CHAPTER VIII.
We quitted the direct narrative of Bach’s life at the point when the arrival of the new rector of the Thomasschule gave it an interval of peace and quietness, an interval of which we took advantage to review the great ranges of church-music which fell as an official task to the cantor. The four years of Gesner’s rule are the ripest and busiest in Bach’s life; not that they include his greatest individual works, with the notable exception of the High Mass, but that they are the most productive, and of works attaining a more uniform level of first-rate excellence than any others. After 1735 Bach was content to relax somewhat, and he employed his time, less in composing new cantatas or the like, than in revising, solidifying, and balancing his earlier works. He must also have retired more into the quiet of his family life, and devoted himself to his private pupils, after the blow struck at his influence in the school by Gesner’s successor, Ernesti.
Ernesti, a young man of great learning and a good teacher, was as incapable as his father, the old rector under whom Bach first taught, of grasping the primary conditions of the school, namely, its combination of musical with general education. He was jealous of the predominance of the former, and therefore started with a bias against Bach. He succeeded in winning a victory for his own schemes, but at the expense of the ruin of the music. Bach was not the only sufferer; the same dispute was going on elsewhere in Germany at the time, and was in fact one of the incidents of a transitional period in the history of education. The Thomasschule from its double government, the cantor having an equal supremacy in musical matters with the rector’s in secular, was peculiarly liable to such a conflict. Unless the two heads were joined by a strong bond of sympathy, as happened with Bach and Gesner, rivalry was, perhaps, inevitable. When Ernesti succeeded to the place, we have not long to wait before the unpleasant spectacle presents itself.
It is needless to follow the details of the quarrel which kept Bach in a nervous state of exasperation for nearly two years, and left him in official discomfort for the rest of his life. Suffice it to say, that in 1736 Ernesti quite unwarrantably usurped the cantor’s right of nominating the musical prefects. Bach’s contention was throughout the just one, only he made the mistake of losing his temper about it. However, it is to be observed that his language, if occasionally violent, is consistently to the point, and the musician shews better breeding than the scholar, who is not ashamed of vulgar abuse, charges of lying, and like scurrilities. The whole thing, indeed, began by a scene that tells strongly for Bach’s sense of justice. A prefect had been, as he believed, wrongly condemned to a public flogging before the school. Bach, who had had nothing to do with his subordinate’s crime, interposed by taking the whole blame upon his shoulders. The rector was in a rage, and refused to remit the punishment: so the prefect had to leave, and the rector filled up the vacancy. Hence the quarrel. To Bach it must have been irritating beyond bearing to have a man, little more than half his age, intruding upon his incontestable rights, still more to find the Town Council and consistory unscrupulous in supporting the claim of the stronger, by declining to disturb a right which had no precedent. It was not until he had appealed to the King, and delighted him by some evening-music, produced when he was next at Leipzig, that the matter came for a fair hearing. As often happens, when we have elaborate documents of the progress of a case, the conclusion has disappeared, but it is presumed that the royal judgment was broader than the indecent partiality of the Leipzig officials, and that the grievance was redressed. But the harm had gone too far to be undone, and while Bach and Ernesti lived there was no more unity in the school. How deeply Bach resented the injury is seen from the eager interest he took in a quarrel that turned on the same principles as his own, the very year before his death. He not only had a critique of the offending school-*master written and printed for him but actually changed the phrasing of a secular cantata, The Contest of Phœus and Pan, when it was next performed, so as to convey a covert sneer at him and Ernesti jointly.
One more assault came to disturb Bach’s tranquillity a short time after the controversy with Ernesti had come to an end. This was an insolent article by Scheibe, a musician not without a superficial cleverness, whom Bach had rejected as unqualified for a certain organistship. It appeared anonymously in Scheibe’s own review, the Critische Musicus, in 1737; nor was Bach’s name given, though the reference was too clear to escape notice. Bach is said to have resented the attack, which was a mere flippant pasquinade upon his music, bitterly; and he was almost induced to enter into literary warfare in defence. Happily we are spared the sight of a master in one art essaying to use weapons with which he is sure to show to disadvantage; and it was Bach’s friend, Magister Birnbaum, who took up his cause for him.
