[Johann Sebastian Bach]
_Johann Sebastian Bach. About 1720. (From the picture by Johann Jakob
Ihle, in the Bach Museum, Eisenach)._
Johann Sebastian Bach
His Life, Art and Work. Translated from the German of Johann Nikolaus
Forkel. With notes and appendices by Charles Sanford Terry, Litt.D.
Cantab.
Johann Nikolaus Forkel and Charles Sanford Terry
Harcourt, Brace and Howe, New York
1920
CONTENTS
Introduction
FORKEL’S PREFACE
CHAPTER I. THE FAMILY OF BACH
Chapter II. THE CAREER OF BACH
CHAPTER IIA. BACH AT LEIPZIG, 1723-1750
CHAPTER III. BACH AS A CLAVIER PLAYER
CHAPTER IV. BACH THE ORGANIST
CHAPTER V. BACH THE COMPOSER
CHAPTER VI. BACH THE COMPOSER (continued)
CHAPTER VII. BACH AS A TEACHER
CHAPTER VIII. PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS
CHAPTER IX. BACH’S COMPOSITIONS
CHAPTER X. BACH’S MANUSCRIPTS
CHAPTER XI. THE GENIUS OF BACH
APPENDIX I. CHRONOLOGICAL CATALOGUE OF BACH’S COMPOSITIONS
APPENDIX II. THE CHURCH CANTATAS ARRANGED CHRONOLOGICALLY
APPENDIX III. THE BACHGESELLSCHAFT EDITIONS OF BACH’S WORKS
APPENDIX IV. BIBLIOGRAPHY OF BACH LITERATURE
APPENDIX V. A COLLATION OF THE NOVELLO AND PETERS EDITIONS OF THE ORGAN
WORKS
APPENDIX VI. GENEALOGY OF THE FAMILY OF BACH
Footnotes
ILLUSTRATIONS
_Johann Sebastian Bach. About 1720. (From the picture by Johann Jakob
Ihle, in the Bach Museum, Eisenach)._
Bach’s Home at Eisenach
The Church and School of St. Thomas, Leipzig, in 1723.
Johann Sebastian Bach, circa 1746. _From the picture by Haussmann._
Divided Harmony, Bach treatment
Divided Harmony, conventional treatment
The Bach Statue at Eisenach
Johann Sebastian Bach. _From the picture discovered by Professor Fritz
Volbach_
The Bach Statue at Leipzig
Genealogy Table, p. 303
Genealogy Table, p. 304
Genealogy Table, p. 305
Genealogy Table, p. 306
Genealogy Table, p. 307
Genealogy Table, p. 308
Genealogy Table, p. 309
Genealogy Table, p. 310
INTRODUCTION
Johann Nikolaus Forkel, author of the monograph of which the following
pages afford a translation, was born at Meeder, a small village in
Saxe-Coburg, on February 22, 1749, seventeen months before the death of
Johann Sebastian Bach, whose first biographer he became. Presumably he
would have followed the craft of his father, the village shoemaker, had
not an insatiable love of music seized him in early years. He obtained
books, and studied them with the village schoolmaster. In particular he
profited by the “Vollkommener Kapellmeister” of Johann Mattheson, of
Hamburg, the sometime friend of Handel. Like Handel, he found a derelict
Clavier in the attic of his home and acquired proficiency upon it.
Forkel’s professional career, like Bach’s half a century earlier, began at
Lüneburg, where, at the age of thirteen (1762), he was admitted to the
choir of the parish church. Thence, at the age of seventeen (1766), he
proceeded to Schwerin as “Chorpräfect,” and enjoyed the favour of the
Grand Duke. Three years later he betook himself (1769), at the age of
twenty, to the University of Göttingen, which he entered as a law student,
though a slender purse compelled him to give music lessons for a
livelihood. He used his opportunity to acquire a knowledge of modern
languages, which stood him in good stead later, when his researches
required him to explore foreign literatures. Concurrently he pursued his
musical activities, and in 1774 published at Göttingen his first work,
_Ueber die Theorie der Musik,_ advocating the foundation of a music
lectureship in the University. Four years later (1778) he was appointed
its Director of Music, and from 1779 to 1815 conducted the weekly concerts
of the Sing-Akademie. In 1780 he received from the University the
doctorate of philosophy. The rest of his life was spent at Göttingen,
where he died on March 17, 1818, having just completed his sixty-ninth
year.
