Chapter IX: Liszt and the Present Time 271 (4)

The da capo is in fact the scaffolding of this formal music. To our modern minds it appears pointless; but in those days it was natural enough. Some day the history of musical repetition ought to be written; it would be indeed the history of quite half of music. Even in Greek writings we meet melodic repetitions; it is on the principle of imitation that the contrapuntal style of the Middle Ages[66] is built; from the repetition of parts, or the rearrangement of the themes, musical sentences become capable of new effects; and further, there was the germ of progress in the thematic conception of whole bars, whole groups of bars and whole movements, which finally, whether arias or sonatas, were taken da capo. This is the last step of thematic music which has shaken off the contrapuntal forms. To-day we are in a period of repetition which, for want of a better word, we may call “Thematic.” In dependence on the old beginnings of programme-music, which were greatly developed by Beethoven, the new _subjective_ repetition takes the place of the older. This new form works chiefly in the _idée fixe_, in the Leit-motiv, which is subtly treated and varied according to the situations represented. Founded deep in the essence of music, the principle of repetition has at all times been an ever-changing, ever re-incarnating characteristic of the condition of the tonic art.

Old engraving representing Scarlatti playing a Harpsichord with two rows of keys; and certain well-known contemporaries of his. A satire on the unheard-of successes of the famous Italian Soprano, Cafarelli. From the Nicolas-Manskopf collection, Frankfort-on-Main. Cafarelli’s cat is sitting in the foreground singing an Italian parody. The persons represented are named on the right. The two verses are as follows: “The concert of these great Italian masters would be beautiful, if the cat did not join in. Just in the same way, the sweet harmony of two souls joined by the god of Love is constantly being interrupted by some animal or other.” ]

It gave to the Italian sonata of its time the same character of unity which the rhythm of the dance gave to the French clavier-piece. But, before the separate movements could reach their full formal development, the emancipation of the thematic subjects from counterpoint, and their absolute self-dependence, must be completed. The Italian ear, from its mere pleasure in motive and its development, released the subject from obligatory contrapuntal treatment. From the old thin forms of toccata and capriccio sprang fugal exercises with poor and limited themes, to which, so early as 1611, the old Francesco Turini gives the sounding title of sonatas. They are full of the passages associated with solo-instruments; they sound with flexible melodies; they run off in the measured steps of the dance, and circle round with repetitions of motives, groups, and movements. The point which a Rameau, in his “Cyclopes,” attains by an extension of the rondo-form--perhaps under the gentle influence of the sonata--is reached by the Italian by formalising the free fantasia, under the influence of the dance. It is _form_ at which everything on all sides aims.

In Scarlatti’s sonatas we have very rarely more than one movement; the two-movement groups of the sonatas, numbered by Czerny 122 and 123, are exceptions. The pieces might be combined into sonatas on the Corellian model but for the lack of slow movements, which Scarlatti did not willingly write for the brilliant and spirited clavier. The structure of the movements displays that perfect freedom which still reigned in that springtime of the age of musical form. If we are so inclined, we may often detect, as in the prototype, a[67] first and a second theme; but the signs of this later form of the typical sonata are still so hidden that in many pieces we might, with equal justification, detect five or six themes in the more melodious or decorative passages. All is in transition, but the thematic conception is never left utterly in the background. The motives come out in apparently reckless profusion, but scarcely one remains without its adequate treatment. We observe all possible arrangements. Sonata 110 has a perfectly incongruous middle movement; in Sonata 111 a moderato alternates with a presto, and both are repeated in fuller elaboration. On the other hand some sonatas preserve throughout the same rhythmical movement. As a rule the second part of a movement concludes like the first, but in a different key, just as it began like the first, but again in a different key; or sometimes Part II. begins with some different motive from that of Part I., or even with one absolutely new. Usually the beginnings of both parts are somewhat stiff in their thematic, while their later course is usually more free. The development of a main motive--which in later times begins the second division of a movement in sonata form--is as yet confined to no definite part. Not rarely it is despatched in the first part, as in Sonata 169, where the dactylic-trochaic motive is so taken up, more or less decidedly, in the first part, that only the very briefest reminiscence is left for the second. The general construction is well illustrated in the eighth sonata--runs of five semiquavers (_sic_) in A minor[68]--a fugal movement proceeding in crotchets, diatonically rising and chromatically descending--groups of diminished sevenths descending to C--conclusion, the semiquaver motive again. Part II.: the latter motive modulating from C, through G minor to D minor, with an insertion of the former figure in crotchets, developed as in the conclusion of Part I., and returning from D minor to A minor.

