Chapter II: The Golden Age of Harpsichord Music (1)

The period and the masters of the ‘Golden Age’--Domenico
Scarlatti; his virtuosity; Scarlatti’s ‘sonatas’;
Scarlatti’s technical effects; his style and form; æsthetic
value of his music; his contemporaries--François Couperin,
_le Grand_; Couperin’s clavecin compositions; the ‘musical
portraits’; ‘program music’--The quality and style of
his music; his contemporaries, Daquin and Rameau--John
Sebastian Bach; Bach as virtuoso; as teacher; his technical
reform; his style--Bach’s fugues and their structure--The
suites of Bach: the French suites, the English suites,
the Partitas--The preludes, toccatas and fantasies;
concertos; the ‘Goldberg Variations’--Bach’s importance; his
contemporary Handel.

In round figures the years between 1700 and 1750 are the Golden Age of harpsichord music. In that half century not only did the technique, both of writing for and performing on the harpsichord, expand to its uttermost possibilities, but there was written for it music of such beauty and such emotional warmth as to challenge the best efforts of the modern pianist and to call forth the finest and deepest qualities of the modern pianoforte.

It was an age primarily of opera, of the Italian opera with its senseless, threadbare plots, its artificial singers idolized in every court, its incredible, extravagant splendor. The number of operas written is astonishing, the wild enthusiasm of their reception hardly paralleled elsewhere in the history of music. Yet of these many works but an air or two has lived in the public ear down to the present day; whereas the harpsichord music still is heard, though the instrument for which it was written has long since vanished from our general musical life.

Practically the whole seventeenth century has been required to lay down a firm foundation for the development of instrumental music in all its branches. This being well done, the music of the next epoch is not unaccountably surprising. As soon as principles of form had become established, composers trod, so to speak, upon solid ground; and, sure of their foothold, were free to make rapid progress in all directions. In harpsichord music few new forms appeared. The toccata, prelude, fugue, and suite offered room enough for all the expansion which even great genius might need. Within these limits the growth was twofold: in the way of virtuosity and refinement of style, and in the way of emotional expression. That music which expands at once in both directions, or in which, rather, the two growths are one and the same, is truly great music. Such we shall now find written for the harpsichord.

Each of the three men whose work is the chief subject of this chapter is conspicuous in the history of music by a particular feature. Domenico Scarlatti is first and foremost a great virtuoso, Couperin an artist unequalled in a very special refinement of style, Sebastian Bach the instrument of profound emotion. In these features they stand sharply differentiated one from the other. These are the essential marks of their genius. None, of course, can be comprehended in such a simple characterization. Many of Scarlatti’s short pieces have the warmth of genuine emotion, and Couperin’s little works are almost invariably the repository of tender and naïve sentiment. Bach is perhaps the supreme master in music and should not be characterized at all except to remind that his vast skill is but the tool of his deeply-feeling poetic soul.

I

It will be noticed that each of these great men speaks of a different race. We may consider Scarlatti first as spokesman in harpsichord music of the Italians, who at that time had made their mark so deep upon music that even now it has not been effaced, nor is likely to be. His father, Alessandro, was the most famous and the most gifted musician in Europe. From Naples he set the standard for the opera of the world, and in Naples his son Domenico was born on October 26, 1685, a few months only after the birth of Sebastian Bach in Eisenach. Domenico lived with his father and under his father’s guidance until 1705, when he set forth to try his fame. He lived a few years in Venice and there met Handel in 1708, with whom he came back to Rome. Here in Rome, at the residence of Corelli’s patron, Cardinal Ottoboni, took place the famous contest on organ and harpsichord between him and Handel. For Handel he ever professed a warm friendship and the most profound admiration.

He remained for some years in Rome, at first in the service of Marie Casimire, queen of Poland, later as _maestro di capella_ at St. Peter’s. In 1719 came a journey to London in order to superintend performances of his operas. From 1721 to 1725 he seems to have been installed at the court of Lisbon; and then, after four years in Naples, he accepted a position at the Spanish court in Madrid. Just how long he stayed there is not known. In 1754 he was back again in Naples, and in Naples he died in 1757, seven years after the death of Bach.

Scarlatti wrote many operas in the style of his father, and these were frequently performed, with success, in Italy, England, Spain, and elsewhere. During his years at St. Peter’s he also wrote sacred music; but his fame now rests wholly upon his compositions for the harpsichord and upon the memory of the extraordinary skill with which he played them.

We have dwelt thus briefly upon a few events of his life to show how widely he had travelled and in how many places his skill as a player must have been admired. That in the matter of virtuosity he was unexcelled can hardly be doubted. It is true that in the famous contest with Handel he came off the loser on the organ, and even his harpsichord playing was doubted to excel that of his Saxon friend. But these contests were a test of wits more than of fingers, a trial of _extempore_ skill in improvising fugues and double fugues, not of virtuosity in playing.

Two famous German musicians, J. J. Quantz and J. A. Hasse, both heard him and both marvelled at his skill. Monsieur L’Augier, a gifted amateur whom Dr. Burney visited in Vienna, told a story of Scarlatti and Thomas Roseingrave,[11] in which he related that when Roseingrave first heard Scarlatti play, he was so astonished that he would have cut off his own fingers then and there, had there been an instrument at hand wherewith to perform the operation; and, as it was, he went months without touching the harpsichord again.

