THE GOLDEN AGE OF HARPSICHORD MUSIC
The period and the masters of the ‘Golden Age’--Domenico
Scarlatti; his virtuosity; Scarlatti’s ‘sonatas’;
Scarlatti’s technical effects; his style and form; æsthetic
value of his music; his contemporaries--François Couperin,
_le Grand_; Couperin’s clavecin compositions; the ‘musical
portraits’; ‘program music’--The quality and style of
his music; his contemporaries, Daquin and Rameau--John
Sebastian Bach; Bach as virtuoso; as teacher; his technical
reform; his style--Bach’s fugues and their structure--The
suites of Bach: the French suites, the English suites,
the Partitas--The preludes, toccatas and fantasies;
concertos; the ‘Goldberg Variations’--Bach’s importance; his
contemporary Handel.
In round figures the years between 1700 and 1750 are the Golden Age of
harpsichord music. In that half century not only did the technique,
both of writing for and performing on the harpsichord, expand to its
uttermost possibilities, but there was written for it music of such
beauty and such emotional warmth as to challenge the best efforts of
the modern pianist and to call forth the finest and deepest qualities
of the modern pianoforte.
It was an age primarily of opera, of the Italian opera with its
senseless, threadbare plots, its artificial singers idolized in every
court, its incredible, extravagant splendor. The number of operas
written is astonishing, the wild enthusiasm of their reception hardly
paralleled elsewhere in the history of music. Yet of these many works
but an air or two has lived in the public ear down to the present day;
whereas the harpsichord music still is heard, though the instrument for
which it was written has long since vanished from our general musical
life.
Practically the whole seventeenth century has been required to lay
down a firm foundation for the development of instrumental music in
all its branches. This being well done, the music of the next epoch
is not unaccountably surprising. As soon as principles of form had
become established, composers trod, so to speak, upon solid ground;
and, sure of their foothold, were free to make rapid progress in all
directions. In harpsichord music few new forms appeared. The toccata,
prelude, fugue, and suite offered room enough for all the expansion
which even great genius might need. Within these limits the growth
was twofold: in the way of virtuosity and refinement of style, and in
the way of emotional expression. That music which expands at once in
both directions, or in which, rather, the two growths are one and the
same, is truly great music. Such we shall now find written for the
harpsichord.
Each of the three men whose work is the chief subject of this chapter
is conspicuous in the history of music by a particular feature.
Domenico Scarlatti is first and foremost a great virtuoso, Couperin
an artist unequalled in a very special refinement of style, Sebastian
Bach the instrument of profound emotion. In these features they stand
sharply differentiated one from the other. These are the essential
marks of their genius. None, of course, can be comprehended in such
a simple characterization. Many of Scarlatti’s short pieces have the
warmth of genuine emotion, and Couperin’s little works are almost
invariably the repository of tender and naïve sentiment. Bach is
perhaps the supreme master in music and should not be characterized
at all except to remind that his vast skill is but the tool of his
deeply-feeling poetic soul.
I
It will be noticed that each of these great men speaks of a different
race. We may consider Scarlatti first as spokesman in harpsichord music
of the Italians, who at that time had made their mark so deep upon
music that even now it has not been effaced, nor is likely to be. His
father, Alessandro, was the most famous and the most gifted musician in
Europe. From Naples he set the standard for the opera of the world, and
in Naples his son Domenico was born on October 26, 1685, a few months
only after the birth of Sebastian Bach in Eisenach. Domenico lived with
his father and under his father’s guidance until 1705, when he set
forth to try his fame. He lived a few years in Venice and there met
Handel in 1708, with whom he came back to Rome. Here in Rome, at the
residence of Corelli’s patron, Cardinal Ottoboni, took place the famous
contest on organ and harpsichord between him and Handel. For Handel he
ever professed a warm friendship and the most profound admiration.
He remained for some years in Rome, at first in the service of Marie
Casimire, queen of Poland, later as _maestro di capella_ at St.
Peter’s. In 1719 came a journey to London in order to superintend
performances of his operas. From 1721 to 1725 he seems to have been
installed at the court of Lisbon; and then, after four years in Naples,
he accepted a position at the Spanish court in Madrid. Just how long he
stayed there is not known. In 1754 he was back again in Naples, and in
Naples he died in 1757, seven years after the death of Bach.
Scarlatti wrote many operas in the style of his father, and these
were frequently performed, with success, in Italy, England, Spain,
and elsewhere. During his years at St. Peter’s he also wrote sacred
music; but his fame now rests wholly upon his compositions for the
harpsichord and upon the memory of the extraordinary skill with which
he played them.
We have dwelt thus briefly upon a few events of his life to show
how widely he had travelled and in how many places his skill as a
player must have been admired. That in the matter of virtuosity he
was unexcelled can hardly be doubted. It is true that in the famous
contest with Handel he came off the loser on the organ, and even his
harpsichord playing was doubted to excel that of his Saxon friend.
But these contests were a test of wits more than of fingers, a trial
of _extempore_ skill in improvising fugues and double fugues, not of
virtuosity in playing.
Two famous German musicians, J. J. Quantz and J. A. Hasse, both heard
him and both marvelled at his skill. Monsieur L’Augier, a gifted
amateur whom Dr. Burney visited in Vienna, told a story of Scarlatti
and Thomas Roseingrave,[11] in which he related that when Roseingrave
first heard Scarlatti play, he was so astonished that he would have cut
off his own fingers then and there, had there been an instrument at
hand wherewith to perform the operation; and, as it was, he went months
without touching the harpsichord again.
Whom he had to thank for instruction is not known. There is nothing in
his music to suggest that he was ever a pupil of Bernardo Pasquini,
who, however, was long held to have been his master. J. S. Shedlock, in
his ‘History of the Pianoforte Sonata,’ suggests that he learned from
Gaëtano Greco or Grieco, a man a few years his senior and a student
under his father; but it would seem far more likely that Domenico
profited immediately from his father, who, we may see from a letter to
Ferdinand de’ Medici, dated May 30, 1705, had watched over his son’s
development with great care. It must not be forgotten that Alessandro
Scarlatti’s harpsichord toccatas, described in the previous chapter,
are, in spite of a general heaviness, often enlivened by astonishing
devices of virtuosity.
Scarlatti wrote between three and four hundred pieces for the
harpsichord. The Abbé Santini[12] possessed three hundred and
forty-nine. Scarlatti himself published in his lifetime only one set
of thirty pieces. These he called exercises (_esercizii_) for the
harpsichord. The title is significant. Before 1733 two volumes, _Pièces
pour le clavecin_, were published in Paris; and some time between 1730
and 1737 forty-two ‘Suites of Lessons’ were published in London under
the supervision of Roseingrave. More were printed in London in 1752.
Then came Czerny’s edition, which includes two hundred pieces; and
throughout the nineteenth century various selections and arrangements
have appeared from time to time, von Bülow having arranged several
pieces in the order of suites, Tausig having elaborated several in
accordance with the modern pianoforte. A complete and authoritative
edition has at last been prepared by Sig. Alessandro Longo and has been
printed in Italy by Ricordi and Company.
By far the greater part of these many pieces are independent of each
other. Except in a few cases where Scarlatti, probably in his youth,
followed the model of his father’s toccatas, he keeps quite clear of
the suite cycle. The pieces have been called sonatas, but they are
not for the most part in the form called the sonata form. This form
(which is the form in which one piece or movement may be cast and is
not to be confused with the sequence or arrangement of movements in
the classical sonata) is, as we shall later have ample opportunity
to observe, a tri-partite or ternary form; whereas the so-called
sonatas of Scarlatti are in the two-part or binary form, which is, as
we have seen, the form of the separate dance movements in the suite.
Each ‘sonata’ is, like the dance movements, divided into two sections,
usually of about equal length, both of which are to be repeated in
their turn. In general, too, the harmonic plan is the same or nearly
the same as that which underlies the suite movement, the first section
modulating from tonic to dominant, the second back from dominant to
tonic. But within these limits Scarlatti allows himself great freedom
of modulation. It is, in fact, this harmonic expansion within the
binary form which makes one pause to give Scarlatti an important place
in the development of the sonata form proper.
The harmonic variety of the Scarlatti sonatas is closely related to the
virtuosity of their composer. He spins a piece out of, usually, but not
always, two or three striking figures, by repeating them over and over
again in different places of the scale or in different keys. His very
evident fondness for technical formulæ is thus gratified and the piece
is saved from monotony by its shifting harmonies.
A favorite and simple shift is from major to minor. This he employs
very frequently. For example, in a sonata in G major, No. 2 of the
Breitkopf and Härtel collection of twenty sonatas[13] measures 13, 14,
15, and 16, in D major, are repeated immediately in A major. In 20, 21,
22, and 23, the same style of figure and rhythm appears in D major and
is at once answered in D minor. Toward the end of the second part of
the piece the process is duplicated in the tonic key. In the following
sonata at the top of page seven occurs another similar instance. It is
one of the most frequent of his mannerisms.
The repetition of favorite figures is by no means always accompanied
by a change of key. The two-measure phrase beginning in the fifteenth
measure of the third sonata is repeated three times note for note;
a few measures later another figure is treated in the same fashion;
and in yet a third place, all in the first section of this sonata,
the trick is turned again. Indeed, there are very few of Scarlatti’s
sonatas in which he does not play with his figures in this manner.
