The following passage from the Autobiography of Hector Berlioz (ed. Dent, p. 11) is relevant: “My father would never let me learn the piano; if he had, no doubt I should have joined the noble army of piano thumpers…Sometimes I regret my ignorance, yet, when I think of the ghastly heap of platitudes for which that unfortunate piano is made the daily excuse—insipid, shameless productions, that would be impossible if their perpetrators had to rely, as they ought, on pencil and paper alone—then I thank the fates for having forced me to compose silently and freely by saving me from the tyranny of finger-work, that grave of original thought.”
Antonio Vivaldi, A. 1743; a master of form. That fact turned the attention of German composers to him; while the popularity of his Violin Concertos also attracted musicians, like Bach, whose work at Cöthen was in close association with the Court Kapelle or band.
Bach re-wrote sixteen Vivaldi Violin Concertos for the Clavier, four of them for the Organ, and developed one into a Concerto for four Claviers and a quartet of strings which Forkel enumerates ( infra, p. 132) as a composition of Bach's (Peters bk. 260). Bach learnt from Vivaldi “clearness and plasticity of musical structure.” See article Vivaldi in Grove; Spitta, i. 411 ff; Schweitzer, i. 192 ff. The Vivaldi Clavier Concertos are in Peters bk. 217; the Organ Concertos in Novello bk. 11. Not all these transcriptions are based on Vivaldi. See Schweitzer, i. 193.
Girolamo Frescobaldi, b. 1583, d. 1644; Organist of St. Peter's, Rome.
Delphin Strungk, b. 1601, d. 1694; Organist of St. Martin's, Brunswick; composed for the Organ.
Purcell should be added to those whom Forkel mentions as Bach's models. See infra, p. 261.
* See Kirnberger's “Kunst des reinen Satzes,” p. 157. [The work was published in two volumes at Berlin in 1771, 1776.]
Transitus regularis= a passing note on the unaccented portions of the bar; transitut irregularis=a passing note on the accented part of the bar.
Spitta (iii. 315 ff. ) prints a treatise by Bach, Rules and Instructions for playing Thorough-bass or Accompaniment in Four Parts, dated 1738. Rule 3 of chap. vi. states: “Two fifths or two octaves must not occur next one another, for this is not only a fault, but it sounds wrong. To avoid this there is an old rule, that the hands must always go against one another, so that when the left goes up the right must go down, and when the right goes up the left must go down.”
Actually the third beat of the fourth bar from the end. P. bk. 1 p. 37 Fugue no. 9.