Bach had certainly warm admirers and true friends in Leipzig. His old pupils remained faithful to him, and one, Altnikol, married his second daughter. Their number continually increased with the master’s fame, and among them are reckoned three at least of his kinsmen and not a few musicians of high repute in the younger generation, such as J. L. Krebs (afterwards court organist at Altenburg), J. F. Agricola (capell-*meister at Berlin), J. F. Doles (cantor of the Thomasschule), G. A. Homilius (cantor of the Kreuzschule at Dresden), and J. P. Kirnberger (a noted contra-*puntist, and court musician at Berlin), not to mention the most eminent of all, Bach’s two eldest sons. Another, J. T. Goldberg, was the clavichord-player for whom Bach made his Thirty Variations. He was attached to the suite of the Baron von Kayserling, an invalid who suffered greatly from sleeplessness. The Baron would often have Goldberg pass the night in a room adjoining his, that he might play to him when he could not rest. Once he said to Bach that he should like to have some music “of a soothing and rather cheerful character, that he might be a little amused by them in his sleepless nights.”66 To this request Bach replied by his variations which combine a monotony of ground-work with an endless variety of treatment, including canons in all intervals, and winding up with a quodlibet of delightful freshness.67 Kayserling was more than amused by the present. He was never tired of hearing the pieces, and “for a long time afterwards, when the sleepless nights came, he used to say, Dear Goldberg, do play me one of my variations:” — they were always his variations. He thanked Bach for them with a gold cup filled with a hundred louis-d’or (or about 75l. sterling).
But while students thronged to Bach as a master; and while he was often assailed by smatterers who only wanted to be known as his pupils — and were disappointed — his later years were years of declining influence in Leipzig, precisely in proportion to his increasing celebrity outside. Like Milton his fame grew when public recognition failed. He became merely one of the sights of the place. No musician who passed through or near Leipzig was satisfied without an interview. But when any real occasion came, when his help and judgment would have been of use, he was not called. I do not refer to the Society of Musical Sciences, to which Bach was only admitted years after it was established at Leipzig, and only as an ordinary member with a canon sent in as testimonial. Probably its scientific discussions on the theory of music were little to Bach’s taste: perhaps he declined to join at first; though to a man of smaller generosity it would have been a blow to see Handel chosen as an honorary member. The occasion on which even courtesy should have decided a resort to Bach’s advice and co-operation was the establishment in 1743 of the Grosse Concert, the parent of the famous concerts of the Gewandhaus. It was arranged by an association of rich burghers; and its tendencies were from the outset in a distinctly modern direction. Rossini — of all people — notes Dr. Spitta, supplanted Beethoven among contemporaries; and the great Leipzig master became a stranger in his own town. But the fact that Bach had nothing to do with the beginning of the decisive musical movement68 of the town does a great deal to fix his position in one’s mind. Equally significant is the circumstance that some time, perhaps some years, after 1736 he resigned the leadership of the Musical Society over which he had presided since 1729. If he was not to be fi
rst, he preferred to retreat into privacy. This privacy must have become closer when his three eldest sons left him to follow a musical calling elsewhere, Friedemann at Dresden and then at Halle, Emanuel at Berlin, and Bernhard at Muehlhausen. One daughter of his first marriage was all that remained to him. Of the thirteen children of his second marriage, seven died in early childhood and one was an idiot. Friedrich and Johann Christian were the only sons of musical promise; the former became capellmeister to the Count of Schaumburg at Bueckeburg, the latter made the name of Bach famous in London drawing-rooms, but only through his own thin productions. Born in 1735, he was the darling of his father’s old age, and was the only son who remained with his three sisters in the home when Bach died.