We have said that often he varies his key when thus repeating himself,
and that such variety saves from monotony. But it must be added that
even where there is no change of key he escapes being tedious to the
listener. The reason must be sought in the sprightly nature of the
figures he chooses, and in the extremely rapid speed at which they are
intended to fly before our ears. He is oftenest a dazzling virtuoso
whose music appeals to our bump of wonder, and, when well played,
leaves us breathless and excited.
The pieces are for the most part extremely difficult; and this,
together with his ever-present reiteration of special harpsichord
figures, may well incline us to look upon them as fledgling études. The
thirty which Scarlatti himself chose to publish he called _esercizii_,
or exercises. We may not take the title too literally, bearing in mind
that Bach’s ‘Well-Tempered Clavichord’ was intended for practice, as
were many of Kuhnau’s suites. But that Scarlatti’s sonatas are almost
invariably built up upon a few striking, difficult and oft-repeated
figures, makes their possible use as technical practice pieces far
more evident than it is in the ‘Well-Tempered Clavichord’ or even
the ‘Inventions’ of Bach. He undoubtedly offers the player enormous
opportunity to exercise his arms and his fingers in the production of
brilliant, astonishing effects.
Of these effects two will always be associated with his name: the
one obtained by the crossing of the hands, the other by the rapid
repetition of one note. Both devices will be found freely used in the
works of his father, and it is absurd to suppose that the son invented
them. Yet it is hardly an exaggeration to say that he made more use of
them than any man down to the time of Liszt. The crossing of the hands
is not employed to interweave two qualities of sound, as it oftenest is
in music for the organ or for the German and French harpsichords which
have two or more manuals that work independently of each other. The
Italian harpsichords had but one bank of keys, and Scarlatti’s crossing
of the hands, if it be not intended merely for display, succeeds
in making notes wide apart sound relatively simultaneous, and thus
produces qualities of resonance which hitherto had rested silent in the
instrument.
It has been suggested that the device of repeated notes was borrowed
from the mandolin, on which, as is well known, a _cantabile_ is
approximated by rapid repetition of the notes of the melody. Scarlatti,
however, rarely employs it to sustain the various notes of his
tune. In his sonatas it is usually, if not intentionally, effective
rhythmically; as it is, unfailingly, in more modern pianoforte music.
On the harpsichord, moreover, as on the pianoforte, it can make a
string twang with a sort of barbaric sound that still has the power to
stir us as shrieking pipes and whistles stirred our savage ancestors.
Still another mannerism of his technique or style is the wide leap of
many of his figures. A plunge from high to low notes was much practised
in contemporary violin music and was considered very effective, and
probably suggested a similar effect upon the harpsichord. Into this
matter again Scarlatti may well have been initiated by his father,
by whom it was not left untried. In the son’s sonatas it succeeds in
extending the range of sonority of the harpsichord, and thus points
unmistakably to developments in the true pianoforte style.
It is, in fact, by this extension of figures, by sudden leaps, by
crossing of hands, that Scarlatti frees harpsichord music from all
trace of slavery to the conjunct style of organ music; and he may
therefore be judged the founder of the brilliant free style which
reached its extreme development in the music of Liszt. Though we may
not fail to mention occasionally his indebtedness to his father and
to instrumental music of his time, we cannot deny that he is a great
inventor, the creator of a new art. He was admitted by composers of
his day to have not only wonderful hands, but a wonderful fecundity of
invention.
What guided him was chiefly instinct. He had, no doubt, considerable
strict training in the science of counterpoint and composition. He
wrote, as we know, not only harpsichord pieces, but operas and sacred
music as well. In the sonatas there is a great deal of neat two-part
writing, and an occasional flash of skill in imitations; but musical
science is almost the last thing we should think of in connection
with them. Rules are not exemplified therein. Burney relates, through
L’Augier, that Scarlatti knew he had broken established rules of
composition, but reasoned that ‘there was scarce any other rule worth
the attention of a man of genius than that of not displeasing the only
sense of which music is the object.’ And, further, that he complained
of the music of Alberti and other ‘modern’ composers because it did not
in execution demand a harpsichord, but might be equally well or perhaps
better expressed by other instruments. But, ‘as Nature had given him
[Scarlatti] ten fingers, and, as his instrument had employment for
them all, he saw no reason why he should not use them.’ He might have
included his two arms among his natural gifts. Certainly the free use
he made of them in most of his sonatas marks a new and extraordinary
advance in the history of keyboard music.
In the matter of form Scarlatti is not so strikingly an innovator as
he is in that of style. He is in the main content to cast his pieces
in the binary mold common to most short instrumental pieces of his
day. Yet, as has already been suggested, the harmonic freedom which
he enjoys within these relatively narrow limits is significant in
the development of the sonata form; and even more significant is his
distribution of musical material within them.
The binary form, such as we find it in the suites of Froberger and
even in those of J. S. Bach, is essentially a harmonic structure. The
balance and contrast which is the effect of any serviceable shape of
music is here one of harmony, principally of tonic and dominant and
dominant and tonic, with only a few measures of modulation for variety.
There is, in addition, some contrast between that musical material
which is presented first in the tonic key and that which appears later
in the dominant. But, while we may speak of these materials as first
and second themes or subjects, their individuality is hardly distinct
and is, in effect, obliterated by the regularity and smoothness of
style in which these short pieces are conventionally written. The
composer makes no attempt to set them off clearly, one against the
other. The entrance into the dominant key is almost never devised
in such a way as to prepare the listener for a new musical thought,
quite separate and different from that which he has already heard. The
transitional passage from tonic to dominant emerges from the one and
merges into the other, without break or distinctions.
In the matter of setting his themes in their frame, Scarlatti hardly
differs from his contemporaries. His style, though free and varied, is
in constant motion. But his genius was especially fertile in clean-cut
figures; and when, as he often does, he combines two or three distinct
types of these in one short piece, the music is full of thematic
variety and sparkles with an animation which at times is almost
dramatic.
Scarlatti is, indeed, hovering close to the sonata form in a great many
of his pieces, and in one actually strikes it.[14] We shall, however,
postpone a more detailed discussion of Scarlatti’s pieces in relation
to the sonata form to the next chapter. The distribution of his musical
material is quite whimsical and irregular, always more instinctive than
experimental. It is chiefly by the quality of this material that he
stands apart from his contemporaries, and as the founder of the free
and brilliant pianoforte style.
There remains little to be said of the æsthetic worth of his music.
During the years of his most vigorous manhood he was almost invariably
a virtuoso. Sheer delight in tonal effects rather than more sober need
of self-expression stimulated him. The prevalence of trumpet figures
such as those which constitute the opening phrases of the eleventh
and fourteenth sonatas in the Breitkopf and Härtel edition already
referred to, suggests that he took a good deal of material ready-made
from the operas of the day. Burney says there are many passages in
which he imitated the melody of tunes sung by carriers, muleteers, and
common people. But what he added to these was his own. A number of
pieces are conspicuous by especially free modulation and expansion
of form; and in these, technical effects are not predominant, but
rather a more serious interest in composition. It has therefore been
suggested that these pieces are the work of later years.[15] Though it
is said that while in Spain he grew too fat to cross his hands at the
harpsichord as was his wont in his youth, this physical restriction is
not alone responsible for the mellowness and warmth of such pieces as
the so-called Pastoral in D minor, familiar to audiences in Tausig’s
elaborated transcription. A great number of his pieces are rich in pure
musical beauty; and the freshness which exhales from all true musical
utterance is and probably always will be theirs.
None of his contemporaries in Italy approached him in the peculiar
skill which has made him conspicuous in the history of pianoforte
music. Francesco Durante (1684-1755) and Nicolo Porpora (1686-1767),
the great singing master, both wrote pieces for the harpsichord; the
one, ‘sonatas’ in several movements, the other fugues; but their music
lacks charm and can hardly be considered at all influential in the
development of the art of writing for keyboard instruments. Domenico
Alberti and P. D. Paradies will be considered in the following chapter.
II
The art of Couperin is flawless, the charm of his music not to be
described. It has that quality of perfection with which Nature marks
her smallest flowers. It is the miniature counterpart in music of a
perfected system of living, of the court life of France under Louis XIV.
Scarlatti was a rover. He tried his fortune in Italy, in England, in
Portugal and Spain. He won it by the exhibition of his extraordinary
and startling powers. He was on the alert to startle, his tribute the
bravas and mad applause of his excited hearers. He was the virtuoso in
an old sense of the word, the man with his powers consciously developed
to the uttermost. Bach, on the other hand, was an introspective, mighty
man, immeasurably greater than his surroundings, fathomless, personal,
suggestive. Between them stands Couperin, for the greater part of his
life in the intimate service of the most brilliant court the world has
ever seen, delicate in health, perfect in etiquette, wise and tender.
Of his life little need be said. He was born in Paris on November 10,
1668, the son of Charles Couperin, himself a musician and brother to
Louis and François Couperin, disciples of the great Chambonnières.
The father died about a year after his son was born, and the musical
education of the young François seems to have been undertaken by
his uncle, François, and later by Jacques Thomelin, organist in the
king’s private chapel in Versailles. Practically nothing is known
of his youth, and, though it is certain that he was for many years
organist at the church of St. Gervais in Paris, as his uncle and even
his grandfather had been before him, the time at which he took up his
duties there has not been exactly determined. There is on record,
however, the account of a meeting held on the twenty-sixth of December,
1693, at Versailles, at which Louis XIV heard Couperin play and chose
him from other competitors to succeed Thomelin as his private organist.
Thenceforth he passed his life in service of the king and later of the
regent. He died in Paris in 1733, after several years of ill health.