Whom he had to thank for instruction is not known. There is nothing in his music to suggest that he was ever a pupil of Bernardo Pasquini, who, however, was long held to have been his master. J. S. Shedlock, in his ‘History of the Pianoforte Sonata,’ suggests that he learned from Gaëtano Greco or Grieco, a man a few years his senior and a student under his father; but it would seem far more likely that Domenico profited immediately from his father, who, we may see from a letter to Ferdinand de’ Medici, dated May 30, 1705, had watched over his son’s development with great care. It must not be forgotten that Alessandro Scarlatti’s harpsichord toccatas, described in the previous chapter, are, in spite of a general heaviness, often enlivened by astonishing devices of virtuosity.

Scarlatti wrote between three and four hundred pieces for the harpsichord. The Abbé Santini[12] possessed three hundred and forty-nine. Scarlatti himself published in his lifetime only one set of thirty pieces. These he called exercises (_esercizii_) for the harpsichord. The title is significant. Before 1733 two volumes, _Pièces pour le clavecin_, were published in Paris; and some time between 1730 and 1737 forty-two ‘Suites of Lessons’ were published in London under the supervision of Roseingrave. More were printed in London in 1752. Then came Czerny’s edition, which includes two hundred pieces; and throughout the nineteenth century various selections and arrangements have appeared from time to time, von Bülow having arranged several pieces in the order of suites, Tausig having elaborated several in accordance with the modern pianoforte. A complete and authoritative edition has at last been prepared by Sig. Alessandro Longo and has been printed in Italy by Ricordi and Company.

By far the greater part of these many pieces are independent of each other. Except in a few cases where Scarlatti, probably in his youth, followed the model of his father’s toccatas, he keeps quite clear of the suite cycle. The pieces have been called sonatas, but they are not for the most part in the form called the sonata form. This form (which is the form in which one piece or movement may be cast and is not to be confused with the sequence or arrangement of movements in the classical sonata) is, as we shall later have ample opportunity to observe, a tri-partite or ternary form; whereas the so-called sonatas of Scarlatti are in the two-part or binary form, which is, as we have seen, the form of the separate dance movements in the suite. Each ‘sonata’ is, like the dance movements, divided into two sections, usually of about equal length, both of which are to be repeated in their turn. In general, too, the harmonic plan is the same or nearly the same as that which underlies the suite movement, the first section modulating from tonic to dominant, the second back from dominant to tonic. But within these limits Scarlatti allows himself great freedom of modulation. It is, in fact, this harmonic expansion within the binary form which makes one pause to give Scarlatti an important place in the development of the sonata form proper.

The harmonic variety of the Scarlatti sonatas is closely related to the virtuosity of their composer. He spins a piece out of, usually, but not always, two or three striking figures, by repeating them over and over again in different places of the scale or in different keys. His very evident fondness for technical formulæ is thus gratified and the piece is saved from monotony by its shifting harmonies.

A favorite and simple shift is from major to minor. This he employs very frequently. For example, in a sonata in G major, No. 2 of the Breitkopf and Härtel collection of twenty sonatas[13] measures 13, 14, 15, and 16, in D major, are repeated immediately in A major. In 20, 21, 22, and 23, the same style of figure and rhythm appears in D major and is at once answered in D minor. Toward the end of the second part of the piece the process is duplicated in the tonic key. In the following sonata at the top of page seven occurs another similar instance. It is one of the most frequent of his mannerisms.

The repetition of favorite figures is by no means always accompanied by a change of key. The two-measure phrase beginning in the fifteenth measure of the third sonata is repeated three times note for note; a few measures later another figure is treated in the same fashion; and in yet a third place, all in the first section of this sonata, the trick is turned again. Indeed, there are very few of Scarlatti’s sonatas in which he does not play with his figures in this manner.

We have said that often he varies his key when thus repeating himself, and that such variety saves from monotony. But it must be added that even where there is no change of key he escapes being tedious to the listener. The reason must be sought in the sprightly nature of the figures he chooses, and in the extremely rapid speed at which they are intended to fly before our ears. He is oftenest a dazzling virtuoso whose music appeals to our bump of wonder, and, when well played, leaves us breathless and excited.

The pieces are for the most part extremely difficult; and this, together with his ever-present reiteration of special harpsichord figures, may well incline us to look upon them as fledgling études. The thirty which Scarlatti himself chose to publish he called _esercizii_, or exercises. We may not take the title too literally, bearing in mind that Bach’s ‘Well-Tempered Clavichord’ was intended for practice, as were many of Kuhnau’s suites. But that Scarlatti’s sonatas are almost invariably built up upon a few striking, difficult and oft-repeated figures, makes their possible use as technical practice pieces far more evident than it is in the ‘Well-Tempered Clavichord’ or even the ‘Inventions’ of Bach. He undoubtedly offers the player enormous opportunity to exercise his arms and his fingers in the production of brilliant, astonishing effects.

