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FIGURE XIV. DEVICE OF "SHIFTED RHYTHM."

4. "Stretto:" The imitation of the subject by a second voice occurring prematurely, before the first voice has completed the subject, frequently with highly dramatic effect. (b) in Figure IX is an example of stretto.

These devices are mentioned here not only because they occur in many fugues, but because they are used in the symphonic music of Mozart and Beethoven, as we shall later have occasion to see.

IV. GENERAL QUALITIES OF BACH'S WORK.

Perhaps the most exacting of all tests applicable to music is the test of economy. Are there superfluous tones that do not enrich the harmony? Are there unnecessary subjects not needed to fill the scheme of design? If so, no matter how beautiful the music, it is defective as art. Bach bears this test victoriously. There is not a note of his writing which one would willingly sacrifice. There is not a melody that is not needed. Each subject is not merely introduced and dismissed, but is developed to the utmost, so that all that was implicit in its germ becomes explicit in its final form. There is no confusion of the outline, no overcrowding of the canvas, no blotchiness in the color. As Giotto proved his supremacy among draughtsmen by the apparently simple but really enormously difficult feat of drawing a complete, perfect circle with one stroke of the pencil, so Bach constantly proves his supremacy among musicians by making two voices satisfy the ear like an orchestra. And this purity of texture is quite compatible with the utmost richness. Indeed, Bach's polyphonic scores are inimitably rich, since each voice sings its own melody, and the melodies all interplay harmoniously like the lines of a well-composed picture. Those who call Bach's fugues dry make an astonishing confession of their own insensibility or crudity of taste. Bach's melodies are not, to be sure, like "Annie Laurie" or "Home, Sweet Home." But neither is daylight like candle light; yet we do not call it darkness because it is diffused through all the atmosphere instead of concentrated in a single visible ray.

Bach's daring has been the subject of the endless admiration of students. Especially in the matter of harmony he did things in the eighteenth century, and entirely on his own responsibility, that whole schools of composers band together with a sense of revolutionary courage to do in the twentieth. He is truly one of the most modern of composers, and will always remain so. Composers who might have been his grandsons are now antiquated, while he is always contemporary with the best musical thought. Brahms, irritated at Rubinstein's persistent patronizing of "Papa Haydn" in his book, "A Conversation on Music," remarked in his dry way: "Rubinstein will soon be Great-grandfather Rubinstein, but Haydn will then be still Papa Haydn." The same might be said even more truly of Bach, who will always be the father of musicians.

Another way in which Bach is modern is in the variety of his musical expression. It is not only that his range of different species of works is so great, reaching from the ecstatically tender and exalted religious choral compositions, such as cantatas, motets, oratorios, and passions, through the grand and monumental organ toccatas and fugues, to the intimate, colloquial suites and sonatas for orchestra and for clavichord; it is even more wonderful that in a single work, such as the "Well-Tempered Clavichord," he knows how to sound the whole gamut of human feeling, from the deep and sombre passions of the soul to the homely gaiety or bantering humor of an idle moment.[9] Bach might have boasted, had it been in his nature to boast, that in this work he had not only written in every key known to musicians, but in every mood known to men. It is the musical "Com?ie Humaine."

Bach lived quietly and in almost complete obscurity; for the last quarter-century of his life he held a post as teacher of music and church-music director in Leipsic.