With Friedemann and Emanuel their father always kept near relations, as far as the difficulty of travelling allowed. It was through the latter that Bach came to make his famous visit to the court of Frederick the Great. The king had often expressed a desire to see him and Emanuel had informed his father of it. But Bach was usually now too busy to undertake so long a journey. At last, in 1747, he decided to go, and, characteristically enough, fetched Friedemann from Halle on the way to accompany him. I give the account of the interview at Potsdam in the words of Forkel, who had it from Friedemann himself: —
“At this time the king had every evening a private concert, in which he himself generally performed some concertos on the flute. One evening, just as he was getting his flute ready, and his musicians were assembled, an officer brought him the list of the strangers who had arrived. With his flute in his hand he ran over the list, but immediately turned to the assembled musicians, and said, with a kind of agitation, Gentlemen, old Bach is come. The flute was now laid aside, and old Bach, who had alighted at his son’s lodgings, was immediately summoned to the Palace.... At that time it was the fashion to make rather prolix compliments. The first appearance of J. S. Bach before so great a King, who did not even give him time to change his travelling-dress for a black chanter’s gown, must necessarily be attended with many apologies. I will not here dwell on these apologies, but merely observe, that in William Friedemann’s mouth they made a formal dialogue between the King and the Apologist.
“But what is more important than this is, that the King gave up his concert for this evening, and invited Bach, then already called the Old Bach, to try his fortepianos, made by Silbermann, which stood in various rooms of the palace,” and numbered fifteen. “The musicians went with him from room to room, and Bach was invited everywhere to try and to play unpremeditated compositions.” The king gave him a subject to develop in fugue, and Bach concluded by adding one that occurred to himself, which he extemporized in six voices. It was the greatest display of Bach’s life, and certainly an exhibition that has never been equalled on its own lines. A permanent record of the visit lies in the Musikalische Opfer, wherein Bach treated the theme which the king had proposed to him with an exuberance of learning and variety beyond the possibilities of ex tempore composition. It comprises fugues in three and six parts, eight canons, and a sonata for three instruments, ending in a perpetual canon.
The Musical Offering has always been an object of admiration for the ingenuity of its workmanship. But its object was mainly the display of contrapuntal learning. It was a parergon to which Bach delighted himself by applying every resource of musical science; and therefore stands on a different footing to the three great collections of fugues which Bach composed, the last of which was his employment almost to the time of his death. The Art of Fugue stands nearest to the Musical Offering, since it too consists of fugues and canons, all upon a single subject. It differs from that work inasmuch as here he wrote not to display his own skill, but to illustrate the final possibilities of contrapuntal art. But equally it appeals to a very limited class of musicians; to us in the present moment it is chiefly interesting as shewing that, if Bach’s productive energy ceased comparatively early, his power only became the more massive when he chose to use it. Far otherwise is it with the two sets of preludes and fugues through all the major and minor keys, called the Wohltemperirte Clavier.69 These no musician or pianist can ignore with impunity; Schumann himself, whose style of playing and composing lies at the antipodes of Bach’s, commends them to “young musicians” as their “daily bread.”70
The Forty-Eight Preludes and Fugues were begun partly with an educational purpose. Bach wished to prove the capacity of the clavichord, now that he had enlarged its sphere by an improved method of tuning, and to impress this variety upon his pupils. The first half, to which alone the title Das Wohltemperirte Clavier properly belongs, was completed in 1722, just before the author left Coethen; the second was finally arranged some time before 1746, perhaps before 1740. The labour and the years Bach took to mature these great works seem to indicate that he regarded them as representative works. Not a bar but was subjected to the most thoughtful remodelling.71 The first part in particular needed many a trial before it could find the master’s approval, and thrice did he transcribe the whole with his own hand. Every idea that was out of place, every line that led nowhere, was ruthlessly pruned away. When the root of the piece was reached, perhaps the motive of the original would germinate afresh, and the whole would assume a quite new and statelier form. The two parts are in some measure distinguished by the greater development of some of the preludes in the second, which are now and then sonatas on a small scale, and by the technical incompleteness of some fugues in the first. But, though the latter part is perhaps the richer and more full of fancy, there is a symmetry about the whole series which makes inconceivable that Bach should have not intended the two parts to be combined. Indeed we are told that Bach liked to have the whole played through at a sitting. The work as it stands bears no trace, except in its various readings, of the multiple processes through which it has passed to gain each time in purity and simplicity and freedom.72
