During the last year of his life his sight failed. In the winter of 1749-50 he underwent two operations, both of which were unsuccessful, and he was left totally blind and shaken in health. On July 18, 1750, his sight was suddenly restored, but a few hours afterward he was stricken with apoplexy and he died on Tuesday, July 28, at a quarter to nine in the evening. With him at the time of his death were his wife and daughters, his youngest son Christian, his son-in-law Altnikol and one of his pupils. The funeral was on the following Friday from St. John’s church, where the preacher announced: ‘The very worthy and venerable Herr Johann Sebastian Bach, court composer to his kingly majesty of Poland and electoral and serene highness of Saxony, chapel master to his highness the prince of Anhalt-Cöthen, and cantor to the school at St. Thomas’s in town, having fallen calmly and blessedly asleep in God, in St. Thomas’s churchyard his body has this day, according to Christian usage, been consigned to the earth.’ It was remarked in a sitting of the town council on August 8 that Herr Bach had been a great musician but not a schoolmaster.
Such are the outlines of Bach’s life. It was decidedlya happy one as lives go. There is much evidence to show that he was impulsive and that he worked at his music with great enthusiasm, but the tenor of his life was even, not erratic, methodical, and simple. It is strange to think of him as a schoolmaster, but such he was for a great part of his life. Though the duties of teaching must have been often irksome, they were relatively light, and in no way demanded so much time or effort as to deprive him of opportunity or enthusiasm to compose. His own report of the condition of the choirs and band at the school can leave no doubt that he never heard his choral works performed in a manner which we should deem at the present day appropriate to their greatness. Probably the two choirs at his service for singing the St. Matthew Passion numbered not more than twelve singers each, and the soloists were members of the choir; he never had a complete band, and the organs at St. Thomas church were bad. There was lax discipline and disorder, too. Still these were inadequacies and improprieties from which most composers of his day suffered. Even the Abendmusik at Lübeck, as fine church music as was likely to be heard in all Germany, was interrupted and marred by the noise of the choir boys racing and capering in the choir loft. Bach was not exceptionally unfortunate in this regard. In material affairs he was relatively well-off; his family life was exceptionally happy and complete, he won the love and admiration of many friends and pupils, and honor from princes.
Of his many children but three boys and a girl long survived him, Wilhelm Friedemann, Carl Philipp Emanuel, Johann Christian, and Regina. Friedemann, the most gifted and the favorite son, became a drunkard, Emanuel and Christian became famous, one in Germany, the other in London. All three are to blame for the fact that their father’s widow, all but their mother, fell into abject poverty and dependence uponpublic charity. Regina lived to be an old woman, friendless and likewise poverty-stricken until not long before her death, Rochlitz, the publisher, undertook a publication by subscription of her father’s works. Among the subscribers Beethoven was the first.
Bach published only a very few works during his lifetime. The majority of his compositions passed in manuscript into the keeping of his sons. Emanuel later brought out many, but much of what fell to the keeping of Friedemann was carelessly lost or sold for a pittance here and there. There is no way of telling how much of the great man’s music has disappeared, but the amount which has been preserved is prodigious. As is so often the case among musicians, and, indeed, among most artists, his activity is more or less clearly divided into several periods. Thus the early years at Arnstadt and Mühlhausen are years of experiment and study. In the account of his life the ‘Necrology,’ which was published by Emanuel in a periodical owned by Mizler and called theBibliothèque, we learn that during these years he frequently spent the whole night in study and practice. During the Weimar period, when he was both organist and player in the duke’s band, he came into contact with Italian music, and devoted himself with enthusiasm and evidently untiring energy to the mastery of those principles of clear and lucid form which were at that time exemplified at their best in the violin works of Corelli and Vivaldi. It was a period of great and brilliant works for the organ, probably the toccata and fugue in D minor, which, however, because of its very evident relationship in style and even in theme to works of Buxtehude, may have been conceived earlier; almost certainly the fugue in G minor, the prelude and fugue in A minor, the colossal toccata in F, and perhaps the onepassacaglia. At this time, possibly largely as a matter of study and exercise, he transcribed concertosof Vivaldi for harpsichord, mastering thus the form, practically invented by the Italian, which he later used so brilliantly in the Italian Concerto for clavicembalo.