Of these effects two will always be associated with his name: the one obtained by the crossing of the hands, the other by the rapid repetition of one note. Both devices will be found freely used in the works of his father, and it is absurd to suppose that the son invented them. Yet it is hardly an exaggeration to say that he made more use of them than any man down to the time of Liszt. The crossing of the hands is not employed to interweave two qualities of sound, as it oftenest is in music for the organ or for the German and French harpsichords which have two or more manuals that work independently of each other. The Italian harpsichords had but one bank of keys, and Scarlatti’s crossing of the hands, if it be not intended merely for display, succeeds in making notes wide apart sound relatively simultaneous, and thus produces qualities of resonance which hitherto had rested silent in the instrument.

It has been suggested that the device of repeated notes was borrowed from the mandolin, on which, as is well known, a _cantabile_ is approximated by rapid repetition of the notes of the melody. Scarlatti, however, rarely employs it to sustain the various notes of his tune. In his sonatas it is usually, if not intentionally, effective rhythmically; as it is, unfailingly, in more modern pianoforte music. On the harpsichord, moreover, as on the pianoforte, it can make a string twang with a sort of barbaric sound that still has the power to stir us as shrieking pipes and whistles stirred our savage ancestors.

Still another mannerism of his technique or style is the wide leap of many of his figures. A plunge from high to low notes was much practised in contemporary violin music and was considered very effective, and probably suggested a similar effect upon the harpsichord. Into this matter again Scarlatti may well have been initiated by his father, by whom it was not left untried. In the son’s sonatas it succeeds in extending the range of sonority of the harpsichord, and thus points unmistakably to developments in the true pianoforte style.

It is, in fact, by this extension of figures, by sudden leaps, by crossing of hands, that Scarlatti frees harpsichord music from all trace of slavery to the conjunct style of organ music; and he may therefore be judged the founder of the brilliant free style which reached its extreme development in the music of Liszt. Though we may not fail to mention occasionally his indebtedness to his father and to instrumental music of his time, we cannot deny that he is a great inventor, the creator of a new art. He was admitted by composers of his day to have not only wonderful hands, but a wonderful fecundity of invention.

What guided him was chiefly instinct. He had, no doubt, considerable strict training in the science of counterpoint and composition. He wrote, as we know, not only harpsichord pieces, but operas and sacred music as well. In the sonatas there is a great deal of neat two-part writing, and an occasional flash of skill in imitations; but musical science is almost the last thing we should think of in connection with them. Rules are not exemplified therein. Burney relates, through L’Augier, that Scarlatti knew he had broken established rules of composition, but reasoned that ‘there was scarce any other rule worth the attention of a man of genius than that of not displeasing the only sense of which music is the object.’ And, further, that he complained of the music of Alberti and other ‘modern’ composers because it did not in execution demand a harpsichord, but might be equally well or perhaps better expressed by other instruments. But, ‘as Nature had given him [Scarlatti] ten fingers, and, as his instrument had employment for them all, he saw no reason why he should not use them.’ He might have included his two arms among his natural gifts. Certainly the free use he made of them in most of his sonatas marks a new and extraordinary advance in the history of keyboard music.

In the matter of form Scarlatti is not so strikingly an innovator as he is in that of style. He is in the main content to cast his pieces in the binary mold common to most short instrumental pieces of his day. Yet, as has already been suggested, the harmonic freedom which he enjoys within these relatively narrow limits is significant in the development of the sonata form; and even more significant is his distribution of musical material within them.

The binary form, such as we find it in the suites of Froberger and even in those of J. S. Bach, is essentially a harmonic structure. The balance and contrast which is the effect of any serviceable shape of music is here one of harmony, principally of tonic and dominant and dominant and tonic, with only a few measures of modulation for variety. There is, in addition, some contrast between that musical material which is presented first in the tonic key and that which appears later in the dominant. But, while we may speak of these materials as first and second themes or subjects, their individuality is hardly distinct and is, in effect, obliterated by the regularity and smoothness of style in which these short pieces are conventionally written. The composer makes no attempt to set them off clearly, one against the other. The entrance into the dominant key is almost never devised in such a way as to prepare the listener for a new musical thought, quite separate and different from that which he has already heard. The transitional passage from tonic to dominant emerges from the one and merges into the other, without break or distinctions.

In the matter of setting his themes in their frame, Scarlatti hardly differs from his contemporaries. His style, though free and varied, is in constant motion. But his genius was especially fertile in clean-cut figures; and when, as he often does, he combines two or three distinct types of these in one short piece, the music is full of thematic variety and sparkles with an animation which at times is almost dramatic.

Scarlatti is, indeed, hovering close to the sonata form in a great many of his pieces, and in one actually strikes it.[14] We shall, however, postpone a more detailed discussion of Scarlatti’s pieces in relation to the sonata form to the next chapter. The distribution of his musical material is quite whimsical and irregular, always more instinctive than experimental. It is chiefly by the quality of this material that he stands apart from his contemporaries, and as the founder of the free and brilliant pianoforte style.

There remains little to be said of the æsthetic worth of his music. During the years of his most vigorous manhood he was almost invariably a virtuoso. Sheer delight in tonal effects rather than more sober need of self-expression stimulated him. The prevalence of trumpet figures such as those which constitute the opening phrases of the eleventh and fourteenth sonatas in the Breitkopf and Härtel edition already referred to, suggests that he took a good deal of material ready-made from the operas of the day. Burney says there are many passages in which he imitated the melody of tunes sung by carriers, muleteers, and common people. But what he added to these was his own. A number of pieces are conspicuous by especially free modulation and expansion of form; and in these, technical effects are not predominant, but rather a more serious interest in composition. It has therefore been suggested that these pieces are the work of later years.[15] Though it is said that while in Spain he grew too fat to cross his hands at the harpsichord as was his wont in his youth, this physical restriction is not alone responsible for the mellowness and warmth of such pieces as the so-called Pastoral in D minor, familiar to audiences in Tausig’s elaborated transcription. A great number of his pieces are rich in pure musical beauty; and the freshness which exhales from all true musical utterance is and probably always will be theirs.

