Passing from Muehlhausen to Weimar was to Bach as the step from school
to a university. The nine years of his life there produced works in
which almost any other musician might glory as the perfect consummation
of his powers; but when we range them beside the performance of
Bach’s middle life, we see that all this time was still a period of
preparation. Wonderful indeed is this strenuous preparation, carried on
with increasing earnestness to his thirty-second year; this prelude to
a life-long study—the index of the faithful artist—which was never
relaxed until sight and strength forsook him. And no less wonderful
is the growth of his genius—when we look back upon his earlier
performances—revealed in rapid stages from the beginning of his
sojourn at Weimar. But it was not only the years that had come upon
him, but also the opportunity they brought with them, that make this
change so marked an epoch in his life. Little as we know of the court
of Weimar, there are some facts about its condition at this time which
let us see that its intellectual atmosphere could not have been without
its excitement and inspiration to Bach.
The Duke, Wilhelm Ernst, was a man of naturally grave and religious
character. It is told of him that at eight years old he preached a
sermon before his parents and their company; and in later life his
chief pleasure and occupation lay in building churches, organizing
religious schemes, and founding schools. In the troubles of an unhappy
marriage and the approach of a childless age, his serious temper
deepened into austerity. But, if always averse from gaiety or the least
approach to the wonted dissipations of a court, he was a good friend
to arts and letters; and the forty-five years of his rule began the
tradition of culture which led up to the historical era in the annals
of Weimar a century later. He founded the library, had a collection
of coins, and—what is more to our purpose—took a strong and pious
delight in hearing and fostering the music in the castle chapel.
The strict and sombre discipline which the Duke imposed upon his homely
court—it went to bed, we are told, at eight in winter, and only an
hour later in summer—was relieved by the brighter influence of his
brother, Johann Ernst, the prince with whom Bach had taken service
as a violinist in 1703. He died in 1707, but his son, also Johann
Ernst, inherited his father’s taste for the chamber-music of France
and Italy, and showed himself in his short life a composer of promise.
The boy liked to be surrounded by musicians, to take lessons from
them, and hear his favourite music. At the present time there was a
brilliant circle at Weimar, and in this the prominent figures were the
town organist Walther, known for his _Musical Dictionary_, and Bach.
A famous story connects the two. Bach, we are told, had boasted of
his ability to play anything at first sight, and Walther determined
to baffle him. He asked him to breakfast, and, knowing Bach’s habits,
laid among the music upon the clavichord a piece of simple and innocent
appearance. While the meal was making ready the host leaves the room.
Bach comes upon the piece, tries it and halts, begins again, and breaks
down. Then he leaves the instrument in exasperation, shouting to his
friend, _No, one cannot play everything off: the thing is impossible_.
Of the routine of Bach’s life at Weimar we can only gather the outline.
He held the double post of organist and _musicus_ in the court. The
latter function involved in Bach’s case either taking a fiddle in the
orchestra—a band of sixteen performers all attired in a grotesque
uniform of Hungarian heyducks—or accompanying from the _basso
continuo_ on the harpsichord (_cembalo_). When after some years he was
appointed concertmeister he of course took the place of first violin.
He was now required to supply a certain number of church compositions;
and the age of the capellmeister often added to his duties the task of
conducting. The series of church cantatas written at this time—among
which the magnificent one, _Ich hatte viel Bekümmerniss_, stands
preëminent—are sufficient evidence of the energy with which he applied
himself to his additional duties. If we ask how he lived in his
household—and no man lived more than Bach in the life of his home—we
are answered by a blank. We have not even a clue as to the manner of
woman his wife was. Six of her seven children were born at Weimar, and
two, twins, died there in 1713. The names of the sponsors to them
show the varied popularity Bach had gained among the different ranks
with whom he was thrown. Pages in waiting and a Muehlhausen clergyman
appear beside Bach’s kinsfolk or his professional comrades—Telemann is
among them—or the humbler associates of his early life at Ohrdruf or
Arnstadt. His continually increased salary—it never indeed exceeded
some thirty pounds, added to the usual perquisites paid in kind—is
one of the many signs of his being valued. More significant is the
request he was in as an organist throughout Saxony, and even in a wider
circle. He was always being invited to try or inspect organs, to play
at different courts and attend musical celebrations, till it came to
be a yearly practice with him to break the busy monotony of his Weimar
life by a holiday spent in answer to these various calls. Some accounts
that remain of these journeys are the more interesting since they are
the only record, outside his compositions, of these years.
