When an artistic form reaches perfection, its active life is over, and it is a subject of contemplation, no longer a tool to be used.
And just so, when the instrument necessary to the full interpretation of Bach’s clavier-music, the pianoforte, had arrived within measurable distance of perfection, then did Bach’s own Art reach its highest formal expression, then once more did the fashion of things suffer a change, and his work began to take its place as a colossal monument pointing on the road towards the House Beautiful.
Bach is, as it were, the priest of modern music. His congregation sit at his feet daily. Wherever a pianoforte is found, there is his temple. But though the priest cannot utterly control the worship of his hearers (nay, many will bow the knee to Rimmon in the house of the God), still his voice is strong, his words are true, and they may hear if they will.] This is the significance of Bach, and the longer we live, the more we shall believe it.
[73] The word “Intavolata” was used about 1600 to describe the “arrangement” of a many-voiced madrigal for the keyed instrument. Hence “intavolatura” comes to mean a “copy” presenting all the parts at one view, and such “arrangements” for clavier were common and popular.
[74] More than a century before Kuhnau, an English clavier composer, John Munday, composed a piece of “programme-music,” with the various sections labelled, e.g.—Faire Wether, Lightening, Thunder, Calme Wether, A Cleare Day. It is the third piece in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book.
[75] Bach died in 1750. Hawkins published his great History of Music in 1776, and in spite of the fact that he had his information direct from Bach’s son, John Christian Bach, then living in London, he appears quite ignorant of any of his works but the Clavierübung (1731-42), from which he prints three short harpsichord pieces.
[76] This is certainly not so, historically speaking. The strict canon is far older than what we understand by “imitation.”
[77] Long before Bach was born, we find an English composer anticipating this comprehensive treatment of the scales. Before 1667, John Jenkins wrote a series of “Fancies” on each degree of the alphabetical scale, three movements to the set. The keys actually used are C, D, E, F, G, A, B flat, all minor except F and B flat. But, as is mentioned in a previous note, in one of the three movements in F, Jenkins modulates nearly through all the flat keys, at any rate as far as D flat, thus showing that already in the middle of the seventeenth century an Englishman contemplated Bach’s accomplished work of using the scale on every semitone. And this by no means fixes the ultimate limit. Bull’s fantasia on Ut, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La—piece number 51 in the Fitzwilliam book—modulates into all the twelve keys. Though this does not prove that instruments were as yet tuned with an equal temperament, it does prove that Bach was in no sense the originator of the idea, and the probability is very great that the system was in practical use in England in Elizabethan times. Bull was flourishing in 1590.
[78] The date of the first edition of the “Forty-eight” is uncertain, namely, 1799 or 1800, London. (Author’s note.)
[79] August Gottlieb Muffat, of Vienna, 1690-1770, son of Georg Muffat, organist of Strassburg Cathedral.