Formal structure is the be-all and end-all of the Italian sonata. Technique is its very life. An inexhaustible brilliancy and exclusive adaptation to the clavier is the characteristic of Scarlatti. He has in his eye the thousand possibilities of clavier-technique, and throughout his pieces there breathes a glow of enthusiasm which draws us easily from beginning to end with the sweet grace of an irresistible rhythm. The successive retardations, as in the arias of his father Alessandro’s Rosaura, the changes of hands, the rivalry of concerted violins, the delight in passages of quavers with thirds and sixths as their harmonic accompaniment, such as is seen in the pieces of Corelli, long-sustained notes with sudden leaps which seem to be derived from the violin--all this is yet treated from the point of view of the clavier, and, so to speak, new-born from it. There is little song in Scarlatti, and a singing phrase is preferably repeated with brilliant decorations; for the _leggiero_ is much better adapted to the spinet than the _arioso_. As a rule, both hands roll on in a two-voiced exercise in pure and simple movement without any additional encumbrance of heavy harmonies. It is a spectacle of fireworks. Deep bass-tones are suddenly introduced; high thirds fly off; thirds and sixths are darted in; close arpeggios swell into monstrous bundles as they are filled in with all possible passing-notes; octaves are vigorously introduced; the hands steer in contrary motion, to one another, away from one another; they are tied into chains of chords; they release themselves alternately from the same chords, the same groups, the same tones; unison passages in the meanwhile run up and down; chromatic tone-ladders dart through, then slowly moving phrases or still-standing isolated treble notes are seen confusedly dotted over the changing bass as it runs up and down, in a kind of upper pedal point; harsh sevenths one after another; repeated notes, syncopated effects, parallel runs of semiquavers with leaping side-notes, such as we know so well in Bach; sudden interchanges from major to minor, a device of which the Neapolitan operas are so fond; bold characterisation by means of sudden pauses; startling modulations by means of chromatic passages; embellishments rarely introduced; a delicate arrangement of tones from the severest fugues to the most unrestrained bourrées, pastorales, or fanfares--such is the world of Scarlatti’s clavier-music. The “plucked” clavier (clavichord)[69] as yet does not admit of the delicacies of touch[70] which delight us in the pianoforte; and its technique, too, will have to consider the three main problems--how to arrange the musical conception in the light and lively style suitable to the clavier, how effectively to combine the two hands, and how to use the opportunities which spring from the divided movements of the single hand. These three problems--what the fingers can do, what the hands can do, and what the clavier can do--are solved by Scarlatti with all the readiness of his Italian temperament. His style luxuriates in the liveliest crossings of the hands--a practice he is said to have diminished as years increased his bodily dimensions; and his ideas blossom out into a captivating, often eccentric freshness, as, for example, in his fugal theme G, B♭, E flat, F sharp, B♭, C sharp [D] (ascending), which he has taken as the foundation of his best known and perhaps most splendid composition, the Cat’s Fugue. Legend indeed asserts that these boldly combined tones were suggested to him by a cat gliding along the keyboard.

The most distinguished names of those who have laboured with success at the Italian clavier are those of Alberti,[71] whose preference for the skilfully broken chord-accompaniment has given rise to the title “Alberti Bass”; Durante, who was dry, calculating, and destitute of emotion; Galuppi, the graceful and courtly; the somewhat superficial Porpora; the subtle Paradies; and Turini, who is by far the most brilliant of all the Italian inheritors of the mantle of Scarlatti. They take two or three movements for a work; they combine dance-pieces and sonata-pieces; they pursue new melodic and rhythmic graces; but they all group themselves around or after their hero, Domenico Scarlatti, who, as first and greatest, has ushered in the pure Italian delight in sound as voiced by the clavier.[72]

[44] Before 1746. Burney says they were printed in Venice.

[45] The engraving and printing of music was rare, even in
the case of popular masters, till late in the eighteenth
century. In most cases short and simple clavier pieces
were copied privately. This method of spreading works
about in our own time when printing has made everything
democratic is not lost, but made aristocratic. When Wagner
copies the Ninth Symphony, or when a scholar copies an old,
unpublished work, we have an instance of the personal love
of manual labour in a dilettante or scholar--the work of
the hand in an age of machinery.--[Author’s Note.]

