Innovations in the Fingering and Use of Keyed and Stringed
Instruments.
At Weimar Bach had devoted a considerable part of his energies to
the clavier, as his official duties demanded. The harpsichord, being
deficient in expression and in duration of sound, required rapidity of
movement and polyphonic writing to produce its due effects. Bach did
what was possible, however, to use the legato style on it, and on the
other hand introduced on the organ, as far as it would bear it, the
rapid execution peculiar to the harpsichord.
[Sidenote: _The fingering of keyed instruments_]
Before his period the fingering of keyed instruments had not been
reduced to any systematic method. Michael Prætorius in his _Syntagma
Musicum_ thinks the matter of no importance, and that if a note was
produced clearly and distinctly it was a matter of indifference how it
was done.[77]
[Music]
At the beginning of the eighteenth century the necessity of some method
seems to have dawned on musicians; up to that time the thumb and little
finger had hardly been used, owing to their shortness. In order to play
legato on the organ, the middle fingers were made to go under and over
each other. Daniel Speer, in 1697, gives the following fingering for
the scale of C (for convenience we alter it to English numbering):--
[Music]
Mattheson taught--
[Music]
J. F. B. C. Majer, a Swabian organist about the same time, taught--
[Music]
There is no advance in these fingerings on the book by Ammerbach,
published in 1571.
The right thumb it will be seen was unused, and hung helpless--the
fingers being stretched out flat to reach the keys.
In order to bring the thumb into use, Bach caused the fingers to be
curved and to remain over their respective keys, so as to be able to
strike them accurately and rapidly. The thumbs had to pass under the
fingers, and to take an equal part with them in the playing.
[Sidenote: _Bach’s method of fingering_]
The new kind of fingering was made the more necessary by the use of all
the keys equally; for hitherto only a few keys had been used. The hand
and arm were to be held horizontally, the wrist straight; the fingers
bent in the natural position assumed by the hand when about to grasp
any object. Each finger had to fall without disturbing the others;
and Bach devoted an immense amount of labour to make his fingers
independent and equal in strength. He could perform trills with all
fingers equally well, and could play melodies at the same time with
the other fingers. After a finger had held down a note as long as was
necessary it was drawn towards the inner part of the hand on leaving
the key. The wrist and elbows were kept perfectly quiet. The method was
the same for both organ and harpsichord. The keys were not struck but
pressed down. Bach raised his fingers so little that their movement was
hardly noticeable. They were, however, still passed over one another,
as well as the thumb, and in order not to break the legato effect, the
finger passed over was drawn back before leaving the key. This method
was particularly applicable to the clavichord, one of Bach’s favourite
instruments.
He liked the upper row of keys to be shallower than the lower, so that
he could slip down from one to the other without change of finger.
[Sidenote: Other Fingering Methods]
But others were at work on the same ground. Couperin, organist of St
Gervais at Paris, published in 1717 his “L’art de toucher le clavecin.”
J. G. Walther used the thumb, and has left some organ chorales with
this indicated.
Heinichen and Handel also used the thumbs, and bent their fingers over
the notes, so that they struck the right ones unconsciously.
Two short pieces with Bach’s fingering in his own hand have come down
to us--the rules laid down by his son C. P. Emanuel differ from them
considerably--thus Emanuel limits the crossing to the thumb; Sebastian
prescribes crossing of fingers as well.
Sebastian, in fact, retained all that was advantageous in the old
system and engrafted on it the use of the thumb, etc. His son, who was
the forerunner of modern piano-playing, simplifies his father’s rules.
His compositions were of a far less complicated nature than those of
his father, and he therefore was able to use simpler fingering.
The hammer-like stroke required for the modern piano effectually
banished the crossing of fingers over one another, by which pressure
only, not a blow, could be obtained. The loss of Bach’s complete
method of fingering (which is not adapted for the piano) causes his
compositions to be more difficult to the modern player than they were
to him, but this does not hold good of the organ, the nature of which
remains the same as in his time.
He played equally in all keys, and for this purpose had his instruments
tuned in equal temperament, as is universally the case at present.
Experiments had been made in this method of tuning by Werkmeister, who
died in 1706, and, later, by J. G. Neidhardt.