That Forkel is remembered at all is due solely to his monograph on Bach.
Written at a time when Bach’s greatness was realised in hardly any
quarter, the book claimed for him pre-eminence which a tardily enlightened
world since has conceded him. By his generation Forkel was esteemed
chiefly for his literary activity, critical ability, and merit as a
composer. His principal work, _Allgemeine Geschichte der Musik,_ was
published in two volumes at Leipzig in 1788 and 1801. Carl Friedrich
Zelter, Goethe’s friend and correspondent, dismissed the book
contemptuously as that of an author who had “set out to write a history of
music, but came to an end just where the history of music begins.”
Forkel’s work, in fact, breaks off at the sixteenth century. But the
curtailed _ History_ cleared the way for the monograph on Bach, a more
valuable contribution to the literature of music. Forkel already had
published, in three volumes, at Gotha in 1778, his _Musikalisch-kritische
Bibliothek,_ and in 1792 completed his critical studies by publishing at
Leipzig his _Allgemeine Literatur der Musik._
Forkel was also a student of the music of the polyphonic school. He
prepared for the press the scores of a number of sixteenth century Masses,
Motets, etc., and fortunately received proofs of them from the engraver.
For, in 1806, after the Battle of Jena, the French impounded the plates
and melted them down. Forkel’s proofs are still preserved in the Berlin
Royal Library. He was diligent in quest of Bach’s scattered MSS., and his
friendship with Bach’s elder sons, Carl Philipp Emmanuel and Wilhelm
Friedemann, enabled him to secure precious relics which otherwise might
have shared the fate of too many of Bach’s manuscripts. He took an active
interest in the proposal of Messrs. Hoffmeister and Kühnel, predecessors
of C. F. Peters at Leipzig, to print a “kritisch-korrecte” edition of
Bach’s Organ and Clavier works. Through his friend, Johann Gottfried
Schicht, afterwards Cantor at St. Thomas’s, Leipzig, he was also
associated with Breitkopf and Haertel’s publication of five of Bach’s six
extant Motets in 1802-3.
As a composer Forkel has long ceased to be remembered. His works include
two Oratorios, _ Hiskias_ (1789) and _Die Hirten bey der Krippe_; four
Cantatas for chorus and orchestra; Clavier Concertos, and many Sonatas and
Variations for the Harpsichord.
In 1802, for reasons which he explains in his Preface, Forkel published
from Hoffmeister and Kühnel’s “Bureau de Musique” his _Ueber Johann
Sebastian Bachs Leben, Kunst und Kunstwerke. Für patriotische Verehrer
echter musikalischer Kunst,_ of which a new edition was issued by Peters
in 1856. The original edition bears a dedication to Gottfried Baron van
Swieten(1) (1734-1803), Prefect of the Royal Library, Vienna, and sometime
Austrian Ambassador in Berlin, a friend of Haydn and Mozart, patron of
Beethoven, a man whose age allowed him to have seen Bach, and whose career
makes the association with Bach that Forkel’s dedication gives him not
undeserved. It was he, an ardent Bach enthusiast, who introduced the
youthful Mozart to the music of the Leipzig Cantor. “I go every Sunday at
twelve o’clock to the Baron van Swieten,” Mozart writes in 1782, “where
nothing is played but Handel and Bach, and I am now making a collection of
the Fugues of Bach.” The merit and limitations of Forkel’s book will be
considered later. For the moment the fact deserves emphasis that,
inadequate as it is, it presented a fuller picture of Bach than so far had
been drawn, and was the first to render the homage due to his genius.