The great François was, no doubt, an unusually skillful organist, but
his fame rests upon his work for the clavecin, the French harpsichord,
and his book of instruction for that instrument. His duties at court
were various. He says himself that for twenty years he had the honor
to be with the king, and to teach, almost at the same time, Monseigneur
le Dauphin, the Duke of Burgundy, and six princes or princesses of the
royal house.
In his preface to the _Concerts royaux_ he informs us that chamber
concerts were given in the king’s presence on Sunday afternoons at
Versailles, and that he was commanded to write music for them and that
he himself played the clavecin at them. His book on the art of playing
the clavecin, written in 1716, was dedicated to the king. By all
accounts he was a beloved and highly prized teacher and performer. And
neither his pupils nor his fame were confined solely to the court.
There is no doubt that he was a public favorite and that he published
his pieces for the clavecin to satisfy a general demand. Also in a
measure to safeguard his music. For at that time instrumental pieces
were not often published, but were circulated in manuscript copies in
which gross errors grew rapidly as weeds; and which, moreover, were
common booty to piratical publishers, especially in the Netherlands.
So Couperin took minute care in preparing his music for his public.
Each set of pieces was furnished with a long preface, nothing in the
engraving was left to chance, the books were beautifully bound so that
all might be in keeping with the dainty and exquisite art of the music
itself. Since his day his pieces were never published again until
Madame Farrenc included the four great sets in her famous _Trésor des
Pianistes_ (1861-72). This edition was, according to Chrysander,[16]
very carelessly prepared and is full of inaccuracies. Chrysander
planned a new, accurate and complete edition, to be edited by Brahms,
of which unhappily only one volume, containing Couperin’s first two
books, ever came to print.
The original editions being now rare and priceless, and hardly
serviceable to the average student on account of the confusing obsolete
clef signs, it is to be hoped that before long Chrysander’s plan
will be carried out and the almost forgotten treasures of Couperin’s
clavecin music be revealed in their great beauty to the lover of music.
Couperin published in all five books of _pièces de clavecin_. Of these
the first appeared early in the century and is not commonly reckoned
among his best works. The other four sets appeared respectively in
1713, 1716, 1722, and 1730.
Each book contains several sets of pieces grouped together in _ordres_,
according to key.[17] The canon of the suite is wholly disregarded
and there is very little of the spirit of it. The first _ordre_, it
is true, has as the first six pieces an allemande, two courantes, a
sarabande, a gavotte, and a gigue; but there are twelve pieces in
addition, of which only three are named dances. The second _ordre_,
too, has an allemande, two courantes, and a sarabande at the beginning;
but there follow eighteen more pieces of which only four are strictly
dances. The fourth _ordre_ is without true dance forms; so are the
sixth, the seventh, the tenth, and others. Even the orthodox dances are
given secondary titles, or the dance name is itself secondary. In fact,
not only by including within one _ordre_ many more pieces than ever
found place within the suite, but by the very character of the pieces
themselves, Couperin is dissociated from the suite writers.
He wrote in the preface to his first book of pieces,[18] that in
composing he always had a particular subject before his eyes. This
accounts for the titles affixed to most of his pieces. We have already
referred to ‘battle’ pieces of earlier composers, and to Kuhnau’s
narratives in music. Couperin’s music is not of the same sort. The
majority of his titled pieces are pure music, admirable and charming
in themselves. They are seldom copies. They make their appeal, or they
are intelligible, not by what they delineate, but by what they express
or suggest. The piece as a whole gives an impression, not the special
figures or traits of which it is composed.
Let us consider a few of many types. Take what have been often called
the portraits of court ladies. In these we cannot by any effort of the
imagination find likenesses. It would be ludicrous to try. As ladies
may differ in temperament from each other, so do these little pieces
differ. There is the allemande _L’Auguste_, which is a dignified,
somewhat austere dance piece in G minor; another, _La Laborieuse_, in
a complicated contrapuntal style unusual with him. There are three
sarabandes called _La Majesteuse_, _La Prude_, and _La Lugubre_,
impressive, meagre, and profound in turn. These pieces are hardly
personal, nor have they peculiar characteristics apart from the spirit
which is clear in each of them.
Another type of portrait fits its title a little more tangibly. There
is _La Mylordine_, in the style of an English jig; _La Diane_, which
is built up on the fanfare figure always associated with the hunt; _La
Diligente_, full of bustling finger work. _Les Nonnettes_ are blonde
and dark, the blondes, oddly enough, in minor, the dark in major.
Many others are so purely music, delicate and tender, that the titles
seem more to be a gallant tribute to so and so, rather than the names
of prototypes in the flesh. _La Manon_, _La Babet_, _La fleurie, ou
la tendre Nanette_, _L’Enchanteresse_, _La tendre Fanchon_, and many
others are in no way program music; nor can they ever be interpreted
as such, since no man can say what charming girl, two centuries dead,
may have suggested their illusive features.
It is these ‘portraits’ particularly which are Couperin’s own new
contribution to the art of music. So individual is the musical life in
each one, so special and complete its character, so full of sentiment
and poetry, that, small as it is, it may stand alone as a perfect and
enduring work of art. It has nothing to do with the suite or with
any of the cyclic forms. Here are the first flowers from that branch
of music from which later were to grow the nocturnes of Field, the
_Moments musicals_ of Schubert, the preludes of Chopin.
Between these and the few pieces which are frankly almost wholly
dependent upon a program are a great number of others lightly
suggestive of their titles. Sometimes it is only in general character.
_Les vendangeuses_ and _Les moissoneurs_ do not seem so particularly
related to wine-gathering or harvesting that the titles might not
be interchanged; but both have something of a peasant character. In
_Les abeilles_ and in Le moucheron the characterization is finer. The
pleasant humming of the bees is reproduced in one, the monotonous
whirring of the gnat in the other. _Les bergeries_ is simply pastoral,
_Les matelots Provençales_ is a lively march, followed by a horn-pipe.
_Les papillons_ is not unlike the little piece so named in the Schumann
_Carnaval_, though here it means but butterflies. There are some
imitative pieces which are in themselves charming music, such as _Les
petits moulins à vent_, _Le réveille-matin_, _Le carillon de Cythère_,
and _Les ondes_, with its undulating figures and fluid ornamentation.
Finally the program music is in various degrees programmistic. A
little group of pieces called _Les Pèlerines_ (Pilgrims) begins with a
march, to be played gaily. Then comes a little movement to represent
the spirit of alms-giving, in a minor key, to be played tenderly; and
this is followed by a cheerful little movement of thanks, to which is
added a lively coda. The whole is rather an expression of moods than a
picture of actions. _Les petits ages_ is in some respects more literal.
The first movement, _La muse naissante_, is written in a syncopated
style, the right hand always following the left, which may well express
weakness and hesitation. _L’adolescente_, the third movement, is a
lively rondo in vigorous gavotte rhythm.
Two sets are entirely program music. One of these, _Les Bacchanales_,
has a march (_pésament, sans lenteur_) of the gray-clad ones; then
three movements expressive of the delights of wine, the tenderness
to which it warms and the madness to which it enflames. The music is
not of itself interesting. More remarkable, though devoid of musical
worth save a good bit of the comical, is _Les fastes de la grande et
ancienne Mxnxstrxndxsx_. These records or tales are divided into five
acts, which represent the notables and judges of the kingdom, the old
men and the beggars (over a drone bass), the jugglers, tumblers and
mountebanks, with their bears and monkeys, the cripples (those with
one arm or leg played by the right hand, those who limp played by the
left), and, finally, the confusion and flight of all, brought about by
the drunkards and the bears and monkeys.
III
The last of these compositions are in no way representative of Couperin
the artist. They might have been written by any one who had a love for
nonsense, and they are not meant to be taken seriously. The quality
of Couperin’s contribution to music must be tested in such pieces as
_Le bavolet-flottant_, _La fleurie_, _Les moissoneurs_, _Le carillon
de Cythère_, and _La lugubre_. His harmony is delicate, suggesting
that of Mozart and even Chopin, to whom he is in many ways akin. He
does not, like Scarlatti, wander far in the harmonic field; but in
a relatively small compass glides about by semi-tones. There is, of
course, a great deal of tonic and dominant, such as will always be
associated with a certain clear-cut style of French dance music; but
the grace of his melody and his style is too subtle to permit monotony.
The harmonies of the sarabande _La lugubre_ are profound.
In form he is precise. His use of the rondo deserves special attention.
In this form he cast many of his loveliest pieces, and it is one
which never found a place in the suite. It is very simple, yet in
his hands full of charm. The groundwork of one main theme recurring
regularly after several episodes or contrasting themes was analyzed in
the previous chapter. Couperin called his episodes couplets, and his
rondos are usually composed of the principal theme and three couplets.
He does not invariably repeat the whole theme after each couplet, but
sometimes, as in _Les bergeries_, only a characteristic phrase of it.
The couplets are generally closely related to the main theme, from
which they differ not in nature, but chiefly in ornamentation and
harmony. Much of the charm of his music is due to the neat proportions
of this hitherto neglected form. It was native to him as a son of
France, where, from the early days of the singers of Provence, the song
in stanzas with its dancing refrain had been beloved of the people.
Through him it found a place in the great instrumental music of the
world.
Couperin’s style is too delicate to be caught in words. To call it the
_style galant_ merely catalogues it as a free style, highly adorned
with _agrémens_. The freedom is of course the freedom from all trace of
polyphony in the old sense, of strict leading of voices from beginning
to end. Couperin adds notes to his harmonic background when and where
he will; so that it is impossible to say whether a piece is in two, or
three, or four parts, because it is in no fixed number of parts at all.
