Chapter XI: By the time of Bach organs were well-made and effective (2)

We have already observed that all great composers from the time of Beethoven have acknowledged Bach as the father of modern music, but this relationship which his descendants have so gladly acknowledged is, on the whole, general and intangible. The reason is partly that Bach invented no new forms, and that the forms which he chose, and the style in which he wrote, passed out of circulation, so to speak, immediately after his death. The fugue, the cantata, and the Passion he brought to the highest point it was possible for these forms to attain. They have rarely been attempted since with near enough success to suggest even imitation. The fugues of Mozart, Beethoven, and Brahms are essentially different from the fugues of Bach. Mendelssohn fell far short of the master whom he, more almost than all others, worshipped. César Franck has been compared to Bach, but is curiously unlike him. The cantata and the Passion grew up to Bach and then stopped: the cantata, because even in the hands of Bach it was an uncouth hybrid, neither opera, which is itself an illogical mixture, nor church music; the Passion, because, as Bach left it, it is as unattainable as the sun. As far as form and outward show are concerned, therefore, Bach’s position in the history of music is that of the culmination, the ultimate consummation, of certain styles and forms now obsolete. To understand his appearance in the history of music one must step back into the history of the seventeenth century in German music, a history strangely complicated with that of Protestantism, Lutheran hymns, and cantata texts, inextricably associated with the church and with the organ loft. In the growth of church music in Germany Bach had not one, nor two predecessors. A dozen different courses converged in him. Strangely enough, of the music of the one man before him with whom he might seem related, Heinrich Schütz, he knew little or nothing. All others worthy of the name of composers, however, contributed some share to his development.

All the great organists from the time there were great organists led to Bach, step by step, unmistakably. Every new phase of form, every new device of virtuosity but paved the way for one who was so supremely great as to cast them all into shade or oblivion. All hymn writers, all composers of chorales led the same way. The Protestant religion found its perfect artistic expression in Bach, not in the cantatas but in the chorale fantasies for organ, the motets and the Passion according to St. Matthew. Catholic art contributed its share. He copied out masses by Palestrina, and by other men now forgotten, such as Lotti and Caldara. For a good part of the Lutheran service, especially at St. Thomas church in Leipzig, was practically Catholic in form. The _Kyrie_, the _Gloria_, _Credo_, _Benedictus_, _Sanctus_, and _Agnus Dei_ had their place in the ritual; and, what is more, German composers, and Bach was no exception, seldom troubled to set them to new music but adapted music of the earlier Italian writers to the new German words. The enormous number of cantatas was owing to the fact that the form had grown out of a native German custom of singing hymns between the reading of the _Gospel_ and the _Credo_, on the one hand, and the sermon, on the other, and composers were given opportunity to set texts not already time-worn. The history of these texts is one full of sad failures to achieve a truly artistic form, of futile efforts to reconcile chorale and hymn with the new operatic style, of bad verse and trivial, mechanical sentiment. Bach was constantly harassed by problems of text, varying in his choice between an old style Bible text woven with the strophes of the chorale hymns, by far the best though least suited to the operatic style of music which had established itself in the church, and a free text developed from a line or passage in the Bible, consisting of strophic arias and passages for recitative in the so-called madrigal style, a loose versification. The artistic perfection of the Passion is due no little to the fact that he himself supervised the arrangement of the text, the introduction of strophic verse for arias, and madrigal style for ariosos and the chorales.

The history of Passion music leads to Bach, and further than that it cannot go. Way back in the Middle Ages the story of the Passion was chanted in the churches, some time, usually on Good Friday in holy week. The words of the evangelist, of actors in the drama, and of Christ were chanted by a priest or deacon in the monotonous reciting tone, and the choir was given the ejaculations of the crowd. Later the words of Christ, the evangelist, Pilate, Peter, etc., were allowed to different chanters and with the growth of the operatic style the monotonous chant was changed to more expressive recitative. This intrusion of the operatic style was at times bitterly opposed, and the greatest German composer before Bach--Heinrich Schütz--was among the reactionaries, though he had received his training in Italy under Giovanni Gabrieli and Monteverdi himself. However, the influence of opera was too strong for the conservative clergy, and not only did recitative, aria, and dramatic choruses come to play a part in the singing of the story of the Passion, but instruments were introduced into the accompaniment, and the whole became practically a drama. The need for texts suitable for treatment in recitative and aria finally led to versified arrangements of the Biblical narrative itself, as well as to the introduction of strophic stanzas interpretative of the mood or action of the story. A new character, the so-called daughter of Zion, was introduced as a convenient spokeswoman for the congregation.