In 1713 he was at Halle, and so much attracted by the quality of a
new organ then building as to offer himself for the organistship. The
consistory eagerly accepted him, and Bach composed a cantata on the
spot, and brought it out as a testimonial. The documents of office
quickly followed him back to Weimar for signature. But Bach was
dissatisfied with the terms, possibly the Duke had persuaded him to
stay at the castle; in any case, he wrote a courteous letter asking
for some changes in the conditions of the post. The church authorities
were indignant, refused to alter a word in the agreement, and hinted,
quite falsely, that Bach had merely played with them in order to get
an increase of pay at Weimar. Bach wound up the correspondence by
a vigorous and dignified defence of his action; and it is pleasant
to know that peace was tacitly re-established by Bach’s accepting a
flattering invitation to play upon that same organ on its completion in
1716.
Another autumn journey of Bach took him to Cassel (1714), where he
played a pedal solo on the organ, a feat of miraculous agility, which
few, one relates, could equal with their hands. The hereditary prince,
who was present, took a precious ring from his finger and expressed by
the oriental gift his admiration of the performance.[12] Other years
Bach went to Leipzig, perhaps to Meiningen, and his excursions from
Weimar end with the celebrated visit to Dresden. Just before this, in
1716, Mattheson, one of the most influential musical critics of his
day, had asked for his biography, and wrote of him as _the renowned
organist_; in the following year his mere name vanquished a redoubtable
harpsichord-player, Marchand, who had never before been confronted
by an equal. The Frenchman was so popular at the Dresden court that
some friends of Bach in the orchestra there seem to have induced the
German master to stand forward in defence of his national music. It is
certain that a challenge was sent to Marchand, and that a large company
awaited the contest of the pianists in the house of one of the royal
ministers. Bach was there, but not Marchand. After long expectation,
a messenger at last was sent to his lodging, only to bring back the
news that he had left Dresden by express post that morning. No defeat
could be more decisive, especially when we remember that Bach’s fame
had hitherto rested upon his consummate powers as an organist. It may
be added that he was so far from being prejudiced by his personal
relations with Marchand that he always valued the gracefulness and
exuberant variety of the French composer; and Adlung, who tells the
story, says that he only once was able to appreciate his music, and
that was when Bach played it to him. Success never affected Bach’s
judgment: his generosity was always without vanity.
In leaving Weimar in 1717, Bach ceased for ever to be by calling an
organist, though the instrument remained always his chief delight,
and once at least he was tempted again to resume it as a profession.
As a performer he seems to have grown every year in mature strength.
In 1720, when he visited Hamburg, his performance at S. Katharine’s
Church was attended by the aged organist, Reincke, and an assemblage
of many of the principal men of the city. How he impressed Reincke
has already been related, and no doubt it was partly the enthusiasm
with which he was greeted that made him view Hamburg as a congenial
home for him. An organistship was vacant at one of the other churches
there, and Bach directly offered himself for the place. He had to leave
before the trial of the candidates took place, but was so eager for
the appointment that he wrote from Coethen to repeat his willingness
to accept it. The post as it turned out, was given to the man who paid
the highest premium, and Mattheson was not the only man in Hamburg who
expressed indignation at _the well-to-do tradesman’s son, who could
prelude better with dollars than with fingers_, being preferred to the
_great virtuoso whose mastery excited the admiration of every one_.
Neumeister, who was chief preacher of the church, took occasion to
remark in a sermon just after, that _he was sure enough that if one of
the angels who sang at Bethlehem were to come down from heaven and play
divinely and desire to be organist of S. James’s, nevertheless if he
had no money he might as well fly back again straight_.
