one another. Here the simple contrapuntal exercise, which sets them
neatly together, and enfolds their rhythms into each other, will soon
cease to satisfy. The best-sounding contrapuntal relations are those
in which the voices show some slight traces of imitation. From the
lighter imitations rises the stricter canon,[76] and at last the exact
and regular succession of canonic repetitions is reached. The ideal is
then an exercise in which every note of every voice has its imitative
relations, and in which the whole is so interconnected that not a
stone can be removed without bringing about the fall of the whole
structure.
We see Bach himself at this work. He works more lightly and elegantly,
or more heavily and massively, not by arbitrary choice, but according
to his subject. He begins with a Prelude, in which a gentle
interlacing of voices answers to his mood; imitations, arising as if
of their own accord, are inserted here and there. Then there is the
final gigue of a suite, in which a rapid 6/8 theme has to be treated,
in spite of its rapidity, with a certain canonic severity, which gives
solidity to the conclusion of the whole suite. Then again we have a
slow movement of intertwining voices, such as is found after the first
preluding bars of the F sharp minor and C minor Toccatas; the voices
alternately take up the mournful themes, with no strict regularity of
exact succession, wonderfully floating, according to a fixed purpose,
and gently swimming in their harmonies, with no recognisable support,
almost a fairy-like echo of mediæval counterpoint. Or, finally, there
is a regular fugue, which stands there like a monument, with hardly
a superfluous note; in regular succession the voices present the
theme in single or double counterpoint, always alternately imitating
at the fourth or fifth, with a never-failing reference to the tonic
key; and near the close, where still greater closeness of imitation
is demanded, proudly and stiffly vaulted over with diminutions or
augmentations of the theme.
Bach has left us clavier-works in which we see perfected the simplest
form which the contrapuntal conception could assume in his hands.
These are the fifteen “Inventions” and the fifteen “Symphonies,”
which in the manuscript appear with the inscription, “Straightforward
directions, by which the amateur of the clavier, but especially the
one anxious to learn, is shown a plain method, not only of playing
properly in two parts, but also, on further progress, to undertake
three obbligato parts; at the same time also not only gaining good
inventions, but also personally performing them, and, above all,
attaining a cantabile style in playing, as well as a good foretaste of
composition.” This curious preface ends, “Verfertiget von Joh. Seb.
Bach, hochf. Anhalt-Cöthenischen Capell-meister, Anno Christi 1723.”
The simple homeliness of the time speaks in this title-page; and it is
well to appropriate to-day as much of this as possible, in order to
lose nothing in the enjoyment of these fifteen two-voiced Inventions
and these fifteen three-voiced Symphonies. Even to-day Bach demands
the desire of learning in amateurs, who should feed their pleasure
with diligence, and enter into the feelings of the composer. One who
sits at the clavier with a zeal worthy of Bach’s compositions, will
find in these thirty simple contrapuntal pieces a small storehouse of
treasures. He will be captivated by the elegance of this canonic music
as soon as his fingers are able to play in parts; but he will never be
released from the influence of the many-coloured glittering character
of these compositions. They are the drawings of a master, which in
a few strokes depict great objects; sketches of a great artist, so
full of scholarship that they cover the whole of life. The solemn
Invention in F minor, the eccentric one in B flat major, the Symphony
which sounds so mournfully in E flat major, or the chromatically
gloomy F minor, the sprightly staccato G minor, the graceful A major
whose traces are to be found in so many works of a later time, and
the rhythmical, freely-singing B minor, with its harp-like strokes,
in which Beethoven and Chopin, yet unborn, seem to meet--these pieces
were then unique in literature, and still remain so.
[Illustration: Skull of Sebastian Bach, with Seffner’s modelling of
his features.]
In these fantasy-pieces the fugal conception is dealt with on a small
scale; in the Toccatas on a large scale. The clavier-toccatas of Bach
are free pieces of that wonderful many-sidedness of construction
which a music might still possess that had not yet stiffened into
conventionalism. When we sit down to play the Inventions and
Symphonies, we point our fingers as if for miniature work. But when we
sit down to the Toccatas, we dispose our arms and hands, as would have
been said in Bach’s time, “in einer gewissenen grossartigen Freyheit,”
with a certain large freedom. These Toccatas will be eternal
favourites, because of their air of improvisation which develops the
fughetta out of the preludic movement, and scatters the playful,
pleasant technique in the midst of the severities of imitation.
