The Art of Fugue has already been mentioned as the last and most massive of Bach’s works. It must have been begun in 1749, and so careful was the author of what he wished to be considered as his masterpiece — in the strict sense — that he had it engraved under his own eyes.75 He did not live to see it published76; the carelessness or ignorance of those into whose hands it came allowed it to appear with several extraneous insertions, and its intended regular structure of fifteen fugues and four canons upon a single theme in D minor remained long obscured. Not content with this gigantic fugue — for it is one fugue through all its fifteen sections — Bach resolved to penetrate still further into the labyrinth of harmonic combinations, and to write, so it is said, a fugue in four parts with four subjects, all of them to be reversed in each of the parts. He had not, however, gone much beyond the introduction of the third subject, which contained in the German notation the letters of his own name, when his excessive application was terminated by a painful disorder in the eyes. He had always been near-sighted, and now his vision almost failed. He consulted an English oculist of repute, who was then in Leipzig; but after two operations he became totally blind, and the medical treatment he underwent broke his hitherto hale constitution. For half a year he declined, until he found his rest on the evening of Tuesday, the 28th of July, 1750. Ten days before his death his eyesight for a short space suddenly returned to him. It was a few days after that strange illumination that he called Altnikol, his son-in-law, to him, and bade him write at his dictation the chorale When we are in the depths of need. But death had become a new presence to him. Often had he lingered upon the idea in chorale and cantata; but now he felt himself to have passed beyond the gulf. He bade Altnikol set other words at the head of the music. The words were these: Herewith I come before thy throne.77
CHAPTER IX.
The fact of Bach’s death was registered by the Town Council in the following terms: The Cantor at the Thomasschule, or rather the Capelldirector, Bach, is dead. They proceeded to resolve that the school needed a Cantor, and not a Capellmeister, although he must understand music too. Such was the public recognition of Leipzig’s greatest man. His widow was suffered to live on in need, and to die a pauper ten years after her husband. The youngest daughter was at last relieved by a public subscription, in which Beethoven was proud to join; but not by the town. The last infamy of Leipzig was achieved when S. John’s churchyard, in which Bach had been laid to rest, was rooted up and made into a road. His bones were scattered, no man knew or cared where.
The boys of the Thomasschule, of course, followed their cantor’s funeral, and one of his colleagues published a short memorial upon his friend. But Bach was very soon forgotten in his own school. His works were doubtless performed, more or less frequently; but cantatas and motets were required for the church service, and it was easier to fall back upon the stores of music he had left, than to buy or transcribe new pieces. How little the treasure was valued we may learn from the circumstance that in 1803 over a hundred church compositions existed there in autograph, while seven years later there remained but three in score and forty-four in parts.
Nevertheless the name, only the name, of Bach continued powerful in Leipzig. When the Gewandhaus was opened, in 1781, it was painted in great letters upon a screen behind the orchestra; but nothing of his was performed there until the concerts had existed for more than half a century. It was his feeblest son, Johann Christian, whose compositions were admired. The visit of Mozart, in 1789, of which I have before spoken, did something to revive the interest in Bach’s music; but the process was a slow one. His works became known among an increasing number of scattered admirers; then they came to be partially published; but it was not until 1842 that he had a monument on the Promenade, behind the windows of his old house, not until 1850 that a worthier monument was begun in the establishment of the Bach Society, whose collection of the master’s works has hardly an equal in critical accuracy or magnificence of form. The erection of the first was due to the efforts of Mendelssohn; the second, in great measure, to Schumann.
From these two monuments we turn again to their original. Of Bach’s figure we know nothing but the head and the square shoulders. His countenance was one of singular dignity and refinement. The thick eyebrows that stood out beneath his great forehead, knotted above his long firm nose, seemed to denote a force, if not a severity, of character; but the impression was softened by the sweet, sensitive lines of his mouth. Both traits are true of the man. He had a strong self-dependence, which was reflected in his sense of duty, the consistency, the uprightness of his life, but which was liable to exaggeration in self-will, even obstinacy. Partly this was owing to his irritable temperament, the other side of his nature, born of an acute sensibility, which might reveal itself either so or more often in the tender charities of his family life. These double tendencies, the fine and the strong, had their ground in his active and contemplative religious faith; they find their testimony in his music. Only here we see a third factor, not so manifest in his own life, in the boundless flexibility of mind to which it points. If, however, one is asked the dominant characteristics of it, there is but one reply, — manliness and melody, the one never too vigorous to overpower the melody, the other restrained by it from any approach to effeminacy.
It is these qualities that adjudge Bach the same place among musicians as Milton holds among our own poets; and the thought has a touching suggestion in the lack of recognition of his later years, and in his blindness. But the likeness goes deeper into their work. Each is in his craft the most learned of artists; each is ruled by an absorbing religious sense. They are equals in chastened grace, in balance and ear; and equally wanting in two special gifts, humour and dramatic power.
