History of the pianoforte and pianoforte players

by Oskar Bie

In this secularisation of counterpoint by means of the contrasting features of an arioso, the foundation of a bass, and the modern system of a network of harmony, he exhibits the characters of both musical styles in one, and gives us the unification of two epochs, which necessarily opened a boundless prospect into the future.

Two or more voices running alongside are treated in their relation to one another. Here the simple contrapuntal exercise, which sets them neatly together, and enfolds their rhythms into each other, will soon cease to satisfy. The best-sounding contrapuntal relations are those in which the voices show some slight traces of imitation. From the lighter imitations rises the stricter canon,[76] and at last the exact and regular succession of canonic repetitions is reached. The ideal is then an exercise in which every note of every voice has its imitative relations, and in which the whole is so interconnected that not a stone can be removed without bringing about the fall of the whole structure.

We see Bach himself at this work. He works more lightly and elegantly, or more heavily and massively, not by arbitrary choice, but according to his subject. He begins with a Prelude, in which a gentle interlacing of voices answers to his mood; imitations, arising as if of their own accord, are inserted here and there. Then there is the final gigue of a suite, in which a rapid 6/8 theme has to be treated, in spite of its rapidity, with a certain canonic severity, which gives solidity to the conclusion of the whole suite. Then again we have a slow movement of intertwining voices, such as is found after the first preluding bars of the F sharp minor and C minor Toccatas; the voices alternately take up the mournful themes, with no strict regularity of exact succession, wonderfully floating, according to a fixed purpose, and gently swimming in their harmonies, with no recognisable support, almost a fairy-like echo of mediæval counterpoint. Or, finally, there is a regular fugue, which stands there like a monument, with hardly a superfluous note; in regular succession the voices present the theme in single or double counterpoint, always alternately imitating at the fourth or fifth, with a never-failing reference to the tonic key; and near the close, where still greater closeness of imitation is demanded, proudly and stiffly vaulted over with diminutions or augmentations of the theme.

Bach has left us clavier-works in which we see perfected the simplest form which the contrapuntal conception could assume in his hands. These are the fifteen “Inventions” and the fifteen “Symphonies,” which in the manuscript appear with the inscription, “Straightforward directions, by which the amateur of the clavier, but especially the one anxious to learn, is shown a plain method, not only of playing properly in two parts, but also, on further progress, to undertake three obbligato parts; at the same time also not only gaining good inventions, but also personally performing them, and, above all, attaining a cantabile style in playing, as well as a good foretaste of composition.” This curious preface ends, “Verfertiget von Joh. Seb. Bach, hochf. Anhalt-Cöthenischen Capell-meister, Anno Christi 1723.”

The simple homeliness of the time speaks in this title-page; and it is well to appropriate to-day as much of this as possible, in order to lose nothing in the enjoyment of these fifteen two-voiced Inventions and these fifteen three-voiced Symphonies. Even to-day Bach demands the desire of learning in amateurs, who should feed their pleasure with diligence, and enter into the feelings of the composer. One who sits at the clavier with a zeal worthy of Bach’s compositions, will find in these thirty simple contrapuntal pieces a small storehouse of treasures. He will be captivated by the elegance of this canonic music as soon as his fingers are able to play in parts; but he will never be released from the influence of the many-coloured glittering character of these compositions. They are the drawings of a master, which in a few strokes depict great objects; sketches of a great artist, so full of scholarship that they cover the whole of life. The solemn Invention in F minor, the eccentric one in B flat major, the Symphony which sounds so mournfully in E flat major, or the chromatically gloomy F minor, the sprightly staccato G minor, the graceful A major whose traces are to be found in so many works of a later time, and the rhythmical, freely-singing B minor, with its harp-like strokes, in which Beethoven and Chopin, yet unborn, seem to meet—these pieces were then unique in literature, and still remain so.

Skull of Sebastian Bach, with Seffner’s modelling of his features.

In these fantasy-pieces the fugal conception is dealt with on a small scale; in the Toccatas on a large scale. The clavier-toccatas of Bach are free pieces of that wonderful many-sidedness of construction which a music might still possess that had not yet stiffened into conventionalism. When we sit down to play the Inventions and Symphonies, we point our fingers as if for miniature work. But when we sit down to the Toccatas, we dispose our arms and hands, as would have been said in Bach’s time, “in einer gewissenen grossartigen Freyheit,” with a certain large freedom. These Toccatas will be eternal favourites, because of their air of improvisation which develops the fughetta out of the preludic movement, and scatters the playful, pleasant technique in the midst of the severities of imitation. Inexhaustible in the apparent formlessness of their form, they stand on the threshold of modern literature as the great models of that true clavier-style which will always have a touch of the extempore as one of its characteristic features.

In the Toccatas it can be seen how Bach permits his fugal conceptions organically to grow. It is in them that we see the psychology of the fugue more purely than in the strictest formal fugal movements. Take, for example, the F sharp minor Toccata. Here the fingers preludise over the keyboard, gradually growing slower, the passages differentiate themselves into motives, which gently imitate each other, until at length they come to rest on a solid bass. This is the moment of lyric inspiration; and the soul sighs itself out in a slow movement, which weaves itself in fugal style, speedily sweeping forth in its own free, harmonious woven-work. A staccato-motive breaks in; rolling semiquavers soon crystallise around it; it grows and swells in a three-voiced fugue; loosens itself, becomes lighter, and passes off into an operatic joyousness, circling round in repetitions, which to us seem almost too wide for the narrow significance of this motive. A pause, and in the new-won freshness emerges the first chromatic adagio-motive as a lively floating fugue, soon breaking forth into four voices, and ending in a stirring finale.