At Cöthen he was cut off from the organ and associated wholly with secular music, and in this period naturally fall the first part of the Well-tempered Clavichord, the French suites, the suites for violin alone and for 'cello, the Brandenburg concertos and the overtures for orchestra. Finally at Leipzig, where he was expected to furnish music for almost every Sunday of the year, he composed his great choral works, about three hundred cantatas, six motets at least, the Christmas and Easter oratorios, the Magnificats, the great mass in B minor, and shorter masses, and four settings of the Passion, of which that according to St. Matthew is perhaps the most sublime of his works and the perfect expression of his genius. Instrumental works also belong to this period, marked by maturity and calm, a broadening of form, an alienation from the lucid conciseness of the Italian and French styles. There are, for example, the prelude and fugue for organ in E-flat major, the English suites and the second part of the Well-tempered Clavichord for clavier, the overtureà la manière française, the ‘Musical Offering,’ and the ‘Art of Fugue.’
Within the limits of a single chapter there is no space to discuss these great works in detail, nor to point to the ways in which Bach’s genius manifested itself in each of them. We shall, therefore, give a brief analysis of that genius in general and then proceed to show the position Bach occupies in the course of the development of music.
Bach’s skill in polyphonic writing is perhaps unequalled both in its minute perfection and in its breadthand power. It is evident in nearly everything he wrote, be it the simplest of the two-part Inventions or the mighty choruses in the B minor mass, the fugues for organ or the fugues for solo violin. Within the most confined limits or ranging over mighty expanses it still serves his end, marvellously flexible and seeming spontaneous. Yet this skill does not constitute his genius. In general it differs more in degree than in kind from that of his predecessors and his contemporaries. In spite of the rapidly spreading domination of the monodic style, which was the style resulting from the Italian opera, the style of melody and simple accompaniments in chords, the polyphonic style still retained the allegiance of serious musicians, and even, in fact, of those who were less serious. All composers, probably all church organists, in the time of Bach could write fugues, double or single; could even improvise fugues; could write canons; wrote them as a pastime. Such skill was acquired almost in childhood, aided largely by copying volumes of music. Many composers discarded it altogether in writing for the public, many made a false show of it. It was, however, a manner of expression still common to the time, almost an idiom. So, though Bach’s skill could amaze even those who had been brought up to write fugues as daily exercise, it appeared to his contemporaries something as a matter of course, and to historians and critics allied with the new schools a positive detriment—a failing. At the present day the idiom in its naturalness is so far lost that our ears can hardly understand it. We no longer listen to polyphonic music without very special training. We do not follow it naturally, almost instinctively. The skill amazes, does not immediately express. It was, of course, thoroughly natural to Bach. But it was no more to him than an art, than, let us say, the art of speech; for he was wont to liken the interweaving of several parts in music to aconversation upon a given subject. Bach’s skill in polyphony is but a manner of speech, most faultless and subtle and powerful. Others acquired the manner, not perfectly, but none had the ideals, the emotions to express which have filled his works with warmth, with vitality, with actual life.