This is not the place to pursue the parallel more closely; but the statement of it may help us to realise how little popularity can be taken as an index of artistic worth, it may also serve as a warning to those who insist on comparing Bach with other masters. He can as little be compared with Beethoven, for instance, as Milton with Shakespeare. That he should have been constantly brought into comparison with Handel was, perhaps, inevitable; but to see the unfairness to both, it is only necessary to observe that neither produced his best work in the same fields as the other. Bach wrote nothing more than distantly akin to the Oratorio; Handel attempted nothing great in Masses or in Passion Music. Wherever they do enter into comparison, only ignorance can excuse the claim of superiority often made for Handel. So it is remarkable when they are set side by side as organists. With his prodigious brilliancy Handel was untrue to the nature of the organ; he made it a concert-instrument. Bach, on the other hand, developed its powers to the utmost extent possible while preserving its church character. Accordingly, it is not strange that no single work for organ solo by Handel is known to exist, while among contemporaries Bach was hardly known except as an organ-master, and his works have remained to organists the most precious of possessions. Mattheson, no unqualified judge, courteously decided that in this sphere their names must stand in alphabetical order.
To complete the picture of Bach as a performer, we must add to his command of the organ and clavichord the skill he acquired as a violinist. In both his appointments at Weimar this was his instrument, and to have written and played the sonatas for violin solo, he must almost have attained perfection in its technicalities. But his favourite stringed instrument in later years was the viola, because it placed him, “as it were, in the middle of the harmony, whence he could best hear and enjoy it, on both sides;”78 and, when he was in the vein, he would extemporize an additional part to a trio or whatever was being played. In the same way he would at sight combine scores on the clavichord with astonishing fluency. That he could readily expand a figured bass is only to say that he was proficient in the ordinary training of an accompanist; but there are some details noticed by Forkel in this connexion, which bear in an interesting manner upon a vexed question of the present day, namely, the lawfulness of writing “additional
accompaniments” to his vocal works, and must not be passed over.
Bach was able, we are told, “if a single bass part, often ill-figured, was laid before him, immediately to play from it a trio, or a quartet; nay, he even went so far ... as to perform extempore, to three single parts, a fourth part, and thus to make a quartetto of the whole.”79 The plain meaning of this is that, when he pleased, he did not play simple chords to the given bass, but extracted from them two or three strains of independent melody. The principle has been applied to many of Bach’s compositions, especially by Robert Franz, whom a close study of the master led to the opinion that, when Bach had left a vocal piece accompanied only by a single bass, the natural way of making the accompaniment satisfactory was to treat it polyphonically, in the same style as Bach is recorded to have done sometimes himself; in other words, to write new parts over it in counterpoint and imitation. The necessity for some such treatment is argued from the decay, in modern times, of the art of expanding even the common harmonies of a figured bass. The real reason against it is that we may be thus obscuring the relief of light and shade which Bach designed to produce by leaving some pieces barely accompanied, as in contrast to the elaborate orchestration of others. This is more weighty than the argument drawn from the absence of any authoritative example of it; as for instance, that it is not to be found in some exercises in figured bass by a pupil which Bach corrected. It is obvious to answer that a master would probably be content with accuracy in his scholar’s work, and would not apply to it the same standard of elaboration, or allow the same freedom of treatment, as he would desire in his own. No doubt Bach employed, probably he preferred for teaching purposes, a simple accompaniment of three or four-part harmonies. But side by side with this must be placed the testimony of a pupil, that he had never heard anything more excellent than the singing of the voices among each other, when Bach accompanied: the accompaniment was in itself so beautiful that even the principal voice could not withdraw from the pleasure he received from the accessory. Failing this faculty now-a-days, it is probably wisest to adopt the judgment of Mendelssohn and limit the additional accompaniment to the writing out of the implied organ part.80
Two other facts demand notice in reference to the production of Bach’s music in modern times. One is the non-existence of distinctive solo singers. When an aria was to be sung, a single member stood up out of the body of the choir. This will explain the almost equal difficulty of each. The other fact relates to the proportion of the choir to the orchestra. In the last century the latter regularly outnumbered the former; and Bach’s own scheme for the organisation of the music at S. Thomas’s desiderated only twelve singers to a band of eighteen, exclusive of the organ — the organ, be it remembered, being entrusted by Bach with a very important part. Such a distribution must have given the performances which he conducted a different colour from that which they present now. He did not separate the voices and the instruments so broadly as we are accustomed to do. The voice was to him hardly more than any other instrument; and if we are to judge his music fairly, we must consider the two elements of his band, not as choir and accompaniment, but as one mass of sound, composed of two balanced and co-ordinate parts.