The countless _agrémens_ are more than an external feature of his
music, and of other music of his time. The analogies which have often
been drawn between them and the formal superficialities of court life
under the great Louis are in the main false. Both Couperin and Emanuel
Bach, a man of perhaps less sensitive, certainly of less elegant,
taste, regarded them as of vital importance. Even the learned Kuhnau,
who can hardly be called a stylist at all, considered them the sugar
of his fruit. It would seem as if only by means of these flourishes
harpsichord music could take on some grace of line and warmth of color.
Whatever subtlety of expression the dry-toned instrument was capable
of found life only in the _agrémens_. We cannot judge of the need of
them nor of their peculiar beauties by the sound of them on the modern
pianoforte, even under the lightest fingers. It is open to question
whether any but a few of them should be retained in the performance of
Couperin’s works, now that the instrument, the shortcomings of which
they were intended to supplement, has been banished in general from the
concert stage.
This is not only because the peculiarities of the pianoforte call for
a different kind of ornamentation, but also because the playing of
harpsichord flourishes is practically a lost art. Couperin and Emanuel
Bach left minute directions and explanations in regard to them; but
in their treatises we have only the letter of the law, not the spirit
which inspired it. Even in their day, in spite of all laws, the
_agrémens_ were subject to the caprice of the player; and they remained
so down to the time of Chopin.
Neither the freedom from polyphonic strictness nor the profusion of
ornaments are the special peculiarities of Couperin’s style. They
were more or less common to a great deal of the harpsichord music of
his day. But he had a way, all his own at that time, of accompanying
his melodies with a sort of singing bass or a melodious inner voice
that moved with the melody in thirds or sixths, or in smooth contrary
motion. This may be studied in such pieces as _La fleurie_, _Le
bavolet-flottant_, _Les moissoneurs_, _Les abeilles_, and many others.
It has little to do with polyphony. The accompanying voices are only
suggested. They never claim attention by their own movement. They seem
a sort of spirit or tinted shadow of the melody, hardly more than
whispering.
This accounts in part for what we may call the tenderness of Couperin’s
music, a quality which makes itself felt no matter how elusive it
may be. He marked most of his pieces to be played with a special
expressiveness, and frequently used the word _tendrement_. This, he
admitted in one of his prefaces, was likely to surprise those who were
aware of the limitations of the clavecin. He knew that the ‘clavecin
was perfect as regards scope and brilliance, but that one could not
increase or diminish the tone on it.’ His thanks would be forthcoming
to one who through taste and skill would be able to improve its
expression in this respect. He was not above all else a virtuoso.
‛_J’ayme beaucoup mieux ce qui me touche que ce qui me surprend_,’
he wrote in 1713. There is no doubt that he desired the greatest
refinement of touch and shading in the expression of his music, and
that he suffered under the limitations of the instrument for which
he wrote. For the texture of his music is soft and delicate, its
loveliness has a secret quality, hardly more than suggested by the
shadowy inner voices. We cannot but be reminded of Chopin, in whose
music alone the spirits of music whispered again so softly together.
Among the contemporaries of Couperin, Marchand, Claude Daquin
(1694-1772), and J. P. Rameau (1683-1764) are best known, at least by
name, today. Marchand is remembered chiefly by reason of the episode
with Bach in Dresden. Daquin enjoyed a brilliant reputation as an
organist in his day. One of his pieces for clavecin--‘The Cuckoo’--is
still heard today. J. B. Weckerlin quoted an amusing bird-story[19]
about Daquin, the burden of which is that one Christmas eve Daquin
imitated the song of a nightingale so perfectly on the organ in church
that the treasurer of the parish dispatched beadles throughout the
edifice in search of a live songster.
Rameau is a greater figure in the general history of music than
Couperin himself; yet, though his harpsichord pieces are, perhaps
therefore, better known than those of the somewhat earlier man, they
lack the most unusual charm and perfection of Couperin’s. There are
fifty-three of these in all. Ten were published in 1706, of which
a gavotte in rondo form in A minor is best known. A second set of
twenty-one pieces appeared in 1724, containing the still famous _Rappel
des oiseaux_, the _Tambourin_, _Les niais de Sologne_, _La poule_, the
Gavotte with variations, in A minor, and many others. Sixteen more
followed, written between 1727 and 1731. In 1747 a single piece--_La
Dauphine_--was published. Besides these, all written originally for
harpsichord, he published five arrangements of his _Pièces de concert_,
written in the first place for a group of three or more instruments.
Rameau’s style is less delicate than Couperin’s. It is not only that
there are fewer _agrémens_. The workmanship is more vigorous, more
dramatic; the music itself less intimate. The first gavotte in A
minor, the doubles in the Rigaudon and in _Les niais de Sologne_, the
variations in the second gavotte in A minor, and _La Dauphine_, all
speak of a technical enlargement. Yet a certain fineness is lacking.
It will be noticed that he showed hardly more allegiance to the canon
of the suite than Couperin had shown; and there is a large portion of
titles such as _Les tendres plaintes_, _Les soupirs_, _L’entretien
des muses_, and there are also many portraits: _La joyeuse_, _La
triomphante_, _L’Egyptienne_, _L’agaçante_, and others.
In the preface to the new edition of his works published under the
supervision of Camille Saint-Saëns, there is the following quotation
from Amadée Mereaux’s _Les clavecinistes de 1637-1790_, which
summarizes his position in the history of harpsichord music. ‘If there
is lacking in his melodies the smoothness of Couperin, the distinction,
the delicacy, the purity of style which give to the music of that
clavecin composer to Louis XIV its so precious quality of charm, Rameau
has at least a boldness of spirit, an animation, a power of harmony and
a richness of modulation. The reflection of his operatic style, lively,
expressive, always precise and strongly rhythmical, is to be found
in his instrumental style. In treatment of the keyboard Rameau went
far ahead of his predecessors. His technical forms, his instrumental
designs, his variety and brilliance in executive resources, and his
new runs and figures are all conquests which he won to the domain of
the harpsichord.’ Rameau is primarily a dramatic composer. It may be
added that several of his harpsichord pieces later found a place in his
operas, usually as ballet music.
IV
A glance over the many pieces of Scarlatti and Couperin discovers a
vast field of unfamiliar music. If one looks deep enough to perceive
the charm, the beauty, the perfection of these forgotten masterpieces,
one cannot but wonder what more than a trick of time has condemned
them to oblivion. For no astonished enthusiasm of student or amateur
whose eye can hear, renders back glory to music that lies year after
year silent on dusty shelves. The general ear has not heard it. The
general eye cannot hear it as it can scan the ancient picture, the
drama, the poetry of a time a thousand or two thousand years ago. Music
that is silent is music quite forgotten if not dead.
And, what is more, the few pieces of Couperin which are still heard
seem almost to live on sufferance, as if the life they have were not
of their own, but lent them by the listener disposed to imagine a
courtier’s life long ago washed out in blood. ‘Sweet and delicate,’ one
hears of the music of Couperin, as one hears of some bit of old lace or
old brocade, that has lain long in a chest of lavender. Yet the music
of Couperin is far more than a matter of fashion. It is by all tokens
great art. The lack is in the race of musicians and of men who have
lost the art of playing it and the simplicity of attentive listening.
To a certain extent the music of Sebastian Bach suffers from the same
lack. On the other hand, the spirit of his music is perennial and
it holds a rank in the modern ear far above that held by any other
harpsichord music. Apart from indefinable reasons of æsthetic worth
there are other reasons why Bach’s music, at any rate a considerable
part of it, is still with us.
In the first place, the style of its texture is solid. Instead of being
crushed, as Couperin’s music is, by the heavy, rich tone of the modern
pianoforte, it seems to grow stronger by speaking through the stronger
instrument. Bach’s style is nearly always an organ style, whether he is
writing for clavichord, for chorus, for bands or strings. It is very
possible that a certain mystical, intimate sentiment which is innate in
most of his clavichord music cannot find expression through the heavy
strings of the pianoforte. This may be far dearer than the added depth
and richness which the pianoforte has, as it were, hauled up from the
great reservoirs of music he has left us. But it is none the less true
that the high-tensioned heavy strings on their gaunt frame of cast iron
need not call in vain on the music of Bach to set the heart of them
vibrating.
In the second place, the two-and three-part ‘Inventions,’ and the
preludes and fugues in the ‘Well-Tempered Clavichord’ have proved
themselves to be, as Bach himself hoped, the very best of teaching
or practice pieces. It is not that your conventional Mr. Dry-as-dust
teacher has power to inflict Bach upon every tender, rebellious
generation. It is rather that the pieces themselves cannot be excelled
as exercises, not only for the fingers but for the brain. One need
not delve here into the matter of their musical beauty, but one must
pause in amazement before their sturdiness, which can stand up, still
resilient, under the ceaseless hammering of ten million sets of
fingers. Clementi and Czerny are being pounded into insensibility;
Cramer, despite the recommendations of Beethoven, is breathing his
last; Moscheles, Dohler, Kalkbrenner, and a host of others are laid to
rest. But here comes Bach bobbing up in our midst seeming to say: ‘Hit
me! Hit me as hard as you like and still I’ll sing. And when you know
me as well as I know you, you’ll know how to play the piano.’ So Bach
has been, is, and will be introduced to young people. He inspires love,
or hate, or fear--a triple claim to remembrance.