Thus his melodies are beautiful and expressive. Take, for example, the subjects of the fugues in the first part of the Well-tempered Clavichord. Here one might reasonably expect type melodies, mechanical phrases inexpressive in themselves, worthless, except as polyphonic material; the sort of phrases handed on from composer to composer, almost note for note—mere formulas. But one is astonished by the endless variety and freshness. All are original. Even the shortest, those which are hardly more than a kernel of melody, have a distinction, such as the subjects of the very first fugue, in C major, of the serious, indescribably sad figures in C-sharp minor, and E-flat minor, and the exalted, inspired fugue in B-flat minor. A more passionately expressive phrase is hardly to be found in music than that upon which the fugue in G minor is built, a more graceful melody than the subject of the fugue in C-sharp major; more delicate or humorous than those of the C minor and B-flat major fugues. These touches of pure melodic expressiveness are but preludes to the great melodies of the cantatas and the Passion. The melodiesMein gläubiges Herzefrom the Pentecost cantata, ‘Only Weep’ and ‘Have Mercy, Lord’ from the Passion according to St. Matthew are no more conspicuous than many others for their expanse and the depth of feeling which breathes in them. The grace of certain melodies in the suites for violin and for 'cello alone are captivating, the aria for the G string from the second orchestral suite most profound; and there is a type of melody especially dear to him, such as is found in the middle movement of the sonatas and concertos for violin, wonderfully free, rhapsodical, as though improvised. In general he avoided the elaborate, ornamental roulades characteristic of the Italian aria, even when writing in that form. In the few cases in which he did employ them they are expressive and gently realistic. In all his work there is evidence of a melodic genius of the purest kind, often not vocal, it is true, and often wound in a polyphonic web, but astonishingly genuine and inspired.
Though the quality of a great part of the music of Bach is meditative and not seldom mystical, parts of it are conspicuous for their rhythmical lightness and delicacy. Especially the suites for violin and ‘cello have a rhythmical animation which is irresistible. The dance movements which compose the last parts of theOuverture à la manière française, and movements in the English suites, depend almost wholly for their charm on the incisiveness and zest of their rhythm. Nor is such sprightliness lacking in the fugues, though in polyphonic music it is usually unemphasized. The fugue in D major in the first part of the Well-tempered Clavichord might be called a fugue in rhythm; the fugue in F minor in the second part, too, is almost wholly guided by a playful rhythm. It is to the music of Bach therefore that one should look to find the polyphonic style set free of its proverbial heaviness and inertia, light and airy as laughter and true wit, strong as the march of an army.
But to harmony more than to all else in music the touch of the genius of Bach brought new life and a splendor that can never grow dull. It is as a harmonist that he stands the father of modern music. His pupils have told us that the first task to which he set them was exercise, not in counterpoint, but in harmonization of simple chorale melodies. If one tries to analyze the difference between a Bach fugue and other fugues it is not to be found in the superior workmanship andfinish, nor, save little, in the melodic and rhythmical inspiration, but in the background of harmony. In harmony lie the mystery and wonder of Bach’s imperishable music. It is half the strength of its form. One might well ask what is a fugue without Bach. The seeds of it are in the old vocal polyphonic style, passages in which one voice imitated another at the interval of a fifth or fourth, were perhaps suggested to composers by voices singing the same words in turn; and the device was taken over by organists in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century and used inricercariandcanzone, with no notion of form and balance; it was used in preludizing to the singing of the congregation, but had no true independent existence apart from the chorale to which it led; it was used as the second part of the so-called French overture. Experimenting in one way or another, composers gradually built up a fairly definite instrumental form of fugue. But the fugues, notably the organ fugues, of even the greatest organists before Bach, lacked logical construction. Buxtehude’s were built, as Albert Schweitzer has said, on a principle oflaisser-aller. There seemed to be no good reason, according to Dr. Hugo Riemann, why any of them should not end or should not go on. It was Bach at last who gave to the fugue perfect proportion and organic unity. Principles of a form in music more clear-cut than any German forms he acquired, as we have said, in Weimar from a study of Italian and French masterpieces, but he based all his forms on a foundation of harmony and to all his works gave proportion and logic sprung from harmony alone.
