=German Mastery of Polyphonic Music=.—The Italians, with their quick
perception of structural beauty, have been the pioneers in the
invention and use of most art forms. So it happened, in the history
of instrumental music, that they were the ones to invent and give to
other nations the vehicle of expression, while it remained for their
pupils, notably, in this case, the composers of Germany, to fill these
forms out with the expression of real and deep feeling. The German
tendency toward serious and philosophical thought found the intricacies
of polyphonic music, or the simultaneous flow of independent melodies,
admirably adapted to their need of expression; and when this style
of voice writing was applied to instrumental compositions, German
musicians found a branch of art in which they were admirably qualified
to excel. So, from being mere pupils of the Italians, they advanced
to the production of works of much more distinguished character and
deeper, richer content than was possible to mere beauty of form and
melody.
=Hasler=.—In the second half of the 16th century, the clavier was
popular in Germany, disputing the place of the lute as a social
instrument, although organ and clavier compositions were identical, as
in Italy. There is a record of the publication of two books of pieces
for organ and “instrument”—by which is meant the clavier—in 1575-77,
in which there were dance tunes with accompanying chords. =Hans Leo
Hasler= (1564-1612), a pupil of A. Gabrieli, and fellow-student with
G. Gabrieli, was especially prominent as organ and clavier player and
composer during this epoch, publishing a number of such dances written
for the organ or the clavier.
=Froberger=.—The devastating Thirty Years’ War (1618-48) put an end to
artistic ambition during its progress. However, art quickly recovered
at its close, and a number of worthy musicians appeared. An interesting
figure among them, and a man who has been called the first German
clavier virtuoso, was =Johann Jacob Froberger= (1605-1667). Showing
great promise as a boy, he was brought to the notice of the Austrian
Kaiser, Ferdinand III, who sent him to Rome, where he studied with
Frescobaldi for three years. After this we hear of him as a successful
performer at Paris, and, on his return to Vienna, as court organist,
in which position he won widespread fame. A remarkable story is told
of a perilous journey to England, where he arrived penniless, and
of his subsequent recognition and his cordial reception by Charles
II, who was delighted with his improvisation upon the harpsichord.
Afterwards returning to Vienna, he resigned his post there, through
some disagreement, and lived afterwards in retirement. In a number of
Caprices, Toccatas and the like, written in the contrapuntal style,
he definitely adopted the five-lined staff, and introduced many
embellishments, after the French fashion. He possessed much charming
melodic invention, and, in his Toccatas employed a treatment of his
subject in definite sections, which afterwards appeared in the fugue
form. Froberger anticipates the _program style_ of music, as he is said
to have improvised descriptions of events, like that of the Count von
Thurn’s crossing of the Rhine, which he depicted in twenty-six pieces.
=Johann Kaspar Kerl= (1625-90), also sent by Ferdinand III to
Rome, studied there with Carissimi, the oratorio writer, becoming
accomplished as an extemporizer. He occupied a number of organ
positions in Vienna and Munich, also teaching the clavier, and wrote
compositions which show a tendency toward the modern scale systems.
=Johann Pachelbel= (1653-1706), celebrated as organ and clavier
player, wrote pleasing works for the clavier, in which he tried to
follow out the characteristics of the instrument. Many of these were
in the form of variations. =Georg Muffat= (d. 1704) showed in his
compositions a tendency toward French ornamentation, and his son
=Gottlieb= (1683-1770), a pupil of the contrapuntist J. J. Fux, was
organist to the Kaiser Charles VI, in Vienna, and clavier teacher to
the Imperial family. His clavier compositions were in the form of
Versettes and Toccatas.
=Eighteenth Century Clavier Composers=.—The Thirty Years’ War
exercised a demoralizing influence upon music trades, and many
excellent musicians were unable to have their compositions published
in consequence. The result is, that comparatively few specimens of the
works of the composers mentioned have come down to us in available
form. Approaching the 18th century, we now come to a group of composers
who represent the most brilliant epoch of early clavier work. Their
productions, while retaining the dignity and complexity of the
contrapuntal school, yet use its material with a freedom of modulation
and of dissonant chords sufficient to express genuine emotional ideas
through their medium.