Such were the theatrical arrangements made by C. F. Hunold, known as Menantes, and by B. H. Brockes, a town councillor of Hamburg, whose arrangement was set to music by Keiser, Mattheson, Telemann, and Handel. Chorale melodies and hymns found no place in these passions. Schütz had employed them at the beginning and the end of his settings, as introduction and epilogue. They were apparently first woven into the body of the work by a little-known composer, Johann Sebastiani, about 1672. The arrangement which Bach finally used for his St. Matthew Passion was a combination of these earlier styles. For the narrative he reverted to the Biblical text, divided among the various characters. He retained the interpretative arias which in the midst of the story dwell for a time on the suffering, on the horror of it all, and their effect upon man; he included among the singers the Daughter of Zion. The chorus was used for the utterances of the crowd, with considerable restraint, and, throughout the work, for richly harmonized chorales which served to draw the congregation into the tragedy even though they were but once or twice given a voice in them. At the beginning and the end massive double choruses, into the first of which a chorale melody was woven, opened and concluded the story. Orchestra and organ made up the accompaniment. All these various elements he combined with unerring sense of proportion and fitness and with no inconsistencies and no histrionic glamour, so that the work stands perfect as a piece of art, and as the purest expression in music of the Lutheran religion.

In his general treatment of the orchestra Bach is allied so much more closely to the past than to the future that in this regard he can be said to have had practically no influence upon his successors. Before his death the Mannheim school, led by Johann Stamitz, was already pointing the way toward a new treatment of the orchestra which was to be taken up and developed by Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. Bach differs from these later men not so much in a lack of appreciation of tone color as in his forcing all instruments, irrespective of their peculiar capabilities, to conformity in a polyphonic style much influenced by the organ. The result is that trumpets and oboes, for examples, are made to play rapid, agile figures suitable only to violin. All instruments are treated in the same way, may be required to take equal and similar parts in the music. This is, of course, distinctly old-fashioned. Purely technical reasons would prevent any composer of the new school from writing for the oboes as he would write for the violins. Sonority and color, too, ousted the old polyphonic ideal. Bach was not, however, deaf to orchestral color. Often in the accompaniments to cantatas and other vocal works the coloring is rich and unusual, and unusual combinations of solo instruments in the Brandenburg concertos seem to show him on voyages of discovery, so to speak, into the effects of combinations of different timbres.

The two series of orchestral works are the Brandenburg concertos and the _Ouvertures_, both written during his stay at Cöthen. The names themselves speak from the now distant past of orchestral music. The name concerto then signified a composition written for a small group of solo instruments, called the _concertino_, accompanied by or alternating with a larger group called the _tutti_. For instance, in the second concerto the solo group is composed of trumpet, flute, oboe, and violin, the _tutti_ being in all cases made up of strings. The form is Corellian. The relatively modern treatment of a solo instrument in a concerto, writing for it to show off its special qualities and technical peculiarities, is hardly suggested, _tutti_ and _concertino_ having to play the same musical material in the same polyphonic style, offering principally contrast between sonority and delicacy; though, as we have said, the element of tone color plays a part. It must be added, however, that the long passage for harpsichord at the end of the first movement of the fifth concerto is very similar to modern cadenzas. The treatment of all parts is consistently polyphonic.

The same is true of the four _Ouvertures_. These compositions are in reality suites, having as the first two movements the two characteristics of the French _ouverture_ invented by Lully, one slow and serious, the other an extended _allegro_ in fugal style. The following movements are in dance forms and rhythms. They are scored for the customary brass, wood, and strings, employed here not so much for their specialties as for contrasts of sonority and delicacy.