None of his contemporaries in Italy approached him in the peculiar skill which has made him conspicuous in the history of pianoforte music. Francesco Durante (1684-1755) and Nicolo Porpora (1686-1767), the great singing master, both wrote pieces for the harpsichord; the one, ‘sonatas’ in several movements, the other fugues; but their music lacks charm and can hardly be considered at all influential in the development of the art of writing for keyboard instruments. Domenico Alberti and P. D. Paradies will be considered in the following chapter.

II

The art of Couperin is flawless, the charm of his music not to be described. It has that quality of perfection with which Nature marks her smallest flowers. It is the miniature counterpart in music of a perfected system of living, of the court life of France under Louis XIV.

Scarlatti was a rover. He tried his fortune in Italy, in England, in Portugal and Spain. He won it by the exhibition of his extraordinary and startling powers. He was on the alert to startle, his tribute the bravas and mad applause of his excited hearers. He was the virtuoso in an old sense of the word, the man with his powers consciously developed to the uttermost. Bach, on the other hand, was an introspective, mighty man, immeasurably greater than his surroundings, fathomless, personal, suggestive. Between them stands Couperin, for the greater part of his life in the intimate service of the most brilliant court the world has ever seen, delicate in health, perfect in etiquette, wise and tender.

Of his life little need be said. He was born in Paris on November 10, 1668, the son of Charles Couperin, himself a musician and brother to Louis and François Couperin, disciples of the great Chambonnières. The father died about a year after his son was born, and the musical education of the young François seems to have been undertaken by his uncle, François, and later by Jacques Thomelin, organist in the king’s private chapel in Versailles. Practically nothing is known of his youth, and, though it is certain that he was for many years organist at the church of St. Gervais in Paris, as his uncle and even his grandfather had been before him, the time at which he took up his duties there has not been exactly determined. There is on record, however, the account of a meeting held on the twenty-sixth of December, 1693, at Versailles, at which Louis XIV heard Couperin play and chose him from other competitors to succeed Thomelin as his private organist. Thenceforth he passed his life in service of the king and later of the regent. He died in Paris in 1733, after several years of ill health.

The great François was, no doubt, an unusually skillful organist, but his fame rests upon his work for the clavecin, the French harpsichord, and his book of instruction for that instrument. His duties at court were various. He says himself that for twenty years he had the honor to be with the king, and to teach, almost at the same time, Monseigneur le Dauphin, the Duke of Burgundy, and six princes or princesses of the royal house.

In his preface to the _Concerts royaux_ he informs us that chamber concerts were given in the king’s presence on Sunday afternoons at Versailles, and that he was commanded to write music for them and that he himself played the clavecin at them. His book on the art of playing the clavecin, written in 1716, was dedicated to the king. By all accounts he was a beloved and highly prized teacher and performer. And neither his pupils nor his fame were confined solely to the court.

There is no doubt that he was a public favorite and that he published his pieces for the clavecin to satisfy a general demand. Also in a measure to safeguard his music. For at that time instrumental pieces were not often published, but were circulated in manuscript copies in which gross errors grew rapidly as weeds; and which, moreover, were common booty to piratical publishers, especially in the Netherlands. So Couperin took minute care in preparing his music for his public. Each set of pieces was furnished with a long preface, nothing in the engraving was left to chance, the books were beautifully bound so that all might be in keeping with the dainty and exquisite art of the music itself. Since his day his pieces were never published again until Madame Farrenc included the four great sets in her famous _Trésor des Pianistes_ (1861-72). This edition was, according to Chrysander,[16] very carelessly prepared and is full of inaccuracies. Chrysander planned a new, accurate and complete edition, to be edited by Brahms, of which unhappily only one volume, containing Couperin’s first two books, ever came to print.

The original editions being now rare and priceless, and hardly serviceable to the average student on account of the confusing obsolete clef signs, it is to be hoped that before long Chrysander’s plan will be carried out and the almost forgotten treasures of Couperin’s clavecin music be revealed in their great beauty to the lover of music.

Couperin published in all five books of _pièces de clavecin_. Of these the first appeared early in the century and is not commonly reckoned among his best works. The other four sets appeared respectively in 1713, 1716, 1722, and 1730.

Each book contains several sets of pieces grouped together in _ordres_, according to key.[17] The canon of the suite is wholly disregarded and there is very little of the spirit of it. The first _ordre_, it is true, has as the first six pieces an allemande, two courantes, a sarabande, a gavotte, and a gigue; but there are twelve pieces in addition, of which only three are named dances. The second _ordre_, too, has an allemande, two courantes, and a sarabande at the beginning; but there follow eighteen more pieces of which only four are strictly dances. The fourth _ordre_ is without true dance forms; so are the sixth, the seventh, the tenth, and others. Even the orthodox dances are given secondary titles, or the dance name is itself secondary. In fact, not only by including within one _ordre_ many more pieces than ever found place within the suite, but by the very character of the pieces themselves, Couperin is dissociated from the suite writers.