There are constant and innumerable proofs, besides the few we have
noticed, of the impression Bach made as an organist: not the least
striking among these is a note by Gesner, with whom Bach was closely
connected in later years at Leipzig, illustrating a musical passage in
Quintilian. After describing in vigorous rhetoric the almost superhuman
powers of his friend, he adds, _Though none can surpass me in my
support of the ancients I opine that many Orpheuses and twenty Arions
are comprehended singly in my Bach and any, if such there be, like to
him_.[13] The characteristics which gave Bach his quite unique position
as an organist are partly those of an extraordinary originality in
the application of the mechanical resources of the instrument. How
minutely he knew its structure is shewn by the frequency with which
he was chosen, almost from boyhood, to pronounce upon the necessity
and the detail of repair in organs, and to judge the success of the
result. His arrangement of stops before he played was so singular as
to make _connoisseurs_ absolutely incredulous of the possibility of
so producing harmonious combinations, but when he began the doubt was
changed into amazement at the swiftness, the precision, and the power
of his movements both of feet and hands. If, however, a by-stander
expressed astonishment, he would silence him with quiet modesty. _There
is nothing to wonder at in that_, he would say: _you have only to touch
the right key at the right time and the instrument plays itself_. As
a rule he gave the pedal a real part of its own, often of incredible
difficulty; and by this means he left his hands free to develop the
theme in the broadest manner, and to apply the stops, each as it
appeared most appropriate and characteristic, with wonderful insight
and ingenuity. He liked also to use the pedal to announce a tenor
part whenever (as was the case at Weimar) he could find a four-foot
register. Of difficulties he seemed unconscious, and this was equally
true when he was elaborating a simple bass or a chorale, or improvising
a fugue, as when he was playing from a written score. Indeed Forkel,
who knew Bach’s sons, relates that “his unpremeditated voluntaries on
the organ, where nothing was lost in writing down, are said to have
been still more devout, solemn, dignified, and sublime,” than those
which stand in record of his supreme command of the instrument. Forkel
instances Bach and the son to whom his gifts were transmitted in a
special measure, Wilhelm Friedemann, as solitary examples of consummate
skill equally on clavichord and organ. “Both,” he says, “were elegant
performers on the clavichord; but when they came to the organ, no
trace of the harpsichord-player was to be perceived. Melody, harmony,
motion, &c., all was different, that is, all was adapted to the nature
of the instrument and its destination. When I heard Will. Friedemann
on the harpsichord, all was delicate, elegant, and agreeable. When I
heard him on the organ, I was seized with reverential awe. There, all
was pretty; here, all was grand and solemn. The same was the case with
John Sebastian, but both in a much higher degree of perfection. William
Friedemann was here too but a child to his father, and most frankly
concurred in this opinion.”[14]
I have already taken occasion to trace the studies by which Bach
prepared himself to become the greatest organ composer as well as the
greatest organist of all time. At the present break in his life it will
be convenient to give a summary account of his total production in this
department,[15] though it must be little more than an enumeration of
the works that survive; since organ music least of all lends itself to
any but a scientific analysis, such as would be altogether out of place
here. My references are to the compositions contained in the _Fifth
Series_ of Peters’ collected edition of Bach’s instrumental works.[16]
Bach’s organ works divide themselves into three great branches, the
first of which is connected most closely with his religious office.
It is well known that the German chorale since the days of Luther has
always held its regular place in the service of the church. This form
of melody, however much more beautiful, is essentially the same with
what we in England used to sing as psalm tunes, at a time when one
metrical version of the Psalter was employed and the modern hymn with
its new words and heterogeneous structure had not yet made its voice
heard. In Germany words and music were alike familiar to every one;
they formed in fact the nucleus of Lutheran worship both in church
and at home. We shall see hereafter how Bach collected two hundred
and forty chorales for use in his household; and there are hardly any
of his church cantatas which do not contain at least one. In church,
whenever a chorale was announced, every one present could be trusted
to sustain the melody, and it was allowed to the organist to vary the
harmonies almost to any extent he pleased without fear of confusing
the people.[17] In this way it came to be a recognised part of the
organist’s function, at least in Middle Germany, to adorn the simple
grandeur or pathos of the chorale by means of preludes, interludes, and
variations, generally improvised at the moment; and this treatment of
chorales was so popular, through the influence of Johann Christoph and
Michael Bach, Pachelbel, and a number of leading organists just before
Sebastian Bach’s time, that it became extended so as to form the basis
of independent instrumental compositions, for use at other intervals
in the church service. It was a custom of which Bach was peculiarly
fond, giving him, as it did, a firm groundwork, with high associations,
upon which his fancy could build with the utmost freedom. And though
he wrote down but a minute part of what he composed, we possess in
print no less than a hundred and thirty elaborations of chorales (parts
5-7), besides twenty-eight of which the genuineness is disputed (suppl.
