It is impossible to characterise in a few words the works which gave Bach his chief renown among contemporaries, and the familiarity of many of the greatest of them renders such an attempt unnecessary. It may suffice to direct attention to the majestic motion of the august Passacaglio, as contrasted with the idyllic grace of the Pastorale which follows it in the printed edition, and which remains lamentably a fragment;—to the broad directness of the Fugue in C (2. 1), the daring invention of the longest of the fugues, that in E minor (2. 9), which proceeds almost entirely by chromatic intervals, the irresistible charm of the G minor, or the marvellously varied solemnity of the E flat, naturalised in England as the S. Ann Fugue. It is as an organ composer that Bach stands, as a colossus, absolutely unapproached and unapproachable.
CHAPTER IV.
The reasons which determined Bach to leave Weimar are not quite clear. He was in fact one of those quick-tempered men whom a small irritation might kindle to a resolve of disproportionate gravity. In the present case he had a real grievance in the appointment of a son as successor to the old capellmeister, whose work Bach had done for a long time and the reversion of whose office he might reasonably have counted upon. Leopold, the reigning prince of Anhalt-Coethen was no stranger at Weimar. A family alliance connected the two courts, and it is likely that he had heard Bach there. In any case Bach was known to him by report, and in 1717 was invited to take the post of capellmeister at Coethen.
The six years that Bach spent in the service of this prince make a kind of pause or breathing-space in his life. It is not that he was idle during this period: his work was different. He had, as it were, stepped aside from the road upon which he had journeyed all the years of his manhood, to follow a by-lane where he might loiter if it pleased him. And if this short abandonment of his peculiar art, dedicated to the service of the church, in favour of the writing of suites for strings or clavichord, hardly needs apology, it remains remarkable that Bach consented to take a position in which church music or even organ-playing had no place. In no one of the three churches in Coethen had he any control; perhaps he was not sorry in the present case, since two of them, with the bulk of the population, belonged to (his special aversion) the reformed or Calvinistic sect.[22] The Castle Church could boast but an indifferent organ and was unprovided with a choir; so that even had Bach wished to overstep the limitations of his duty, there were no opportunities, but rather discouragement, in Coethen for him to return to his old work.
He was designated Capellmeister and Director of his Highness’s Chamber Music, but in the peculiar situation of the Coethen court the title imperfectly describes the nature of his post. Leopold was a young bachelor who gave to music the loving worship he had not yet consecrated to a woman. He cultivated his art with an eager enthusiasm, sang a full bass, and was no mean performer on violin, viola-da-gamba, and clavichord. He welcomed Bach as a brother in the craft, and not only employed him to compose for his varied requirements, but took him into his familiar fellowship,[23] played with him, sang with him, insisted on his company whenever, as was his habit, he journeyed abroad.
Before this he had learned some knowledge of the world, had travelled in England and Italy, and made acquaintance with the music of Rome and Venice. For the future we find him and Bach making repeated visits to Karlsbad and other distant places, and the obedient capellmeister sometimes perhaps a little ennuyé, if we may credit a story which relates that on one of these journeys he consoled himself for the lack of all musical instruments by striking off the greater part of the Wohltemperirte Clavier. The incongruous performance recalls the tale of the famous printer, Henry Estiennes, that he divided the New Testament into verses, the verses which we still retain, on a ride from Paris to Lyons.
In spite of the widened experience, it was in truth a narrowing life to Bach. He was not one of a musical group as at Weimar; there is no record of his having any friends in the place. If he had the pleasantness of the grateful appreciation of the Prince, he had no public to sustain his ambition. His days were divided between his house and the music-room of the castle; and he only came into contact with the musical society outside by the custom which he still maintained of employing his holiday in the autumn to visit towns where he was known, where he was invited to try organs and exhibit his skill, or to produce occasional cantatas. Once he went to Leipzig to prove the new organ at the University Church, another time, as has been already mentioned, to Hamburg. Once again he travelled to Halle in the hope of making Handel’s acquaintance, but just missed him.