Bach brought the methods I have indicated to bear upon Church music, and they help to explain his extraordinarily dignified and inspired playing, which was at once so appropriate and filled the listener with deep awe and admiration. His profound knowledge of harmony, unfailing originality, freedom from a secular style, his complete command of the instrument, both manuals and pedals, whence flowed a generous stream of the richest and most abundant fancy, the infallible and swift judgment which allowed him always to select from the treasury of his mind precisely the musical ideas best suited to the occasion immediately before him, his intuitive grasp of every detail, and his power to make it serve his artistic ends—in a word, his transcendent genius brought the art of Organ playing to a degree of perfection which, till then, it had never attained and hardly will attain again. Quantz[133] has expressed the [pg 67] same opinion. “The admirable Johann Sebastian Bach,” he writes, “brought the art of Organ playing to its highest perfection. It is to be hoped that when he dies it will not be suffered to decline or be lost, as is to be feared from the small number of people who nowadays bestow pains upon it.”[134]
Strangers often asked Bach to play to them between the hours of divine service. On those occasions he was wont to select and treat a theme in various ways, making it the subject of each extemporisation even if he continued playing for two hours. As a beginning he played a Prelude and Fugue on the Great Organ. Then he developed it with solo stops in a Trio or Quartet. A Hymn-tune followed, whose melody he interrupted in the subtlest fashion with fragments of the theme in three or four parts. Last came a Fugue, with full Organ, in which he treated the subject alone or in association with one or more accessory themes. Here we have the art which old Reinken of Hamburg considered to be lost, but which, as he afterwards found, not only survived but attained its greatest perfection in Bach.
Bach's pre-eminent position and his high reputation often caused him to be invited to examine candidates for vacant organistships, and to report on new Organs. In both cases he acted so conscientiously and impartially that he generally made [pg 68] enemies. Scheibe, late Director of Music at the Danish Court, who as a young man was examined by Bach on such an occasion, was so incensed by Bach's unfavourable verdict that he afterwards avenged himself in his “Critical Musician” by violently attacking his examiner.[135] In his examination of Organs Bach equally exposed himself to trouble. He could as little prevail on himself to praise a bad instrument as to recommend a bad organist. He was, therefore, severe, though always fair, in the tests he applied, and as he was thoroughly acquainted with the construction of the instrument it was hopeless to attempt to deceive him. First of all he drew out all the stops, to hear the Full Organ. He used to say jokingly, that he wanted to find out whether the instrument had good lungs! Then he gave every part of it a most searching test. But his sense of fairness was so strong that, if he found the work really well done, and the builder's remuneration [pg 69] too small, so that he was likely to be a loser, Bach endeavoured, and often successfully, to procure for him an adequate addition to the purchase price.
When the examination was over, especially if the instrument pleased him, Bach liked to exhibit his splendid talent, both for his own pleasure and the gratification of those who were present. Such demonstrations of his powers invariably invited the verdict, that he was conclusively “the prince of Clavier and Organ players,” a title which Sorge, the late highly-esteemed organist at Lobenstein,[136] once gave him in a dedicatory Preface.
CHAPTER V. BACH THE COMPOSER
Bach's first attempts at composition, like all early efforts, were unsatisfactory. Lacking special instruction to direct him towards his goal, he was compelled to do what he could in his own way, like others who have set out upon a career without a guide. Most youthful composers let their fingers run riot up and down the keyboard, snatching handfuls of notes, assaulting the instrument in wild frenzy, in hope that something may result from it. Such people are merely Finger Composers—in his riper years Bach used to call them Harpsichord Knights—that is to say, their fingers tell them what to write instead of being instructed by the brain what to play.[137] Bach abandoned that method of composition when he observed that [pg 71] brilliant flourishes lead nowhere. He realised that musical ideas need to be subordinated to a plan and that the young composer's first need is a model to instruct his efforts. Opportunely Vivaldi's Concertos for the Violin,[138] then recently published, gave him the guidance he needed. He had often heard them praised as admirable works of art, and conceived the happy idea of arranging them for the Clavier.[139] Hence he was led to study their structure, the musical ideas on which they are built, the variety of their modulations, and other characteristics. Moreover, in adapting to the Clavier ideas and phrases originally written for the Violin Bach was compelled to put his brain to work, and so freed his inspiration from dependence on his fingers. Henceforth he was able to draw ideas out of his own storehouse, and having placed himself on the right road, needed only perseverance and hard work to succeed. And how persevering he was! He even robbed [pg 72] himself of sleep to practise in the night what he had written during the day! But the diligence he bestowed upon his own compositions did not hinder him from studying the works of Frescobaldi,[140] Froberger, Kerl, Pachelbel, Fischer, Strungk,[141] Buxtehude, Reinken, Bruhns, Böhm, and certain French organists who were famed in those days as masters of harmony and fugue.[142]
The models he selected—Church musicians for the most part—and his own disposition inclined him to serious and exalted subjects. But in that kind of music little can be accomplished with inadequate technique. Bach's first object, therefore, was to develop his power of expressing himself before he attempted to realise the ideal that beckoned him. Music to him was a language, and the composer a poet who, whatever the idiom he affects, must first of all have at his disposal the means of making himself intelligible to others. But the technique of his period Bach found limited in variety and insufficiently pliable. Therefore he set himself at the outset to refashion the accepted harmonic system. He did so in a manner characteristically individual and bearing the impress of his personality.
If the language of music is merely the utterance of a melodic line, a simple sequence of musical notes, it can justly be accused of poverty. The addition of a Bass puts it upon a harmonic foundation and clarifies it, but defines rather than gives it added richness. A melody so accompanied—even though all the notes are not those of the true Bass—or treated with simple embellishments in the upper parts, or with simple chords, used to be called “homophony.” But it is a very different thing when two melodies are so interwoven that they converse together like two persons upon a footing of pleasant equality. In the first case the accompaniment is subordinate, and serves merely to support the first or principal part. In the second case the two parts are not similarly related. New melodic combinations spring from their interweaving, out of which new forms of musical expression emerge. If more parts are interwoven in the same free and independent manner, the apparatus of language is correspondingly enlarged, and becomes practically inexhaustible if, in addition, varieties of form and rhythm are introduced. Hence harmony becomes no longer a mere accompaniment of melody, but rather a potent agency for augmenting the richness and expressiveness of musical conversation. To serve that end a simple accompaniment will not suffice. True harmony is the interweaving of several melodies, which [pg 74] emerge now in the upper, now in the middle, and now in the lower parts.