Bach’s first attempts at composition, like all early efforts, were
unsatisfactory. Lacking special instruction to direct him towards his
goal, he was compelled to do what he could in his own way, like others who
have set out upon a career without a guide. Most youthful composers let
their fingers run riot up and down the keyboard, snatching handfuls of
notes, assaulting the instrument in wild frenzy, in hope that something
may result from it. Such people are merely Finger Composers—in his riper
years Bach used to call them Harpsichord Knights—that is to say, their
fingers tell them what to write instead of being instructed by the brain
what to play.(137) Bach abandoned that method of composition when he
observed that brilliant flourishes lead nowhere. He realised that musical
ideas need to be subordinated to a plan and that the young composer’s
first need is a model to instruct his efforts. Opportunely Vivaldi’s
Concertos for the Violin,(138) then recently published, gave him the
guidance he needed. He had often heard them praised as admirable works of
art, and conceived the happy idea of arranging them for the Clavier.(139)
Hence he was led to study their structure, the musical ideas on which they
are built, the variety of their modulations, and other characteristics.
Moreover, in adapting to the Clavier ideas and phrases originally written
for the Violin Bach was compelled to put his brain to work, and so freed
his inspiration from dependence on his fingers. Henceforth he was able to
draw ideas out of his own storehouse, and having placed himself on the
right road, needed only perseverance and hard work to succeed. And how
persevering he was! He even robbed himself of sleep to practise in the
night what he had written during the day! But the diligence he bestowed
upon his own compositions did not hinder him from studying the works of
Frescobaldi,(140) Froberger, Kerl, Pachelbel, Fischer, Strungk,(141)
Buxtehude, Reinken, Bruhns, Böhm, and certain French organists who were
famed in those days as masters of harmony and fugue.(142)
The models he selected—Church musicians for the most part—and his own
disposition inclined him to serious and exalted subjects. But in that
kind of music little can be accomplished with inadequate technique.
Bach’s first object, therefore, was to develop his power of expressing
himself before he attempted to realise the ideal that beckoned him. Music
to him was a language, and the composer a poet who, whatever the idiom he
affects, must first of all have at his disposal the means of making
himself intelligible to others. But the technique of his period Bach found
limited in variety and insufficiently pliable. Therefore he set himself
at the outset to refashion the accepted harmonic system. He did so in a
manner characteristically individual and bearing the impress of his
personality.
If the language of music is merely the utterance of a melodic line, a
simple sequence of musical notes, it can justly be accused of poverty.
The addition of a Bass puts it upon a harmonic foundation and clarifies
it, but defines rather than gives it added richness. A melody so
accompanied—even though all the notes are not those of the true Bass—or
treated with simple embellishments in the upper parts, or with simple
chords, used to be called “homophony.” But it is a very different thing
when two melodies are so interwoven that they converse together like two
persons upon a footing of pleasant equality. In the first case the
accompaniment is subordinate, and serves merely to support the first or
principal part. In the second case the two parts are not similarly
related. New melodic combinations spring from their interweaving, out of
which new forms of musical expression emerge. If more parts are
interwoven in the same free and independent manner, the apparatus of
language is correspondingly enlarged, and becomes practically
inexhaustible if, in addition, varieties of form and rhythm are
introduced. Hence harmony becomes no longer a mere accompaniment of
melody, but rather a potent agency for augmenting the richness and
expressiveness of musical conversation. To serve that end a simple
accompaniment will not suffice. True harmony is the interweaving of
several melodies, which emerge now in the upper, now in the middle, and
now in the lower parts.
From about the year 1720, when he was thirty-five, until his death in
1750, Bach’s harmony consists in this melodic interweaving of independent
melodies, so perfect in their union that each part seems to constitute the
true melody. Herein Bach excels all the composers in the world.(143) At
least, I have found no one to equal him in music known to me. Even in his
four-part writing we can, not infrequently, leave out the upper and lower
parts and still find the middle parts melodious and agreeable.
But in harmony of this kind each part must be highly plastic; otherwise it
cannot play its role as an actual melody and at the same time combine with
the other parts. To produce it Bach followed a course of his own, upon
which the textbooks of his day were silent, but which his genius suggested
to him. Its originality consists in the freedom of his part writing, in
which he transgresses, seemingly, at any rate, rules long established and
to his contemporaries almost sacred. Bach, however, realised their object,
which was simply to facilitate the flow of pure melody on a sound harmonic
basis, in other words, successive and coexistent euphony, and he succeeded
with singular success though by unfamiliar means. Let me explain my
meaning more closely.