Sir Hubert Parry in his study of Johann Sebastian Bach has demonstrated by careful analysis what a surprising number of preludes in the Well-tempered Clavichord are fundamentally progressions of chords. The name alone of this great series is suggestive, as weshall later prove. The clearest example of this harmonic prelude is the very first—that in C major. Hardly less clear are the second, the third, the sixth, the fifteenth, the twenty-first, and the twenty-third. Practically all, indeed, are upon the same plan, though in those mentioned the plan is clearest. This is, of course, no invention of Bach. The prelude grew out of a few chords rolled by an organist or player of the harpsichord or lute to claim the attention of his audience. The point is that Bach has made out of these preludes music of ineffable beauty merely by the gift of his genius in harmony. The sequences of his chords may be as modern as Wagner’s, chromatic alterations even more subtle; or, as in the organ works, they may move through broad diatonic highways, powerful in suspensions and magnificent in delays. And, as to his power of expression through harmony, let one listen to the recitatives of the St. Matthew Passion, one of the immortal, unfathomable creations of man’s genius; consider how they move on phrase after phrase, page after page, bearing the whole weight of a mighty composition and unaccompanied save by a few scattered chords. It may well be doubted if any art has or could have added one touch more of inexplicable, unspeakable beauty to the story of the Passion, save only these few scattered chords of Bach’s genius.
We have already observed that all great composers from the time of Beethoven have acknowledged Bach as the father of modern music, but this relationship which his descendants have so gladly acknowledged is, on the whole, general and intangible. The reason is partly that Bach invented no new forms, and that the forms which he chose, and the style in which he wrote,passed out of circulation, so to speak, immediately after his death. The fugue, the cantata, and the Passion he brought to the highest point it was possible for these forms to attain. They have rarely been attempted since with near enough success to suggest even imitation. The fugues of Mozart, Beethoven, and Brahms are essentially different from the fugues of Bach. Mendelssohn fell far short of the master whom he, more almost than all others, worshipped. César Franck has been compared to Bach, but is curiously unlike him. The cantata and the Passion grew up to Bach and then stopped: the cantata, because even in the hands of Bach it was an uncouth hybrid, neither opera, which is itself an illogical mixture, nor church music; the Passion, because, as Bach left it, it is as unattainable as the sun. As far as form and outward show are concerned, therefore, Bach’s position in the history of music is that of the culmination, the ultimate consummation, of certain styles and forms now obsolete. To understand his appearance in the history of music one must step back into the history of the seventeenth century in German music, a history strangely complicated with that of Protestantism, Lutheran hymns, and cantata texts, inextricably associated with the church and with the organ loft. In the growth of church music in Germany Bach had not one, nor two predecessors. A dozen different courses converged in him. Strangely enough, of the music of the one man before him with whom he might seem related, Heinrich Schütz, he knew little or nothing. All others worthy of the name of composers, however, contributed some share to his development.
All the great organists from the time there were great organists led to Bach, step by step, unmistakably. Every new phase of form, every new device of virtuosity but paved the way for one who was so supremely great as to cast them all into shade or oblivion. Allhymn writers, all composers of chorales led the same way. The Protestant religion found its perfect artistic expression in Bach, not in the cantatas but in the chorale fantasies for organ, the motets and the Passion according to St. Matthew. Catholic art contributed its share. He copied out masses by Palestrina, and by other men now forgotten, such as Lotti and Caldara. For a good part of the Lutheran service, especially at St. Thomas church in Leipzig, was practically Catholic in form. TheKyrie, theGloria,Credo,Benedictus,Sanctus, andAgnus Deihad their place in the ritual; and, what is more, German composers, and Bach was no exception, seldom troubled to set them to new music but adapted music of the earlier Italian writers to the new German words. The enormous number of cantatas was owing to the fact that the form had grown out of a native German custom of singing hymns between the reading of theGospeland theCredo, on the one hand, and the sermon, on the other, and composers were given opportunity to set texts not already time-worn. The history of these texts is one full of sad failures to achieve a truly artistic form, of futile efforts to reconcile chorale and hymn with the new operatic style, of bad verse and trivial, mechanical sentiment. Bach was constantly harassed by problems of text, varying in his choice between an old style Bible text woven with the strophes of the chorale hymns, by far the best though least suited to the operatic style of music which had established itself in the church, and a free text developed from a line or passage in the Bible, consisting of strophic arias and passages for recitative in the so-called madrigal style, a loose versification. The artistic perfection of the Passion is due no little to the fact that he himself supervised the arrangement of the text, the introduction of strophic verse for arias, and madrigal style for ariosos and the chorales.
