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.
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.22The 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,23played 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 littleennuyé, 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 theWohltemperirte 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.
A visit with Prince Leopold to Karlsbad in 1720,was sadly memorable to Bach. For while he was on his way home and no news could reach him, his wife suddenly fell sick and died. He arrived only to learn that she was already buried. How deep a grief this was to the family—the mother was but thirty-five—we know from the recollection of it which the second son, Philipp Emanuel, then a child of six, bore more than thirty years later. His tender, flexible nature reflected hers closely, as his elder brother Friedemann’s robust vigour did that of his father. And the fact that the two most striking figures, as also the most musical, among Bach’s twenty children sprang from this marriage may be taken in evidence of the near sympathy subsisting between the parents. Else we know nothing of Maria Barbara, and one is apt to depreciate her by comparison with the more gifted woman whom Bach chose for his second wife.
His care was now mainly for the children, four of his seven alone surviving their infancy. The eldest was a daughter, Katharina Dorothea, whom we shall hereafter meet again as helping with her voice in the family concerts; then came three sons, the two already mentioned, and Johann Gottfried Bernhard.24It was Wilhelm Friedemann, now a lad of ten, who claimed his father’s most anxious attention; and never was a charge fulfilled with greater love and willingness. In later life Bach’s relation to him was one of intimate friendship; already the promise of his musical skill aroused the keenest hopes of his father. He showedafterwards that he had all the characteristics of Sebastian accentuated: stolid independence was carried into wilful obstinacy, hotness of temper into a confirmed irascibility, morose when not violent. At present he was only the hopeful eldest son, for whose sake Bach developed a complete scheme of musical training, beginning with aClavier-Büchleinof easy pieces, as early as January, 1720. There is an air of tenderness for the small fingers he loved, and longed to educate, in the ladder of difficulties he so carefully constructed, and in the little preface,in nomine Jesu. This was followed byInventionsin two and three parts, designed to cultivate an equable strength and free motion in all the fingers. The title was apparently chosen to indicate that beyond this he sought to teach in these pieces the elements of musical taste,inventionin the scholastic sense being a compound of just disposition of the members and appropriate expression.25The third stage in the course of instruction was constituted by the preludes and fugues of theWohltemperirte Clavier, in which technical execution is combined with beauty of form and expression, each in its finest development. One of the points on which Bach insisted was that the practice of the clavichord should from the outset go hand in hand with composition. He assumed that no one should learn to play who could notthink musically, as he expressed it; and he never allowed a pupil to compose at the instrument. He would not, he said, have him to be apiano-hussar, a taunt that might well be taken to heart by some of our modern composers. Aparallel system of training for the organ was also primarily intended for Friedemann; and both alike shew the clearness and penetration with which Bach understood the functions of a teacher.
In after-years the rector of his school at Leipzig, between whom and Bach there was no love lost, said of him that he was a bad teacher and could not keep order in class. The latter is likely enough, and the former may not be without foundation in the particular case. A man of Bach’s extreme sensibility would certainly appear at his worst in the irritating surroundings of a rude schoolroom. That he could teach, however, and teach better than any man of his time, is proved by the string of distinguished names that appear among his scholars and by the unbroken succession of pupils whom he had in his house from his marriage almost to his death, the applicants increasing in his later days until he was continually forced to turn them back. To his chosen pupils he was kind and genial, and full of encouragement.You have five as good fingers on each hand as I have, was his answer to complaints of difficulty. He never set himself up as a model to which others could not attain:I was obliged, he would say,to be industrious; whoever is equally industrious will succeed as well. From these glimpses of his bearing we may readily conceive the love and enthusiastic reverence which he aroused in his pupils, and as for his irritability, the common failing of great artists, experience shews that at least it does not make a man a bad teacher in private, however much it may militate against his success in a school.
Bach did not remain long a widower. The tradition of his ancestors contained no law requiring a year of mourning; indeed his father married again in seven months. Sebastian was more patient, waited nearly a year and a half, and chose wisely. His new wife, Anna Magdalena Wuelken, held a position as singer at the Coethen court; her father was trumpeter in that of the Duke of Saxe-Weissenfels. She was twenty-one, fifteen years younger than her husband.
The marriage, which took place on the third of December, 1721, was entirely happy. Anna Magdalena proved herself no merehausfrau, but a real companion to Bach in all his tastes, a helper in work and a sharer in all his pleasures. She had a finesopranovoice, for which her husband delighted to arrange songs and recitatives. Often she copied them out for herself, and besides this her clear well-formed hand, closely resembling Bach’s, occurs constantly in the collections of his manuscripts. On his side he helped her to master the clavichord. TwoClavier-Büchleins, written for her, exist in his autograph, and to judge by their handsome bindings and the inscriptions in them, were intended as gifts to her, one just after their marriage, in 1722, the other in 1725. She used and added to them afterwards as a sort of album. They contain a great part of what we now know as the French suites, with a variety of preludes, arrangements of airs from his cantatas, &c., and also a set of rules for thorough-bass. It is plain that if the one was an indulgent teacher, the other was a ready and diligent pupil.
The beginning of Bach’s new happiness was soon attended with an unexpected drawback. Prince Leopold married a week after his capellmeister, and from this time forth his interest in music declined. His wife, so unlike Bach’s, cared nothing for music the concerts were still attended, but no longer listened to, and Bach’s work became more and more irksome to him. He had no outside public to take the place of the now indifferent court. He continued, however, for a year, until the death of Kuhnau, the learned and original cantor of the Thomasschule at Leipzig, offered to him an opportunity of returning to that work in the service of the church for which he must have longed all these years. He left Coethen in the summer of 1723, having first composed two church cantatas, as evidence of his fitness for the post. It is probable that, in the hope of the election taking place before Easter, he wrote theS. John Passion Musicto grace his arrival, as though to prove that the divorce from sacred music which he had supported for so long a time had made his fertility and creative force only the more abundant. But the delay of the Leipzig authorities postponed the production of this masterpiece. By a coincidence the Princess of Coethen, the determining course of Bach’s removal, died just before he left. Perhaps for the moment he regretted the step he had taken: to us that step is the most fortunate act in his life and the herald of his greatest triumphs.