[Sidenote: _Equal temperament_]
The early experiments in tempering must have led to curious
results--thus the major-thirds were flattened; and yet only when three
major-thirds are sharpened (CE, E G♯, G♯ (A♭) C) do they reach a purely
tuned octave. Bach mastered the problem for himself. He tuned his own
harpsichord and clavichord, making the major-thirds rather sharp; and
he must have flattened the fifths as we do. His son Emanuel speaks
of his testing the fifths by tuning their octave below, and making
this a fourth below the starting point. What he did was the result of
practical experiment, for he would have nothing to do with mathematical
theory. He always quilled his harpsichord himself; and he made a point
of practising the clavichord, since the expression possible on this
instrument made the ear keener and more sensitive to the possibility of
effect on the more inexpressive harpsichord.
Spitta considers that Bach’s genius in a way foresaw the advent of a
more perfect instrument than either the clavichord or harpsichord--an
instrument which should combine the expression of the first with
the power of the latter, and at the same time approach the organ in
possibilities of legato and sustained sounds. Such an instrument is the
modern pianoforte.
[Sidenote: _The Lute-harpsichord_]
In 1740 Bach planned a lute-harpsichord, and got Zacharias Hildebrand,
an organ-builder, to make it under his direction. It had gut strings,
two to each key, and a set of octave metal strings. It had also cloth
dampers, which made the instrument sound something like a real lute;
and when these were raised, it sounded like a theorbo--it was in size
shorter than an ordinary harpsichord (Adlung Mus. Mech. II., p. 139).
Although Bach was concertmeister, or leader of the orchestra at Cöthen,
it is not to be supposed that he had any extraordinary facility on the
violin. Quantz, in “Versuch einer Anweisung, etc.,” rightly considers
that for such a post, at any rate in those days, it was more necessary
that the holder should be a good all-round musician with sufficient
facility to execute the ordinary orchestral music, than that he should
be a “virtuoso”--and not every virtuoso makes a good leader.
[Sidenote: _Knowledge of stringed instruments_]
His knowledge of the construction of stringed instruments was
sufficient for him to invent a new one while he was at Cöthen, in
order to meet the demands made on the performer by his own music.
This instrument, which he called the viola pomposa, was something
between the viola and violoncello. It was played like a violin, and
had five strings tuned to the four strings of the violoncello, with
the addition of E above the first string. This additional string
makes the performance of his sonatas for violoncello comparatively
easy. Thus in the sixth violoncello sonata, which is expressly written
for five strings, in the third bar of the saraband the chords [Music]
are comparatively easy with the additional string; and in the gavotte
[Music] the first chord would be played with two open strings, which is
impossible with a four-stringed instrument. He also altered the tuning
of his violoncello, as in the fifth sonata, where he lowers the first
string to G[78] and obtains the chords [Music] etc.
[Sidenote: Practical Knowledge]
It seems impossible that he could have himself performed his violin
and violoncello sonatas; they tax the highest efforts of the best
performers of the present day; but his knowledge of stringed
instruments and their possibilities is shown by these compositions
to have been as profound as his knowledge of the organ. No mere
theoretical knowledge could have sufficed to enable him to write
these things; he must have had a wider practical knowledge than any
but the best _virtuosi_, and to this he united his enormous genius for
composition.
It appears natural that the German violinists, with their feeling for
full harmony, should have cultivated the art of double-stopping on
stringed instruments, rather than that of pure melody and tone. It
is said that Bruhns the organist, Buxtehude’s pupil, while playing
in three and four parts on his violin, would sometimes sit before an
organ, and add a bass on the pedals.[79]
FOOTNOTES:
[77] In “The Compleat Tutor for the Harpsichord or Spinnet, wherein
is shown the Italian manner of Fingering, &c.” by S. and S. Thompson,
the date of which is later than 1742, since it contains the minuet in
_Samson_, the little finger is never used in a scale, and fingers are
made to go under one another, in the way the thumb is used nowadays.
The English numbering is used; and the example of an ascending and
descending scale on p. 153 shows the chaotic condition of things.
[78] Our readers will remember the familiar case in Schumann’s
pianoforte quartet, where he lowers the C string to B♭ for a particular
effect. De Beriot _raises_ his fourth (violin) string to A for certain
passages.
[79] M. Vivien, a pupil of Léonard, and one of the first violins in the
orchestra at Brussels about 1876, had a violin of which the bridge was
cut nearly flat at the top. This enabled him to play on three and (with
a little extra pressure of the bow) four strings at once, by which he
produced very full effects.