Bach has not, therefore, contributed in matters of style and form to the development of music after his time nor to the growth of orchestral music, which was the distinguishing feature of the age which followed immediately upon his death. This is due, as we have said, to the fact that the style and forms which were his own inheritance passed out of circulation. In many cases, too, his work was of such unique greatness that no imitation of it could come near enough to suggest more than most vaguely an influence. Copies of his style but emphasize its remoteness, both in time and quality. Certain works must remain forever unique because their peculiar perfection must always keep them in a class by themselves. Among these there are none more striking than the works for solo violin and for solo violoncello, works which have no counterpart in music. Still, we are not limited to intangible influences of melody and harmony in noting the effect which his compositions have had upon his followers. In two ways at least he gave a definite impulse to the course of music; he reorganized the system of fingering keyboard instruments, and invented a satisfactory and universally accepted method of equal temperament.

IV

About the time Friedemann, his first born son, was nine years old Bach began to compose for him the book of pieces known as the 'Little Clavier Book.’ It is what we should call to-day a graded collection of short pieces intended to perfect the already striking abilities of his son. Beginning with the simplest elements, he introduced difficulties by degrees until the last pieces, in polyphonic style, demand a very considerable skill. The most interesting passages are those in which Bach has indicated the fingering, for they prove that he reorganized all the systems of fingering in use in his day and perfected one of his own upon which future developments are based. His chief innovation is in the manner of using the thumb. Up to the time of Couperin, players of keyed instruments used only the four fingers of the hand. The thumb hung idle. The position must have been stiff and awkward and it is hard to understand how such brilliant performers as the north German organists ever overcame the difficulties of it. Yet Bach himself told his son Emanuel that in his youth he had seen great organists play who never used the thumb except for the widest stretches. Couperin’s famous book on the art of playing the harpsichord appeared in 1717, the very year Bach went to Cöthen. In it he advocated the use of the thumb, but over the fingers, not under them. Bach was one of the first to appreciate the advantages of passing the thumb under the hand. It is hardly possible that he invented the practice. Many of the oldest works for the harpsichord must have called for a use of the thumb, and the contemporary works of Domenico Scarlatti would have been almost insurmountably difficult without it; but in theory the use of the thumb under the hand was avoided, and Bach’s 'Little Clavier Book’ contains probably the first open recognition of the advantages of so using it, no matter what the actual practice of virtuosi had been up to that time. One will observe that Bach did not abandon the old system, and that many passages marked by him are to be played in the old way; that is, by passing the long fingers, chiefly the middle finger, over the short ones; but he laid the foundations of the new. The most famous of players in the next generation was his own son Emanuel, whose book on playing the harpsichord was the standard authority down to the time that the harpsichord was finally supplanted by the pianoforte. Haydn and Mozart undoubtedly profited by it, and thus the methods of the father were spread abroad through the son and played a considerable part in the development of music for the pianoforte.

'The Well-tempered Clavichord’[158] is unquestionably an epoch-making work. It is, as is well known, a series of preludes and fugues in all major and minor keys. The term 'well-tempered’ refers to Bach’s method of tuning the clavichord, which for the first time made such an unbounded use of harmony possible. It will be remembered that the first keyboards had only those keys which are to-day white, sounding only the diatonic tones of the modes. The first chromatic alteration allowed in these modes was the B-flat, which was practically forced upon musicians in order to avoid the augmented interval between F and B natural, an interval excruciating to their ears. So the black key between A and B was the first to find its place on the keyboard, and it was tuned in the relation of a perfect fourth with the F below. E-flat seems to have been the next black key and was tuned in the relation of a perfect fourth to the B-flat. The other black keys were added one by one, nearly always in exact relation to some one of the white keys or the original diatonic notes of the modes, F sharp in that of a perfect fifth with the B below, G sharp in that of a perfect major third with E, C sharp in the same relation with A. Inasmuch as all these intervals were mathematically exact--and such was the idea of tuning all through the Middle Ages and nearly to the time of Bach--the black keys were in perfect relation only with one or more of the white keys, and often quite out of relation with each other. The intervals between them were very noticeably out of tune and false. When, during the seventeenth century, our harmonic system of transposing keys finally supplanted the old modal system, composers for the harpsichord and the organ still found themselves limited by their keyboards to three sharp keys and two flat, so long as their instruments were perfectly tuned.