He wrote in the preface to his first book of pieces,[18] that in composing he always had a particular subject before his eyes. This accounts for the titles affixed to most of his pieces. We have already referred to ‘battle’ pieces of earlier composers, and to Kuhnau’s narratives in music. Couperin’s music is not of the same sort. The majority of his titled pieces are pure music, admirable and charming in themselves. They are seldom copies. They make their appeal, or they are intelligible, not by what they delineate, but by what they express or suggest. The piece as a whole gives an impression, not the special figures or traits of which it is composed.

Let us consider a few of many types. Take what have been often called the portraits of court ladies. In these we cannot by any effort of the imagination find likenesses. It would be ludicrous to try. As ladies may differ in temperament from each other, so do these little pieces differ. There is the allemande _L’Auguste_, which is a dignified, somewhat austere dance piece in G minor; another, _La Laborieuse_, in a complicated contrapuntal style unusual with him. There are three sarabandes called _La Majesteuse_, _La Prude_, and _La Lugubre_, impressive, meagre, and profound in turn. These pieces are hardly personal, nor have they peculiar characteristics apart from the spirit which is clear in each of them.

Another type of portrait fits its title a little more tangibly. There is _La Mylordine_, in the style of an English jig; _La Diane_, which is built up on the fanfare figure always associated with the hunt; _La Diligente_, full of bustling finger work. _Les Nonnettes_ are blonde and dark, the blondes, oddly enough, in minor, the dark in major.

Many others are so purely music, delicate and tender, that the titles seem more to be a gallant tribute to so and so, rather than the names of prototypes in the flesh. _La Manon_, _La Babet_, _La fleurie, ou la tendre Nanette_, _L’Enchanteresse_, _La tendre Fanchon_, and many others are in no way program music; nor can they ever be interpreted as such, since no man can say what charming girl, two centuries dead, may have suggested their illusive features.

It is these ‘portraits’ particularly which are Couperin’s own new contribution to the art of music. So individual is the musical life in each one, so special and complete its character, so full of sentiment and poetry, that, small as it is, it may stand alone as a perfect and enduring work of art. It has nothing to do with the suite or with any of the cyclic forms. Here are the first flowers from that branch of music from which later were to grow the nocturnes of Field, the _Moments musicals_ of Schubert, the preludes of Chopin.

Between these and the few pieces which are frankly almost wholly dependent upon a program are a great number of others lightly suggestive of their titles. Sometimes it is only in general character. _Les vendangeuses_ and _Les moissoneurs_ do not seem so particularly related to wine-gathering or harvesting that the titles might not be interchanged; but both have something of a peasant character. In _Les abeilles_ and in Le moucheron the characterization is finer. The pleasant humming of the bees is reproduced in one, the monotonous whirring of the gnat in the other. _Les bergeries_ is simply pastoral, _Les matelots Provençales_ is a lively march, followed by a horn-pipe. _Les papillons_ is not unlike the little piece so named in the Schumann _Carnaval_, though here it means but butterflies. There are some imitative pieces which are in themselves charming music, such as _Les petits moulins à vent_, _Le réveille-matin_, _Le carillon de Cythère_, and _Les ondes_, with its undulating figures and fluid ornamentation.

Finally the program music is in various degrees programmistic. A little group of pieces called _Les Pèlerines_ (Pilgrims) begins with a march, to be played gaily. Then comes a little movement to represent the spirit of alms-giving, in a minor key, to be played tenderly; and this is followed by a cheerful little movement of thanks, to which is added a lively coda. The whole is rather an expression of moods than a picture of actions. _Les petits ages_ is in some respects more literal. The first movement, _La muse naissante_, is written in a syncopated style, the right hand always following the left, which may well express weakness and hesitation. _L’adolescente_, the third movement, is a lively rondo in vigorous gavotte rhythm.

Two sets are entirely program music. One of these, _Les Bacchanales_, has a march (_pésament, sans lenteur_) of the gray-clad ones; then three movements expressive of the delights of wine, the tenderness to which it warms and the madness to which it enflames. The music is not of itself interesting. More remarkable, though devoid of musical worth save a good bit of the comical, is _Les fastes de la grande et ancienne Mxnxstrxndxsx_. These records or tales are divided into five acts, which represent the notables and judges of the kingdom, the old men and the beggars (over a drone bass), the jugglers, tumblers and mountebanks, with their bears and monkeys, the cripples (those with one arm or leg played by the right hand, those who limp played by the left), and, finally, the confusion and flight of all, brought about by the drunkards and the bears and monkeys.

III

The last of these compositions are in no way representative of Couperin the artist. They might have been written by any one who had a love for nonsense, and they are not meant to be taken seriously. The quality of Couperin’s contribution to music must be tested in such pieces as _Le bavolet-flottant_, _La fleurie_, _Les moissoneurs_, _Le carillon de Cythère_, and _La lugubre_. His harmony is delicate, suggesting that of Mozart and even Chopin, to whom he is in many ways akin. He does not, like Scarlatti, wander far in the harmonic field; but in a relatively small compass glides about by semi-tones. There is, of course, a great deal of tonic and dominant, such as will always be associated with a certain clear-cut style of French dance music; but the grace of his melody and his style is too subtle to permit monotony. The harmonies of the sarabande _La lugubre_ are profound.