As we considered the Weimar time as representative of Bach’s career as an organist, so Coethen is the sceneof his most extensive production for the clavichord, for the chamber, and for the orchestra. We may therefore here enumerate the compositions that belong to these classes, reserving for the present the great collections of fugues contained in theWohltemperirte Clavier, of which the second half falls under a later date when the first was alone entirely rearranged and partly rewritten, and theKunst der Fugewhich was the achievement of Bach’s last years.
The clavichord works admit of a double classification. On the one hand we have independent compositions, of which the idea is mostly derived from the organ-style; on the other stand thesuites, or sets of pieces in dance-measures, which are moulded upon Italian models. Both alike are adapted by Bach to the clavichord in such a manner that they are completely naturalised in their new-found country. To the former class belong the following works arranged in conformity with Dr. Spitta’s critical results; the numbers refer toPeters’ cheap edition:—
A.Weimar Period.
1. FourFantasias, in D, A minor, G minor, and B minor (211, p. 28; 215, pp. 3, 30; 216, p. 9):26
2. FourToccatas, in E minor, D minor, Gr minor and major (210, pp. 3, 30; 211, p. 4; 215, p. 17):
3. SixFugues, two in A, and two in A minor (212, p. 10; 216, p. 20; 212, p. 14; the fourth in MS. at Berlin), together with two, in A and B minor, on subjects taken from Albinoni (216, p. 25; 214, p. 12):
4. OnePrelude and Fuguein A minor (211, p. 14): to these we may perhaps add the well-known one in B flat of which the subject is on the (German) notes contained in the name Bach (B flat, A, C, B natural) but of which the genuineness is suspicious (212, p. 24).
B.Coethen Period.
1. AFantasiain C minor (212, p. 2).
2. FourFantasias and Fugues, in D minor (the famousChromatic Fantasia), B flat, and D (207, p. 20; 212, pp. 28, 32).
3. TwoToccatas, in F sharp minor and C minor (210, pp. 10, 20.)
4. APreludein C (printed among the organ works, series v. 8. 3), and two sets of twelve and six little preludes for beginners (200, pp. 3, 14).
5. FiveFugues, in C minor, two in C, and two in D minor (200, pp. 20, 22, 24; 212, pp. 3, 5).
6. FourPreludes and Fuguesin D minor, E minor, and two in A minor (200, pp. 26, 28, 33; 207, p. 36).
C.Leipzig Period.
TwoFantasias and Fuguesin A minor and C minor (208, p. 22; 207, p. 32 and 212, p. 22, the two parts are separated in the edition).
To this list must be added the two sets ofinventions(201) written at Coethen; and the four greatDuets(208 p. 36) in which the idea of the invention (orsinfonia) is treated on a much larger scale.27The duetswere written at Leipzig, and it has always been claimed that no skill could possibly add a third real part to them.
In a similar intermediate position stand the two sets ofVariations, one in A minor, a Weimar composition, headedalla maniera Italiana(215, p. 10), the other a great series of thirty variations in G, of which notice will be taken in connexion with Bach’s life at Leipzig (209).
TheSuitesbegin at Coethen with the six so-calledFrench Suites(202) and three single sets which probably belong together (214, pp. 18, 26, 32). A solitary suite, in F, bears traces of having been written at Weimar (215, p. 25). At Leipzig Bach produced sixGreat Suites, known as theEnglish(203, 204), and an equal number of sets ofPartitas(205, 206). Another partita of the same period, in B minor, is known from its opening as theFrench Overture(208, p. 4).28
At Coethen Bach also wrote three sonatas, in A minor, C, and D minor (213, pp. 2, 16, 24), with a fourth which remains only a fragment (212, p. 18).29These sonatas, the title being to some extent interchangeable withsuite, have little in common with the form to which Bach’s son Philipp Emanuel, Haydn, and Mozart (Beethoven can of course not come into the comparison) developed it. The parent of this exists also among Bach’s works, but it has a different name, being distinguished as theItalian Concerto(207, p. 4). It is remarkable that it should bear a designation properly true of an orchestral composition, as though in prevision of the unlimited development of which the form was susceptible.30But the feeble internal resources of the clavichord, Bach’s chosen instrument for study—the harpsichord was too hard, and the infant pianoforte too coarse for him—prevented him from himself following up the conception. He preferred to write music which was independent of so imperfect an exponent; and his clavichord works are characterised by freedom and delicacy of melody, infinite fancy, and, as we see specially in his fugues, the fullest solidity and richness of structure, rather than by any effects which need a responsive sympathy in the instrument. It is as such that we ought to judge them, however much their life is broadened by performance on the piano.
It is difficult to separate Bach’s chamber compositions from those for orchestra. The orchestras of that day were very small, that at Weimar consisted but of sixteen performers, and Bach’s matured scheme for the production of his church music at Leipzig asked only for a band of twenty. It is wholly uncertain how far it was usual, or considered necessary, to multiply with the parts; in any case chance might oftenreduce the small orchestra to numbers more consistent with chamber music. That this happened in the concertos which Bach conducted in his own house we may be pretty sure. There is, therefore, little objection to our enumerating both forms of composition in one section.
TheConcertosare written on various scales, the use of one instrumentconcertantebeing extended toConcerti Grossirequiring as many as four. For the harpsichord there exists six; for two harpsichords two, and for three again two. In another concerto he has combined the harpsichord with two flutes, and in two more with flute and violin, as the threeobbligatoinstruments.
For the violin Bach composed three concertos, besides one apiece for two violins, for violin and hautboy, for two flutes and violin, and for flute, violin, hautboy, and trumpet.
