What has been said regarding Bach’s admirable Clavier playing applies
generally to his skill as an organist. The Clavier and Organ have points
in common, but in style and touch are as different as their respective
uses. What sounds well on the Clavier is ineffective on the Organ, and
vice versa. The most accomplished Clavier player may be, and usually is,
a bad organist unless he realises the differing natures of the two
instruments and the uses they serve. I have come across only two men who
can be regarded as exceptions to this general rule—Bach and his eldest
son, Wilhelm Friedemann. Both were finished Clavier performers, but no
trace of the Clavier style was apparent when they played the Organ.
Melody, harmony, and pace were carefully selected with due regard to the
nature and distinctive use of each instrument. When Wilhelm Friedemann
played the Clavier his touch was elegant, delicate, agreeable. When he
played the Organ he inspired a feeling of reverent awe. On the one he was
charming. On the other he was solemn, impressive. So also was his father,
and to an even greater degree. Wilhelm Friedemann was a mere child to him
as an organist, and frankly admitted the fact.(131) The music that
extraordinary man wrote for the Organ is full of dignity, awe-inspiring,
saturated with the atmosphere of devotion. His improvisation was even
more inspired, dignified, and impressive: for then his imagination was
untrammelled by the irksomeness of expressing himself on paper. What is
the essence of this art? Let me, though imperfectly, attempt an answer.
When we compare Bach’s Clavier compositions with those written for the
Organ it is at once apparent that they differ essentially in melodic and
harmonic structure. Hence we conclude that a good organist must select
fitting themes for his instrument, and let himself be guided by its
character and that of the place in which it stands and by the objects of
its use. Its great body of tone renders the Organ ill-adapted to light
and jaunty music. Its echoes must have liberty to rise and fall in the
dim spaces of the church, otherwise the sound becomes confused, blurred,
and unintelligible. What is played upon it must be suited to the place
and the instrument, in other words, must be congruous to a solemn and
majestic fabric. Occasionally and exceptionally a solo stop may be used
in a Trio, etc. But the proper function of the Organ is to support church
singing and to stimulate devotional feeling. The composer therefore must
not write music for it which is congruous to secular surroundings. What
is commonplace and trite can neither impress the hearer nor excite
devotional feeling. It must therefore be banished from the Organ-loft.
How clearly Bach grasped that fact! Even his secular music disdained
trivialities. Much more so his Organ music, in which he seems to soar as
a spirit above this mortal planet.
Of the means by which Bach attained to such an altitude as a composer for
the Organ we may notice his harmonic treatment of the old Church modes,
his use of the obbligato pedal, and his original registration. The
remoteness of the ecclesiastical modes from our twenty-four major and
minor keys renders them particularly appropriate to the service of
religion. Any one who looks at Bach’s simple four-part Hymn tunes
(Choralgesänge) will at once convince himself of the fact. But no one can
realise how the Organ sounds under a similar system of harmonic treatment
unless he has heard it. It becomes a choir of four or five parts, each in
its natural compass. Compare the following chords in divided harmony:
[Divided Harmony, Bach treatment]
with these:
[Divided Harmony, conventional treatment]
which is the more usual form organists employ. We realise instantly the
effect when music in four or more parts is played in the same manner. Bach
always played the Organ so, adding the obbligato pedal, which few
organists know how to use properly. He employed it not only to sound the
low notes which organists usually play with the left hand, but he gave it
a regular part of its own, often so complicated that many organists would
find it difficult to play with their five fingers.
To these qualities must be added the exquisite art Bach displayed in
combining the stops of the Organ. His registration frequently astonished
organists and Organ builders, who ridiculed it at first, but were obliged
in the end to admit its admirable results and to confess that the Organ
gained in richness and sonority.(132)
Bach’s peculiar registration was based on his intimate knowledge of Organ
building and of the properties of each individual stop. Very early in his
career he made a point of giving to each part of the Organ the utterance
best suited to its qualities, and this led him to seek unusual
combinations of stops which otherwise would not have occurred to him.
