clearness and acuteness of intellect, strength of will, a persistency
which often amounted to obstinacy, the love for order and a high sense of
duty. Like all artists, he possessed an irritable temperament, and was
liable to passionate outbreaks, but in the main his demeanor was grave
and dignified. Though conscious of his worth, he was free from arrogance.
He provided generously for his family and his home life was a happy one,
nothing affording him more pleasure than the little concerts which he
conducted with his wife and children, assisted occasionally by talented
pupils. If he sometimes manifested violent excitement when giving
instruction to large school classes, he exercised great patience with
individual pupils, and showed a happy faculty for teaching them. Instead
of oppressing them by the excess of his genius, he drew them up to
himself with words of friendly encouragement, and it is certain that he
could hold up to them no better example than his own unwearied industry.
Among the large number of distinguished artists trained by him are Johann
Ludwig Krebs, Gottfried August Homilius, Johann Friedrich Agricola,
Johann Philipp Kirnberger, Johann Theophilus Goldberg, Johann Gottfried
Müthel; also his own sons, Wilhelm Friedemann, Carl Philipp Emanuel,
and Johann Christoph Friedrich. The education of the last he was unable
to complete. His latest pupil was Johann Christian Kittel, afterwards
organist in Erfurt, who, through his great gifts as a teacher, kept alive
in Thuringia for several generations the art of Sebastian Bach. He died
in 1809.
The old inherited love of race was strongly characteristic of Johann
Sebastian. We owe to him a manuscript genealogy of the Bach family,
which is now preserved in the royal library at Berlin. The first number
is from the hand of Sebastian himself, while the remainder of the
work was performed by his son, Philipp Emanuel. The philanthropic and
self-sacrificing spirit manifested by Bach towards his pupils was still
more fully exemplified in the circle of his family. In the year 1707
he bestowed upon a cousin in needy circumstances a part of his slender
salary. While in Weimar, he took into his house a son of his eldest
brother, thus requiting the kindness which he had received from the
latter as a boy. In Cöthen he devoted himself energetically and with true
filial affection to the fulfilment of an honored relative's testamentary
bequests, against his own interests and in opposition to the grasping
demands of her next of kin. All that we know of Bach's life presents him
to us in the light of a strong and noble nature and confirms us in the
belief that the truly great artist must as a man always be profoundly
worthy of our veneration.
[Illustration: Fac-simile of the manuscript of the first page of the
first Prelude from Bach's "Well-tempered Clavichord."]
That in Bach we behold the highest degree of development attained by a
race of musicians who flourished through many generations, is due to his
wonderful and manifold musical gifts, rather than to his having followed
directly in the footsteps of any of the more important composers among
his ancestors. He was endowed with a talent for composition of the
very first order, has not been excelled as a performer upon the organ
and the clavier up to the present day, and was a violin player of the
profoundest intelligence, exhibiting complete mastery over the technique
of his instrument. At the same time he had a thorough knowledge of
organ-building and also distinguished himself by the invention of a new
stringed instrument, called the "viola pomposa", and a keyed instrument
which was an ingenious combination of the lute and the cembalo. He
devised the first perfectly satisfactory method of tuning a clavier
according to the tempered system, and introduced the style of fingering,
which, with a few modifications, is now in use. But the particular
musical form in which his uncle Johann Christoph Bach, of Eisenach,
became so great a master--the motet--while cultivated to some extent
by Sebastian Bach, was developed differently by him, and his immediate
predecessors in the art which made him especially great were not found
among the men of his own race.
Bach is first of all a composer of organ music as employed in the domain
of the church, and his work must be viewed from this standpoint, if
we are to judge him aright. The original foundation of organ music in
Germany had been the ecclesiastical Volkslied, or Protestant choral.