A cursory glance at some of the old harpsichord music shows that composers did not by any means submit to such a restriction, and we must presume that, unless they were willing to endure the sound of many hideous imperfections, they developed in practice at any rate some system of tuning which softened or tempered them. Bach, therefore, is not the inventor of the first tempered tuning, but it is doubtful if any composer before him had worked out such a satisfactory system as his which has been called equal temperament, and which amounts practically to the division of the keyboard octave into twelve equal though slightly imperfect intervals. Only the octave remained strictly in tune. The imperfections of the other intervals were so slight, however, as to be hardly perceptible. Thus the black keys of the keyboard came to represent two notes, different in theory, the sharp of the note below and the flat of the note above; and, by such a compromise, composers for the instrument were enabled to modulate freely through all keys. Bach must be acknowledged the first great musician to recognize the inestimable value of such a liberation, in proof of which he wrote the first series of the 'Well-tempered Clavichord.’ The fugues notably are enriched by the most beautiful modulations, and in this regard the collection may be said to be almost the foundation upon which all subsequent music has been built, and to contain the seeds from which the most soaring harmonies of Beethoven, Chopin and even Wagner have sprung. Thus we are brought back by the 'Well-tempered Clavichord’ to the crowning glory of his genius, his gift for harmony. Beethoven knew the Well-tempered Clavichord.’ He is said to have won his first distinction as a pianist by his playing of those preludes and fugues in Vienna. And Beethoven called Bach the forefather of harmony.

Probably no collection of pieces has been so carefully studied and sounded again and again by generation after generation of composers and probably no other set of pieces will ever prove so impervious to every influence of time. It is like an eternal spring, forever fresh, forever marvellous. Scarcely less wonderful are the collections of two- and three-part Inventions. Both these and the preludes and fugues were written as exercises--the one, in Bach’s own words, as 'an honest guide by which the lovers of the clavier, but particularly those who desire to learn, are shown a plain way not only to play neatly in two parts, but also, in further progress, to play correctly and well in three _obbligato_ parts; and, at the same time, not only to acquire good ideas, but also to work them out themselves; and, finally, to acquire a _cantabile_ style of playing, and, at the same time, to gain a strong predilection for, and foretaste of, composition’; the other 'for the use and practice of young musicians who desire to learn, as for those who are already skilled in this study, for amusement.’ There can be no better testimony to Bach as a teacher than these short prefaces, written in his own fine hand, upon the title pages of the two sets. For him, the greatest virtuoso of his day, virtuosity was nothing, and he taught those about him above all to seek to express only what was genuine and fine in music. So he continues to teach the world of musicians, though music has passed through fire and tempest since he wrote these pieces all but two hundred years ago in the castle at Cöthen. Styles have changed, forms have changed, instruments have changed; the state, the world, are no longer the same; yet in every state and to every corner of the world where there are men and women who have devoted their lives to music, there will Bach be found as the touchstone of all that is good in the art.

V

This is in essence his position at the present day in music, a position unique and special. He will always be the greatest of teachers. His music is profoundly mystical and for this reason the secret of its extraordinary vitality will perhaps never be revealed; and it is nearly always intimate; in this most different from Handel, his great contemporary, with whom he will ever be compared, though the startling contrasts between them lead no nearer to the comprehension or just estimate of either. Handel is outspoken, Bach suggestive; the one compels, the other stimulates.

In conclusion we may once more draw attention to some of the salient points in his genius. As a man he had keen practical knowledge, yet he was impulsive and ardent. He was unshakable in his convictions. He was generous but not always peaceable. And he was always quietly but profoundly thoughtful. Among his friends were men of prominence, knowledge, and high social rank. The circumstances of his life kept him from the theatre, which was the goal of most composers of his time, but, furthermore, his genius was not of the dramatic kind nor his nature one to seek public acclaim. He was, however, in the words of a contemporary, the prince of all players on the harpsichord and the organ, and was so recognized over a large part of Germany.