In the third place, there is an intellectual complexity in his music
which, as a triumph of human skill over the masses of sound, deserves
and has won an altar with perpetual flame. And the marvel is that this
skill is rarely used as an end in itself, but as a means of expressing
very genuine and frank emotion. Here we come upon perhaps the great
reason of Bach’s immortality--the warmth of his music. It is almost
uniquely personal and subjective. In it he poured forth his whole soul
with a lack of self-consciousness and a complete concentration. His was
a powerful soul, always afire with enthusiasm; and his emotion seems
to have clarified and crystallized his music as heat and pressure have
made diamonds out of carbon.
Bach was a lovable man, but a stern and somewhat bellicose one as
well. He was shrewd enough to respect social rank quite in the manner
of his day, as the dedication of the Brandenburg concertos plainly
shows; but the records of his various quarrels with the municipal
authorities of Leipzig prove how quick he was to unrestrained wrath
whenever his rights either as man or artist were infringed upon. A
great deal of independence marked him. The same can hardly be said
either of Scarlatti or of Couperin, the one of whom was lazy and
good-natured, the other gently romantic and extremely polite. Scarlatti
rather enjoyed his indifference to accepted rules of composition; and
there was nothing either of self-abasement or of self-depreciation
in Couperin; but both lacked the stalwart vigor of Bach. Scarlatti
aimed, confessedly, to startle and to amuse by his harpsichord pieces.
He cautioned his friends not to look for anything particularly
serious in them. It is hard to dissociate an ideal of pure and only
faintly colored beauty from Couperin. But in the music of Bach one
seldom misses the ring of a strong and even an impetuous need of
self-expression. In the mighty organ works, and in the vocal works,
one may believe with him that he sang his soul out to the glory of his
Maker; but in the smaller keyboard pieces sheer delight in expressing
himself is unmistakable.
It is this that makes Bach a romanticist, while Couperin, with all
his fanciful titles, is classic. It is this that made Bach write in
nearly the same style for all instruments, drawing upon his personal
inspiration without consideration of the instrument for which
he wrote; while Couperin, exquisitely sensitive to all external
impressions, forced his fine art to conformity with the special and
limited qualities of the instrument for which he wrote the great part
of his music. And, finally, it is this which produced utterance of so
many varied moods and emotions in the music of Bach; while in the music
of Couperin we find all moods and emotions tempered to one distinctly
normal cast of thought.
Bach has been the subject of so much profound and special study that
there is little to be added to the explanation of his character or of
his works. In considering him as a composer for the harpsichord or
clavichord, one has to bear two facts in mind: that he was a great
player and a great teacher.
There is much evidence from his son and from prominent musicians who
knew him, that the technical dexterity of his fingers was amazing.
He played with great spirit and, when the music called for it, at a
great speed. Perhaps the oft-repeated story of his triumph over the
famous French player, Marchand, who, it will be remembered, defaulted
at the appointed hour of contest, has been given undue significance.
As we have had occasion to remark, in speaking of the contest between
Handel and D. Scarlatti, such tourneys at the harpsichord were tests of
wits, not of fingers. Bach was first of all an organist and it may be
suggested, with no disloyalty to the great man among musicians, that he
played the harpsichord with more warmth than glitter. We find little
evidence in his harpsichord music of the sort of virtuosity which makes
D. Scarlatti’s music astonish even today; or, it may be added, of the
special flexible charm which gives Couperin’s its inimitable grace.
Bach is overwhelming as a virtuoso in his organ music, especially
in passages for the pedals. In his harpsichord music he achieves a
rushing, vigorous style. It must not be overlooked that Bach wrote also
for the clavichord, quite explicitly, too. Most of the Forty-eight
Preludes and Fugues are distinctly clavichord, not harpsichord, music.
That is to say, they require a fine shading which is impossible on the
harpsichord. When he wrote for the harpsichord he had other effects in
mind. The prelude of the English suite in G minor or the last movement
of the Italian concerto may be taken as representative of his most
vigorous and effective harpsichord style. They are different not only
in range and breadth, but in spirit as well, from practically all of
the ‘Well-Tempered Clavichord.’ Nevertheless, though these may be taken
fairly as examples of his harpsichord style at its best and strongest,
they are not especially effective as virtuoso music. There is sheer
virtuosity only in the Goldberg Variations.
To Bach as a teacher we owe the Inventions and the ‘Well-Tempered
Clavichord,’ both written expressly for the use and practice of young
people who wished to learn about music and to acquire a taste for
the best music. Volumes might well be filled with praise of them. It
will suffice us only to note, however, that to master the technical
difficulties of the keyboard was always for Bach only a step toward the
art of playing, which is the art of expressing emotion in music. These
two sets of pieces are all-powerful evidence of this--his creed--in
accordance with which he always nobly lived and worked. They have
but one parallel in pianoforte music: the _Études_ of Chopin. The
‘Well-Tempered Clavichord’ is, and always will be, essentially a study
in expression.
His system of tempering or tuning the clavichord, by reason of which
he has often been granted a historical immortality, was the relatively
simple one of dividing the octave into twelve equal intervals. Only the
octave itself was strictly in tune, but the imperfections of the other
intervals were so slight as to escape detection by the most practised
ear. By paying the nominal toll of theoretical inaccuracy, Bach
opened the roads of harmonic modulation on every hand. It must not be
forgotten, however, that most of the pieces of Couperin or Scarlatti,
not to mention many an outlandish chromatic _tour de force_ in the
works of the early English composers, would have been intolerable on a
harpsichord strictly in tune. Other men than Bach had their systems of
temperament. We may take Bach’s only to be the simplest.
Furthermore, that he created a new development of pianoforte technique
by certain innovations in the manner of fingering passages, is
open to question. It is well known that up to the beginning of the
eighteenth century the use of the thumb on the keyboard was generally
discountenanced. Bach himself had seen organists play who avoided using
the thumb even in playing wide stretches. Scales were regularly played
by the fingers, which, without the complement of the thumb, passed
sideways over each other in a crawling motion which is said to have
been inherited from the lutenists. Couperin advocated the use of the
thumb in scales, but _over_, and not under, the fingers. Bach seems the
first to have openly advised and practised passing the thumb under the
fingers in the manner of today. Yet even he did not give up entirely
the older method of gliding the fingers over each other in passages up
and down the keyboard.
His system passed on through the facile hands of his son Emanuel, the
greatest teacher of the next generation; and if it is not the crest
of the wave of new styles of playing which was to break over Europe
and flood a new and special pianoforte literature, is at any rate a
considerable part of its force. Yet it must be borne in mind that
Scarlatti founded by his own peculiar gifts a tradition of playing the
piano and composing for it, in which Clementi was to grow up; and that,
influential as Emanuel Bach was, Clementi was the teacher of the great
virtuosi who paved the way to Chopin, the composer for the piano _par
excellence_.
The foundation of all Bach’s music is the organ. Even in his works
for violin alone, or in those for double chorus and instruments, the
conjunct, contrapuntal style of organ music is unmistakable. His
general technique was acquired by study of the organ works of his great
predecessors, Frescobaldi, Sweelinck, Pachelbel, Buxtehude, Bohm, and
others. He was first and always an organist. So it is not surprising to
find by far the greater part of his harpsichord and clavichord music
shaped to a polyphonic ideal; and, what is more, written in the close,
smooth style which is primarily fitting to the organ.
His intelligence, however, was no less alert than it was acute. There
is evidence in abundance that he not only knew well the work of most
of his contemporaries, but that he appropriated what he found best in
their style. He seems to have found the violin concertos of Vivaldi
particularly worthy of study. He was indebted to him for the form of
his own concertos; and, furthermore, he adapted certain features of
Vivaldi’s technique of writing for the violin to the harpsichord. Of
the influence of Couperin there is far less than was once supposed. The
‘French Suites’ were not so named by Bach and are, moreover, far more
in his own contrapuntal style than in the tender style of Couperin.
Kuhnau’s Bible sonatas are always cited as the model for Bach’s little
Capriccio on the departure of his brother; but elsewhere it is hard to
find evidence of indebtedness to Kuhnau.
But he even profited by an acquaintance with the trivial though
enormously successful Italian opera of his day, and used the _da
capo_ aria as frankly as A. Scarlatti or J. A. Hasse. Still, whatever
he acquired from his contemporaries was but imposed upon the great
groundwork of his art, his organ technique. He never let himself go
upon the stream of music of his day, but held steadfast to the ideal he
had inherited from a century of great German organists, of whom he was
to be the last and the greatest.
So, for the most part, the forms which had evolved during the
seventeenth century were the forms in which he chose to express
himself. Of these, two will be for ever associated with him, because he
so expanded them and filled them with his poetry and emotion that no
further growth was possible to them. These are the fugue and the suite.
V
Most of Bach’s predecessors and many of his contemporaries regarded
the fugue as the highest form of instrumental music. It was the form
in which they put their most serious endeavor. The harmonic basis of
music was generally accepted and skill in weaving a contrapuntal or
a polyphonic piece out of a principal motive or theme, and two or
three subsidiary ones, was more or less common to all musicians. Yet
fugues up to the time of Bach lacked a logical unity of construction.
Excellent as the craftsmanship displayed in them might be, the effect
was not satisfactory. There seemed, for instance, to be no very clear
reason why a fugue should end except that the composer chose to end
it. There was no principle of balance governing the work as a whole.
It was architecturally out of proportion, or it failed to impress its
proportions upon the listener. Bach alone seems to have given the fugue
a perfectly balanced form, to have endowed it not only with life but
with organization as well.