In an illuminating chapter (xii.), _Death and Resurrection_, Schweitzer
has told the story of the neglect that obscured Bach’s memory after his
death in 1750. Isolated voices, raised here and there, acclaimed his
genius. With Bach’s treatise on _The Art of Fugue_ before him, Johann
Mattheson (1681-1664), the foremost critic of the day, claimed that
Germany was “the true home of Organ music and Fugue.” Friedrich Wilhelm
Marpurg (1718-95), the famous Berlin theorist, expressed the same opinion
in his preface to the edition of that work published shortly after Bach’s
death. But such appreciations were rare. Little of Bach’s music was in
print and available for performance or critical judgment. Even at St.
Thomas’s, Leipzig, it suffered almost complete neglect until a generation
after Forkel’s death. The bulk of Bach’s MSS. was divided among his
family, and Forkel himself, with unrivalled opportunity to acquaint
himself with the dimensions of Bach’s industry, knew little of his music
except the Organ and Clavier compositions.
In these circumstances it is not strange that Bach’s memory waited for
more than half a century for a biographer. Forkel, however, was not the
first to assemble the known facts of Bach’s career or to assert his place
in the music of Germany.
Putting aside Johann Gottfried Walther’s brief epitome in his _Lexikon_
(1732), the first and most important of the early notices of Bach was the
obituary article, or “Nekrolog,” contributed by his son, Carl Philipp
Emmanuel, and Johann Friedrich Agricola, one of Bach’s most distinguished
pupils, to the fourth volume of Mizler’s _Musikalische Bibliothek,_
published at Leipzig in 1754. The authors of this appreciation give it an
intimacy which renders it precious. But Mizler’s periodical was the organ
of a small Society, of which Bach had been a member, and outside its
associates can have done little to extend a knowledge of the subject of
the memoir.
Johann Friedrich Agricola contributed notes on Bach to Jakob Adlung’s
_Musica mechanica Organoedi,_ published in two volumes at Berlin in 1768.
The article is valuable chiefly for Agricola’s exposition of Bach’s
opinions upon Organ and Clavier building.
With the intention to represent him as “the coryphaeus of all organists,”
Johann Adam Hiller, who a few years later became Cantor at St. Thomas’s,
Leipzig, published there in 1784 a brief account of Bach in his
_Lebensbeschreibungen berühmter Musikgelehrten und Tonkünstler neuerer
Zeit._
Four years after Hiller’s notice, Ernst Ludwig Gerber published at
Leipzig, in two volumes, 1790-92, his _Historisch-biographische Lexikon
der Tonkünstler._ As in Hiller’s case, Gerber, whose father had been
Bach’s pupil, was chiefly interested in Bach as an organist.
Coincidently with Gerber, another of Bach’s pupils, Johann Martin
Schubart, who succeeded him at Weimar in 1717, sketched his
characteristics as a performer in the _Aesthetik der Tonkunst_, published
at Berlin by his son in the _Deutschen Monatsschrift_ in 1793.
In 1794 appeared at Leipzig the first volume of a work which Spitta
characterises as fantastic and unreliable, so far as it deals with Bach,
Friedrich Carl Gottlieb Hirsching’s _Historisch-literarisches Handbuch_ of
notable persons deceased in the eighteenth century.
Last of Forkel’s forerunners, A. E. L. Siebigke published at Breslau in
1801 his _Museum deutscher Tonkünstler,_ a work which adds nothing to our
knowledge of Bach’s life, but offers some remarks on his style.
Little, if any, information of value, therefore, had been added to the
_Nekrolog_ of 1754 when Forkel, in 1802, produced his monograph on Bach
and his music. Nor, viewed as a biography, does Forkel much enlarge our
knowledge of the conditions of Bach’s life. He had the advantage of
knowing Bach’s elder sons, but appears to have lacked curiosity regarding
the circumstances of Bach’s career, and to have made no endeavour to add
to his imperfect information, even regarding his hero’s life at Leipzig,
upon which it should have been easy for him to obtain details of utmost
interest. His monograph, in fact, is not a “Life” in the biographic
sense, but a critical appreciation of Bach as player, teacher, and
composer, based upon the Organ and Clavier works, with which alone Forkel
was familiar.