Nothing escaped his notice which had the slightest bearing on his art or
promised to advance it. For instance, he made a point of observing the
effect of large musical compositions in different surroundings. The
practised ear, which enabled him to detect the slightest error in music
even of the fullest and richest texture, and the art and rapidity with
which he tuned his instrument, alike attest his intuitive skill and
many-sidedness. When he was at Berlin in 1747 he was shown the new Opera
House. He took in its good and bad qualities at a glance, whereas others
had done so only after experience. He was shown the large adjoining Saloon
and went up into the gallery that runs round it. Merely glancing at the
roof he remarked, “The architect has secured a novel effect which,
probably, neither himself nor any one else suspected.” The Saloon, in
fact, is a parallelogram. If a person puts his face to the wall in one
corner of it and whispers a few words, another person at the corner
diagonally opposite can hear them distinctly, though to others between
them the words are inaudible. The effect arises from the span of the
arches in the roof, as Bach saw at a glance. These and similar
observations suggested to him striking and unusual combinations of Organ
stops.
Bach brought the methods I have indicated to bear upon Church music, and
they help to explain his extraordinarily dignified and inspired playing,
which was at once so appropriate and filled the listener with deep awe and
admiration. His profound knowledge of harmony, unfailing originality,
freedom from a secular style, his complete command of the instrument, both
manuals and pedals, whence flowed a generous stream of the richest and
most abundant fancy, the infallible and swift judgment which allowed him
always to select from the treasury of his mind precisely the musical ideas
best suited to the occasion immediately before him, his intuitive grasp of
every detail, and his power to make it serve his artistic ends—in a word,
his transcendent genius brought the art of Organ playing to a degree of
perfection which, till then, it had never attained and hardly will attain
again. Quantz(133) has expressed the same opinion. “The admirable Johann
Sebastian Bach,” he writes, “brought the art of Organ playing to its
highest perfection. It is to be hoped that when he dies it will not be
suffered to decline or be lost, as is to be feared from the small number
of people who nowadays bestow pains upon it.”(134)
Strangers often asked Bach to play to them between the hours of divine
service. On those occasions he was wont to select and treat a theme in
various ways, making it the subject of each extemporisation even if he
continued playing for two hours. As a beginning he played a Prelude and
Fugue on the Great Organ. Then he developed it with solo stops in a Trio
or Quartet. A Hymn-tune followed, whose melody he interrupted in the
subtlest fashion with fragments of the theme in three or four parts. Last
came a Fugue, with full Organ, in which he treated the subject alone or in
association with one or more accessory themes. Here we have the art which
old Reinken of Hamburg considered to be lost, but which, as he afterwards
found, not only survived but attained its greatest perfection in Bach.
Bach’s pre-eminent position and his high reputation often caused him to be
invited to examine candidates for vacant organistships, and to report on
new Organs. In both cases he acted so conscientiously and impartially
that he generally made enemies. Scheibe, late Director of Music at the
Danish Court, who as a young man was examined by Bach on such an occasion,
was so incensed by Bach’s unfavourable verdict that he afterwards avenged
himself in his “Critical Musician” by violently attacking his
examiner.(135) In his examination of Organs Bach equally exposed himself
to trouble. He could as little prevail on himself to praise a bad
instrument as to recommend a bad organist. He was, therefore, severe,
though always fair, in the tests he applied, and as he was thoroughly
acquainted with the construction of the instrument it was hopeless to
attempt to deceive him. First of all he drew out all the stops, to hear
the Full Organ. He used to say jokingly, that he wanted to find out
whether the instrument had good lungs! Then he gave every part of it a
most searching test. But his sense of fairness was so strong that, if he
found the work really well done, and the builder’s remuneration too small,
so that he was likely to be a loser, Bach endeavoured, and often
successfully, to procure for him an adequate addition to the purchase
price.
When the examination was over, especially if the instrument pleased him,
Bach liked to exhibit his splendid talent, both for his own pleasure and
the gratification of those who were present. Such demonstrations of his
powers invariably invited the verdict, that he was conclusively “the
prince of Clavier and Organ players,” a title which Sorge, the late
highly-esteemed organist at Lobenstein,(136) once gave him in a dedicatory
Preface.