In form he is precise. His use of the rondo deserves special attention. In this form he cast many of his loveliest pieces, and it is one which never found a place in the suite. It is very simple, yet in his hands full of charm. The groundwork of one main theme recurring regularly after several episodes or contrasting themes was analyzed in the previous chapter. Couperin called his episodes couplets, and his rondos are usually composed of the principal theme and three couplets. He does not invariably repeat the whole theme after each couplet, but sometimes, as in _Les bergeries_, only a characteristic phrase of it. The couplets are generally closely related to the main theme, from which they differ not in nature, but chiefly in ornamentation and harmony. Much of the charm of his music is due to the neat proportions of this hitherto neglected form. It was native to him as a son of France, where, from the early days of the singers of Provence, the song in stanzas with its dancing refrain had been beloved of the people. Through him it found a place in the great instrumental music of the world.

Couperin’s style is too delicate to be caught in words. To call it the _style galant_ merely catalogues it as a free style, highly adorned with _agrémens_. The freedom is of course the freedom from all trace of polyphony in the old sense, of strict leading of voices from beginning to end. Couperin adds notes to his harmonic background when and where he will; so that it is impossible to say whether a piece is in two, or three, or four parts, because it is in no fixed number of parts at all.

The countless _agrémens_ are more than an external feature of his music, and of other music of his time. The analogies which have often been drawn between them and the formal superficialities of court life under the great Louis are in the main false. Both Couperin and Emanuel Bach, a man of perhaps less sensitive, certainly of less elegant, taste, regarded them as of vital importance. Even the learned Kuhnau, who can hardly be called a stylist at all, considered them the sugar of his fruit. It would seem as if only by means of these flourishes harpsichord music could take on some grace of line and warmth of color. Whatever subtlety of expression the dry-toned instrument was capable of found life only in the _agrémens_. We cannot judge of the need of them nor of their peculiar beauties by the sound of them on the modern pianoforte, even under the lightest fingers. It is open to question whether any but a few of them should be retained in the performance of Couperin’s works, now that the instrument, the shortcomings of which they were intended to supplement, has been banished in general from the concert stage.

This is not only because the peculiarities of the pianoforte call for a different kind of ornamentation, but also because the playing of harpsichord flourishes is practically a lost art. Couperin and Emanuel Bach left minute directions and explanations in regard to them; but in their treatises we have only the letter of the law, not the spirit which inspired it. Even in their day, in spite of all laws, the _agrémens_ were subject to the caprice of the player; and they remained so down to the time of Chopin.

Neither the freedom from polyphonic strictness nor the profusion of ornaments are the special peculiarities of Couperin’s style. They were more or less common to a great deal of the harpsichord music of his day. But he had a way, all his own at that time, of accompanying his melodies with a sort of singing bass or a melodious inner voice that moved with the melody in thirds or sixths, or in smooth contrary motion. This may be studied in such pieces as _La fleurie_, _Le bavolet-flottant_, _Les moissoneurs_, _Les abeilles_, and many others. It has little to do with polyphony. The accompanying voices are only suggested. They never claim attention by their own movement. They seem a sort of spirit or tinted shadow of the melody, hardly more than whispering.

This accounts in part for what we may call the tenderness of Couperin’s music, a quality which makes itself felt no matter how elusive it may be. He marked most of his pieces to be played with a special expressiveness, and frequently used the word _tendrement_. This, he admitted in one of his prefaces, was likely to surprise those who were aware of the limitations of the clavecin. He knew that the ‘clavecin was perfect as regards scope and brilliance, but that one could not increase or diminish the tone on it.’ His thanks would be forthcoming to one who through taste and skill would be able to improve its expression in this respect. He was not above all else a virtuoso. ‛_J’ayme beaucoup mieux ce qui me touche que ce qui me surprend_,’ he wrote in 1713. There is no doubt that he desired the greatest refinement of touch and shading in the expression of his music, and that he suffered under the limitations of the instrument for which he wrote. For the texture of his music is soft and delicate, its loveliness has a secret quality, hardly more than suggested by the shadowy inner voices. We cannot but be reminded of Chopin, in whose music alone the spirits of music whispered again so softly together.

Among the contemporaries of Couperin, Marchand, Claude Daquin (1694-1772), and J. P. Rameau (1683-1764) are best known, at least by name, today. Marchand is remembered chiefly by reason of the episode with Bach in Dresden. Daquin enjoyed a brilliant reputation as an organist in his day. One of his pieces for clavecin--‘The Cuckoo’--is still heard today. J. B. Weckerlin quoted an amusing bird-story[19] about Daquin, the burden of which is that one Christmas eve Daquin imitated the song of a nightingale so perfectly on the organ in church that the treasurer of the parish dispatched beadles throughout the edifice in search of a live songster.