It remains to give a brief sketch of the reception which Bach has had in England. Probably Dr. Burney, the learned historian of music, was the first to introduce him here; but he afterwards confessed that his partial verdict was based solely upon a copy of the first half of the Forty-Eight Preludes and Fugues— “a vile and most diabolical copy,” as it turned out, fall of mistakes — and had never heard one played. The first serious steps to promote the knowledge of Bach in England were taken by a company of three enthusiastic worshippers at his shrine; to one of whom is due the honour of the first publication anywhere of the Wohltemperirte Clavier. It was brought out in London by A. F. K. Kollman in 1799. The impulse thus given was carried on by two leading musicians, Horn and Wesley, who planned a complete edition of Bach’s works. The series was begun in 1809, but, although well received, did not proceed very far. Eleven years later appeared a translation of Forkel’s Life of Bach. The most interesting record, however, of this movement, lies in a recently published collection of letters by Samuel Wesley,81 the greatest organist of his time.
The little band of enthusiasts set out as the apostles of a new religion. Wesley proclaimed his championship of Saint Sebastian, as a sacred mission, in the defence of truth and justice, against the idolaters of Handel — quite unconscious how necessarily such a combat must resolve itself into mere partisanship, and the very bigotry which he opposed. He has, however, the credit of having convinced the redoubtable Burney of the injustice of his published opinion of Bach, and also of being the first in England to observe, what Forkel had seized upon independently abroad, that of his “characteristic beauties” “air” was “one of the chief and most striking.”82 No doubt his wonderful playing of the organ did something to make Bach known in England; but it was long before he was really accepted. The movement, in fact, for a time subsided; it was roused again into life by the energetic work of Mendelssohn, who declared it was high time that the “immortal master, who is on no one point inferior to any master, and in many points superior to all, should no longer be forgotten.” He prepared the road for the successful labours of Sterndale Bennett, who, as the most prominent English musician, was able to force Bach into notice in London. In 1849, a year before the foundation of the German Bach-Gesellschaft, he established the Bach Society, with the main object, however, not of publishing, but of producing the works of Bach. By this the S. Matthew Passion was performed in 1854 and 1858, to be followed by part of the High Mass, and lastly by the Christmas Oratorio. Moreover, as musical professor at Cambridge, Sir
William extended the study of Bach in a wider circle; and it was taken up by many provincial associations. In the meanwhile Schumann’s widow was asserting, by her wonderful playing, the rightful place of Bach’s clavichord works among the treasures of the pianist. At length in 1871, the S. Matthew Passion was produced at Westminster Abbey, and since that time, there, or in S. Paul’s Cathedral, the Passion Music and the Christmas Oratorio have taken their constant position as the special services of Holy Week and the new year. Other churches in London, notably S. Anne’s, Soho, have taken up the example, and the formation of the Bach Choir has added a new zeal to the cultivation of the master. If England was late in acknowledging his greatness, nowhere now are his works performed more regularly, and nowhere does he stand in so wide and so assured a popularity.
PEDIGREE OF MUSICIANS IN THE BACH FAMILY
(Composers are distinguished by spaced type)
VEIT BACH,
d. 1619
(Cithara),
Wechmar.
┌───────┴────────┐
Lips
(See page 130).
HANS,
d. 1626
(Der Spielmann),
Arnstadt.
┌───────────┬─────┴──────┐
Johann,
1604-1673
(Town Musician
and Organist)
Erfurt.
CHRISTOPH,
1613-1661
(Town Musician),
Erfurt and
Arnstadt.
Heinrich,
1615-1692
(Organist),
Arnstadt.
Johann,
1604-1673
(Town Musician
and Organist),
Erfurt.
┌───────────────┼───────────────┐
Johann
Christian,
1640-1682
(Viol),
Erfurt and
Eisenach.
Johann
Aegidius,
1645-1717
(Viol),
Erfurt.
│
Johann
Niko
laus,
1653-1682
(Viola-da-Gamba),
Erfurt.
┌──┴───┐
┌────┴────┐
Johann
Jakob,
1668-1692
(Town
Musician),
Eisenach.
Johann
Christoph,
1673-1727
(Cantor and
Organist),
Gehren.
Johann
Bernhard,
1676-1749
(Organist),
Eisenach.
│
│
Johann
Ernst,
1722-1777
(Capellmeister),
Weimar.
Johann
Christoph,
1685-post
1735
(Town
Musician),
Erfurt.
CHRISTOPH,
1613-1661
(Town Musician),
Erfurt and
Arnstadt.
┌──────────────────┴───────────────────┐
Georg
Christoph,
1642-1697
(Cantor),
Schweinfurt.
JOHANN
AMBROSIUS,
1645-1695
(Viol),
Eisenach.
Johann
Christoph,
1645-1693
(Viol),
Arnstadt.
│
Delphi Masterworks of Johann Sebastian Bach Page 57