[46] A far earlier exponent of pure virtuosity is found in
England in Dr John Bull, whose pieces, written a century
and a half before Dom. Scarlatti’s, bear every mark of
devotion to “pianistic,” as Bülow would call it. The author
seems to recognise this a few lines back.

[47] Plagiarism of the most thorough-going character was
common in the eighteenth century, and can hardly have been
accounted disgraceful, considering how frequently Handel
himself practised it, appropriating subjects of fugues,
long passages, and whole movements, from Stradella, Kerl,
Urio, Steffani, and others.

[48] A “spiritual” opera, or oratorio.

[49] A doubtful story. S. died _circa_ 1681, probably in
his bed.

[50] “Tearing the passion to tatters.”

[51] For instance, in the numerous seventeenth century
English “cantatas” for solo voice, and the contemporary
instrumental fantasias, where it is common to find short
sections in triple time breaking the continuity of the more
ordinary quadruple time.

[52] A notation for the lute was published as early as 1512.

[53] “Monochord” is synonymous with “Clavichord” here. The
word was often used for the keyed instrument, probably
because the “German” clavichord had tangents at the ends
of the levers, which cut off the right length of the
string, just as the moveable “bridge” of the acoustician’s
monochord of one single string does.

[54] Our modern notion of a “cantata” includes the free use
of a chorus; whereas the seventeenth century “cantata” was
for a solo voice with accompaniment of a single instrument,
harpsichord, lute, or viol da gamba.

[55] For instance, Corelli’s trios, two books (out of four)
of which are “suonate da camera,” chamber music, the rest
being “da chiesa,” for church.

[56] Two Gabrielis, uncle and nephew; the former, Andrea,
dating 1510-1586, the latter, Giovanni, 1557-1612. Andrea
was a pupil of Willaert and he succeeded Merulo as “second”
organist of St Mark’s, Venice, in 1566.

[57] “Canzone,” a sixteenth and seventeenth century term
for a sort of vocal madrigal.

[58] “Ricercari” (compare French “recherché”), the name of
a class of pieces for organ or cembalo in which the object
was to include as many ingenuities of counterpoint as
possible.

[59] Compare Byrd’s Cantiones Sacræ, 1575, where the pieces
are divided in this way, _e.g._, Pars Prima, Pars Secunda.

[60] Meaning that the fingers were held straight out,
and consequently only the first, second, and third (in
so-called “German” notation, 2, 3 and 4) would be in common
use, the ends being nearly of a length.

[61] It is difficult to set the limits of what is possible
in such matters; _e.g._--John Jenkins wrote a “Fancy” for
three viols, before 1667, which modulates from F major
through the whole set of flat keys, up to G flat, whence he
coolly turns a rather sharp corner home to F. No one would
have dared to suppose this possible.

[62] This might well be. Compare the first phrase of the
Recitative, which precedes Dido’s dying song in Purcell’s
“Dido and Æneas,” with the first phrase of Wolfram’s
recitative before the “Star” song in “Tannhäuser.”

[63] This _coloratura_ means the elaborate ornamentation
with which Corelli used to overlay the plain written violin
part. Joachim’s edition gives Corelli’s own version of the
sonatas as he himself used to play them.

[64] These in France were usually arranged adagio, allegro,
adagio; in Italy, allegro, adagio, allegro, but in both
countries they had found very early a stereotyped form for
the succession of their movements.--[Author’s Note.]

[65] Such things are found as late as Mozart; cf. overture
to Zauberflöte.

[66] The true origin of imitative counterpoint is almost
certainly the _Rota_, what is nowadays called a Round.
This sort of infinite canon was already perfect in the
thirteenth century in England. No doubt the _Rota_ itself
was invented by an accident.

[67] The “first” and “second” subjects are often very
clearly distinct in the binary form of Scarlatti. The
“second subject” is not a mere continuation of the “first”
in the subordinate key, as more generally it is in J. S.
Bach, but it is another melody altogether.

[68] The movement here described is apparently the “Presto”
on page 25 of the first volume of Mr Thomas Roseingrave’s
edition of Scarlatti. The groups, so-called, of “five
semiquavers,” are of four descending semiquavers, followed
by a crotchet, making five notes altogether.