Orchestral works, but for an orchestra of very various constitution, are three of the so-calledBrandenburg Concertos,31and fourpartiesor suites which rank among the most flexible and melodious of all Bach’s creations.32The list would be increased by nearly thirty works if we added the instrumental symphonies which occur in the course of his cantatas.
As strict chamber music we may reckon his threesonatas or trios, in which the harpsichord combines respectively with two flutes, flute and violin,33and two violins. For harpsichord and flute there are six sonatas; for harpsichord and violin a like number, together with three separate pieces, a sonata, a partie, and a fugue; finally, three sonatas for harpsichord and viola-da-gamba.
The list of Bach’s instrumental works is completed by two sonatas for obsolete instruments, one for the lute, the other for his own invention, theviola pomposa, and by the memorable sets, of six sonatas each, for the violin and violoncello, which are well enough known in England to render an account of them superfluous.
But a few words are needed in conclusion to mark Bach’s position in reference to the clavichord. In the first place, being acutely sensible of the least falsity of tune, he always tuned the instrument himself, a process which never cost him more than a quarter of an hour. In this art he introduced a great reform, that of tuning on a basis of equal temperament. Without such a reform his chromatic music, and notably hisChromatic Fantasiaand theWohltemperirte Clavier, would have been impossible. Another instance of his fastidious taste is that no one but himself could adjust the quills of a harpsichord to his satisfaction. He took great pains in improving the actionof the clavichord, and invented a new instrument, the lute-harpsichord (lauticlavicymbel), with a surprising brilliancy of tone; but the difficulty of tuning it led to its abandonment.
It would demand too technical a discussion if we were to analyse the method of playing which Bach introduced. That he was the first to insist upon an equal use of the thumb with the rest of the hand, and to act upon the principle that touch proceeds from the lower joints of the fingers, and not from the wrist or arm, makes him the founder of the modern art of piano-playing. It is said of him that he “played with so easy and small a motion of the fingers that it was hardly perceptible. Only the first joints of the fingers were in motion; the hand retained, even in the most difficult passages, its rounded form; the fingers rose very little from the keys, hardly more than in a shake, and when one was employed, the others remained still in their position. Still less did the other parts of his body take any share in his play, as happens with many whose hand is not light enough.”34His playing was light, smooth, swift—powerful or expressive, as he chose—but always without display or the appearance of effort.
For near forty years Bach’s history had followed the common course of the musicians of his generation, and he had reached what was then held the most dignified rank in his craft. He had passed through the stages of chorister, orchestral violinist, and organist: he was now capellmeister in a ducal palace, and, measured by conventional standards of success, he had nothing further to look for or to desire. Least of all was it to be expected that he would descend from this dignity to the position of a school-teacher and precentor in the less select atmosphere of a trading town. Success, however, held a small place in Bach’s mind in comparison with anything which should forward his highest artistic aims, consistently with his own honour and integrity; and the confined circle of activity in the chapel at Coethen could satisfy but a part of his complete musician’s nature. The years of study and the years of ripe performance must be completed by a period of broadened influence exerted in the arousing of the musical soul of a great town, and in the foundation of a school of disciples of his own spirit.
In the spring then of 1723 Bach quitted a life which had become ungrateful to him since the duke had tired of his devotion to music. One reason for his leaving—and this perhaps was decisive—was, that he might do his best for his children’s bringing up. His care was always for Wilhelm Friedemann, his eldest and best-loved child; and in this very year we find that he entered him as a student at the university of his new home. In reviewing his life seven years later Bach touches upon all these considerations which took him from Coethen to Leipzig.
The school of S. Thomas in this town, where Bach was called to fill the post of cantor, was an ancient foundation, already in its fifth century of existence. Once belonging to the Augustinian Canons of the Thomaskloster, it combined music and general teaching, like other conventual schools of the middle ages. In this shape it survived the reformation: it remained both a choir-school and a grammar-school; and of its seven masters, the cantor, who took a middle place, lowest of the foursuperiores, had his share of both branches of teaching. He gave a certain number of lessons a week in music and Latin grammar, varied on Sunday evenings by the Latin catechism of Luther. Bach, however, was allowed to pay one of his colleagues to take the Latin teaching from him—less, it is to be presumed, from incapacity than from disinclination or perhaps from diffidence; so that, except when his substitute was ill, his occupation was solely musical. His formal declaration of office bound him to treat the boyshumanely, and to instruct them as well in instrumental as in vocal music.
But the work in school was the least portion of the cantor’s task. He had the musical oversight—as we should say, he was precentor—of the two chief churches of S. Thomas and S. Nicholas; he had to provide a choir for the simpler service at S. Peter’s; and he had also a more undefined control over the New Church (S. Matthew’s). Among these four churches, and apparently, on festivals, in the extra-mural church of S. John too, the cantor had to distribute his choir. The best-trained voices were reserved for S. Thomas’s and S. Nicholas’, where the services were so arranged that the cantor could preside over the important music at both. The other churches had to be content with the younger and more unskilled choristers. All of them the cantor supplied with music—not too long or too operatic, was the special injunction when Bach entered office. He had to be ready with special services for high days, weddings, and funerals, which last he was directed to attend in person. Finally, he had to supervise the different organists, the fiddlers and pipers—the embryo orchestra—of the town.