Inexhaustible in the apparent formlessness of their form, they stand
on the threshold of modern literature as the great models of that true
clavier-style which will always have a touch of the extempore as one
of its characteristic features.
In the Toccatas it can be seen how Bach permits his fugal conceptions
organically to grow. It is in them that we see the psychology of
the fugue more purely than in the strictest formal fugal movements.
Take, for example, the F sharp minor Toccata. Here the fingers
preludise over the keyboard, gradually growing slower, the passages
differentiate themselves into motives, which gently imitate each
other, until at length they come to rest on a solid bass. This is the
moment of lyric inspiration; and the soul sighs itself out in a slow
movement, which weaves itself in fugal style, speedily sweeping forth
in its own free, harmonious woven-work. A staccato-motive breaks in;
rolling semiquavers soon crystallise around it; it grows and swells in
a three-voiced fugue; loosens itself, becomes lighter, and passes off
into an operatic joyousness, circling round in repetitions, which to
us seem almost too wide for the narrow significance of this motive.
A pause, and in the new-won freshness emerges the first chromatic
adagio-motive as a lively floating fugue, soon breaking forth into
four voices, and ending in a stirring finale.
Take the D major Toccata. Here there is a joyous prelude of ascending
scales, running off in chords and tremoli. An insertion of a fresh
capriccioso motive follows, which pursues its course mingled with
playful figures. A pause in adagio; mournfully moving melodies, freely
accompanied by tremoli; softly passing over into a quiet three-voice
fugue, which again leads to preluding passages, speaking recitatives,
broken chords, till the great wild hunt of triplets surges in its
fugal power. This D major piece is in content and technique Schumann
all over.
Similarly, one easily recognises the development of soul in the
solemn C minor Toccata, which is dominated almost throughout by
a charmingly-constructed fugue; or in the D minor Toccata, with
its stirring and beautiful adagio-movement; the G minor with its
bacchanalian finale; the rapid G major; and the never-to-be-forgotten
E minor with its clearness and restraint. They are all built up on an
inner meaning, and show a grandeur in their intimate nature such as
only Beethoven has dared to express on the clavier, and a soulfulness
never surpassed by a programme-musician in our century in his own
style. But the fugue has in them become the indwelling soul, and the
whole speech of music has absolutely ascended into their form. We see
it come, grow, and depart.
One who has investigated the psychology of Bach’s fugue in the
Toccatas, will no longer fail to recognise it in his pure and absolute
fugues. A fugue of Bach--this sounds to the _lay_ musical ear as the
very sum of all that is academic. But in reality never were fugues
written which were developed less academically, or which flow so
entirely from the soul. Only take the fugal form not as the end in
itself, and not as a mere example of musical architecture--only
take pains to discover the spirit of its unfolding--and we shall be
astounded at the endless variety of the inward musical life which is
profusely showered into this form. The essence of a fugue of Bach
is just this freedom from all architecture, this suppression of all
calculation in favour of the spiritual development. The fugal form,
that well-known series of enlargements and arrangements of the pure
canon, is to him a prime _datum_, from which, nevertheless, he has
formed no unbending principle. But he works with this material in such
a way that he keeps the development of a piece always subordinate to
the character which the fugal theme imposes on him. The theme is the
title, the piece the contents.
His genius reveals itself in perception of the thousand possibilities
of unfolding which lie in his themes--some advancing diatonically,
some studded over with pauses, some with sudden stops on sevenths,
some marching on in massive choral style, some humorously staccato,
especially those with startling false accents, others drawn in large
outlines which excite curiosity and scarcely stand forth in their
clear rhythm till the ninth or tenth bar, and which he was so fond of
because they gave the strongest stimulus to the coming development.
[Illustration: J. S. Bach.