=Reinken and Buxtehude=.—The Hamburg organist =Johann Adam Reinken=
(1623-1722), a native of Holland, wrote a number of clavier
compositions, publishing in 1704, pieces for two violins and
harpsichord. =Dietrich Buxtehude= (1637-1707), organist at St. Mary’s
Church, Lübeck, from 1668, excelled in free style of writing for
clavier. The latter gave a series of Sunday evening concerts at his
church which gained renown through all the surrounding country; and J.
S. Bach himself is said to have walked to these concerts, a distance of
fifty miles.
=Instrumental Polyphonic Forms=.—These men have been mentioned largely
because their work made possible the results which Bach afterwards
attained from an elaboration of what they had already accomplished. It
was among such eminent German organists that the instrumental Fugue,
the highest instrumental type of polyphonic music, took definite
shape, consisting of an Exposition, in which the Subject, Answer and
Countersubject were announced by the various voices; and a subsequent
Development, in which, according to certain laws more or less strict,
the material presented was carried through a variety of phases and
brought finally to a triumphant close. Of other forms, like the Toccata
and Canzona, the tendency came to be toward more freedom of treatment
on the one hand, and an increasing definiteness and consistency on the
other.
=Handel’s Early Life=.—A composer must now be mentioned whose work
lay chiefly in other fields than the clavier, but who nevertheless
drew much of his inspiration from the strings of the harpsichord. This
was =George Frederick Handel= (1685-1759), who was born at Halle, and
whose musical genius asserted itself so strenuously that, although
his father was strongly opposed, he learned the harpsichord as a mere
child, and became so proficient a performer that the reigning Duke
of Saxe-Weissenfels, hearing him play, insisted on his receiving a
thorough musical education. So he was placed under Zachau, a competent
organist and musician, at his native place, with whom he studied
diligently. After his father’s death he went to Hamburg, entering the
orchestra of the Opera house and rising to the post of harpsichordist.
Launching out as an opera composer, he began to acquire a reputation,
and in 1706 went to Italy, meeting many distinguished musicians there,
among them Domenico Scarlatti, with whom he had a contest as to ability
as clavichordist and organist, and winning fresh laurels.
=Handel in England=.—In 1707, he became music director to the Elector
of Hanover, but quickly left the post for England, where, with the
exception of short intervals, he passed the remainder of his life,
becoming a naturalized English subject. It was no wonder that he was
so warmly attached to his adopted country, since he became the popular
idol, even winning over the king, George I, formerly Elector of
Hanover, who, on his accession to the throne, was at first angry with
Handel for his desertion of the post in his service at Hanover.
[Illustration: GEORGE FRIEDRICH HANDEL.]
=Handel’s Operas and Oratorios=.—Handel was of an irascible
disposition, and, living in the artificial atmosphere of London,
among wits and satirists like Dr. Johnson, Addison and Pope, he was
constantly embroiled with the cabals of his rivals, and the fickleness
of the public. He produced a great number of operas, most of them
successful; but as theatrical manager he met with severe losses, and
finally gave up opera writing in despair, and turned to the composition
of oratorios. The result was that in this form he has left his most
enduring and elevated compositions; for while his operas were sometimes
written down to the popular taste for empty Italian melody, the lofty
themes of his oratorios inspired him to his grandest and most sincere
style, which, moreover, was rendered the more dramatic and intelligible
by his knowledge of the requirements of his audiences.
=Handel’s Clavier Works=.—Handel was an expert performer on the
harpsichord, for which he wrote two sets of Suites, besides a number of
single pieces. The Suites, of which the first set is by far the better,
are written mostly in the _dance forms_, but with the interpolation
of more serious forms, such as Airs, Variations and Fugues. The
_contrapuntal style_ is here most _prominent_, although _with harmonic
basis_, and with a laxity in the strictness of the voice writing,
caused by the occasional use of extra notes to complete chords. Some of
the variations are worked up to effective climaxes, and have running
passages and broken chords, in which the resources of the clavier are
cleverly drawn upon.
=Handel’s Last Years=.—Handel became blind in 1752, but continued to
take part in the performances of his works till the year of his death.
Choleric as was his temperament, the known generosity of his nature and
his devotion to the ideals of his art made him the idol of the English
people. He was buried in Westminster Abbey.
=Mattheson=.—A close associate of Handel, when he was in the Hamburg
orchestra, was =Johann Mattheson= (1681-1764), famed for his literary
writings on musical subjects no less than for his musical ability. He
wrote suites, a sonata and fugues in two parts, for clavier, which were
of excellent workmanship.