This does not mean that the melody of a choral was played from beginning
to end upon the organ, but that it was made the central point of an
independently constructed work, an arrangement possible to be effected
in three different ways. Firstly: the choral was played in direct
combination with the organ accompaniment, in a way to introduce the
congregational singing as the principal feature; in this case a few lines
only were worked out in free, contrapuntal style, so as to acquire the
character of an improvisation. We see here the choral prelude in its
most restricted form. In the second place, the choral was treated as an
independent piece of music and resolved into its elementary parts, each
one of which was worked out for itself, the composer being influenced
in a general way by the poetic sentiment of the text and allowing the
musical form to be determined by the relation which the separate lines
of the melody bore to each other. Thirdly: the choral, as it left the
composer's hands, seemed to him the expression of the poetical thoughts
and sensations embodied by the text, and, if played merely by one person,
he regarded it as the form in which the assembled congregation gave
utterance to its feelings; the choral melody then became the middle point
of an independent composition, one part of which moved majestically
and solemnly onward, while to the others was entrusted the office of
expressing the delicate and personal emotions awakened in the breast of
the composer.
By the side of these choral compositions, which, as we have seen, are
founded upon a given melody, stand other important forms of music in
the seventeenth century: the toccata, the praeludium, the fugue and the
passacaglio, or ciacone. While the two last-mentioned proceed from the
free invention of the composer, yet here also the Volkslied has exerted
its influence, as can easily be seen from the nature of the fugal
themes, which are much more expressive and definite than those employed
by the Catholics, because with the latter the strong attraction for the
Volkslied was wanting. The two greatest organ masters directly preceding
Bach were Dietrich Buxtehude and Johann Pachelbel. The latter was born in
Nuremberg in 1653 and died there in 1706, while holding the position of
organist.
He had been actively at work in Eisenach and Erfurt for thirteen years,
gave instruction to Bach's oldest brother and exercised a great influence
upon organ music in Thuringia and upon Bach himself in his earlier years.
That poetic treatment of the organ choral already described owes its
origin to Pachelbel, whose strength lay chiefly in this form of art.
Buxtehude's forte, on the other hand, is pre-eminently a free style
of composition for the organ and a brilliant artistic handling of the
instrument, in contrast to which the thorough, but unpretending technique
of Pachelbel falls into the background. All the creative power possessed
by these two masters, Bach combined in his own person.
Over one hundred organ chorals by Bach are still extant and a large
proportion of them are in his own handwriting. A fine collection of
forty-five shorter pieces is presented by his "Orgelbüchlein" (Little
Organ Book). The compilation of this was made in Cöthen, but the greater
part of its contents belongs to the Weimar period. The pieces are almost
wholly in Pachelbel's manner, but are more characteristic, richer and
of greater depth. The melody always moves on uninterruptedly and, with
few exceptions, in the simple style adapted to congregational singing.
The other parts are artistically interwoven and reflect the particular
sensations which the significance of the choral melody in the church
liturgy and the import of the poem to which it belongs awaken in the
mind. The musical thought from which the accompanying parts are developed
is usually brief; it takes its character from the poem, into the meaning
of which Bach penetrates very deeply. The effect is especially beautiful
when he reproduces in his music the idea of certain visions, which have
been called up by the poem. An example of this is furnished by the
choral: "Vom Himmel kam der Engel Schaar" ("From Heaven came the Angel
Host"), in which two of the accompanying parts with their ascending and
descending strains seem to personify the Christmas angels coming down
to the shepherds and again soaring upward. A favorite plan of Bach for
increasing in an artistic manner the importance of the choral melody, is
that of managing it after the fashion of a canon; that is to say, it is
heard not merely in a single part, but recurs in another, after a certain
interval, an arrangement from which surprisingly expressive harmonies
result.
Besides the "Little Organ Book," we possess a second autograph collection
by Bach, containing sixteen organ chorals, interspersed with several
pieces of the same order written by his pupil Altnikol. In this volume
are included the most noteworthy of the more extended organ chorals
composed during the Weimar period; these however were not published
until they had undergone the careful revision of the artist and received
many changes from his hand. Here we find model compositions in all the
larger forms, which either came down to Bach from his predecessors, or
were acquired by his own continually increasing culture. His constant
and energetic efforts to attain the greatest possible organic unity in
his compositions naturally obliged him to place the strongest emphasis
upon the development of the polyphonic web of the melodic accompaniment
from a single musical thought. If this thought became expanded into a
longer and more expressive theme, worked out according to the rules of
art, the accompaniment was then likely to acquire an independence and
importance which interfered with the predominance of the choral melody.