Bust by Carl Seffner. Modelled on the actual skull. After His, J. S.
Bach (Vogel, Leipsic).]
Let the “layman” accustom himself not to be frightened by fugues. The
fugue in the grand style of Bach, constructed with that unparalleled
art which the first C major fugue in the “Wohltemperiertes Klavier”
displays, or which is shown in the C sharp minor fugue, with its three
themes gradually stratified one above the other, or rolling themselves
off with that extraordinary ease which we daily admire in the famous
A minor--this kind of fugue is a necessary speech of music: it is
melody, it is a natural language which can never disappear. To grasp
it, to assimilate it, until the many voices or even many themes of its
development stand clearly before our eyes in their full characteristic
value, is a feast for the musical epicure to which hardly anything
else can be compared. Bach’s fugues are _playable_. They are not too
easy; but they are so in the spirit of the clavier that the fingers
soon lose their timidity, and the work is as a mirror in which they
speedily recognise the necessary nature of their motion. And there is
an eternally fresh animation in this activity, in which no deception,
no dilettantism, no superfluity can exist for a moment.
The great artist, to whom the “Fantasy” is a presupposition, does
not work on it, however much it may seem to the crowd a chief aim;
he works on the form which requires this kind of work. We see Bach,
through his whole life, labouring at the fugue; and the encyclopædic
work, in the midst of which he died, “The Art of Fugue,” shows us
heights of power in this form which make us dizzy. Besides certain
scattered fugues, he has made a collection of different periods in
the two volumes of the “Wohltemperiertes Klavier.” Here every major
and minor mode of every semitone is doubly treated, with a prelude
and fugue--a comprehensiveness of arrangement which was partly due
to the taste of the time,[77] and partly can be referred to the
secondary aim of the work, which was the introduction of a system of
clavier-tuning which should be sufficient for practical purposes, in
which no acoustic solecisms should be committed to suit convenience,
and in which all the keys should be used indifferently and in their
completeness by pupils. It is not hard to detect that the unity of
these two volumes is not very complete. Even Spitta, a meritorious but
somewhat tasteless biographer, who seeks to find the “higher” unity
in all Bach’s works, is compelled to grant that there are varieties
of style and intrusions of alien matter in the “Wohltemperiertes
Klavier.” But that is no loss. The brilliant many-sidedness of its
contents can support even this discontinuity of style (which, by
the way, is but a slight discontinuity) and this artistic fusion of
certain preludes and fugues, which originally were not composed with
a view to each other. No one will fail to perceive how wonderfully
the preludes combine with each other and with many of the fugues. The
whole, perhaps, gains something of the character of the old composite
epics, such as Homer or the Bible. Bach’s autograph of the first part
bears the date 1722; there is no complete autograph of the second
part, and this Bible of clavier-playing was first printed in 1800, two
or three generations after its production.[78]
If we look at the original editions of the six works which were
printed in Bach’s time, they speak in no uncertain tone of the taste
of the age. From 1726 to 1730 appeared the “Klavierübung”--the first
part, with the suites which are known as “Partiten.” In 1735 we have
the second part of the Klavierübung, containing the Italian Concerto
and the “Ouverture nach französischer Art” (also a suite). In 1739
appeared the third part, in which are found organ chorales along
with four duets for two claviers. In these the distinction between
organ and clavier is as feebly marked as it always was before the
invention of the pianoforte. The fourth part, which appeared in 1742,
contains the great Variations for clavicymbal with two keyboards.
Besides these, in 1747 appeared the “Musikalisches Opfer,” in which
the theme of Frederick the Great is elaborated; and, in 1752, two
years after Bach’s death, was published the “Kunst der Fuge.” He could
only venture on the printing of the “Kunst” in his later years, when
the Bach fugue had made some way in the world. The “Musikalisches
Opfer” came out under the protection of the King; all the other
clavier-pieces which seemed to him likely to pay for the printing are
of a lighter kind--suites and concertos “for the delight of amateurs,”
as it stands on the title-page. The three types of the great Bach
counterpoint--the miniature Invention, the free Toccata, and the
absolute Fugue--then, as now, appealed to too select a circle to
attain the popularity of dances and concertos.
