History of the pianoforte and pianoforte players

by Oskar Bie

Among the suites which do not belong to these collections, we recollect with great pleasure the dainty dances and intermezzi—for example in the E flat major suite, and especially that in B minor with overture in French style (Largo—Fuga—Largo) which appeared in the second part of the Klavierübung as a piece for two manuals. It presents, among the many intermezzi, a gavotte in the style of the orchestral Partiten, which links itself with the choicest dances, in graceful style, of the preceding century. From the clavier-suites we pass to the clavier-sonatas, which, still in the style of Italian art, mingled with dances, offer free combinations of different movements. The melodious andante of the D minor sonata, and its final allegro-movement rattling off almost in one part, are perfect pearls. A step further we reach the fantasias with fugues; especially the polyphonic one in A minor, the recitatival “Chromatische” and the concerto-like C minor, fugally treated, but still not a fugue. These three fantasia-pieces were Bach’s direct bequests to the future. In the polyphony of the brilliantly rushing fantasia in A minor, rising with endlessly delicate melody, we are reminded of the “Meistersinger”; in the chromatic fantasia, with its broad narration and grandiose concluding pedal point, the clavier seems to us to speak with the freedom of a drama; in the significantly constructed C minor fantasia rests the whole formal talent of the instrumental composers of the expiring eighteenth century.

The three “brilliant” fantasias incline naturally to the concerto style, which partly abandoned counterpoint in favour of a mere accompaniment, and partly subordinated it to the careful elaboration of a single voice-part. The problem of committing a whole concerto to the clavier alone, Bach has solved in his famous “Italian Concerto”—Italian in the conception of the style of execution proper to concertos, which in Italy developed itself specially on the violin—Italian in the form of a slow movement enclosed by two quicker movements, which had emerged as the most practical method for the violin (half in rivalry with the Tutti, half in the interest of solo virtuosity). Bach has in the Italian concerto perfectly attained the object of writing in several movements a clavier piece fit for execution. The grand sonatas of a later time have been able to add nothing essential to it. The first movement is an ingenious combination of pregnant motives, which reminds us of tutti-effects, of running semiquaver figures, and melodious passages on moving quaver accompaniment, which correspond to the second lyrical theme of sonatas. The slow movement is a great recitative song with a berceuse-like accompaniment, of a structure so delicate that we are irresistibly reminded of the contours of old primitive pictures. It has the dainty grace of archaic outline, just like that in the two-part interwoven arioso[80] of the B minor Prelude, or in the crisp melody of the E flat Prelude (Wohltemperiertes Klavier I.). The third movement, which is quicker, unravels the whole into the cheerful linked play of floating parts, unsurpassed in elegant construction by any of the great formalists. Floating passages run up and down among chords, falling like drops of rain, and the voices combine in pleasant unity.

Facsimile of Title-page of Bach’s Manuscript of the Wohltemperiertes Klavier.
In the Royal Musikbibliothek, Berlin.

The entire multiformity of music at the beginning of the eighteenth century is expressed in the clavier-works of Bach. As yet the sonata-form with its two themes, and its “free” section in the middle of the movement, has not become the consecrated scheme;[81] and all the forces which had gradually worked towards this form exert themselves unfettered, in order to make themselves effective now in this, now in that combination of movements and parts of movements. “Thematic” is not neglected. To a series of suite-movements similar commencing motives are given, and the motives of earlier parts are taken up in the later. But this tendency to unity does not act as a restraint upon form, and does not reduce everything to one stiff mould. There is a fugue with a prelude, by Bach, that in E flat major (Wohltemp. Kl. i.), which offers perhaps the most delicate example of this unrestrained unity of motive. The Prelude, which is much longer than the fugue, begins with semiquaver figures, whose characteristic is melodious sustained passages advancing by sixths and sevenths; after this introduction, begins in toccata-fashion a kind of slow fugue, which unfolds the just heard motive in a terser form; and finally, in a third part, mingles itself with the former semiquaver figure. The fourth part is so to speak moulded in the fugue form, which in its “subject” makes use of the characteristic leap of a seventh, found in the Prelude, as a main feature, and brings the play to a conclusion in a busy and lively manner. The relations of motive are only to be felt, not seen; but they are there, and give to the formal freedom of this piece a vigour of its own. Thus, in many of Bach’s pieces, apart from the direct thematic motives, we shall find this indirect assonance, which, springing from a general feeling of unity, is, in fact, a more dainty framework for the piece than any unity that could be impressed on it from outside.

So also is it with the construction of the pieces. We find everywhere traces of the later sonata-style; and not less in the dance-forms than in free movements. It was too natural to repeat the beginning of the piece at the end, then to transpose a second theme into the main key, and in the centre to work out the main motive in a kind of free fantasia. But so long as the author held fast to the binary form of the piece, and to the Da capo of each half, as was the case at this time, so long did the parts of the “developments” and repetitions fail to concentrate themselves so completely as not to leave a rich field of varied forms in which fancy could move at ease. Bach’s imagination was keen enough to give to every one of these forms, as they developed themselves each moment, a natural and elemental strength. A toccata by him, although they are all very various in form, or a fantasia, like the C minor, which is of sonata-character, is built up so firmly and self-evidently that the later uniformity of the sonata seems rather to betray a weakening than a strengthening of style.