The secret of this is that at the bottom of his fugues lies a broadly
conceived, well-balanced and firmly constructed harmonic plan. It must
be granted, besides, that the subjects out of which he builds them have
a singular vitality and are full of suggestion. But Bach, with his
fertility in highly charged musical ideas and his apparently unlimited
power to weave and ravel and weave musical material in endless
variety of effects, rarely let his skill or his enthusiasm betray his
sense of proportion. There is a compactness in nearly all his fugues
which results from the compression of expressive ideas within the
well-defined limits of a logical, harmonic plan.
Doubtless, the definiteness of this harmonic plan is more or less
concealed from our modern ears by the uninterrupted movement of the
voice parts, which was part of the conventional ideal of polyphonic
writing. We are used to the pauses or stereotyped repetitions of the
more modern style, which throw harmonic goals into prominence whereon
the mind may perch and rest for a moment. Such perches are for the
most part lacking in the Bach fugues. The subject takes flight and
flies without rest until the end. Moreover, the art of playing Bach
which brings out more than the regular and mechanical march of the
voice-parts is unhappily extremely rare. Evenness of execution, that
unhappy _bête-noire_ of the striving student, is exalted far above any
really more difficult, subtle variation of touch which may veil the
flow of the various independent melodies in order to bring out the
beautiful changing harmonies, arising from them like colored mist. But
a simple analysis of any fugue will reveal the clear, well-balanced
plan underneath it.
Pause for a moment at one or two of those that are better known. Take,
for example, the fugue in C-sharp major from the first book of the
‘Well-tempered Clavichord.’ There is the conventional opening section,
in which the theme and secondary themes are announced. We have tonic,
dominant, and a clear cadence again in the tonic. Then begins the
strong pull toward the dominant, so nearly inevitable in most kinds of
musical form, and finally the dominant triumphant with the main theme
strong and clear, and a solid cadence.
Here, on the basis of harmony, the first broad part ends, and the music
goes on to explore and develop through other keys. The harmonies are
rich, the counterpoint melodious, the theme whispered as a recollection
from the first land of familiar tonic and dominant. Then clearly we are
held for a moment to enjoy E-sharp minor before we play back again,
with fragments of the theme, to our well-known dominant and tonic. Off
again on motives we cannot fail to recognize, as if we were again to
wander afield in harmonies. But, no; we sink firmly upon a swelling
G-sharp, our dominant again, the best known note of our theme. The
captive harmonies rise and fall. Movement they have, but escape is
impossible. The return home is inevitable, it is imminent, it is done.
Cheerfully our theme traces its old ground. It pauses a moment as if
contemplating further flight, but the tonic key is all-powerful and the
flight is ended and with it our fugue.
It is all lucid and logical: the first broad section with its
twice-told tonic and its accustomed urge to the dominant; the many
measures of wandering that yet pause to make harmonies clear; the long
struggle against the anchoring G-sharp that pulls ultimately home.
Or take, for example, the more complicated fugue in G minor (Book I).
We find, with few exceptions, the same plan. There are four voices
to enter, and the exposition of the theme and counter-subjects is
consequently longer. But they come in regularly, one after the other,
tonic, dominant, tonic, dominant; and then the irresistible sway of
the whole fabric to the relative major, made clear by an unusually
obvious cadence. There follows the development section and the various
episodic modulations, all held intimately together by recurrences of
the main theme. The keys are well-defined. Then, instead of a firm
anchoring of all this variety on a pedal point, we have a descending,
regular sequence which inevitably suggests an objective point to be
reached--the return of the music at last to the keys in which it was
first made known to us. And now in this final restatement, instead of
retracing step by step the opening measures, we hear the entrances of
the theme pressed close together, overlapping, a persistent leading
F-sharp from which there is but one escape, the final chords settling
majestically into G minor.
Both these fugues are built upon a well-balanced and yet varied
harmonic groundwork. The art of Bach shows especially in the middle
or developing section in the clearness with which he brings out the
various harmonic stages through which he leads his music, and in the
manner in which, by the unmistakable method of a persistent pedal point
or a regular sequence, he brings back the final restatement of his
material in a section balancing the opening section.
Other fugues in the same collection, such as those in C-sharp minor and
in B-flat minor, are more architectural. But, though the marvellous
building up of themes and counter-themes, as in the C-sharp minor
fugue, seems to outline a very cathedral of sound, we shall find none
the less the same tri-partite harmonic base underneath the work as a
whole.
In longer fugues, such as the great one in C minor coupled with a
toccata and that in D minor which is associated with the ‘Chromatic
Fantasy,’ the balance between the opening and closing sections is
somewhat obscured by the long free section in between. But even here a
unity is maintained by the skillful repetition of striking passages and
the return to the final section is always magnificently prepared.
Bach did not bind himself to rules in writing his fugues. He handled
his material with great freedom. Witness many fugues like that in F
minor in the second part of the ‘Well-tempered Clavichord,’ in which
he often subdued the main theme to a capricious, obvious second theme.
Such a treatment of the fugue approaches the dramatic; and this,
together with the division, quite clear in so many, into three sections
of exposition, development and restatement, cannot but suggest some
sort of kinship between the fugue as Bach conceived it and the movement
in so-called sonata form which grew to such splendid proportions in
the half-century after his death. At any rate, we are compelled to
recognize that in spite of the contrapuntal style, inherited from an
age in which harmonic sequence was a secondary element in music, the
Bach fugues owe their imperishable form to the same principles of
harmonic foundation as those upon which the sonata-form of Mozart and
Beethoven is known to rest.
VI
Though in the matter of musical form the name of Bach at once suggests
the fugue, he brought the suite to no less perfection and significance.
It must, however, be granted that the suite suffers by comparison with
the fugue as a great form in music. First, the convention that all its
movements be in the same key is more than likely to make the work as
a whole monotonous. Secondly, the more or less obligatory dependence
upon dance rhythms tends to restrict emotional vivacity and subtlety.
Thirdly, since there can be but little contrast and variety among the
separate movements, the suite lacks organic or internal life.
On the other hand, the emphasis laid upon rhythm may give the
individual movements more obvious charm than the fugue is likely
to exert. Furthermore, though the scope of the movements is more
restricted than that of the fugue, the form is freer. And the neat
balance of structure, with its two repeated sections, is undoubtedly
more sympathetic to our modern ear than the involved architecture of
the fugue. Lastly, though the sequence of allemande, courante, bourrée,
gigue and other conventional movements may give us too much of a good
thing, the sarabande does afford that striking point of contrast which
is the precious asset of the great cyclic forms, whether sonata, string
quartet, or symphony.
Bach wrote three complete sets of suites: the so-called French suites,
which seem to have been written for his second wife during the time of
his stay at Cöthen; the English suites,[20] and the ‘Partitas,’ which
we may call the German suites. Both the English suites and the Partitas
were written at Leipzig, and the latter were among the few works
engraved and printed during his lifetime.
Inasmuch as the form of the suite, its sequence and normal number of
movements, had been clearly defined both by Froberger and Kuhnau some
time before Bach began to write, he cannot be said to have assisted in
its creation, as he did in the creation of the fugue. From the point of
view of form he neither added anything nor, strictly speaking, improved
upon what he inherited. What he did do was to expand the limits of the
various movements to great and noble proportions, and to fill them with
a wealth of musical vigor and imagination hardly suggested before his
day in any instrumental music except Corelli’s.
The French suites are the simplest and the most conventional. The style
of them is unquestionably lighter than that of the later suites; but
this may well be due less to an attempt to write in the _style galant_
of Couperin, than to a desire to compose music technically within
the grasp of his young and charming second wife. The sequence of the
movements is conventional. All six have as their first three movements
the normal allemande, courante and sarabande. All close with a gigue.
Between the sarabande and the gigue he placed a number of extra dances,
two minuets in the first suite, an air and minuet in the second, two
minuets and an _Anglaise_ in the third. The fourth and fifth have each
three of these _intermezzi_, including gavottes, a bourrée and a loure;
and the last has an odd group of four, consisting of a gavotte, a
polonaise, a bourrée and a minuet. Only two of the courantes follow the
French model with its complicated shifting rhythm. The others are of
the more rapid Italian style.
The movements are all short and in the now familiar binary form, with
its first section modulating from tonic to dominant, and repeated; and
its second section going by way of a few more complicated modulations
back again from dominant to tonic. There is little trace of a marked
differentiation between the musical material given first in the tonic,
and that given later in the dominant.
The hand of Bach is, however, not to be mistaken even here in these
relatively simple pieces. The style is firm and for the most part
close upon the organ style; the melodies--and there are melodies--are
surprisingly sweet and fresh; the rhythm, delightfully crisp and
vivacious. It is to be regretted that these early suites have generally
dropped from the concert stage.
In looking over the English suites, which are undoubtedly the greatest
works of their kind, one is first struck by the magnificent preludes.
Each of the six suites has its prelude, longer by far and more
powerful than any of the subsequent movements. In breadth of plan, in
all-compelling vigor and vitality, in a magnificent, healthy emotion,
these preludes may hold their places beside any single movements which
have since been written. It cannot be denied that their style is more
the style of organ than pianoforte music. A certain severity must also
be admitted, which may leave something lacking to the modern ear that
in a relatively long movement craves something of sensuous warmth. But
their power is truly immense.