His unmatched technique in composition was acquired by constant labor and a never-ending study of all available music, both Italian and French, as well as German, while he remained essentially a son of his race. The works of Couperin were known to him, those of Vivaldi and Corelli, of all the great German organists and composers, save only Heinrich Schütz, of the old Italian masters, Palestrina, Lotti, and Caldara. The forms of his day he mastered, both those of ancient descent and those of more recent make; and he invented no new forms. He was first and foremost an organist, the culmination of a long line of German masters. His music for the organ rises higher than that of any of his predecessors, largely because of the logical harmonic foundation upon which he built it. It has never since been equalled. To music for other keyboard installments, precursors of the pianoforte, he brought a richness of harmony and of feeling not to be found in such music before his day. The polyphonic forms, especially the fugues, were influenced by the organ style. Other forms, such as the suites, suggest the influence of French writers. The so-called English suites, the name of which has given rise to much discussion, are the greatest suites in existence. The suites for violin and 'cello alone are unique. The polyphonic style in which many movements of them are written is characteristic of German violin music of the time; the conciseness of form, of the Italian masters. All his vocal works show the influence of the organ style, which was the most natural and most familiar to him, but in these he has incorporated forms such as recitative and _da capo_ aria directly from the contemporary Italian opera. Difficulties and improprieties of text affected the cantatas. The Passions, especially that according to St. Matthew, are flawless in structure. The perfection of the latter is largely due to his supervision of and arrangement of the plan and the text. The mass in B minor is his most colossal work, seeming, however, a less natural expression of his genius than the Passion. Preludes, fugues, suites, concertos in the old style, the church cantata and the musical setting of the Passion he brought to their highest point.

After his death other forms occupied composers, so that he has not served as a model. Also, the next age was preëminently the age of the orchestra, the modern orchestra with its peculiar problems, to the settlement of which Bach contributed little or nothing. The sonorous pianoforte persuaded composers from the organ. The polyphonic style was abandoned or was radically modified. Thus the new era of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven is seemingly completely severed from Bach, totally disconnected save for the links of a revised system of fingering for keyboard instruments and a satisfactory method of equal temperament. But the new age was the age of the supremacy of harmony in music and the genius of Bach, often concealed behind the polyphonic fabric of his greatest works, is essentially harmonic. Chords, modulation, chromaticism are the essence of his music. In all his compositions they give the mysterious warmth. They are the basis of his form, the power of his suggestion. That he might be free to modulate at will he so tuned his clavichord that all keys, both major and minor, could mingle through it; and as initiative for his students to the beauties of harmony unrestricted he composed two series of preludes and fugues in every key which to-day seem an epitome of musical expression. Written for students, they have taught every great composer from Beethoven to Richard Strauss and Claude Debussy. They open the way to his other and to his bigger works, where the lover of music may so lose himself in wonder and deepest joy that he will say, as many have said, here is the beginning and the end of music. L. H.

FOOTNOTES:

[155] The exact date is not known.

[156] Both St. Thomas school and church are still In existence. The boys’ choir is one of the finest in Germany and may be heard as in Bach’s time every Sunday of the year, in a motet.

[157] This famous letter is printed in full in Spitta’s _Life of Johann Sebastian Bach_. It is illuminating in regard not only to Bach’s character, but to his family life as well.

[158] The clavichord was suitable only for the most intimate sort of music. It differed from the harpsichord in that the tone of it was produced not by a plucking of the strings but by a pressure brought to bear on them by little uprights attached to the key levers. The tone was very slender but sweet and within its limitations capable of fine shading. A varying pressure of the key produced that tremolo which on the violin is called _vibrato_, and gave the tone a delicate warmth wholly lacking in the clean-cut, frosty tone of the harpsichord--and, indeed, in the rich tone of the pianoforte.