Monteverde in his day dared to introduce the unprepared seventh of
the dominant triad; but, in boldness he was not alone. In fact, the
development of polyphony from the wholly unembellished and quite faulty
chord progressions of early mediæval music, has been but a series
of innovations at first condemned, then suffered, and then adopted.
The earliest polyphonic writers founded their music wholly on the
ecclesiastical scales derived from the Greek modes, and approved by
Ambrose and Gregory. With the single exception of the Ionic scale,
identical with our scale of C major, these scales were defective
chiefly in one essential, to wit: in place of the modern sharped
seventh, they contained the flatted seventh. This error precluded the
possibility of the characterizing major third of the dominant chord
in both the major and the minor. Then again, the sounding of the
flatted seventh, which in modern tonality indicates modulation to the
subdominant key, suggested to the old contrapuntists a triad now deemed
wholly foreign to the tonic. The resulting vagueness found remedy where
one should least expect it, for, in their melodies, the popular writers
of both song and dance were led instinctively to sharp the seventh, and
otherwise reconstruct the six defective ecclesiastical scales.
The increasing use of accidentals in contrapuntal and sacred music,
gradually evolved the chromatic scale, and led to the founding
of a major and a minor scale on each of its twelve semitones.
These twenty-four were now the basis of that grand and satisfying
instrumental polyphony which Bach was to build in his «Well-tempered
Clavichord.»
As late as the time of Carissimi, and for some years thereafter,
polyphonic writers had not wholly cast off the spell of Ambrose and
Gregory, for, whilst the seventh was now by universal usage sharped
in the cadence, otherwhere still lingered a tendency to revert to the
flatted seventh of the ecclesiastical scales.
At this juncture, the further development of polyphony, and, in fact,
the further development of all great music, found in Bach that peculiar
genius which it wholly needed. He became the masterly unifier of
the harmonic and the polyphonic systems. With a correct idea of key
relationship, he grouped the family of chords around the tonic and the
dominant after the manner of to-day. At the same time, his unparalleled
use of anticipations, suspensions and passing notes, produced an effect
wonderfully rich in the stately sweep of his measures. Thus he prepared
the way for the classical music of Beethoven, who, turning from strict
polyphony to a style wherein his endowed emotional nature found wider
and freer scope, became in turn an innovator in that he gave greater
variety to the harmonic tissue by means of bold and before-unattempted
modulations. Beethoven in turn prepared the way for Wagner who essayed
to enlarge the number of related keys, besides carrying the art of
modulation to before-unknown lengths, even to the limit of good taste:
also by an exhaustive use of anticipations, suspensions, and passing
notes, this latest master revealed the fullest development of the
Bachian polyphony.
How little of true foresight comes to the eyes of the sage! How
incommensurable that foresight with his great and far looking back!
How much of riddle his prophesying touches not and his dying leaves
unsolved! Bach knew nothing of the Classicism of Beethoven, who, in
turn, knew nothing of the Romanticism of Schumann and Chopin; and what
knew these of the latest art-interblendings of Richard Wagner and
Richard Strauss? Can there be other musical riddles worth the solving?
If so, what are they; and who their solver? For answer, ask the average
musician of to-morrow; but not the authorities of to-day.
The career of Bach, the composer, covered a period of about forty-five
years, in fact, a period longer by thirteen years than the entire life
of Schubert; a period longer by nine years than the life of Mozart;
longer by six years than the life of Mendelssohn; and longer by five
years than the lives of Chopin and Von Weber. And yet Handel and Haydn
exceeded by something like ten years, and Verdi by nearly twenty years,
the extended term of Bach's productivity.
Notwithstanding the fatal catastrophe which terminated the promise of
the poet Shelley; notwithstanding the hard conditions which cramped and
well-nigh thwarted the divinely-endowed Mozart, misplaced as a bird
of Paradise caged in an Arctic clime, it can with truth be said that
however short the earthly years allotted to men of genius, they, in
most instances, have, as by Divine ordering, given to the world their
best.