9-36). They range from short and slight preludes to works of the most
intricate brilliancy, abounding in all the science as well as in all
the melodious art of which Bach was master. Those to whom the organ
chorales are inaccessible may learn their spirit by unravelling the
harmonies he has used in the fivefold setting of one chorale in the
S. Matthew Passion or from other no less remarkable instances in that
according to S. John, to quote only from works which are best known
in England. The inexhaustible invention which is pressed into the
brief compass of these verses, is in the organ-chorales distributed
over a long composition; but the extension is never for the purpose
of display, and the fundamental motive insistently maintains itself
throughout.
In opposition to these the second branch of Bach’s organ works stands
remote from the church. It was not choice only but also the determined
bent of musical taste at Weimar that directed his study again to
the instrumental music of Italy; and the influence for the present
lay strongly upon his organ music as well as upon the rest of his
compositions. Three of Vivaldi’s violin-concertos with a movement of a
fourth (part 8, 1-4) he arranged for his instrument; he wrote fugues on
themes by Legrenzi and Corelli[18] (4. 6, 8), and a fugue and _canzone_
(8. 6; 4. 10) recalling the manner of the great Roman organist,
Frescobaldi, whose _Fiori Musicali_, published in 1635, he possessed.
But it would be a great mistake to imagine that Bach was at this time
engrossed by the Italian masters. On the contrary Weimar was the
place where he wrote the bulk of his organ works of the third branch,
the preludes, fantasias, toccatas, and fugues, in which his strong
religious sense united with his power of musical creation to build up
masterpieces of a perfection never approached either before or since.
The list of his works of this period is as follows:—
1. Three _Preludes_, in A minor, C, and G (4. 13; 8. 8, 11):
2. Three _Fugues_, in G minor, C, and G minor (4. 7; 8. 10, 12):
3. Fifteen _Preludes and Fugues_ in A, F minor, C minor, G minor, E
minor, C, G, and D; besides a collection of eight shorter ones (2. 3,
5, 6; 3. 5, 10; 4. 2, 3; 8. 5. i-viii.):
4. Three _Toccatas and Fugues_, in F, C, and D minor (3. 2, 8; 4. 4):
5. Two _Fantasias and Fugues_ both in C minor (3. 6; 4. 12): to which
must be added three single works, namely a _Fantasia_ in C (8. 9); a
_Pastorale_ in F (1. 3); and the superb _Passacaglio_ in C minor, well
known to all organists worthy of the name (1. 2).
For the years succeeding those he spent at Weimar, Bach has left us,
with one grand exception, no certain record on the organ; we shall
see hereafter that he was otherwise occupied. But there is hardly a
doubt that he took advantage of the exceptional opportunity offered by
his Hamburg visit in 1720, to produce his famous _Fantasia and Fugue_
in G minor (2. 4). It does not surprise us to find that the Fugue,
which English musicians have personified as the Giant, left an abiding
impression among the listeners.[19] As we possess it, it has undergone
a rigorous revision, to which, in common with the major part of his
younger works, Bach afterwards submitted it when at Leipzig.
Accordingly the short series which he is believed to have composed in
later years does not represent more than a fraction of his activity in
this direction; since revising in his case usually meant re-writing,
certainly re-thinking. The compositions which are presumed to date
originally from the year 1723 onwards, consist of seven _Preludes and
Fugues_, in C, G, A minor, E minor, B minor, E flat, and D minor,[20]
(2. 1, 2, 8, 9, 10; 3. 1, 4), and a _Toccata and Fugue_ in D minor,
known as the Doric toccata (3. 3); together with six _Sonatas_ written
to exercise the growing skill of Bach’s eldest boy, Wilhelm Friedemann
(1. 1).[21]
It is impossible to characterise in a few words the works which gave
Bach his chief renown among contemporaries, and the familiarity of
many of the greatest of them renders such an attempt unnecessary. It
may suffice to direct attention to the majestic motion of the august
Passacaglio, as contrasted with the idyllic grace of the Pastorale
which follows it in the printed edition, and which remains lamentably
a fragment;—to the broad directness of the Fugue in C (2. 1), the
daring invention of the longest of the fugues, that in E minor (2. 9),
which proceeds almost entirely by chromatic intervals, the irresistible
charm of the G minor, or the marvellously varied solemnity of the E
flat, naturalised in England as the S. Ann Fugue. It is as an organ
composer that Bach stands, as a colossus, absolutely unapproached and
unapproachable.