The sole means therefore of strengthening this melody was to introduce a
vocal part, and that is precisely what was done by Bach. While he added
to the composition thus changed, other instruments besides the organ and
also other vocal parts, he transferred the organ chorus to the domain
of vocal music, in order that he might give it the grandest conceivable
form. Bach's choral choruses, which excite the astonished admiration of
all who know them, are the direct outgrowth of his organ chorals. The
piece from the "Little Organ Book" consisting of twenty-seven measures,
composed upon the melody, "O Lamm Gottes, unschuldig" ("O, Innocent Lamb
of God"), and the gigantic opening chorus of the St. Matthew Passion, in
which the same melody is accompanied and crowned by two vocal choruses,
two orchestras and two organs, rest upon exactly the same principle of
construction.
Buxtehude had paid no attention to the third method of developing the
choral, as previously described, but bestowed much thought and artistic
skill upon the second, and had succeeded in imparting to it an especial
charm, through tasteful ornamentation of the melody and the combination
of several different kinds of organ registers. His works in this line,
however, are not distinguished by any especial unity or by reserve of
form. Bach felt himself attracted by this free and more fantastic style
of composition, because it stimulated him to evolve from it something
which should satisfy his own lofty ideal. A number of highly remarkable
organ chorals, of the most dissimilar character, originated in this way;
among them are the elaborations of "Schmücke dich, o liebe Seele" ("Adorn
thyself, beloved Soul"), "An Wasserflüssen Babylon," two re-arrangements
of "Allein Gott in der Höh sei Ehr" ("Glory alone to God on High"), and
one of "Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland."
In the Leipsic period, few organ chorals were composed by Bach, but each
one of these is a master work of the musician. The forms are those of the
Weimar chorals, but are on a comparatively colossal scale and the art of
the composer has increased in corresponding measure. They were published
in the year 1739, together with several choral fugues in the third part
of his so-called "Clavier-Uebung"; in 1746 were issued five variations
in canonic form upon the Christmas song: "Vom Himmel hoch, da komm ich
her" ("From Heaven on high come I hither"). Bach's strong attachment for
this artistic form, over which he had gained entire mastery in his youth,
continued to the end. His last work, composed immediately before his
death and dictated to Altnikol, was an organ choral.
[Illustration: MONUMENT TO BACH IN PARK AT LEIPSIC.
Reproduced from an old steel engraving.]
In Bach's organ music of a freer style, it is easier than in the chorals
to perceive the gradual approach to perfection. Here it is very evident
that Pachelbel was not his master; even the few preludes and fugues which
he wrote in his first years at Arnstadt betray a study of Buxtehude.
After the journey to Lübeck, what had before been imitation became free
creation after the manner of his model. In Weimar, where he rose to
eminence as an organ virtuoso, the striving after external brilliancy
and the desire of developing his skill as a performer in all directions,
bear evidence for a considerable period of his continued adherence to
the style of the Danish master. Although the compositions of this time
are in no wise superficial, they yet stand far below his later works
in solidity. By degrees, and evidently in consequence of close and
persevering labor with the choral, Bach's melodies become much richer and
more expressive. The study of Italian music, to which he devoted himself
in Weimar, had the effect of imparting to his work greater clearness
and finish, and his beautiful "_canzone_" for the organ is the direct
result of that study. The name itself bears witness to the fact, since
the Italians of the seventeenth century were accustomed to designate by
this word the musical form which afterwards was called the fugue. In a
group of organ compositions, which manifestly belong to the later Weimar
period, Bach shows himself to have reached that eminence as a composer of
fugues which only he was able to attain. The greatest skill in execution
is everywhere presupposed, but nothing is sacrificed to this; the fugal
themes are forms of a strongly accentuated type; in the management of the
parts great restraint and system are displayed; the preludes also lose
their extemporaneous character, are given a real theme and subjected to
the rules of the contrapuntal style. The only organ passacaglio by Bach
was composed at about this time. Well knowing that Buxtehude had excelled
in this form he resolved to make an attempt in that direction, summoned
all his powers and created one of the most lofty works of German tonal
art.