If Bach’s greatness is in the former works stupendous, in the latter
it is loveable. Here we learn to know his other side. It is his “other
manner.” Here, instead of the severe canonic development of a theme,
attention is paid to the voices as parts of a harmonious whole; he
steps down from the cothurnus, and moves familiarly in pleasant
comedy. Still, the contrapuntal conception is the basis of the
structure; but simply harmonised floriations of melody are interwoven,
so that the clavier almost rivals the arioso of a violin. Between
the extremes of the first movement of the “Chromatic Fantasia,”
with its free rhythms, arpeggios, recitatives, and song-passages,
and of the second movement, the regular fugue--extremes which mark
the two limits of Bach’s style--there is an endless abundance of
methods of treatment, in which now the contrapuntal element and now
the arioso takes the lead. We see Bach in this second group of his
clavier-works, the suites and concertos, pass over into the enchanting
fields of Italian sensuous music. But it is remarkable how he never
loses for a single moment his unique depth and his insatiable delight
in form. There is a very abyss between a suite of Bach, founded on
the Eternities, and one of Handel’s, owing its popularity to the
transitory charms of dexterous trivialities.
There are three great groups of Bach’s clavier-suites: the so-called
Partiten, which appeared in print in his own life-time, the “English
Suites,” and the “French Suites.” The Partiten, which were first
published separately, must, as the earliest work of this author known
to the public, have struck the whole world with bewilderment. It was
the first bound of a unique genius, the elevation of a traditional
form of art into quite unparalleled shapes, a storm of intellectual
lightning in a region long regarded as exclusively owned by Frenchmen
and Italians. Even to-day the Partiten belong to the most select class
of clavier-literature; and I cannot for a moment conceive how they
are not to be regarded as superior by many degrees to the English
and French suites. In no book is the future of music more clearly
foretold. To see in the B flat major corrente, Chopin; in the B flat
major gigue, Schumann; in the C minor sinfonia, Beethoven; in the C
minor Rondo and Capriccioso, Mendelssohn; in the A minor Scherzo,
Mozart, is no mere enthusiastic fancy.
[Illustration: The Fifteenth Sinfonia of John Sebastian Bach, from the
Royal Musikbibliothek, Berlin.]
The Partiten outgrew the ordinary scheme of the suites (allemande,
corrente, saraband, gigue) as Beethoven’s sonatas outgrew the old
scheme of sonatas. They have given a new life and a new spirit to
a traditional form. The suite, which at the end of the seventeenth
century has become merely conventional, is so elevated by the spirit
of Bach that it thenceforward stands in the world of actuality.
Even Schumann selects a similar form for the expression of modern
emotions. The suite having been thus despatched, the sonata is in
similar fashion put into precise and regular form, to be transfigured
later by Beethoven with the same modern spirit. Bach had the fortune
and the genius to relegate the traditional suite into the past, and
to see the conventional sonata dawning in the future. Thus with him
the dance-piece and the free piece remained fresh and lively. Suite
and sonata were only different external ways for reducing several
pieces to unity. There, men took their stand on the old familiar
series of dance-tunes, without ever thinking of the dances themselves;
here, they found for the first movement a practical form, and, in
the event, ranged the adagio, scherzo, and rondo together, just as
their predecessors had used the saraband, minuet, and gigue. On this
tendency to unity on the part of the clavier-pieces, from the first
English variations, through Couperin’s Ordres, to Bach’s suites,
Italian sonatas and German sonatas, Chopin’s Albums, Schumann’s
Scenes, Liszt’s Epics, too much stress need not be laid. Even more
than the orchestra, the clavier leans to short pieces, but the
intellect demands some excuse for binding them together.