Rameau is a greater figure in the general history of music than Couperin himself; yet, though his harpsichord pieces are, perhaps therefore, better known than those of the somewhat earlier man, they lack the most unusual charm and perfection of Couperin’s. There are fifty-three of these in all. Ten were published in 1706, of which a gavotte in rondo form in A minor is best known. A second set of twenty-one pieces appeared in 1724, containing the still famous _Rappel des oiseaux_, the _Tambourin_, _Les niais de Sologne_, _La poule_, the Gavotte with variations, in A minor, and many others. Sixteen more followed, written between 1727 and 1731. In 1747 a single piece--_La Dauphine_--was published. Besides these, all written originally for harpsichord, he published five arrangements of his _Pièces de concert_, written in the first place for a group of three or more instruments.

Rameau’s style is less delicate than Couperin’s. It is not only that there are fewer _agrémens_. The workmanship is more vigorous, more dramatic; the music itself less intimate. The first gavotte in A minor, the doubles in the Rigaudon and in _Les niais de Sologne_, the variations in the second gavotte in A minor, and _La Dauphine_, all speak of a technical enlargement. Yet a certain fineness is lacking. It will be noticed that he showed hardly more allegiance to the canon of the suite than Couperin had shown; and there is a large portion of titles such as _Les tendres plaintes_, _Les soupirs_, _L’entretien des muses_, and there are also many portraits: _La joyeuse_, _La triomphante_, _L’Egyptienne_, _L’agaçante_, and others.

In the preface to the new edition of his works published under the supervision of Camille Saint-Saëns, there is the following quotation from Amadée Mereaux’s _Les clavecinistes de 1637-1790_, which summarizes his position in the history of harpsichord music. ‘If there is lacking in his melodies the smoothness of Couperin, the distinction, the delicacy, the purity of style which give to the music of that clavecin composer to Louis XIV its so precious quality of charm, Rameau has at least a boldness of spirit, an animation, a power of harmony and a richness of modulation. The reflection of his operatic style, lively, expressive, always precise and strongly rhythmical, is to be found in his instrumental style. In treatment of the keyboard Rameau went far ahead of his predecessors. His technical forms, his instrumental designs, his variety and brilliance in executive resources, and his new runs and figures are all conquests which he won to the domain of the harpsichord.’ Rameau is primarily a dramatic composer. It may be added that several of his harpsichord pieces later found a place in his operas, usually as ballet music.

IV

A glance over the many pieces of Scarlatti and Couperin discovers a vast field of unfamiliar music. If one looks deep enough to perceive the charm, the beauty, the perfection of these forgotten masterpieces, one cannot but wonder what more than a trick of time has condemned them to oblivion. For no astonished enthusiasm of student or amateur whose eye can hear, renders back glory to music that lies year after year silent on dusty shelves. The general ear has not heard it. The general eye cannot hear it as it can scan the ancient picture, the drama, the poetry of a time a thousand or two thousand years ago. Music that is silent is music quite forgotten if not dead.

And, what is more, the few pieces of Couperin which are still heard seem almost to live on sufferance, as if the life they have were not of their own, but lent them by the listener disposed to imagine a courtier’s life long ago washed out in blood. ‘Sweet and delicate,’ one hears of the music of Couperin, as one hears of some bit of old lace or old brocade, that has lain long in a chest of lavender. Yet the music of Couperin is far more than a matter of fashion. It is by all tokens great art. The lack is in the race of musicians and of men who have lost the art of playing it and the simplicity of attentive listening.

To a certain extent the music of Sebastian Bach suffers from the same lack. On the other hand, the spirit of his music is perennial and it holds a rank in the modern ear far above that held by any other harpsichord music. Apart from indefinable reasons of æsthetic worth there are other reasons why Bach’s music, at any rate a considerable part of it, is still with us.

In the first place, the style of its texture is solid. Instead of being crushed, as Couperin’s music is, by the heavy, rich tone of the modern pianoforte, it seems to grow stronger by speaking through the stronger instrument. Bach’s style is nearly always an organ style, whether he is writing for clavichord, for chorus, for bands or strings. It is very possible that a certain mystical, intimate sentiment which is innate in most of his clavichord music cannot find expression through the heavy strings of the pianoforte. This may be far dearer than the added depth and richness which the pianoforte has, as it were, hauled up from the great reservoirs of music he has left us. But it is none the less true that the high-tensioned heavy strings on their gaunt frame of cast iron need not call in vain on the music of Bach to set the heart of them vibrating.

In the second place, the two-and three-part ‘Inventions,’ and the preludes and fugues in the ‘Well-Tempered Clavichord’ have proved themselves to be, as Bach himself hoped, the very best of teaching or practice pieces. It is not that your conventional Mr. Dry-as-dust teacher has power to inflict Bach upon every tender, rebellious generation. It is rather that the pieces themselves cannot be excelled as exercises, not only for the fingers but for the brain. One need not delve here into the matter of their musical beauty, but one must pause in amazement before their sturdiness, which can stand up, still resilient, under the ceaseless hammering of ten million sets of fingers. Clementi and Czerny are being pounded into insensibility; Cramer, despite the recommendations of Beethoven, is breathing his last; Moscheles, Dohler, Kalkbrenner, and a host of others are laid to rest. But here comes Bach bobbing up in our midst seeming to say: ‘Hit me! Hit me as hard as you like and still I’ll sing. And when you know me as well as I know you, you’ll know how to play the piano.’ So Bach has been, is, and will be introduced to young people. He inspires love, or hate, or fear--a triple claim to remembrance.