It was this commanding position, ofDirector of Musicof the great town of Leipzig, rather than that of teacher in the Thomasschule, which drew Bach from the ease and quiet of his ducal chapel. How little it was realised at the time of Bach’s arrival, we shall soon see. In the first place, the school itself was just then at the last period of decay. It had long suffered from the blunders of its rector, JohannHeinrich Ernesti, a solemn man, clergyman and pedant—he was Professor of Poetry in the university—who had lived his seventy years without learning the first secret of acquiring influence over masters or scholars, far less of giving unity or vigour to the management of the school. There was discord everywhere, with its usual accompaniment. The attendance of the scholars fell off, in the lower classes to less than half their former number; and, worse than this, their quality deteriorated in equal stages: the best pupils drifted away to Lueneburg, and the Leipzig school threatened to sink into a mere training-place for people who were to make their livelihood by singing at funerals. Yet every attempt to reform it was thwarted by the timid obstinacy of its rector; and it was not until his death, when Bach had been under him for six years, that any effectual measures for its revival were possible.
An even greater obstacle to the prosperity of the school lay outside it; for, since the first years of the century, the institution of the opera had established a separate centre of musical training and musical interest in the town. The new importation gained a sudden popularity and success when it came under the hands of Telemann, afterwards famous as organist at Hamburg. The Opera became a dangerous rival to the School; and the rivalry was the keener since Telemann was organist of one of the churches that drew their choirs from S. Thomas’s. If the cantor was mortified at the retrenchment of his authority, it was the school that suffered the most. For its scholars at first spenttheir holidays in the opera-company; soon the choir of the New Church was absorbed into it. The boys went over altogether, willing enough to abandon the restraints and the severer training of the school, for the freedom and gaiety, not to say the profit, of the career now open to them. And, although Telemann left Leipzig after a year (1705), the Musical Society (Musikverein) which he founded went on growing and flourishing at the expense of the school. The music at S. Thomas’s had to be kept down to the diminished capacity of its voices. Difficult works could only be attempted with a certainty of failure. Even the Town Council, usually blind to the faults of old endowments, came to see the fruitlessness of helping any pretence of reform on the part of a school which produced results so inferior to the unendowed performances at the New Church.
Such was the condition of affairs when Bach came to Leipzig: the whole musical life of the place seemed to be dying away in disunion and mismanagement. The very opera which had ruined the Thomasschule ceased to exist in 1726; the Musical Society founded by Telemann had passed into incapable hands; and, to complete the chaos, the University organ and the direction of University music had been given (in the interval between Kuhnau’s death and the appointment of Bach as his successor in the cantorate) to the pitifullest of musicians, one Goerner,35who was to Bach for manyyears a standing grievance and obstruction. The temporary substitute was tacitly kept on by the indulgent University magnates, and the Thomasschule lost that connexion with the University which gave the only promise for its revival. Moreover, Goerner, who was also organist at S. Nicholas’—afterwards, in 1730, at S. Thomas’s, under Bach’s own authority, which he disregarded—had a Collegium Musicum of his own, for which he arrogated a rank superior to the Thomasschule, the latter, in fact, being (as he explained) merely preparatory to his. It seemed as though the old school were destined to lose all weight in the town. The New Church had been monopolised by Telemann’s Musikverein; and now the University Church was being supplied by Goerner’s Collegium.
We cannot be wrong in believing that Bach was well aware of these things; that he accepted his new post in the high ambition of re-creating what had been once a true home of musical art, of keeping alive and (as we see) of infinitely exalting the honourable tradition handed down in the learned line of his predecessors.
On the 5th May, 1723, Bach appeared before the Town Council and made the declarations of office; the appointment was ratified by the consistory of the church, and before the month was over he was formally inducted.
From this time to his death he was settled in the official lodgings in the left wing of the Thomasgebäude, which, added to some 700 thalers, made upthe emoluments of his post. It is significant of the position he was resolved to maintain that, directly upon entering office, he distinctly subscribes himself not only cantor of S. Thomas’s, but also, in defiance of Goerner, Director of Music, or, as we should say, Choragus, in the University. The double function had belonged to his predecessor; and no one could challenge Bach’s claim to a part of the academical function—the duty namely of furnishing music for the proper University services (at the quarterly Acts, the Reformation Festival, and the three high-days of the Church). But of late years there had been a regular Sunday service as well, in the University Church; and this Goerner insisted on appropriating. It was not a mere question of fees that determined Bach’s appeal in 1725 to the King-Elector at Dresden; the entire issue as to who should be supreme in matters musical in Leipzig was at stake. A long correspondence as usual brought no practical result. Goerner seems to have retained his weekly services, and even now and then to have encroached on Bach’s strict province of composing special odes and the like for high University occasions. The fact that in 1736 he is actually described as Academical Director of Music shows that the dispute had not even then been set at rest. It is a common picture, this of a great man being perpetually harassed by the pretensions of a vain fellow who is only remembered for his self-assertion; but it reveals a singular want of appreciation on the part of the Leipzig authorities, that they suffered the nuisance without a hint of its absurdity. Bach never let himselffor an instant appear in the light of a rival. He only resented the impertinence in a certain leonine fashion, and held to his academical title.
This punctiliousness about titles has more in it than shews at first sight. Bach doubtless knew his public, and knew that, if he claimed to be a simple choir-*master, his influence would be restricted proportionately. But, moreover, such a description would have been misleading, since, as Dr. Spitta observes,36if Bach’s music is the truest church-music, it contains none the less the elements of independent concert-music as well. Accordingly the titles of Capellmeister of Coethen, which he held when he came to Leipzig, and of Weissenfels, which was conferred upon him in the year of his arrival, Bach bore until his death. As a final vindication of his position, he appealed to the king, in 1733, for a court appointment at Dresden. The petition was accompanied by a part of the great Mass in B minor, which was written expressly for the royal chapel; but the honorary distinction of Composer in Ordinary did not follow for three years.
Whatever honours he won from abroad, nothing to the end of his days could spare him continual annoyance from the municipal council. With his native independence of spirit he could not brook the invasion of this body into a province totally beyond their scope. All through his life he could never get to understand them or the reasons for their action, simply because he knew perfectly that they were incapable of under-*standing him. This much he knew about them, and they gave him ample opportunity, to his cost, of knowing it. He could not go further and make concessions to their limited intelligence. Their presumption irritated him, when he found his every act hampered and restrained as though he were the most incompetent of sciolists.