If we take a striking liveliness as the characteristic of the
Partiten, we indeed find a feature in which they are distinguished
from the French Suites, but which is far from exhausting their
qualities. Solid melodies, humorous capriccios, enchanting dances,
tuneful airs, everything is included in these works. In their pages
we realise how the spirit of Bach strives to utter the very utmost of
which it feels itself capable. And in these introductory preludes,
toccatas, or symphonies, in these flowing allemandes, gliding
correntes, heavy sarabands, filigree-worked gigues, in those numerous
intermezzo movements, such as burlesques, rondos, airs, minuets, and
passepieds, there are turns of genius, the form of which is impressed
for ever on the mind. I think of the sweet running movements of the
astonishing B flat major Gigue; of the brilliant structure of the C
minor Capriccio, which concludes the Partita in place of a Gigue; of
the D major aria, in which breathes the whole grace of the eighteenth
century; of the bold and rhapsodical Saraband in D major; of the
rich colouring of the introductory E minor Toccata; the rocking
melody of the allemande, the sombre glow of the saraband, the wayward
syncopations of the gigue.
The six English Suites, which we may certainly assume to have been
put into juxtaposition by Bach himself, stand between the six
printed Partiten and the six French Suites, whose combination was
only probably, not certainly, due to Bach. They would seem to have
been called “English” suites, because they were arranged for some
Englishman; the original title was apparently “suites avec prélude.”
For the English suites, like the Partiten, have each a fairly long
introduction, fugal in style, but not conforming to the strictest laws
of the fugue. The intermezzi, also, are as numerous as in the case
of the Partiten. But that extreme intellectual severity is wanting;
they are more graceful and polite. This character is especially
noticeable in the introductory fugal movements and the intermediate
dance pieces; and one who seeks rather a play of tone than grandeur
of soul will perhaps find here a richer yield than in the Partiten.
Neat, volkslied-like sarabands, ravishing bourrées, rococo gavottes,
ornamental minuets, the exquisitely delicate passepied in E
minor--these all lie so thick one on another, that one cannot recall
a more sparkling album of dainty dances in the whole eighteenth
century. It is true that in the Vienna school (as in the case of the
younger[79] Muffat and others) there is in this class of dances a
gentle soothing quality, which gives us the first hint of the coming
beautiful Viennese dance-music; but they are, like those of Handel,
too short in duration and too featureless for us to be able to return
to them with the extraordinary affection with which we return to those
of Bach. These are so rich in invention that they cannot in many
centuries lose their flavour. The dancing underpart of the D major
gavotte in the D minor suite, the multiform air of the D minor, E
minor, and A minor sarabands, the filigree-counterpoint of the E minor
Passepied, the extreme daring of the A minor bourrée, the transport of
the A minor prelude, which even grows into a roundelay,--what a depth
of originality is there in all these pieces, in which the repetitions
so wonderfully satisfy the laws of the mind without becoming
mechanical!
How the French Suites came by their name is hard to say. More French
than the English suites they are certainly not, for they are quite
as Bach-like as the latter. Without Preludes and without too many
Intermezzi or “Doubles” (repetitions with variations), they are of
astonishing variety. The Allemandes especially, as first movements in
every suite, display such a manifoldness of form, that in fact nothing
is left in common to them but the four-time beat. The song in the
Saraband and the dance in the Intermezzi appear to the same effect
as in the English suites, and a light tone runs through the whole.
But the tone is lightest of all in the E major suite, which with its
rolling allemande and courante, its singing saraband, its stiff and
formal gavotte, its characteristic polonaise, its tricksy bourrée,
and its cheerful gigue, is a perfect paradise of dainty devices.
The flowing courante in it strikes our fancy; for it is precisely
in the courantes of these suites with their heavy old-fashioned
movements that we shall most often hit on the rare occasions on which
we must regard Bach as already obsolete. The ornamentations tend to
appear less befitting to us, scattered so profusely as they are in
these movements. But to Bach, little as he could as yet succeed in
emancipating himself from ornamentations, they were no longer such a
matter of course as with the old French clavecinists. If we compare
the different manuscripts of his works, we see the uncertainties and
alterations. Bischoff, in his excellent critical edition of Bach’s
clavier-music (Steingräber) has therefore only engraved large those
ornamentations which were without doubt always played by Bach. Taste
will fill them in in certain places on grounds of symmetry and
“thematic”; but they are no longer bewildering in their profusion.