Between simple intervals there is little difficulty in deciding whether
the second note must rise or fall. And in regard to phrases, or sections
of a phrase, if we analyse their structure and follow out their harmonic
tendency, their resolution is equally clear. But this sense of
destination may be provoked in each part by different intervals. As we
have observed already, every one of the four parts must flow melodically
and freely. But to secure that result it will be necessary to introduce
between the notes which begin a phrase and establish its general
atmosphere other notes which often are not consonant with those employed
in the other parts and whose incidence is governed by the accent. This is
what we call a transitus regularis et irregularis.(144) Each part starts
from a fixed point, and returns to it, but travels freely between them.
No one has made more use of such progressions than Bach in order to colour
his parts and give them a characteristic melodic line. Hence, unless his
music is played with perfect fluency, occasional passages will sound
harshly and we may be tempted to accuse him of exaggeration. But the
charge is ill founded. Once we play them as Bach intended them, such
passages reveal their full beauty and their attractive though bizarre
dissonance opens up new vistas in the realm of sound.
But, to speak in detail of Bach’s transgression of recognised rules. To
begin with, he admitted octaves and fifths provided they sounded well;
that is, when the cause of their being forbidden did not arise.(145)
Everybody knows that there are positions in which they sound well, and
others when they should be avoided, owing to the harsh effect or thin
harmony they produce. Bach’s octaves and fifths never produce bad or thin
harmony, and he was very definite as to when they could and could not be
used. In certain circumstances he would not permit hidden fifths and
octaves even between the middle parts, though we exclude them only between
the outer parts. Yet, on occasion he used them in such a barefaced manner
as to puzzle the beginner in composition. But their use very soon
commends itself. Even in the last revision of his early compositions we
find him altering passages, which at first sight appear impeccable, with
the object of enriching their harmony and without scrupling to use hidden
octaves. A remarkable instance occurs in the first part of the
_Well-tempered Clavier,_ in the E major Fugue, between the fifth and
fourth bars from the end.(146) I regret to this hour that, on looking over
the later text, from which Hoffmeister and Kühnel’s edition of that work
is printed,(147) I was so foolish as to reject Bach’s amended reading
there, merely because the harmony is unorthodox though more pleasing. I
stupidly preferred the older, more correct, and harsher reading, though in
the later text the three parts run easily and smoothly. And what more can
one demand?
Again, there is a rule that every note raised by an accidental cannot be
doubled in the chord, because the raised note must, from its nature,
resolve on the note above. If it is doubled, it must rise doubled in both
parts and, consequently, form consecutive octaves. Such is the rule. But
Bach frequently doubles not only notes accidentally raised elsewhere in
the scale but actually the semitonium modi or leading-note itself. Yet he
avoids consecutive octaves. His finest works yield examples of this.
Again, Bach’s statement that “over a pedal point all intervals are
permissible that occur in the three scales”(148) should be regarded rather
an expansion than a violation of the recognised rule. In general what is
called an Organ point is merely a retarded close. Bach, however, did not
hesitate to employ it in the middle of a piece; a striking example occurs
in the last Gigue of the _English Suites._(149) On a first hearing this
Gigue, imperfectly rendered, may not sound well. But it grows more
beautiful as it becomes more familiar, and what seemed harsh is found to
be smooth and agreeable, until one never tires of playing and hearing it.
Bach’s modulation was as original and characteristic as his harmony, and
as closely related to it. But the two things, though closely associated,
are not the same. By harmony we mean the concordance of several parts; by
modulation, their progression through keys. Modulation can take place in
a single part. Harmony requires more than one. I will endeavour to make
my meaning clearer.
Most composers stick closely to their tonic key and modulate out of it
with deliberation. In music that requires a large number of performers,
and in a building, for instance a church, where the large volume of sound
dies away slowly, such a habit shows good sense in the composer who wishes
his work to produce the best possible effect. But in chamber or
instrumental music it is not always a proof of wisdom, but rather of
mental poverty. Bach saw clearly that the two styles demand different
treatment. In his large choral compositions he bridles his exuberant
fancy. In his instrumental works he lets himself go. As he never courted
popularity, but always pursued his ideal, Bach had no reason to suppress
the nobility of his inspirations, or to lower their standard for public
consumption. Nor did he ever do so. Therefore every modulation in his
instrumental work is a new thought, a constantly progressive creation in
the plane of the chosen keys and those related to them. He holds fast to
the essentials of harmony, but with every modulation introduces a new
suggestion and glides so smoothly to the end of a piece that no creaking
of machinery is perceptible; yet no single bar—I might almost say no part
of a bar—is like another. Every modulation bears a strict relationship to
the key from which it proceeds, and springs naturally from it. Bach
ignored, or rather despised, the sudden sallies by which many composers
seek to surprise their hearers. Even in his chromatic passages his
progressions are so smooth and easy that we are hardly conscious of them,
however extreme they may be. He makes us feel that he has not stepped
outside the diatonic scale, so quick is he to seize upon the consonances
common to dissonant systems and combine them to his sure purpose.
[The Bach Statue at Eisenach]
The Bach Statue at Eisenach