For it must at the outset be explained that the Forty-Eight were never intended as model fugues. Learning was to Bach a means to an end. Except for amusement, as in the Musikalische Opfer, he never let it shew itself. To produce living work it needed the touch of his imagination and the guidance of his clear artist’s instinct. In fact, nothing is freer than his management of the several voices of a fugue. “He considered his parts,” it has been finely said, “as persons, who conversed together, like a select company. If there were three, each could sometimes be silent, and listen to the others, till it again had something to the purpose to say. But, if in the midst of the most interesting part of the discourse, some uncalled and importunate note suddenly stepped in, and attempted to say a word, or even a syllable only, Bach looked on this as a great irregularity, and made his pupils comprehend that it was not to be allowed.” But “no part, not even a middle part, was allowed to break off, before it had entirely said what it had to say.... This high degree of exactness in the management of every single part is precisely what makes Bach’s harmony a manifold melody.”
What Forkel here says of Bach’s part-writing in general is true in an even fuller sense of the fugues. I quote him because he was not only one of the most learned contrapuntists of his day, but also a man who discerned clearly the limits of counterpoint and the difference between musical learning and musical art. His description of the fugues is concise and plain, and so much to the point that it deserves quotation here: —
“A highly characteristic theme, an uninterrupted principal melody, wholly derived from it, and equally characteristic from the beginning to the end; not mere accompaniment in the other parts, but in each of them an independent melody, according with the others, also from the beginning to the end; freedom, lightness, and fluency, in the progress of the whole, inexhaustible variety of modulation combined with perfect purity; the exclusion of every arbitrary note, not necessarily belonging to the whole; unity and diversity in the style, rhythmus, and measure; and lastly, a life diffused through the whole, so that it sometimes appears to the performer or hearer, as if every single note were ani
mated; these are the properties of Bach’s fugue.... All Bach’s fugues ... are endowed with equally great excellencies, but each in a different manner. Each has its own precisely defined character; and dependent upon that, its own turns in melody and harmony. When we know and can perform one, we really know only one, and can perform but one; whereas we know and can play whole folios full of fugues by other composers of Bach’s time, as soon as we have comprehended, and rendered familiar to our hand, the turns of a single one.”73
There is no work that realizes better the conception of a perfect fugue than that in C sharp minor in the first part of the Wohltemperirte Clavier. That it is in five voices and contains three subjects, are facts that would by themselves place it among the most vertebrate of the collection. But least of all does the grandeur of the fugue rest upon its complexity. It is the character-drawing of the several voices, and the nobility of them, that make their discourse sublime — three voices entirely contrasted and entirely blended — each time with a new and surprising effect, now of pomp, now of tenderest pathos — one a slow organ-voice, the next delicate and flowing, and the third vehement, striking hammer-blows. The second and then the last gradually die away; the solemnity of the original theme communicates itself again to the whole web of thought, and the end is plaintive and restful.74
A story is told which displays in a characteristic way Bach’s instinctive knowledge of the nature of a fugue. When he happened to be in a strange church where a fugue was announced, and one of his two eldest sons stood near him, “he always, as soon as he had heard the introduction to the theme, said before-*hand what the composer ought to introduce, and what possibly might be introduced. If the composer had performed his work well, what he said happened: then he rejoiced, and jogged his son, to make him observe it.” Otherwise, it is added, his modesty made him the most lenient of critics.
Delphi Masterworks of Johann Sebastian Bach Page 56