It would be little profitable to weigh the value of Forkel’s criticism.
We are tempted to the conclusion that Bach appealed to him chiefly as a
supreme master of technique, and our hearts would open to him more widely
did not his appreciation of Bach march with a narrow depreciation of
Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, the last of whom, he declared ex cathedra,
had not produced “a single work which can be called a masterpiece.” Gluck
he frankly detested.
But Forkel’s monograph is notable on other grounds. It was the first to
claim for Bach a place among the divinities. It used him to stimulate a
national sense in his own people. Bach’s is the first great voice from out
of Germany since Luther. Of Germany’s own Kisorgimento, patently
initiated by Goethe a generation after Johann Sebastian’s death, Bach
himself is the harbinger. In his assertion of a distinctive German
musical art he set an example followed in turn by Mozart, Weber, and
Wagner. “With Bach,” wrote Wagner, “the German Spirit was born anew.” It
is Forkel’s perpetual distinction that he grasped a fact hidden from
almost all but himself. In his Preface, and more emphatically in the
closing paragraph of his last Chapter, he presents Bach as the herald of a
German nation yet unformed.
It is a farther distinction of Forkel’s monograph that it made converts.
With its publication the clouds of neglect that too long had obscured
Bach’s grandeur began to melt away, until the dizzy altitude of his genius
stood revealed. The publication of the five Motets (1803) was followed by
that of the Magnificat in 1811, and of the Mass in A in 1818. A beginning
was made with the Cantatas in 1821, when Breitkopf and Haertel published
“Ein’ feste Burg” (No. 80), commended in an article written (1822) by
Johann Friedrich Rochlitz (1769-1842), the champion of Beethoven, as now
of Bach. Another enthusiastic pioneer was Carl Friedrich Zelter
(1758-1832), conductor of the Berlin Sing-Akademie, who called Bach “a
sign of God, clear, yet inexplicable.” To him in large measure was due the
memorable revival of the _St. Matthew Passion_ at Berlin, which the
youthful Mendelssohn, Zelter’s pupil, conducted in March 1829, exactly one
hundred years after the first production of the mighty work at Leipzig.
In the following years it was given at Dresden and many other German
towns. Leipzig heard it again after a barren interval in 1841, and did
tardy homage to its incomparable composer by erecting (1843) the statue
that stands in the shadow of St. Thomas’s Church, hard by the Cantor’s
home for a quarter of a century.
Meanwhile, in 1830 and 1831 the _St. Matthew Passion_ and _St. John
Passion_ had been engraved, and by 1845 the B minor Mass was in print.
The credit of having revived it belongs to Johann Nepomuk Schelble
(1789-1837), conductor of the Frankfort Caecilienverein, though the Berlin
Sing-Akademie was the first to give a performance, considerably curtailed,
of the whole work in 1835. A little later, in the middle of the forties,
Peters began to issue his “kritisch-korrecte” edition of the Organ works,
which at length made Bach widely known among organists. But the
publication of the Cantatas proceeded slowly. Only fourteen of them were
in print in 1850, when the foundation of the Bachgesellschaft, on the
centenary of Bach’s death, focused a world-wide homage. When it dissolved
in 1900 its mission was accomplished, the entire works(2) of Bach were
published, and the vast range of his genius was patent to the world.
It remains to discuss the first English version of Forkel’s monograph,
published in 1820, with the following title-page:
LIFE OF JOHN SEBASTIAN BACH; with a Critical View of his
Compositions. By J. N. Forkel, Author of The Complete History of
Music, etc., etc. Translated from the German. London: Printed for
T. Boosey and Co., Holles-Street, Cavendish-Square. 1820.
The book was published in February 1820; it was announced, with a slightly
differently worded title-page, in the _New Monthly Magazine and Universal
Register_ for March 1820 (p. 341), and the _Scots Magazine_ for the same
month ( vol. lxxxv. p. 263). The _New Monthly_ states the price as 5s.,
the _Quarterly Review_ (vol. xxiii. p. 281) as 6s. The book contains
xi+116+3 pages of Music Figures, crown octavo, bound in dark unlettered
cloth. It has neither Introduction, notes (other than Forkel’s), nor
indication of the translator’s identity. Much of the translation is so
bad as to suggest grave doubts of the translator’s comprehension of the
German original; while his rendering of Forkel’s critical chapters rouses
a strong suspicion that he also lacked technical equipment adequate to his
task. It is, in fact, difficult to understand how such an unsatisfactory
piece of work found its way into print.