[That the severe forms of Prelude and Fugue are abundantly capable of expressing poetical ideas is easily shown. Turn only to the D minor Prelude and Fugue in the second part of the Wohltemperiertes Klavier. Although the casual reader perceives in the one movement merely an exercise in two parts, in the other, one in three parts, it requires only a slight exercise of imagination to see that the work really pictures some such feelings as the following: In the Prelude, a man suddenly realises himself in the true “out-of-doors” of this life, with the rain and hail of difficulties and troubles sensibly battering him. Bravely, but ineffectually, he tries to push through the tempest, and sinks wearily into half-sleep, is awakened by a renewed riot of the elements around, tries harder than before, and longer too, to impress himself on his circumstances, and be master of things, and succeeds in a sorrowful kind of way, for the storm passes, sighs itself out, and he at last can rest. In the Fugue, he tries to begin his work in the world. His efforts are strong in their intention, but die down as weakly as the devil himself could wish, one after another. But though these messengers of his will return to him empty again and again, he still goes on. “It is the best I can do, and something may come of it in the end,” he seems to say. And there is in the final bars, where the subject occurs for the last time, a certain expression of savage pleasure at the thought of not having given in, mingled with the abiding knowledge of an abundant measure of continual failure, such as is no imagination to any man who cares about his work, and has arrived at the sorrowful conviction that most of his walking must be done in the dark.][82]

Perhaps the Bach Preludes show this freedom on the most liberal scale. For the Prelude is not so much a kind of form, like the Toccata, but a mere Piece before a Piece; it lays down the lines to be followed, but in itself is uncertain, unfixed in form. The Prelude may be a Toccata or a Sonata, a Symphony or an Invention; it can let its upper part, in arioso style, wander over the continuo, or it may burst forth in fullest polyphony. It may have the rhythm and regularity of beat of the dances, or may speak with the freedom of recitative without thought of a repetition. The abundance of possibilities which Bach found at his disposal in the working out of themes, construction, and style, are mirrored in the Preludes, from the real fugue to the playful method of the court-musicians.[83] Anyone who undertakes the pleasant task of simply running through the Preludes of the “Wohltemperiertes Klavier” (vol. ii.), will be able to appreciate the full spring-like freshness in which the free music of this time, so rich in promise for the future, lived out its life. And, like the discriminating observer of nature, he will admire, in just these yet unspoilt forms, the great harmony and natural unity which is exhibited by the young life of the creation. The Prelude in E major will always seem to me a blossom of this spring-time (“Wohlt. Kl.” i.)—one of the daintiest pieces ever written for the clavier. In an easy 12/8 time the poem begins with an allegretto theme, ingeniously invented, and playful in style. It is supported by two voices; but they soon take part canonically in the delightful movement. We have, in the play of cheerful thought, come to the dominant of the dominant[84] (F sharp), and from this F sharp we rest, in a humorous change, a moment on D, and even G, till, just as rapidly, we emerge through a chromatic maze at B natural once more (Bar 8). The repose of the succeeding dominant passage is gently stirred by ravishing transient modulations, on which the very spirit of happiness seems to rest. A beautiful chain of syncopations leads us through F sharp minor, and a jubilant run of semiquavers, built on a dominant chord on E, brings us to the recapitulation of the opening subject in the key of A (Bar 15), starting from which the movement repeats itself accurately (for eight bars) in its eternal cheerfulness, the piece closing with a couple of bars in Schumann’s ingenious manner, still sweetly suggesting the spring-song of its earlier strains.

We find, then, that nothing essentially new in “form” has been used by later artists, of which the germ did not already exist in Bach. Nay, even in programme-music (supposed by many to be an invention of modern times) for the clavier, which Kuhnau so quaintly worked out in his Biblical Stories,[85] Bach has entered the field in a youthful composition. He is singing the departure of his brother. The first adagio movement in anapæstic rhythms represents the flattery of the friends, who are trying to dissuade the traveller from his journey. It is time for the fugue, and this is the picture of various misfortunes which may befall him in foreign parts. A mournful arioso passage on a ground bass,[86] chromatic in character, is a universal lament of his friends. In a full-chorded Intermezzo they come and bid him good-bye, seeing that it cannot be otherwise. Now the postillion sings his air, broken with octave passages, representing the smacks of his whip; and since a fugue is the end of all good things, we hear one in four parts raise itself above the post-horn, with whip episodes to increase the realism. The young Bach did not go as far as Frohberger, who represented the assaults of robbers, crossings of the Rhine, and even forcible ejectments with violence, on the clavier; or as Kuhnau, who had given the cheating of Laban in “deceptive” cadences,[87] and Hezekiah’s doubtings in the rehearsal of a choral; yet this kind of programme-music declined in the eighteenth century precisely as it has grown up again in the nineteenth.