The history of Passion music leads to Bach, and further than that it cannot go. Way back in the Middle Ages the story of the Passion was chanted in the churches, some time, usually on Good Friday in holy week. The words of the evangelist, of actors in the drama, and of Christ were chanted by a priest or deacon in the monotonous reciting tone, and the choir was given the ejaculations of the crowd. Later the words of Christ, the evangelist, Pilate, Peter, etc., were allowed to different chanters and with the growth of the operatic style the monotonous chant was changed to more expressive recitative. This intrusion of the operatic style was at times bitterly opposed, and the greatest German composer before Bach—Heinrich Schütz—was among the reactionaries, though he had received his training in Italy under Giovanni Gabrieli and Monteverdi himself. However, the influence of opera was too strong for the conservative clergy, and not only did recitative, aria, and dramatic choruses come to play a part in the singing of the story of the Passion, but instruments were introduced into the accompaniment, and the whole became practically a drama. The need for texts suitable for treatment in recitative and aria finally led to versified arrangements of the Biblical narrative itself, as well as to the introduction of strophic stanzas interpretative of the mood or action of the story. A new character, the so-called daughter of Zion, was introduced as a convenient spokeswoman for the congregation.
Such were the theatrical arrangements made by C. F. Hunold, known as Menantes, and by B. H. Brockes, a town councillor of Hamburg, whose arrangement was set to music by Keiser, Mattheson, Telemann, and Handel. Chorale melodies and hymns found no place in these passions. Schütz had employed them at the beginning and the end of his settings, as introduction and epilogue. They were apparently first woven into the body of the work by a little-known composer, Johann Sebastiani, about 1672. The arrangement which Bach finally used for his St. Matthew Passion was a combination of these earlier styles. For the narrative he reverted to the Biblical text, divided among the various characters. He retained the interpretative arias which in the midst of the story dwell for a time on the suffering, on the horror of it all, and their effect upon man; he included among the singers the Daughter of Zion. The chorus was used for the utterances of the crowd, with considerable restraint, and, throughout the work, for richly harmonized chorales which served to draw the congregation into the tragedy even though they were but once or twice given a voice in them. At the beginning and the end massive double choruses, into the first of which a chorale melody was woven, opened and concluded the story. Orchestra and organ made up the accompaniment. All these various elements he combined with unerring sense of proportion and fitness and with no inconsistencies and no histrionic glamour, so that the work stands perfect as a piece of art, and as the purest expression in music of the Lutheran religion.
In his general treatment of the orchestra Bach is allied so much more closely to the past than to the future that in this regard he can be said to have had practically no influence upon his successors. Before his death the Mannheim school, led by Johann Stamitz, was already pointing the way toward a new treatment of the orchestra which was to be taken up and developed by Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. Bach differs from these later men not so much in a lack of appreciation of tone color as in his forcing all instruments, irrespective of their peculiar capabilities, to conformity in a polyphonic style much influenced by the organ. The result is that trumpets and oboes, for examples, are made to play rapid, agile figures suitable only to violin. All instruments are treated in the same way, may be required to take equal and similar parts in the music. This is, of course, distinctly old-fashioned. Purely technical reasons would prevent any composer of the new school from writing for the oboes as he would write for the violins. Sonority and color, too, ousted the old polyphonic ideal. Bach was not, however, deaf to orchestral color. Often in the accompaniments to cantatas and other vocal works the coloring is rich and unusual, and unusual combinations of solo instruments in the Brandenburg concertos seem to show him on voyages of discovery, so to speak, into the effects of combinations of different timbres.