The character of the 1820 translation has a close bearing upon its
authorship. In the article on Bach in the new _Grove_ it is attributed to
Samuel Wesley (1766-1837), an attractive suggestion, since Wesley was as
enthusiastic a Bach pioneer in this country as Forkel himself was in
Germany. But the statement is not correct. In Samuel Wesley’s _Letters to
Mr. Jacobs relating to the Introduction into this Country of the Works of
J. S. Bach_ (London, 1875) we find the clue. On October 17, 1808, Wesley
writes: “We are (in the first place) preparing for the Press an authentic
and accurate Life of Sebastian, which Mr. Stephenson the Banker (a most
zealous and scientific member of our Fraternity) has translated into
English from the German of Forkel.”
Unfortunately, it is impossible to identify Stephenson precisely, or to
detect his activities in the musical circle in which Wesley includes him.
In 1820 there was in Lombard Street a firm of bankers under the style of
“Remington, Stephenson, Remington, and Toulmin,” the active partner being
Mr. Rowland Stephenson, a man of about forty in that year. The firm was
wound up in bankruptcy in 1829, Stephenson having absconded to America the
previous year. He appears to have been the only banker of that name
holding such a recognised position as Wesley attributes to him, though it
remains no more than a conjecture that he was the author of the
translation issued in 1820.(3) But whoever “Stephenson the Banker” may
have been, the poverty of his work fails to support Wesley’s commendation
of his “scientific” equipment, and suggests that his purse rather than his
talents were serviceable to Wesley’s missionary campaign.
For the facts of Bach’s life, and as a record of his artistic activities,
Forkel admittedly is inadequate and often misleading. Stephenson
necessarily was without information to enable him to correct or supplement
his author. Recent research, and particularly the classic volumes of
Spitta and Schweitzer, have placed the present generation in a more
instructed and therefore responsible position. The following pages,
accordingly, have been annotated copiously in order to bring Forkel into
line with modern scholarship. His own infrequent notes are invariably
indicated by a prefixed asterisk. It has been thought advisable to write
an addendum to Chapter II. in order to supplement Forkel at the weakest
point of his narrative.
Readers of Spitta’s first volume probably will remember the effort to
follow the ramifications of the Bach pedigree unaided by a genealogical
Table. It is unfortunate that Spitta did not set out in that form the
wealth of biographical material his pages contain. To supply the
deficiency, and to illustrate Forkel’s first Chapter, a complete
Genealogical Table is provided in Appendix VI., based mainly upon the
biographical details scattered over Spitta’s pages.
In Chapter IX. Forkel gives a list of Bach’s compositions known to him.
It is, necessarily, incomplete. For that reason Appendices I. and II.
provide a full catalogue of Bach’s works arranged under the periods of his
career. In the case of the Oratorios, Cantatas, Motets, and “Passions,”
it is not difficult to distribute them upon a chronological basis. The
Clavier works also can be dated with some approximation to closeness. The
effort is more speculative in the case of the Organ music.
In his Preface Forkel suggests the institution of a Society for the
publication and study of Bach’s works. The proposal was adopted after
half a century’s interval, and in Appendix III. will be found a complete
and detailed catalogue of the publications of the Old and New
Bachgesellschaft from 1850 to 1918 inclusive. The Society’s issues for
1915-18 have not yet reached this country. The present writer had an
opportunity to examine them in the Library of the Cologne Conservatorium
of Music in the spring of this year.