In the third place, there is an intellectual complexity in his music which, as a triumph of human skill over the masses of sound, deserves and has won an altar with perpetual flame. And the marvel is that this skill is rarely used as an end in itself, but as a means of expressing very genuine and frank emotion. Here we come upon perhaps the great reason of Bach’s immortality--the warmth of his music. It is almost uniquely personal and subjective. In it he poured forth his whole soul with a lack of self-consciousness and a complete concentration. His was a powerful soul, always afire with enthusiasm; and his emotion seems to have clarified and crystallized his music as heat and pressure have made diamonds out of carbon.

Bach was a lovable man, but a stern and somewhat bellicose one as well. He was shrewd enough to respect social rank quite in the manner of his day, as the dedication of the Brandenburg concertos plainly shows; but the records of his various quarrels with the municipal authorities of Leipzig prove how quick he was to unrestrained wrath whenever his rights either as man or artist were infringed upon. A great deal of independence marked him. The same can hardly be said either of Scarlatti or of Couperin, the one of whom was lazy and good-natured, the other gently romantic and extremely polite. Scarlatti rather enjoyed his indifference to accepted rules of composition; and there was nothing either of self-abasement or of self-depreciation in Couperin; but both lacked the stalwart vigor of Bach. Scarlatti aimed, confessedly, to startle and to amuse by his harpsichord pieces. He cautioned his friends not to look for anything particularly serious in them. It is hard to dissociate an ideal of pure and only faintly colored beauty from Couperin. But in the music of Bach one seldom misses the ring of a strong and even an impetuous need of self-expression. In the mighty organ works, and in the vocal works, one may believe with him that he sang his soul out to the glory of his Maker; but in the smaller keyboard pieces sheer delight in expressing himself is unmistakable.

It is this that makes Bach a romanticist, while Couperin, with all his fanciful titles, is classic. It is this that made Bach write in nearly the same style for all instruments, drawing upon his personal inspiration without consideration of the instrument for which he wrote; while Couperin, exquisitely sensitive to all external impressions, forced his fine art to conformity with the special and limited qualities of the instrument for which he wrote the great part of his music. And, finally, it is this which produced utterance of so many varied moods and emotions in the music of Bach; while in the music of Couperin we find all moods and emotions tempered to one distinctly normal cast of thought.

Bach has been the subject of so much profound and special study that there is little to be added to the explanation of his character or of his works. In considering him as a composer for the harpsichord or clavichord, one has to bear two facts in mind: that he was a great player and a great teacher.

There is much evidence from his son and from prominent musicians who knew him, that the technical dexterity of his fingers was amazing. He played with great spirit and, when the music called for it, at a great speed. Perhaps the oft-repeated story of his triumph over the famous French player, Marchand, who, it will be remembered, defaulted at the appointed hour of contest, has been given undue significance. As we have had occasion to remark, in speaking of the contest between Handel and D. Scarlatti, such tourneys at the harpsichord were tests of wits, not of fingers. Bach was first of all an organist and it may be suggested, with no disloyalty to the great man among musicians, that he played the harpsichord with more warmth than glitter. We find little evidence in his harpsichord music of the sort of virtuosity which makes D. Scarlatti’s music astonish even today; or, it may be added, of the special flexible charm which gives Couperin’s its inimitable grace.

Bach is overwhelming as a virtuoso in his organ music, especially in passages for the pedals. In his harpsichord music he achieves a rushing, vigorous style. It must not be overlooked that Bach wrote also for the clavichord, quite explicitly, too. Most of the Forty-eight Preludes and Fugues are distinctly clavichord, not harpsichord, music. That is to say, they require a fine shading which is impossible on the harpsichord. When he wrote for the harpsichord he had other effects in mind. The prelude of the English suite in G minor or the last movement of the Italian concerto may be taken as representative of his most vigorous and effective harpsichord style. They are different not only in range and breadth, but in spirit as well, from practically all of the ‘Well-Tempered Clavichord.’ Nevertheless, though these may be taken fairly as examples of his harpsichord style at its best and strongest, they are not especially effective as virtuoso music. There is sheer virtuosity only in the Goldberg Variations.

To Bach as a teacher we owe the Inventions and the ‘Well-Tempered Clavichord,’ both written expressly for the use and practice of young people who wished to learn about music and to acquire a taste for the best music. Volumes might well be filled with praise of them. It will suffice us only to note, however, that to master the technical difficulties of the keyboard was always for Bach only a step toward the art of playing, which is the art of expressing emotion in music. These two sets of pieces are all-powerful evidence of this--his creed--in accordance with which he always nobly lived and worked. They have but one parallel in pianoforte music: the _Études_ of Chopin. The ‘Well-Tempered Clavichord’ is, and always will be, essentially a study in expression.

His system of tempering or tuning the clavichord, by reason of which he has often been granted a historical immortality, was the relatively simple one of dividing the octave into twelve equal intervals. Only the octave itself was strictly in tune, but the imperfections of the other intervals were so slight as to escape detection by the most practised ear. By paying the nominal toll of theoretical inaccuracy, Bach opened the roads of harmonic modulation on every hand. It must not be forgotten, however, that most of the pieces of Couperin or Scarlatti, not to mention many an outlandish chromatic _tour de force_ in the works of the early English composers, would have been intolerable on a harpsichord strictly in tune. Other men than Bach had their systems of temperament. We may take Bach’s only to be the simplest.