The two series of orchestral works are the Brandenburg concertos and theOuvertures, both written during his stay at Cöthen. The names themselves speak from the now distant past of orchestral music. The name concerto then signified a composition written for a small group of solo instruments, called theconcertino, accompanied by or alternating with a larger group called thetutti. For instance, in the second concerto the solo group is composed of trumpet, flute, oboe, and violin, thetuttibeing in all cases made up of strings. The form is Corellian. The relatively modern treatment of a solo instrument in a concerto, writing for it to show off its special qualities and technical peculiarities, is hardly suggested,tuttiandconcertinohaving to play the same musical material in the same polyphonic style, offering principally contrast between sonority and delicacy; though, as we have said, the element of tone color plays a part. It must be added, however, that the long passage for harpsichord at the end of the first movement of the fifth concerto is very similar to modern cadenzas. The treatment of all parts is consistently polyphonic.
The same is true of the fourOuvertures. These compositions are in reality suites, having as the first twomovements the two characteristics of the Frenchouvertureinvented by Lully, one slow and serious, the other an extendedallegroin fugal style. The following movements are in dance forms and rhythms. They are scored for the customary brass, wood, and strings, employed here not so much for their specialties as for contrasts of sonority and delicacy.
Bach has not, therefore, contributed in matters of style and form to the development of music after his time nor to the growth of orchestral music, which was the distinguishing feature of the age which followed immediately upon his death. This is due, as we have said, to the fact that the style and forms which were his own inheritance passed out of circulation. In many cases, too, his work was of such unique greatness that no imitation of it could come near enough to suggest more than most vaguely an influence. Copies of his style but emphasize its remoteness, both in time and quality. Certain works must remain forever unique because their peculiar perfection must always keep them in a class by themselves. Among these there are none more striking than the works for solo violin and for solo violoncello, works which have no counterpart in music. Still, we are not limited to intangible influences of melody and harmony in noting the effect which his compositions have had upon his followers. In two ways at least he gave a definite impulse to the course of music; he reorganized the system of fingering keyboard instruments, and invented a satisfactory and universally accepted method of equal temperament.
About the time Friedemann, his first born son, was nine years old Bach began to compose for him the book of pieces known as the ‘Little Clavier Book.’ It iswhat we should call to-day a graded collection of short pieces intended to perfect the already striking abilities of his son. Beginning with the simplest elements, he introduced difficulties by degrees until the last pieces, in polyphonic style, demand a very considerable skill. The most interesting passages are those in which Bach has indicated the fingering, for they prove that he reorganized all the systems of fingering in use in his day and perfected one of his own upon which future developments are based. His chief innovation is in the manner of using the thumb. Up to the time of Couperin, players of keyed instruments used only the four fingers of the hand. The thumb hung idle. The position must have been stiff and awkward and it is hard to understand how such brilliant performers as the north German organists ever overcame the difficulties of it. Yet Bach himself told his son Emanuel that in his youth he had seen great organists play who never used the thumb except for the widest stretches. Couperin’s famous book on the art of playing the harpsichord appeared in 1717, the very year Bach went to Cöthen. In it he advocated the use of the thumb, but over the fingers, not under them. Bach was one of the first to appreciate the advantages of passing the thumb under the hand. It is hardly possible that he invented the practice. Many of the oldest works for the harpsichord must have called for a use of the thumb, and the contemporary works of Domenico Scarlatti would have been almost insurmountably difficult without it; but in theory the use of the thumb under the hand was avoided, and Bach’s ‘Little Clavier Book’ contains probably the first open recognition of the advantages of so using it, no matter what the actual practice of virtuosi had been up to that time. One will observe that Bach did not abandon the old system, and that many passages marked by him are to be played in the old way; that is, by passing thelong fingers, chiefly the middle finger, over the short ones; but he laid the foundations of the new. The most famous of players in the next generation was his own son Emanuel, whose book on playing the harpsichord was the standard authority down to the time that the harpsichord was finally supplanted by the pianoforte. Haydn and Mozart undoubtedly profited by it, and thus the methods of the father were spread abroad through the son and played a considerable part in the development of music for the pianoforte.