Bach’s grievances in relation to the council began some years after his appointment at the Thomasschule. At first he probably threw himself with zest into his work, and gave no ground for fault-finding. But in time he must have restricted himself to the bare quantum of duty assigned to him, and given his best energies to composition. At least the differences begin in the spring of 1729, and the charge that he did no work came with a peculiar force of demonstration just when he had brought outThe Passion according to Saint Matthew, not to speak of three great church-cantatas at the commemorative festival of the Augsburg confession. The council proceeded to vote that he was not to be trusted even in the choice of choristers for his school. To fill nine vacancies Bach had examined a number of competitors, and sent in a careful report as to their qualifications. The council accepted only five of his nominees, making up the list by three who (as he told them)nichts in Musicis praestirten, and whom he had not even named. Then the council decided that he was so bad a teacher of music that he must be set to secular teaching as well, apparently as a punishment. This he managed to escape; but he suffered a suspension of all theaccidentienor extraordinary emoluments of his post. The council resolved either to work him or to starve him out.
Almost in despair, he wrote to an old friend, Erdmann the schoolfellow who had gone up with him from Ohrdruf to Lueneburg, now Russian agent at Danzig, and begged for a more suitable post anywhere, if any could be found. He gave an account of his position at Leipzig, the reasons that drew him thither, and his disappointment. His routine was ungrateful, his salary reduced (it relied upon varying items, and, as he explained, when a healthy wind blew, he could not count on much from the funerals) and the town very expensive—you could live in Thuringia for half as much—above all, he was under the control of an extraordinary council with little liking for music (eine wunderliche und der Musik wenig ergebene Obrigkeit), with which he stood perforce in continual disagreement and ill-will. Certainly it was, as I have said, the unaccountable—"wunderlich"—genius of the council that most impressed Bach. With that consciousness of himself which no great man is ever wholly without, he could not understand their action. It was an incongruity in the nature of things which would have been comical had it not been a perpetual irritation to him.
There is, however, no hint of this irritation, but rather a haughty disdain which shows through the verbose respectfulness of Bach’s official memorials. Once, for instance, when he was rehearsing a Passion music for Good Friday, the council insisted on hissubmitting it to their inspection. He replied that he had gone to work precisely as on former occasions, the text in fact had been already produced more than once. However, he was not concerned to perform the thing: it would only give him trouble and no profit. He would report to his ecclesiastical superior that the council forbade its performance. In this way he managed to shift the dispute on to the shoulders of the consistory, which had a standing quarrel with the council as to their respective powers over the school. The present question belonged clearly to the church body; and it is evidently with grim satisfaction that Bach seizes on the technical mistake. Let it be noticed, too, how he refuses to give any explanation, refuses even to complain of his disappointment. He says, in so many words, that he is dealing with mere business people, and will use merely business arguments.
Again, in 1730, when they sent one of their number to admonish him gravely of the submission which was due to them, Bach was preparing—perhaps had already sent in—an elaborate and carefully arranged report on the wide-reaching reform and extension which he demanded for the choir and orchestra under his direction. There is an irony in the way the man, who is to be frightened into docility by a retrenchment of his salary and influence, occupies himself meantime in devising and proving the necessity of a large scheme which should extend the scope of his authority and indirectly augment his income. The reform, of course, never came, and the memoir is only interesting as the reflection ofthe independent nature of the writer, and as evidence of the dimensions to which instrumental music had grown under his hands. It should, however, be mentioned that in the ten previous years the council had not been unmindful of the needs of the two chief churches, and had sanctioned an unusual outlay in the repair of the organs and in the purchase of stringed instruments and music-books for the performers.
It is pleasant to turn from these disputes and anxiety to the glimpse—unfortunately almost a solitary glimpse—of the home life which saved Bach from ever really despairing, and which cheered him in a thankful contentment, so that no disappointment from without was able to dwarf his energy for work, or to cool the genial spirit which ever attended his composing. At the end of the letter to Erdmann, from which I have already quoted, he says:I must now acquaint you with somewhat of my domestic estate. For the second time I am married, my first lamented wife having deceased at Coethen. Of her I have living three sons and a daughter, whom your Excellence will kindly remember to have seen at Weimar; of the second marriage there are living a son and two daughters. My eldest son is a student of law, the next two are at school in the first and second class, and my eldest daughter remains unmarried. The children of my second marriage are still little, the eldest a boy of six years. Altogether, however, they are born musicians, and I can assure you that even now I can arrange a concert with my familyvocaliterandinstrumentaliter,whereas my wife thatnow is sings a prettysoprano,and my eldest daughter plays not amiss.
From a variety of scattered facts we may form some idea of the activity of this musical house. Indeed, just at this time the home was reaching its happiest period. The two eldest boys, the worthiest inheritors of the family genius, were still with their father; and there is hardly a doubt that it was to play with them that Sebastian wrote his two concertos for three pianos. Who formed the orchestra we can only conjecture, but it is certain that the string of pupils who had formed part of his household since he began married life at Muehlhausen, and who continued in increasing numbers until his death, were in different degrees capable of giving their help; and the gaps may have been filled by promising scholars of the Thomasschule, or, indeed, by the—chiefly under-*graduate—members of the Musical Society of which Bach undertook the management in 1729. We know, from the inventory taken after his death, that he possessed latterly fiveclavecins(the word must be used inaccurately, and taken to include clavichords) and ten stringed instruments, not counting his three lutes; so that in the house itself there was material for the nucleus of an orchestra, though violinists would probably, and players on wind instruments necessarily, bring their own instruments with them. In all this domestic music his wife took her share, both as player on the clavichord, in which she was his apt pupil, and especially as a singer. It is likely that some church cantatas were written for her and for the eldestdaughter Katharina (who sangalto) as may be inferred from the prevalence in such of onesolovoice, and by other points (for instance, the shortness of one) which render them unfit for performance in church.37Nor need we doubt that a similar use dictated Bach’s great collection of 240 chorales, of which unhappily only fragments remain. For it is almost needless to observe that the old German temper in its best form combined religion inextricably with all the common acts of life. We know how the festive gatherings of the Bachs, however jovial their purpose, always began with a chorale; and Sebastian himself, seeking for a definition of music, can find nothing more comprehensive to say than thatIts final cause is none other than this, that it minister solely to the honour of God and refreshment of the spirit; whereof, if one take not heed, it is no proper music, but devilish din and discord.38
The preparation for these perpetual concerts must have furnished incessant occupation to the household. Printed music was very rare and costly, and, as a matter of course, the parts had regularly to be copiedout. A great deal exists in the delicate hand of Anna Magdalena Bach, who also transcribed many scores for her husband’s private use. No one was idle, and a certain amount even of music-engraving was done in this busy house. Bach himself, we are told, often laboured far into the night. The day was not long enough for all he found to do.