The style is highly contrapuntal and with few exceptions follows the
convention of uninterrupted movement. This tends, as in many of the
fugues, to hide the formal outline. The listener hears the music
flowing on page after page and may be pardoned if, being able to
recognize in the torrent of sound only one distinctly recurring theme,
he thinks he is hearing music akin to the fugue. As a matter of fact,
however, with the exception of only the first, the structure of these
preludes is astonishingly formal and astonishingly simple. The second,
fourth, fifth and sixth are fundamentally arias, on a huge scale.
The aria form is one of the simplest in music, one of the most
effective as well, and was the first to develop under the influence of
the Italian opera of the seventeenth century. It has frequently been
called the A-B-A form. This is because it is made up of three distinct
sections of which the first and last, predominantly in the tonic key,
are identical, and the middle in some contrasting key or keys and
of contrasting musical material. To spare themselves the trouble of
writing out the last section, composers adopted the convention of
merely writing the Italian words _da capo_ (from the beginning) at
the end of the second section, and of placing a double bar at the
end of the first, over which the singer or player was not to pass
upon his second performance of this section. Bach could have adopted
this economical device, had he so desired, in the four preludes just
mentioned; for each of them proves, upon examination, to be composed
of three distinct sections, the middle more or less the longest, the
first and last note for note the same.
We have already remarked how most of Bach’s fugues, especially the
shorter ones, can be divided into three sections based upon harmony.
In the preludes to the English suites the question of musical material
enters into the division. Take for analysis the prelude in A minor
to the second suite. The first section ends at the beginning of the
fifty-fifth measure. It will be seen to open with a bold figure, the
first notes of which are at once imitated in the left-hand part.
There follows then a constant flow of figure work over a relatively
simple harmonic foundation and through orderly sequences, the hands
frequently imitating each other. Fragments of the opening phrase are
heard five times. In the thirty-first measure a very distinct phrase
is introduced, still in the tonic key, it will be observed, though in
dominant harmony; and this is repeated in purely conventional manner in
three registers, giving way to formal passage work which, falling and
rising, leads to a good stout reiteration of the opening motive. With
this the first section ends, in a full tonic cadence.
The second section begins at once with a wholly new figure which
dominates the music from now on up to the one hundred and tenth
measure. At this measure the second section ends, and here Bach might
have written the words _da capo_; for what follows is but a repetition
of the first fifty-five measures.
It must be noticed that, although the middle section is decidedly
dominated by a figure which does not appear in the first, still the
first theme is not allowed to be forgotten. It may be found five times
in the course of the middle section, dividing, as it were, the new
material into distinct clauses, and serving as well to impress upon our
ears the unity of the piece as a whole.
This device is not truly germane to the aria form. It is suggestive of
the rondo in general; and in particular of the modified rondo form of
the Vivaldi violin concerto, of which we know Bach made a minute study.
In the splendid prelude to the third suite, in G minor, this concerto
form is far more in evidence than the aria form. But the fourth,
fifth, and sixth (barring the slow introduction) are like the second
in superbly simple three-part aria form. This fact is well worth
recollecting in connection with the development of the sonata form of a
later period.
The remaining movements of the suites present no irregularities. These
are the dignified allemandes, the Italian or French courantes, the
elusive, sad sarabandes, always one or two Intermezzi, a Gavotte, a
Bourrée, a Passepied or a Minuet, and the final Gigues with their
conventional contrapuntal tricks and turns.
The Partitas are far less regular in structure. The opening movements
are called by various names. There is a prelude for the first, short
and in simple, rich style; a _Sinfonie_ for the second, with three
distinct parts, suggesting the French overture; a _Fantasie_ for the
third; and for the fourth, fifth, and sixth, respectively, an Overture,
a Preamble, and a Toccata. The second and third have odd movements,
such as a Rondo, a Caprice, a Burlesca, and a Scherzo. On the whole, in
spite of the technical perfection never absent in Bach’s work, and some
movements such as the closing Gigue of the first partita, these suites
are inferior to the English suites. There is something tentative about
the new styles of preludes and about the interpolation of freakish
intermezzi, which rather mars them from the point of view of unity and
balance in the cyclic forms.
But the English suites stand out as magnificent specimens of vigorous
and yet emotional music, great and broad in scope, perfect in
detail--keyboard music which in many ways has never been surpassed.
VII
Besides the fugues and the suites there is a great deal of other and
less easily defined harpsichord and clavichord music. We are not
wanting in titles. We have Preludes, Toccatas, and Fantasias, also some
Capriccios. These are, on the whole, of free and more or less whimsical
structure. The preludes, and one thinks of the forty-eight little
masterpieces of the ‘Well-tempered Clavichord,’ are usually simple
and short. They are for the most part clearly harmonic music. Some
are nothing more than a series of chords, notably those in C major, C
minor, D minor, in the first part. The origin of this simple form of
music has already been discussed; but the origin of the particular and
well-nigh matchless beauty of these of Bach’s preludes can be found
only in the great depths of his own genius, which here more almost than
anywhere else, is incomprehensible. The subtlety of the modulations,
the great tenderness and poetry of the chords, the infinite suggestion
of feeling--all these within little pieces that might easily be printed
on half a page, that have no definite outline, no trace of melody: we
can but close our eyes and wonder.
Other preludes which are far more articulate, so to speak, are still
fundamentally only harmonic music. So we may reckon the preludes in
C-sharp major, in C-sharp minor, in E-flat minor, in G minor, in E
major, in the first book. In these there is but a faint network of
melody, usually contrapuntally treated, thrown over the profoundly
moving harmonies underneath. Some others are little studies in
fleetness or brilliancy of playing, such as those in D major and B-flat
major; and still others are lyrical, suggesting Couperin, or even the
Preludes of Chopin. It may be mentioned in passing that there is little
internal relationship between preludes in the ‘Well-tempered
Clavichord’ and the fugues which follow them. Nor is there evidence
to show that the ones were composed for the others. Rather there is
in many cases reason to believe that the preludes were composed often
without any consideration of a fugue to follow. Still one cannot fail
to observe, or rather to feel, a subtle affinity between most of the
little pieces so united, which must have guided Bach in his selection
and pairing.
[Illustration]
Fac-simile of Bach's Manuscript of the Prelude in C major
(Well-Tempered Clavichord.])
The toccatas and the fantasias are on a much broader plan than the
preludes. The former are essentially impressive, if not show pieces.
They are usually built up upon a series of brilliant runs, oftenest
scales or close arpeggios, with slower moving passages of chords and
contrapuntal weavings scattered here and there. The fantasias are, as
the name implies, quite free and irregular in form. Both fantasias and
toccatas are for the most part distinctly in organ style. Their glory
is, like the beauty of the preludes, a glory of harmony. The long,
rapid runs may have lost their power to thrill ears that have heard the
studies of Liszt; but the chords which lie under them have a majesty
that seems to defy time.
There are several ‘concertos’ and ‘sonatas’ of which to say much is to
repeat what has already been said of other forms of his music. Both are
obviously indebted to Vivaldi for style, or the external features of
style, as well as for form.
The idea of the concerto in Bach’s day was not the idea which Mozart
planted firmly in the mind of musicians. To show off the special
qualities of the harpsichord against the background of an orchestra
is not often evident as a purpose in Bach’s concertos. He wrote
for the harpsichord much as he wrote for the orchestra; or for the
orchestra as he wrote for the harpsichord. To the solo instrument he
allotted passages which required a fineness in execution of details,
or passages which he wished to be softer than the general run of the
music. There is a clear intention to get contrast between the group of
instruments and the solo instrument, but apparently little to write for
the two in a distinct style.
One may take the D minor concerto for harpsichord and a group of
instruments, or even better, the Italian Concerto, for a single
harpsichord, preferably with two manuals, as the perfect type. The
arrangement and number of movements is well worth noticing. There are
three, of which the first and last are in the same key and of about the
same length and style. The middle movement is in a contrasting key, is
shorter and nearly lyric in character. The scheme is perfectly balanced
as a whole, and, it will be noticed, shows little kinship with the
suite.
The first and last movements are in the same rapid tempo and both
are treated contrapuntally throughout. Their internal structure is
fundamentally tri-partite, like the fugues and the preludes in the
English suites, the opening and closing sections being the same. The
middle section brings out new material, but also retains suggestions
of that already announced; the new material tending to take on an
episodic character, like the couplets in Couperin’s rondos. This is
unusually clear in the middle section of the last movement of the
Italian Concerto, in which there are three very distinct episodes, one
of which appears twice, quite after the manner of the Beethoven rondo.
But one feature, which Bach probably acquired from Vivaldi, makes the
whole procedure different from Couperin’s. This is that the main theme,
either the short or long part of it which may be restated between the
episodes, appears in different keys. The same feature is evident in the
preludes to the English suites.
The slow movements in both the D minor and the Italian concertos are
written upon a favorite plan of Bach’s. The bass repeats a certain
form or ground over and over again, above which the treble spins an
ever varied, rhapsodical melody, highly ornate in character. The plan
is an exceedingly simple and a very old one. It may be traced in the
old motets of the mensuralists of the thirteenth century, with their
droning _ordines_; and in the favorite ‘divisions’ of the early English
composers. The Chaconne and the Passacaglia are but variants from the
same root. It is, of course, a simple form of variations.
This leads us, at last, to a brief consideration of what is perhaps
from the point of view of the pianist, if not indeed from that of
the musician, the most astonishing of Bach’s harpsichord music,--the
Goldberg Variations. The story of their origin will bear repetition for
the light it throws on the mood in which they were written.
A certain Count Kaiserling, at one time Russian ambassador to the court
of Saxony, supposedly suffered from insomnia and nervous depression.