In this Introduction will be found a list of works bearing on Bach, which
preceded Forkel’s monograph. Appendix IV. provides a bibliography of Bach
literature published subsequently to it.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to Mr. Ivor Atkins, of Worcester
Cathedral, and to Mr. W. G. Whittaker, of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, who have
read these pages in proof, and improved them by their criticism.
C. S. T.
October 1, 1919.
FORKEL’S PREFACE
Many years ago I determined to give the public an account of the life of
Johann Sebastian Bach, with some reflections upon his genius and his
works. The brief article by Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach(4) and Herr
Agricola,(5) formerly composer to the Court of Prussia, contributed to the
fourth volume of Mizler’s _Musical Library,_(6) can hardly be deemed
adequate by Bach’s admirers and, but for the desire to complete my
_General History of Music,_(7) I should have fulfilled my purpose long
ago. As Bach, more than any other artist, represents an era in the
history of music, it was my intention to devote to the concluding volume
of that work the materials I had collected for a history of his career.
But the announcement that Messrs. Hoffmeister and Kühnel, the Leipzig
music-sellers and publishers, propose to issue a complete and critical
edition of Bach’s works has induced me to change my original plan.(8)
Messrs. Hoffmeister and Künel’s project promises at once to advance the
art of music and enhance the honour of the German name. For Bach’s works
are a priceless national patrimony; no other nation possesses a treasure
comparable to it. Their publication in an authoritative text will be a
national service and raise an imperishable monument to the composer
himself. All who hold Germany dear are bound in honour to promote the
undertaking to the utmost of their power. I deem it a duty to remind the
public of this obligation and to kindle interest in it in every true
German heart. To that end these pages appear earlier than my original
plan proposed; for they will enable me to reach a larger number of my
fellow countrymen. The section on Bach in my _History of Music_ probably
would have been read by a handful of experts or musical artists. Here I
hope to speak to a larger audience. For, let me repeat, not merely the
interests of music but our national honour are concerned to rescue from
oblivion the memory of one of Germany’s greatest sons.
One of the best and most effective means of popularising musical
masterpieces is to perform them in public. In that way works of merit
secure a widening audience. People listen to them with pleasure in the
concert room, church, or theatre, remember the agreeable impression they
created, and purchase them when published, even though they cannot always
play them. But Bach’s works unfortunately are rarely heard nowadays; for
the number of persons capable of playing them adequately is at best
inconsiderable. It would have been otherwise had Bach given touring
performances of his music,(9) a labour for which he had neither time nor
liking. Many of his pupils did so, and though their skill was inferior to
their master’s, the admiration and astonishment they excited revealed the
grandeur of his compositions. Here and there, too, were found persons who
desired to hear on their own instrument pieces which the performer had
played best or gave them most pleasure. They could do so more easily for
having heard how the piece ought to sound.
But, to awaken a wide appreciation of musical masterpieces depends upon
the existence of good teachers. The want of them is our chief difficulty.
In order to safeguard their credit, the ignorant and incompetent of their
number are disposed to decry good music, lest they should be asked to play
it. Consequently, their pupils, condemned to spend time, labour, and
money on second-rate material, will not after half a dozen years, perhaps,
show themselves farther advanced in sound musical appreciation than they
were at the outset. Whereas, under a good teacher, half the time, labour,
and money produces progressive improvement. Time will show whether this
obstacle can be surmounted by making Bach’s works accessible in the music
shops and by forming a Society among the admirers of his genius to make
them known and promote their study.(10)
At any rate, if music is really an art, and not a mere pastime, its
masterpieces must be more widely known and performed than in fact they
are. And here Bach, prince of classic composers, can render yeoman
service.(11) For his music is so well calculated to educate the student to
distinguish what is trivial from what is good, and to comport himself as
an artist in whatever branch of the art he makes his own. Moreover, Bach,
whose influence pervades every musical form, can be relied on more than
any other composer to correct the superficiality which is the bane of
modern taste. Neglect of the classics is as prejudicial to the art of
music as it would be fatal to the interests of general culture to banish
Greek and Latin writers from our schools. Modern taste exhibits no shame
in its preference for agreeable trifles, in its neglect of everything that
makes a demand, however slight, upon its attention. To-day we are menaced
by a proposal to banish the classics from our schoolrooms. Equally
short-sighted vision threatens to extinguish our musical classics as well.