Bach’s appeal to Erdmann in the winter of 1730, to try and find him a more congenial post than he had at Leipzig, was without result. In fact, little as he suspected it, events had already begun to take a favourable turn for him. The year before, the organist of the New Church had left, and Bach had followed him as director of the Musical Society, which had hitherto furnished the choir at that church, instead of the boys of the Thomasschule. It was a good thing for Bach in every way to break down a rivalry of this sort. But a greater gain had come to him the very month before he wrote to Erdmann. For the new rector of the school, Gesner, proved himself consistently the firm friend of the ill-used cantor.
Gesner appears to have been much more than his books shew him—one of the revivers of classical learning in Germany. He was also a teacher by instinct, one who by infinite tact and patience could restore harmony to a school that had been dissolving for a generation, and form so direct an understanding between master and pupil that the friend was seen through the severe disciplinarian, and the fervent scholar through the mists and morasses of an antiquated pedagogy.He diffused a new spirit into the school; to Bach he gave his generous sympathy, and an earnest of hopefulness. How he appreciated him as a musician has already been noticed in another connexion; as head of the school he saved him from the petty annoyances to which he had hitherto been subjected. Bach had now his just share of the fees which made the largest item in his income and which were now the more necessary as his family was growing up. Moreover, thrifty as he was, his different posts must have involved expensive journeys to Coethen and Weissenfels; and he was fond of making short visits to Dresden to hear the opera, at that time under the leading of his friend Hasse,Il Sassone, as he is known by the Italians, among whom he lived for many years, and whose music in turn he naturalised in Germany.Friedemann, let us go again and hear the pretty Dresden songs, Bach would say to his boy; and the two went together. The phrase used is, by the way, characteristic of Bach. He enjoyed the opera, but could not call it by any more dignified name thansongs(liederchen). Accordingly he never adopted this form of composition; his genius is essentially undramatic. But he studied the operatic style with eager energy, and absorbed it so thoroughly that the arias, duets, &c., which occur in his cantatas, are the worthiest representatives of the opera that Germany produced before Gluck, whom indeed he anticipated in his treatment of the recitative. They have the gaiety and grace of the Italian manner, and the inspiration of German thought.
The secular post which Bach also held at Leipzig gave a wide opening for compositions specially in this style. The purpose of musical clubs, said his predecessor Kuhnau, in hisMusicalischer Quack-Salber, written in 1700, is for musiciansever to exercise themselves farther in their noble calling, and withal from the pleasant harmony to establish among themselves so like a sweet-sounding agreement of tempers, as oftentimes is mainly lacking in their conversation. We may think of Bach as realising this description, as he presided over theamateurgatherings held on winter-nights in a coffee-*house in the Katharinenstrasse, or in summer of an afternoon in a garden outside the town in the Windmühlengasse. These informal concerts lasted two hours, and took place weekly, or twice a week during the great popular festivals of Leipzig, the quarterly fairs.
We have no express evidence of what purely instrumental compositions Bach wrote for the society. No doubt he revived the chamber-music he had composed at Coethen; and the bulk of his concertos dating from Leipzig would probably be performed at its meetings. The works which are known to have been produced there are chiefly a string of secular cantatas—perhaps we should rather sayserenatas, though the actual title is specificallyDramma per Musica. To these we may add the other compositions which are described simply as for the university students in general, with whom from the first he was in constant request at times of rejoicing, birthdays of favourite teachers, their election as professors, and a multitude of festive occasions prompted by the accustomedloyalty of undergraduates. These pieces are commonly distinguished as dramatic chamber-music; but it must be borne in mind that, although hardly ever acted in costume, they were often presented, not in a room, but with the natural scenery, for instance, of a garden. Bach rarely spent his best work on such ephemeral displays—they mostly had to be got ready in a few days—and whenever he found afterwards that he had included in them anything in his judgment worth preserving, he incorporated it in a church cantata or some more lasting composition. In this way nearly the whole of adrama, written for the Queen’s birthday in 1733, came subsequently to form part of the Christmas oratorio. But we must guard against the inference that Bach was careless of the relation between music and words. On the contrary, we have the distinct statement of a friend, himself a teacher of rhetoric at Leipzig, that Bach’smastery over the qualities and the excellencies which music has in common with rhetoric is such as not only to add unfailing pleasure to his discourses upon the likeness and correspondency between them, but also to move our admiration at the skilful use of his principles in his works. So wrote Magister Birnbaum in 1739; and the importance which Agricola, who was Bach’s pupil for three years, attaches to the study of rhetoric by musicians, was probably caught from his teacher. The truth is that Bach was before all things a sacred composer, and when he adopts in a sacred work that which had once belonged to something secular, it is not from haste, indifference, or a want of fertility, but purely because the piece would findits proper home in a sacred setting. It does not surprise us, therefore, to find that he habitually brought up old compositions, with new words, for the festivities for which he was called upon to provide, and that many of them have entirely perished, their existence being only known from the circulated programme.