At the time when Bach's playing excited the general admiration of the
Hamburg public in 1720, he probably performed there his great G-minor
fugue with prelude, one of his best known and most celebrated works.
A musician of the eighteenth century pronounced this to be "the very
best pedal piece of Herr Johann Sebastian Bach," and it is certainly
safe to assert that he never wrote one which surpassed it. Play of
imagination, inexhaustible invention, transparent clearness, unaffected
simplicity, lofty earnestness and deep inward joy are here combined
to form a whole of such unapproachable grandeur as to exclude every
thought of a comparison with other composers. Among the works of the
Leipsic period should be mentioned first of all the six sonatas for two
manuals and pedal. These were completed between the years 1727 and 1733
and, according to tradition, were intended for the education of the
musician's eldest son, Wilhelm Friedemann. The form of these pieces,
as is well known, is borrowed from the Italian chamber music. Properly
speaking, they are not intended for the organ, but for a pedal-clavier
with two manuals, yet they do not lose in effect, when played upon
the former instrument. They present the most difficult of tasks to
the organ-performer, not only because the most perfect independence
of movement is demanded of both hands, as well as the feet, but also
on account of the crystalline transparency of the three-part movement
which renders the smallest defect in execution extremely painful to the
ear. The six so-called "great preludes and fugues" (Edition of the Bach
Society, Vol. XV., p. 189-260) are also considered as belonging to the
Leipsic time, although no positive external evidence in favor of the
assumption can be produced. If we add to these the preludes and fugues in
G major, the toccata and fugue in F major, the "Doric" toccata and fugue
in D minor and the great prelude with fugue in E♭ major, we shall have
nearly exhausted the list of works composed by Bach during the latest
period of his life. Should this seem to any one a small amount for so
great an artist to accomplish in twenty-seven years, he must remember
that the principal object of Bach's activity throughout this period
was the vocal church music, which, as cantor of St. Thomas's, it was
his duty to provide each Sunday. The value of works of art, moreover,
is not to be estimated by their number or extent. Haydn wrote over one
hundred symphonies, Beethoven only nine, yet the composer of "Fidelio"
certainly does not rank below Haydn in importance. These later organ
pieces of Bach's are creations of a universal type. Into each one of
them the artist infused the whole of his giant intellect, animating
by the breath of his genius the masses of sound poured forth from the
organ in prodigious volume, yet governed in the smallest details by the
most rigorous rules of art. They are true and actual prototypes of the
divinely ordered processes of nature, and in listening to them one calls
to mind the profound saying of Goethe: "Bach's music produces in me the
feeling that the eternal harmonies are holding converse together as they
may have done in the bosom of God before the creation."
The term chamber music was borrowed by the Germans from the Italians,
with whom "_musica da camera_" was directly opposed to "_musica da
chiesa_." In German it might be more appropriate to say "society music."
We are accustomed in our day to think only of instrumental music in
this connection, but it was the original intention to include vocal
compositions as well. Works of both kinds were produced by Bach, but
however interesting his vocal chamber music may be, it is of only
secondary importance, relatively speaking. He must himself have been
of this opinion, for he frequently made re-arrangements of these
compositions (which were mostly written for particular occasions), and
thus converted them into church music. His instrumental works, on the
other hand, are of the highest importance, not only for their intrinsic
merit, but as a means of determining the permanent artistic standing of
the composer. In considering them, it is necessary to distinguish between
such as are especially derived from organ music, those which grew out
of Italian violin music, and the remaining portion, which found their
origin in the exclusive domain of the clavier. In a general way at least,
the style of organ music exercised great influence upon all three of the
varieties mentioned; Bach made it his point of departure and it formed
through his whole life the basis of his work.