When we have known the genius through his works, those
heart-resemblances, those mind-born counterparts of his inner self,
we would contact the outer man, and discover in facial and bodily
expression some token of that which flesh has clothed. Denied this, we
turn to sculptured or painted likeness of such as Johann Sebastian Bach.
In vain we search his pictured face for hint of the vacillating or
the superficial. Every feature and every lineament is indicative of
massive, self-centered power dependent only as man is dependent, being
but mortal. In that face is much of clinging to the mind's self-imposed
task; something too of downright obstinacy, as also in the sturdy form
which, like post or pillar, would say, «I stand! turn and resist me
not!»
Behold him the progenitor of many children after the flesh, and
many, many sprung from his teeming and tireless brain! Behold him,
the musical athlete, challenging virtuosity to trial of skill and
endurance, while he himself rejoices like the swift and strong runner
sure of his lead in the race!
Behold him deferential, but not obsequious, the admired and sought of
a monarch and the chief comer to the palace of Potsdam! Behold him,
unflattered by the attentions of royalty and court, wending back to
Liepsic, and his humble cantorship with its meagre stipend! Behold his
reverent return to the old Lutheran Church of Saint Thomas and the
well-remembered organ where with praiseful notes he often had sought
and found a greater than Frederic, or any earthly potentate!
Between the death of Bach and the present time, more than one hundred
and fifty years have intervened. Years indeed memorable; years of
unparalleled activity and change in the musical world; years of
greater enrichment of its repertory than were all preceding them.
Those one hundred and fifty years have given us the perfected beauties
of Italian, French and German Opera. They have produced for us Haydn
and his great contemporaries and near successors. From them is that
priceless heritage, the Mendelssohn Oratorios. They have brought
to our charmed ears the lyric songs of Schubert and Schumann, and
the unique and wholly adapted tone-poetry of Chopin, composer par
excellence for that instrument of which the clavichord was the humble
precursor. Those years have enlarged the orchestra by introducing many
new and telling instruments, also they have developed its technique
and otherwise elevated it to the virtuoso demands of our most modern
composers. Nevertheless, the music of Bach is nothing belittled by the
vast sum total of subsequent achievement, nor grows it useless like
a garment cast aside because no longer of fashionable cut and color.
And yet that music was underestimated and much neglected in Bach's
lifetime, and, afterwards for a long period, almost forgotten, until,
through the efforts of Mendelssohn and Franz and the Bach society, it
was rescued from the possibility of a fate like that of many an ancient
writing for which the regretful world has vainly sought.
Bach was the famed virtuoso of an era when far less than modern skill
was necessary for the manipulation of the organ and the clavichord, and
yet his works are to-day surprisingly well adapted to the technical
needs of the advanced student. Those for clavichord are musically
adequate in the programmes of the modern concert hall, whilst the
«Preludes and Fugues,» and also the Toccatas, are the delight and
ambition of good organists throughout the world.
The man Johann Sebastian Bach; how much might be said of him, the kind
husband and father, the good and respected citizen, the devout follower
of Luther, the foremost among contemporary virtuosi, the faithful
music-master in the school, the conscientious precentor in the church,
the unobtrusive genius touched not by the infirmities of noble minds.
Surely much more might be said in way of encomium than here undertaken.
The composer, Johann Sebastian Bach; how much more might be said of his
works than in these meagre pages; how much more in way of analysis; but
such is not our object.
As for praise, in the performance of those works we are heart to heart
with the living Bach, the immortal one, the deathless part of whom
speaks from every full and satisfying measure their meed of praise,
wherefore the musical world, even the modern musical world, listens and
approves.
But to what shall we liken his works? With what shall they be compared?
Surely with the mighty, the steadfast, the undecaying! They are
comparable with those man-builded mountains of stone resting forever
upon the floor of the Nile Valley. Yes, they are in very truth the
Pyramids of Music, and Bach with Cyclopean hand has quarried them,
block by block from the enduring substance of the cliffs, and he
has fitted each to other with that accuracy of judgment, precision
of workmanship, and grandeur of conception, which characterized
the architect-builders of Old Egypt; those whose models were the
indestructible upbuildings of God, even the ancient and everlasting
hills.