The following seven cantatas are all that remain:—1. In honour of Dr. Mueller,393rd August, 1725. 2. On the Promotion of Professor G. Kortte,4011th December, 1726. 3. The Contest of Phœus and Pan,411731. 4. Hercules at the Boundary,425th September, 1733. 5. At the Queen’s Birthday, 8th December, 1733. 6. At a Royal Visit to Leipzig, 5th October, 1734. 7. At the King’s Birthday,437th October, 1734.
Of these the third alone can claim more than a limited appreciation; and this has a novel interest outside the music, in certain satirical allusions, under the character of Midas, to one Scheibe, a poor musician, whom Bach had rejected as candidate for an organistship, and who never lost an opportunity of showing his ill-will against the too rhadamanthyne judge.44
This satire connects the student-cantatas with two works of a professed humourous character. One isthe so-calledCoffee-cantata, which turns upon the comparatively modern rage for coffee, supplanting all human joys and interests. Comic pieces of this sort were not unknown in Bach’s time. His cousin Nikolaus had written one called theTapster of Jena, and in a kindred vein Bach inserted a most sympathetic ditty upon his tobacco-pipe in one of the books he wrote for his wife.45But the genial side of Bach’s temper is best reflected in hisCantate en Burlesque, known as thePeasant’s Cantata.46It was composed in 1742 for a feast-day in a village near Leipzig to celebrate the coming of a new landlord, and is full of a frolicsome gaiety that looks like the freshness of a young man’s work; only we know, for instance, from theWinter’s Tale, that such may often shew the mellowed spirit ofolder years. Thelibrettois made up ofbadinage, more or less clumsy, between the countrymen, who like their own old fashion of doing honour to their lord, and the upstarts who try to introduce a new-*fangled courtly style. The genuine swains get the better of it, and have a great deal to say for themselves in a rough way, starting in the true Saxon brogue, and breaking out into popular songs which were in every one’s mouth at the time. The music, which is never vulgar, is certainly the lightest that Bach wrote; but thevolksliederdo not stand alone in his works. Two such songs he has wrought with inimitable art and charm into the Quodlibet which closes his thirty variations in G.
The list of Bach’s secular cantatas is completed by some wedding-music,47and by the pieces he wrote for state occasions. Three of the latter, all birthday cantatas, remain.48One was composed in 1716 for the Duke of Saxe-Weissenfels, when the event was celebrated by a great hunt;49the second is a serenade for the Prince of Coethen, perhaps in 1717;50and thethird, for his second consort, in 1726.51Of far greater importance must have been theDirgeswhich Bach composed for mourning solemnities, and which are indeed only distinguished from the rest of his church music by the personal reference. The music he wrote in 1729 on the death of his patron is lost; but it is supposed to have been to a great extent built upon theS. Matthew Passion. That which he composed, however, two years earlier, for the Queen of Poland remains to us, and apparently was subsequently re-*erected into the (now lost)Passion according to S. Mark.52On these occasions the appointed mourning did not begin for some months, and Bach had therefore time to devote thought to them such as he was not able to give in the hurried seasons of rejoicing. In itself, the more weighty occasion stirred him to deeper reflexion, and theDirge for Queen Christine Eberhardineis of more value than all his secular cantatas put together. It shows Bach to us in his native sphere, that of a church composer, and leads naturally to the consideration of his work as such in its wider manifestations.
His church cantatas are among the earliest and the most mature of Bach’s productions; but the bulk of them were written while he was cantor at Leipzig. Barely thirty can be assigned to an earlier period, while from 1723 onwards he set himself to compose a complete cycle for five church years—near 300cantatas—in which of course he inserted his younger works, though never without a scrupulous revision. Of this marvellous series about two hundred remain. Musicians owe an incalculable debt to Dr. Spitta for the exhaustive scrutiny to which he has subjected every individual number; and although his results, which will be found tabulated at the end of this volume, are in a certain degree tentative, yet their general accuracy can hardly fail to be accepted. In comparatively few cases does the doubt as the chronological place of a cantata extend over more than four years; and the student is therefore for the first time enabled to place each one with security in its proper setting in the total list of Bach’s works.
But it is not the number, but the wonderful variety, individual character, and consummate workmanship, of the church cantatas, that make them an absolutely unique phænomenon in music. It is hardly necessary to say that they have nothing in common with the Italiancantata, which was a mere operaticscenaforsolovoices.53The church cantata may be roughly called a short oratorio. Its component parts are one or more choruses and chorales with recitatives andsoloairs; but the form is as elastic as that of the modernsonata, and one at least of the elements may often be absent. In Bach’s hands the type was enlarged in more than one direction, especially underthe influence of the instrumental music of Italy. His first preserved cantata, dating perhaps from 1704, shows how he was abandoning the purely polyphonic treatment, which the Germans had adopted but never been at ease with, and creating for himself his own manipulation of voices in an instrumental manner. When at Weimar he pursued his studies through the entire range of Italian chamber-music accessible to him, the effect was not to make him in any sense imitate them. His chamber-music is almost wholly of later date. What he did was to apply the forms of thesonataandconcertoto the clavichord, the organ, and above all to the church cantata. In this way he brought to perfection his art of writingsolo-arias, of which the earlier examples are so complete and mature as to leave no room for future improvement. Here accordingly he made little change in the course of his later composing; and the same holds good for his treatment of the recitative,arioso, and simple chorale. The variety he threw into the structure of the cantata is infinite. Sometimes a whole cantata takes the shape of aconcerto, or of an orchestralpartie; sometimes its second division is opened by a regular chamber-sonata. An overture in French style is combined with a freely-imagined chorus, even with a chorale. Dance-measures, thepassacaglia, even the jig, are not excluded; and a chorale has its counterpoint in asiciliano. Everywhere instrumental forms are applied, in a way hitherto unsuspected, to the development of church-music. Now a chorale is played by the orchestra in the midst of a recitative, as though toset a bound to its unmeasured phrases: now the recitative appears as a personal application of the thought between the lines of a chorale. But the influences of the master’s boyhood are not forgotten: except in thearias, the organ is the main basis of his cantata-style; and Pachelbel, Boehm, Buxtehude, have still their reminiscence, in a more glorious apparel. The old forms are broadened, and combined, with inconceivable fancy, with one another and with the new forms which Bach devised for himself.