And is it surprising? Modern art displays such poverty and frivolity that
it well may shrink from putting itself in context with great literature,
particularly with Bach’s mighty and creative genius, and seek rather to
proscribe it.
I fain would do justice to the sublime genius of this prince of musicians,
German and foreign! Short of being such a man as he was, dwarfing all
other musicians from the height of his superiority, I can conceive no
greater distinction than the power to comprehend and interpret him to
others.(12) The ability to do so must at least connote a temperament not
wholly alien from his own. It may even hint the flattering prospect that,
if circumstances had opened up the same career, similar results might have
been forthcoming. I am not presumptuous to suggest such a result in my
own case. On the contrary I am convinced that there are no words adequate
to express the thoughts Bach’s transcendent genius stirs one to utter.
The more intimately we are acquainted with it the greater must be our
admiration. Our utmost eulogy, our deepest expressions of homage, must
seem little more than well-meant prattle. No one who is familiar with the
work of other centuries will contradict or hold my statement exaggerated,
that Bach cannot be named except in tones of rapture, and even of devout
awe, by those who have learnt to know him. We may discover and lay bare
the secrets of his technique. But his power to inspire into it the breath
of genius, the perfection of life and charm that moves us so powerfully,
even in his slightest works, must always remain extraordinary and
insoluble.
I do not choose to compare Bach with other artists. Whoever is interested
to measure him with Handel will find a just and balanced estimate of their
relative merits, written by one fully informed for the task, in the first
number of the eighty-first volume of the _Universal German Library,_ pages
295-303.(13)
So far as it is not derived from the short article in Mizler’s _Library_
already mentioned,(14) I am indebted for my information to the two eldest
sons of Bach himself.(15) Not only was I personally acquainted with them,
but I corresponded regularly for many years with both,(16) particularly
Carl Philipp Emmanuel. The world knows them as great artists. But
probably it is not aware that to the last moment of their lives they spoke
of their father’s genius with enthusiastic admiration.(17) From my early
youth I have been inspired by an appreciation no less deep than theirs. It
was a frequent theme of conversation and correspondence between us.
Thus, having been in a position to inform myself on all matters relating
to Bach’s life, genius, and work, I may fairly hold myself competent to
communicate to the public what I have learnt and to offer useful
reflections upon it. I take advantage of my opportunity the more readily
because it permits me to draw attention to an enterprise(18) that promises
to provide a worthy monument to German art, a gallery of most instructive
models to the sincere artist, and to afford music lovers an inexhaustible
source of sublimest pleasure.
CHAPTER I. THE FAMILY OF BACH
If there is such a thing as inherited aptitude for art it certainly showed
itself in the family of Bach. For six successive generations scarcely two
or three of its members are found whom nature had not endowed with
remarkable musical talent, and who did not make music their
profession.(19)
Veit Bach,(20) ancestor of this famous family, gained a livelihood as a
baker at Pressburg in Hungary. When the religious troubles of the
sixteenth century broke out he was driven to seek another place of abode,
and having got together as much of his small property as he could, retired
with it to Thuringia, hoping to find peace and security there. He settled
at Wechmar, a village near Gotha,(21) where he continued to ply his trade
as a baker and miller.(22) In his leisure hours he was wont to amuse
himself with the lute,(23) playing it amid the noise and clatter of the
mill. His taste for music descended to his two sons(24) and their
children, and in time the Bachs grew to be a very numerous family of
professional musicians, Cantors, Organists, and Town Musicians,(25)
throughout Thuringia.