‘The Well-tempered Clavichord’[158]is unquestionably an epoch-making work. It is, as is well known, a series of preludes and fugues in all major and minor keys. The term ‘well-tempered’ refers to Bach’s method of tuning the clavichord, which for the first time made such an unbounded use of harmony possible. It will be remembered that the first keyboards had only those keys which are to-day white, sounding only the diatonic tones of the modes. The first chromatic alteration allowed in these modes was the B-flat, which was practically forced upon musicians in order to avoid the augmented interval between F and B natural, an interval excruciating to their ears. So the black key between A and B was the first to find its place on the keyboard, and it was tuned in the relation of a perfect fourth with the F below. E-flat seems to have been the next black key and was tuned in the relation of a perfect fourth to the B-flat. The other black keys were added one by one, nearly always in exact relation to some one of the white keys or the original diatonic notes of the modes, F sharp in that of a perfect fifth with the B below, G sharp in that of a perfect major third with E, C sharp in the same relation with A. Inasmuch as all these intervals were mathematically exact—and such was the idea of tuning all through the Middle Ages and nearly to the time of Bach—the black keys were in perfect relation only with one or more of the white keys, and often quite out of relation with each other. The intervals between them were very noticeably out of tune and false. When, during the seventeenth century, our harmonic system of transposing keys finally supplanted the old modal system, composers for the harpsichord and the organ still found themselves limited by their keyboards to three sharp keys and two flat, so long as their instruments were perfectly tuned.
A cursory glance at some of the old harpsichord music shows that composers did not by any means submit to such a restriction, and we must presume that, unless they were willing to endure the sound of many hideous imperfections, they developed in practice at any rate some system of tuning which softened or tempered them. Bach, therefore, is not the inventor of the first tempered tuning, but it is doubtful if any composer before him had worked out such a satisfactory system as his which has been called equal temperament, and which amounts practically to the division of the keyboard octave into twelve equal though slightly imperfect intervals. Only the octave remained strictly in tune. The imperfections of the other intervals were so slight, however, as to be hardly perceptible. Thus the black keys of the keyboard came to represent two notes, different in theory, the sharp of the note below and the flat of the note above; and, by such a compromise, composers for the instrument were enabled to modulate freely through all keys. Bach must be acknowledged the first great musician to recognize theinestimable value of such a liberation, in proof of which he wrote the first series of the ‘Well-tempered Clavichord.’ The fugues notably are enriched by the most beautiful modulations, and in this regard the collection may be said to be almost the foundation upon which all subsequent music has been built, and to contain the seeds from which the most soaring harmonies of Beethoven, Chopin and even Wagner have sprung. Thus we are brought back by the ‘Well-tempered Clavichord’ to the crowning glory of his genius, his gift for harmony. Beethoven knew the Well-tempered Clavichord.’ He is said to have won his first distinction as a pianist by his playing of those preludes and fugues in Vienna. And Beethoven called Bach the forefather of harmony.
Probably no collection of pieces has been so carefully studied and sounded again and again by generation after generation of composers and probably no other set of pieces will ever prove so impervious to every influence of time. It is like an eternal spring, forever fresh, forever marvellous. Scarcely less wonderful are the collections of two- and three-part Inventions. Both these and the preludes and fugues were written as exercises—the one, in Bach’s own words, as ‘an honest guide by which the lovers of the clavier, but particularly those who desire to learn, are shown a plain way not only to play neatly in two parts, but also, in further progress, to play correctly and well in threeobbligatoparts; and, at the same time, not only to acquire good ideas, but also to work them out themselves; and, finally, to acquire acantabilestyle of playing, and, at the same time, to gain a strong predilection for, and foretaste of, composition’; the other ‘for the use and practice of young musicians who desire to learn, as for those who are already skilled in this study, for amusement.’ There can be no better testimony to Bach as a teacher than these short prefaces, written in his own fine hand, upon the title pages of the two sets. For him, the greatest virtuoso of his day, virtuosity was nothing, and he taught those about him above all to seek to express only what was genuine and fine in music. So he continues to teach the world of musicians, though music has passed through fire and tempest since he wrote these pieces all but two hundred years ago in the castle at Cöthen. Styles have changed, forms have changed, instruments have changed; the state, the world, are no longer the same; yet in every state and to every corner of the world where there are men and women who have devoted their lives to music, there will Bach be found as the touchstone of all that is good in the art.