It is in the choruses, however, that the Leipzig cantatas rise above the works of Bach’s earlier time. The great choruses which he wrote at Weimar, for instance, the splendid one that opensIch hatte viel Bekümmerniss, are indeed models of his instrumental treatment. The difference between his early and later writing is rather the uniform massiveness and magnificence of the latter—the more complete absorption in them of the organ-style. Though generally formed on a figured subject, they are wrought with far greater freedom and force. The choruses, based upon the melody of a chorale, are unmatched in depth and grandeur, and it was to these, the rich embodiment of his strenuous religious sense, that Bach turned with peculiar affection in his later years; a long series of cantatas in which they take the chief place were written by him from 1735 onwards.
Yet, it must be confessed that the church cantatas suffer exceedingly from the poverty of the texts to which they are written. Unless Bach draws directly from the Bible or from the old chorale-hymns—for thechorales have a mine of poetry within their rough mass—there are few places in which one is not repelled by the tastelessness of the rhymes he had to use. Bach himself seems at one time to have been conscious of their inadequacy and to have returned to the nervous religious poetry of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. One cannot but suspect that the finer judgment of Gesner—they all bear traces of having been composed during his stay at Leipzig—had something to do with the improved choice of subject. But commonly the texts are derived from three contemporary poetasters, Franck and Neumeister of Weimar and Picander of Leipzig. The last was a neighbour of Bach’s and a docile follower. In fact we cannot, where he was concerned, exculpate Bach from a certain responsibility for the texts. Certainly Picander wrote as he was bid, and would alter as Bach told him. But probably the musician felt that he could do no better than employ so convenient a hack, and it would be going beyond all we know of his life to assume that the artistic sensibility which swayed him in matters musical extended also into the domain of letters. He was content if the meaning of the words agreed with the music.
It remains to add that all the church cantatas are written for orchestra, but for an orchestra of very varying compass, ranging from the simple bass, which accompanies the recitative, to dimensions scarcely inferior to those of modern times; only Bach seldom employed the whole available body at once. He liked to have a reserve, to prevent the music of one Sundaybeing exactly like its neighbour; and he was specially fond of keeping an instrument to come out prominently as theobbligatoaccompaniment of anaria.
Among the cantatas there stands a composition of a partly different character. This is theAscension Oratorio, which connects itself by its title with the two more important works of the same sort which Bach has left, namely, theEasterandChristmas Oratorios, written respectively in 1734 and 1736. The second has the nearest resemblance of the three to what we know as oratorios elsewhere: the last, by far the greatest, is divided into six parts, for performance on Christmas and the two days following, New Year’s Day, the first Sunday in the year, and the Epiphany. It has, however, a unity of feeling running through it, which stamps it as a single work. We have already noticed and explained the presence here of much that had previously formed part of secular cantatas; but it may be added that there is the less incongruity in the case when we consider how largely the rejoicing of Christmastide was mixed up with social festivities. That Bach, however, was careful lest the deeper meaning of the incarnation should be forgotten, is shown by the employment of the melody of a well-known Passion chorale—his favouriteO Haupt voll Blut und Wunden—which occurs twice, the second time with an exuberance of instrumental accompaniment to close the work. The Oratorio has by this time become so familiar in England that it is perhaps unnecessary to describe its structure. Nothing of Bach surpasses it in the warm life of its choruses or the delicate charm of its airs—the purityof one alto song,Bereite dich, Zion, or the idyllic beauty of another,Schlafe, mein Liebster, than which no lovelier lullaby has ever been written.
Before noticing the mysteries which Bach consecrated to the history of the Passion—works by the side of which the Christmas Oratorio takes a worthy place, rather by virtue of its great compass and masterly performance, than by any close affinity of scheme—we may complete the summary of his German works by a brief mention of theMotets.
The motet may be described as a sacred madrigal: in other words, it is written in several parts, commonly four, five, six, or eight; it does not require an instrumental accompaniment; and it is set to a text from the Bible, or a verse from a church hymn. It was a style of composition entirely polyphonic, which had gradually declined in popularity as instrumental music and especially solo singing came into vogue. And it is one of Bach’s great services to church-music to have revived it, so that in the present day the weekly motet-singing in his own Church at Leipzig remains one of the most popular institutions of the town. Contrary, however, to the custom now, Bach seems to have had the motets accompanied, apparently on the organ; and this fact indicates their principal distinction from the older style. They are in fact based upon an organ treatment, and have precise parallels in several chorale-movements in the church cantatas. Few, however, have survived the carelessness of Bach’s successors at the Thomasschule, though their melodious figuration and religious sublimity might, one would have thought,have secured their unintermitted performance there. When Mozart came to Leipzig in 1789, and heard one of them (No. 5) he exclaimed,Here is a new thing from which I may learn, and, finding that the piece existed only in parts, he ranged them round the room until he had mastered their structure. The following are all that remain, not included in the body of church cantatas:—
1.Lobet den Herrn54for four voices;
2.Nun danket alle Gottfor five;
3.Jesu, meine Freude, also for five;
4.Der Geist hilft unsrer Schwachheit auf;
5.Singet den Herrn ein neues Lied;
6.Fürchte dich nicht;
7.Komm, Jesu, komm; the last four for a double chorus of eight voices.