Not all the Bachs, however, were great musicians. But every generation
boasted some of them who were more than usually distinguished. In the
first quarter of the seventeenth century three of Veit Bach’s
grandchildren showed such exceptional talent that the Count of
Schwarzburg-Arnstadt thought it worth while to send them at his expense to
Italy, then the chief school of music, to perfect themselves in the
art.(26)
We do not know whether they rewarded the expectations of their patron, for
none of their works has survived. The fourth generation(27) of the family
produced musicians of exceptional distinction, and several of their
compositions, thanks to Johann Sebastian Bach’s regard for them, have come
down to us. The most notable of these Bachs are:
1. Johann Christoph Bach, Court and Town Organist at Eisenach.(28) He
was particularly happy in his beautiful melodies and in setting
words to music. In the _Archives of the Bachs,_(29) which was in
Carl Philipp Emmanuel’s possession at Hamburg, there is a Motet by
Johann Christoph in which he boldly uses the augmented sixth, a
proceeding considered extremely daring in his day.(30) He was also
an uncommon master of harmony, as may be inferred from a Cantata
composed by him for Michaelmas, to the words “Es erhub sich ein
Streit,” etc., which has twenty-two obbligato parts in correct
harmony.(31) Yet another proof of his rare skill is in the alleged
fact that he never played the Organ or Clavier in less than five
parts.(32) Carl Philipp Emmanuel had a particularly warm regard for
him.(33) I remember the old man playing some of his compositions to
me on the Clavier at Hamburg, and how quizzically he looked at me
when one of these daring passages occurred.(34)
2. Johann Michael Bach, Organist and Town Clerk at Gehren.(35) He was
the younger brother of Johann Christoph, and like him, a
particularly good composer. The Archives already mentioned(36)
contain several of his Motets, including one for eight voices in
double chorus,(37) and many compositions for Church use.
3. Johann Bernhard Bach, Musician in the Prince’s Kapelle and Organist
at Eisenach.(38)He is said to have composed remarkably fine Suites,
or Overtures, in the French style.(39)
Besides these three men, the Bachs boasted several able composers in the
generations preceding Johann Sebastian,(40) men who undoubtedly would have
obtained higher positions, wider reputation, and more brilliant fortune if
they could have torn themselves from their native Thuringia to display
their gifts elsewhere in Germany or abroad. But none of the Bachs seems to
have felt an inclination to migrate. Modest in their needs, frugal by
nature and training, they were content with little, engrossed in and
satisfied by their art, and wholly indifferent to the decorations which
great men of that time were wont to bestow on artists as special marks of
honour. The fact that others who appreciated them were thus distinguished
did not rouse the slightest envy in the Bachs.
The Bachs not only displayed a happy contentedness, indispensable for the
cheery enjoyment of life, but exhibited a clannish attachment to each
other. They could not all live in the same locality. But it was their
habit to meet once a year at a time and place arranged beforehand. These
gatherings generally took place at Erfurt, Eisenach, and sometimes at
Arnstadt. Even after the family had grown very large, and many of its
members had left Thuringia to settle in Upper and Lower Saxony and
Franconia, the Bachs continued their annual meetings. On these occasions
music was their sole recreation. As those present were either Cantors,
Organists, or Town Musicians, employed in the service of the Church and
accustomed to preface the day’s work with prayer, their first act was to
sing a Hymn. Having fulfilled their religious duty, they spent the rest
of the time in frivolous recreations. Best of all they liked to
extemporise a chorus out of popular songs, comic or jocular, weaving them
into a harmonious whole while declaiming the words of each. They called
this hotch-potch a “Quodlibet,” laughed uproariously at it, and roused
equally hearty and irrepressible laughter in their audience.(41) It is
suggested that German Comic Opera has its origin in these trifles. But
the “Quodlibet” was a familiar institution in Germany at a much earlier
period. I possess a collection of them printed and published at Vienna in
1542.(42)
But these light-hearted Thuringians, and even those of their family who
treated their art more seriously and worthily, would not have escaped
oblivion had there not emerged in the fulness of time one whose genius and
renown reflected their splendour and brilliancy on his forbears. This
man, the glory of his family, pride of his countrymen, most gifted
favourite of the Muse of Music, was Johann Sebastian Bach.
[Bach’s Home at Eisenach]
Bach’s Home at Eisenach