JOHANN SEBASTIAN
BACH
(Born at Eisenach on March 21, 1685; died at Leipsic on July 28, 1750)
No matter how well old music may be performed by chorus, orchestra,
virtuoso, many audiences are bored by it today. There is one exception:
the music of Bach. “He is the forerunner, the prophet that foresaw our
epoch and our tastes.” This speech is often heard, as is the remark:
“There is not one ultra-modern harmonic thought that is not to be found
somewhere in Bach’s music.” Bach is one of the great fetishes in music.
The late John S. Dwight really believed in the plenary inspiration of
the indefatigable weaver of counterpoint. No matter how formal, how dull
a page of music looked or sounded, Mr. Dwight was in ecstasy the moment
he was told the page was signed with Bach’s name.
Mme Wanda Landowska (in _Musique ancienne_) says entertainingly: “The
idea that the Cantor of Eisenach, though dedicating his music to
Frederick the Great and princes of his period, composed it solely with a
view to a Châtelet audience is so consecrated a commonplace that I
hardly dare to dream of combating it.” Von Bülow and others have
declared that Bach’s _Chromatic Fantasy_ is an anticipation of modern
romanticism; but the composers hinted at in this piece are more modern
than Beethoven, Chopin, Schumann. Frescobaldi, Buxtehude, Couperin, and
the writers for the lute are more modern because they are less known.
And Bach not only knew their works but followed them rather than the
advanced ideas of his own epoch; for Bach was a conservative rather than
a radical.