This is in essence his position at the present day in music, a position unique and special. He will always be the greatest of teachers. His music is profoundly mystical and for this reason the secret of its extraordinary vitality will perhaps never be revealed; and it is nearly always intimate; in this most different from Handel, his great contemporary, with whom he will ever be compared, though the startling contrasts between them lead no nearer to the comprehension or just estimate of either. Handel is outspoken, Bach suggestive; the one compels, the other stimulates.
In conclusion we may once more draw attention to some of the salient points in his genius. As a man he had keen practical knowledge, yet he was impulsive and ardent. He was unshakable in his convictions. He was generous but not always peaceable. And he was always quietly but profoundly thoughtful. Among his friends were men of prominence, knowledge, andhigh social rank. The circumstances of his life kept him from the theatre, which was the goal of most composers of his time, but, furthermore, his genius was not of the dramatic kind nor his nature one to seek public acclaim. He was, however, in the words of a contemporary, the prince of all players on the harpsichord and the organ, and was so recognized over a large part of Germany.
His unmatched technique in composition was acquired by constant labor and a never-ending study of all available music, both Italian and French, as well as German, while he remained essentially a son of his race. The works of Couperin were known to him, those of Vivaldi and Corelli, of all the great German organists and composers, save only Heinrich Schütz, of the old Italian masters, Palestrina, Lotti, and Caldara. The forms of his day he mastered, both those of ancient descent and those of more recent make; and he invented no new forms. He was first and foremost an organist, the culmination of a long line of German masters. His music for the organ rises higher than that of any of his predecessors, largely because of the logical harmonic foundation upon which he built it. It has never since been equalled. To music for other keyboard installments, precursors of the pianoforte, he brought a richness of harmony and of feeling not to be found in such music before his day. The polyphonic forms, especially the fugues, were influenced by the organ style. Other forms, such as the suites, suggest the influence of French writers. The so-called English suites, the name of which has given rise to much discussion, are the greatest suites in existence. The suites for violin and 'cello alone are unique. The polyphonic style in which many movements of them are written is characteristic of German violin music of the time; the conciseness of form, of the Italian masters. All his vocal works show the influence of the organ style, which was the most natural and most familiar to him, but in these he has incorporated forms such as recitative andda capoaria directly from the contemporary Italian opera. Difficulties and improprieties of text affected the cantatas. The Passions, especially that according to St. Matthew, are flawless in structure. The perfection of the latter is largely due to his supervision of and arrangement of the plan and the text. The mass in B minor is his most colossal work, seeming, however, a less natural expression of his genius than the Passion. Preludes, fugues, suites, concertos in the old style, the church cantata and the musical setting of the Passion he brought to their highest point.
After his death other forms occupied composers, so that he has not served as a model. Also, the next age was preëminently the age of the orchestra, the modern orchestra with its peculiar problems, to the settlement of which Bach contributed little or nothing. The sonorous pianoforte persuaded composers from the organ. The polyphonic style was abandoned or was radically modified. Thus the new era of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven is seemingly completely severed from Bach, totally disconnected save for the links of a revised system of fingering for keyboard instruments and a satisfactory method of equal temperament. But the new age was the age of the supremacy of harmony in music and the genius of Bach, often concealed behind the polyphonic fabric of his greatest works, is essentially harmonic. Chords, modulation, chromaticism are the essence of his music. In all his compositions they give the mysterious warmth. They are the basis of his form, the power of his suggestion. That he might be free to modulate at will he so tuned his clavichord that all keys, both major and minor, could mingle through it; and as initiative for his students to the beauties of harmony unrestrictedhe composed two series of preludes and fugues in every key which to-day seem an epitome of musical expression. Written for students, they have taught every great composer from Beethoven to Richard Strauss and Claude Debussy. They open the way to his other and to his bigger works, where the lover of music may so lose himself in wonder and deepest joy that he will say, as many have said, here is the beginning and the end of music.
L. H.