=Bach’s Early Life=.—But all other names in the domain of polyphonic
instrumental music pale before that of =Johann Sebastian Bach=, the
culmination of the school of voice writing, and the musician who put
the stamp of greatness on all former styles, while at the same time
acting as guide to future fields of composition. Born at Eisenach in
1685, as a scion of a family the members of which had been musical
leaders for generations, he seems to have embodied in himself the
sum of the genius of his forefathers. The story of his life is a
prosaic one, as he filled it with unflagging industry, carrying out
his unswerving ideals of his art, caring little for mere popularity,
and rearing a large family of sons and daughters, some of whom proved
worthy to continue his work. As a boy, he lost both parents at the
age of ten, and was taught clavier playing by his elder brother,
Johann Christian, who took him in charge. He seized with avidity every
opportunity to study his beloved music, copying hundreds of pages of
manuscript, listening to every musical performance possible, drinking
in and assimilating the ideas thus gained, to reproduce them later on,
stamped with his genius.
=Later Life=.—At his brother’s death he went to Lüneburg as choir
boy, where he became acquainted with Reinken’s work. At eighteen he
was violinist in the court band at Weimar, shortly afterward becoming
organist at a church at Arnstadt. His next position was as court
organist at Weimar, in 1708, where many of his most important organ
compositions were written. This post he left in 1717 for that of court
chapel-master at Anhalt-Köthen, where he remained six years, after
which he went to Leipzig, as Cantor of the Thomasschule, staying there
till his death, in 1750.
=Incidents of Bach’s Career=.—Bach’s life was not altogether a happy
one, as he was much annoyed at the persecutions of his rivals; and,
like Handel, he was afflicted with blindness in his last years. Never
considering the element of mere popularity in his work, his greatness
was little appreciated in his lifetime; and it was fifty years after
his death before it began to receive recognition. A pleasant incident
of his declining years was his cordial reception by Frederick the Great
at his court, in 1747, where Bach’s son was in favor as harpsichord
player, and where Bach was shown a number of excellent new Silbermann
pianofortes. It is a curious circumstance that he and Handel, although
born in the same year, were destined never to meet.
=The Well-Tempered Clavichord=.—It has been stated that Bach adopted
the principle of Equal Temperament for clavier tuning. In support
of this he wrote twenty-four preludes and fugues, one in each major
and minor key, requiring, therefore, equal temperament for their
performance; and later added a second similar volume. The whole
forty-eight make up the monumental work called the “Well-Tempered
Clavichord”; and this work, written originally for the clavichord,
has remained the bulwark of piano playing to the present day. Its
fugues, written with consummate mastery of the technic of instrumental
polyphony, are not only models of skill in voice writing, but also are
made the vehicles of genuine moods and emotions; while each preceding
prelude gives the keynote of expression to its following fugue,
although written in a much freer style, frequently closely allied with
the works of the purely harmonic school.
[Illustration: JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH.]
=Bach’s Other Clavier Works=.—Bach wrote also sonatas and concertos,
the latter for one, two or three claviers, sometimes with string
accompaniment. These works, although comprising several movements, _do
not_ otherwise _coincide_ with the _harmonic sonata form_, since their
style is more polyphonic, and since they are occupied mainly with the
_development_ of a _single_ subject. His suites, of which he wrote two
sets, called respectively English and French, are no less important,
since in them the dance forms are invested with a seriousness and an
artistic finish hitherto unattained. Of other clavier works, his famous
“Chromatic Fantasie” has a wealth of harmonic combinations, fiery runs
and arpeggios, and dramatic recitative which give it a worthy place in
the Romantic school developed much later, and of whose style it was
the forerunner. His “Inventions,” studies written originally for his
children, in two or three parts, are an excellent introduction to the
study of his larger works.
=Reforms in Fingering=.—Another gift of Bach’s to coming generations
was his _thorough revision of clavier playing_. Raising the hand above
the keys from its former flat position, he _brought the thumb into
use_, and by inventing the scale fingering, afterwards universally
adopted, he opened the way to the style of brilliant and smoothly
running passages which was afterwards so highly developed. Thus Bach,
while putting the final touch to the old forms, gave an impetus to the
harmonic style, which was then in its infancy, and of which we shall
now trace the course.