He had in attendance a clavecinist named Goldberg, a pupil of Bach’s,
who, among other duties, had by his playing to wile away the miserable
night hours of his unhappy patron. Hearing of the great Bach through
Goldberg, Kaiserling requested him to write some harpsichord music of
pleasant, cheerful character especially for these weary vigils. Bach
composed and sent back a theme and thirty variations, which so pleased
the count that he presented Bach with a goblet filled with one hundred
Louis d’or.
One cannot but smile; the mere thought of thirty variations is
soporific. Yet an examination of them will convince one that Kaiserling
must have rewarded Bach for sheer delight in the music, not for the
blessed forgetfulness in sleep to which it may have been expected to
seduce him. The quality of these variations is inexpressibly vivacious
and charming. Bach shows himself, it is true, always the master of
sounds and the science of music; but this may be taken as the secure
foundation on which he allows himself for once to be the brilliant and
even dazzling virtuoso.
With the object in view of enchanting an amateur who must have been,
_ex officio_, very much a man of the world at large, Bach composed
objectively. That is to say he wrote not so much to express himself as
to please another. The same might be said of two other of the latest
harpsichord works, the _Musikalisches Opfer_ and the _Kunst der Fuge_;
except that in both of these masterpieces his aim was more technical.
In the Goldberg Variations he is, so to speak, off duty.
Consequently, there is in them little trace of the stern, albeit tender
idealist, or of the teacher, or of the man sunk in the mystery of
religious devotion. There are nine canons, at every interval from the
unison to the ninth, some in contrary motion. But even in these learned
processes there is a social suavity and charm. Witness especially the
canon at the third (the ninth variation), and that at the sixth (the
eighteenth variation). Only the twenty-fifth variation seems to show
Bach entirely submerged within himself. Elsewhere he is for the most
part primarily a virtuoso. In the matter of wide skips, of crossing the
hands, and of sparkling velocity, he outruns Scarlatti. In fact the
virtuosity of the variations as a whole is far beyond Scarlatti.
To begin with, he wrote for a harpsichord with two manuals; and in
many of the variations, conspicuously in the eighth, the eleventh, the
twentieth, and the twenty-third, he availed himself to the uttermost
of the advantages of such an instrument. The hands constantly pass
by each other on their way from one extremity of the keyboard to the
other, or cross and recross. The parts which they play are interwoven
in complications which, unhappily, must forever be the despair of the
pianist. In such cases, of course, he may not justly be compared with
Scarlatti, who wrote always for one manual.
But take for example the twenty-eighth and twenty-ninth variations,
which may be played on either one or two manuals. The trills and double
trills in the former, together with the wide and sudden crossing of the
hands, savor of Paganini and Liszt. So do the interlocked chord trills
in the latter, and the airy, whirring triplets which follow them.
Indeed, leaving aside a few effects in double notes, and certain others
of the thunder and lightning variety which were wholly beyond the
possibilities of the harpsichord, the modern pianoforte virtuoso style
has little to show in advance upon the style of the Goldberg Variations.
Furthermore, if the Goldberg Variations are thus amazing from the point
of view of the pianist, they are none the less so to the musician
regarding their general form. There is in them positively no trace of
the stereotyped form of variations of that day, which consisted either
of a repetition of the theme with more and more elaborate ornament, or
at best of a series of arabesques over the more or less bare harmonic
foundation of the theme. The theme is for Bach but the simple germ
of an idea, which, throughout the whole elaborate series, undergoes
change, transformation, metamorphosis, hardly to be recognized in
any of its varied forms, scarcely suggesting a unity to the work as
a whole. Mood and rhythm change. New ideas sprout, seemingly quite
independent of their origin. Even the harmonic foundation is veiled and
altered. Bach speaks, as it were, in beautiful metaphors.
This conception and treatment of the variation form render it true
greatness; endow it, indeed, as a form, with immortal life. External
figurations will grow old-fashioned, or the ear will become satiated
with them. But the Goldberg Variations have an inner life that cannot
wither or decay. Bach’s warm imagination inspired them, gave them
poetry as well as brilliance. No more modern variations are quite
comparable with them except Brahms’ great series on a theme of Handel,
in which, however, there is less warmth than severity, less imagination
than art.
VIII
How shall Bach be placed in the history of music, in particular of
pianoforte music? What part may he be said to play in the development
of the art? The paternity which most composers of the nineteenth
century rejoiced to fasten upon him, is hardly fitting. Bach was the
father of twenty-two children in this life, but musically he died
without heir. His sons Emanuel and Christian were two of the most
influential composers of the next generation; but both discarded their
father’s inheritance as of little service to them in the forward march
of music.
Even before his death Bach knew that the forms and style of music which
he had given his life to perfect and ennoble were already of the past.
That he invented a simple system of temperament in order to afford
himself the harmonic freedom necessary to his expression, or that
he devised a system of fingering which considerably facilitated the
playing of his difficult music, does not constitute him the progenitor
of the new style of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The
composers who followed him knew little or nothing of his music. They
were far less likely to appropriate what they might have found useful
in his old-fashioned art, than to meet the problems inherent in the
new, which they served, with their own ingenuity. Accept, if you like,
Scarlatti as the founder of the modern pianoforte style; Couperin as
the creator of the salon piece. The fugue had had its great day, and so
had the suite. The flawless counterpoint of Bach, with its involutions
and its smoothness, was of too compact a substance to serve the
adolescent, transparent sonata. His harmonies were too rich and fluent.
And Bach had been but once the Bach of the Goldberg Variations.
No; Bach’s harpsichord music attained perfection. A river flowed into
the sea. Further than this no art can go. Where a parallel excellence
seems since to have been achieved, the growth of which it was the
ultimate perfection was from another root. Bach is hardly more the
father of Beethoven, Schumann and Chopin, than Praxiteles is the father
of Michelangelo, or Sophocles of Shakespeare. But he left a standard
in music of the complete mastery and welding of all the elements
which make an art everlasting,--of form, of texture, of noble and
impassioned emotion. And by virtue of this standard which he fixed, he
has exercised over the development of music down to the present day a
greater spiritual influence than that of any other single composer.
The harpsichord works of his great contemporary Handel are far less
significant. Several sets of suites were published in London between
1720 and 1735, also six fugues for organ or harpsichord. In the third
suite of the first set (1720) there is an air and variations. In the
fifth of the same series is the so-called ‘Harmonious Blacksmith,’
the best known of his works for the harpsichord. It is a theme and
variations. The air and variations in B-flat major which has served as
the groundwork of a great cycle of variations by Brahms constitutes the
first number of the second series (1733). There are in other suites
a _Passacaglia_ and two _Chaconnes_, all of which are monotonous
series of variations. One _Chaconne_ has no less than sixty-two varied
repeats. In these works Handel shows little ingenuity. His technical
formulas are conventional and in general uninteresting. The dance
movements of the suites are worthier of a great composer.
Scarlatti, Couperin, and Bach are the great names of harpsichord
music; great because each stands for a supreme achievement in the
history of the art. It may be questioned whether, if the pianoforte
had not come to supplant the harpsichord, composers would have been
able to progress beyond the high marks of these three men, either in
style or in expressiveness. New forms had made their appearance, it
is true, before the death of Bach. These would have run their course
upon the harpsichord without doubt; but it is not so certain that they
could have brought to light any new resources of the instrument. These
had been not only fully appreciated by the three great men, Scarlatti,
Couperin, and Bach, but had been developed to their fullest extent.
And, indeed, it may be asked whether any music has more faithfully
expressed the emotions and the aspirations of humanity than the
harpsichord music of Bach.
FOOTNOTES:
[11] An Englishman, organist at St. George’s, Hanover Square, from
1725 to 1737, when he became insane. He died about 1750. He had made
the acquaintance of both Scarlattis during a stay in Italy, and was
instrumental in bringing D. Scarlatti’s operas and harpsichord pieces
before the British public.
[12] A learned Roman collector, born in 1778, died in 1862. Mendelssohn
had the free use of his library and wrote that as regards old Italian
music it was most complete.
[13] This collection is available to students in America. The sonatas
contained in it are representative of Scarlatti’s style, though, of
course, they represent but a small portion of his work. The collection
can be far more easily used for reference than the cumbersome Czerny.
Unfortunately the complete Italian edition is still rare in this
country.
[14] J. S. Shedlock writes in ‘The Pianoforte Sonata’: ‘The return to
the opening theme in the second section, which divides binary from
sonata form, is, in Scarlatti, non-existent.’ Out of some two hundred
sonatas which I have examined, I have found but one to disprove the
statement. This one exception, No. 11 in the Breitkopf and Härtel
edition of twenty, is so perfectly in sonata form that one cannot but
wonder Scarlatti did not employ the form oftener. [EDITOR.]
[15] See articles by Edward J. Dent in _Monthly Musical Record_ for
September and October, 1906.
[16] See Chrysander’s articles prefatory to his own edition
(_Denkmäler_), edited by Brahms, in the _Monthly Musical Record_ for
February, 1889, _et seq._
[17] The pieces in one _ordre_ may be in major or minor. The first
_ordre_ is in G, that is the pieces in it are either in G minor or G
major. The second is in D, minor and major, the third in C, etc.
[18] That which appeared in 1713. The earlier set is not commonly
reckoned among his publications.
[19] _Musiciana_, Paris, 1877.
[20] The origin of the title is rather doubtful. On the first page
of the manuscript copy, which was in the hands of Christian Bach, of
London, were written the words: _Fait pour les anglais_. The first
prelude is on a theme by Dieupart, a composer then popular in England.