[69] The action of all these keyed instruments, whether
called virginal, spinet, clavecin, clavichord, harpsichord,
cembalo, is the same, namely, a “plucking” of the string
by a projection of quill or leather. The exception is
the _German_ clavichord, which was not a keyed harp, but
a keyed “monochord,” with key levers in connection with
“tangents” of metal, which sounded the string and cut off
the right length of it at the same time.

[70] The _German_ clavichord referred to in the note was
able to produce a most delicate effect of tremolo or
repetition, called _Bebung_. This was possible simply on
account of the “tangential” action of the German instrument.

[71] Alberti rather deserves the title of an early
“decadent.” His broken-chord formula is mainly a way of
avoiding trouble in writing real passages.

[72] Pieces by Durante, Galuppi, Porpora, Paradies, and
Ferdinando Turini (1749-1812), also the disputed movements
mentioned on p. 82, which bear Rossi’s name, may be found
in Litolff’s publication “Les Maîtres du Clavecin.”

Bach

In 1717, when Scarlatti as yet dreamed not of his Spanish renown, and shortly after Couperin’s first little pieces had appeared, the Parisian clavecinist Marchand made a journey to Germany. At the Polish court of Dresden he created a furore by his playing, and a famous contest was the result, got up, as it appears, by intrigue, between Marchand and an organist of Weimar, Johann Sebastian Bach. The King was present in person. Marchand began by improvising variations on a French song, and was loudly applauded. Bach then took the same theme, but varied it twelve times over so marvellously that without further contest he carried off the palm from his famous adversary, who, when Bach proposed a competition on the organ, incontinently fled from Dresden.

Who was this Bach, and what was this sudden development of German music? Hitherto not much had been heard of it in foreign countries, and on looking at the German tablatures[73] of the older time one could only recognise an honourable but somewhat clumsy struggle. In the sixteenth century, perhaps when, in wider circles, some mention was made of the great vocal compositions of Isaac and Senfl, a certain Nürnberger, Hasler by name, proposed himself to Gabrieli in Venice as a pupil, and later his renown was heard at the courts of Vienna and Dresden. In the next century another German, Johann Jakob Froberger, was associated with Frescobaldi in Rome, and his fame also was afterwards heard at the Viennese court. He cannot have been unpopular, for a number of anecdotes clustered round his name. Froberger, and with him Pachelbel of Nürnberg, began the emancipation of the clavier in Germany. In the Hanse Towns of the north were good organists, such as Buxtehude in Lübeck and Reincke in Hamburg; but no one in Italy or France troubled himself with them.

The fame of Italian sonatas and French suites was such a matter of course, that the Leipzig organist, Kuhnau, when he in 1700 published his collections of genuinely German clavier-pieces, plumed himself mightily, in his chatty prefaces, on the fact that now at last, even in Germany, good music was to be had, which could take its place by the side of the foreign. “Even in Germany,” he exclaimed, “oranges and citrons at last bloom!” The excellent Kuhnau ventured to give the title of sonata to a piece on the model of the Italian sonata da camera, although it was written not for violin but for clavier. Hence it is often said that he was the creator of the clavier-sonata. But this piece has nothing in common with the later popular composition of that name; it was a cento of several movements in various tempi, as the suite was a cento of several dances. Nay, the Cyclopes of Rameau stands nearer to the later type than this. The suites and sonatas of Kuhnau are pure clavier-pieces, somewhat marred by the usual failings of youth, and running every theme to death, but clear, vigorous, and adapted to the fingers, smooth in feeling and modern in technique. But the most curious work of Kuhnau is his “Biblical Histories.” Here he illustrates on the clavier all kinds of Scriptural stories, like the death of Goliath, the cure of Saul, the marriage of Jacob, Hezekiah’s recovery, the life of Gideon, and Jacob’s death, in sonata-form, on the model of the programme-music[74] of the time, and with the assistance of verbal elucidations. Yet Kuhnau is as little as Froberger or anyone else a forerunner of Bach, who so overshadows the work of his predecessors that one may almost say he is independent of them.

It is indeed hard to compare Bach even with the other wonders of the history of art. For there is scarcely one who is so identical with his art as is Bach with music. A Michel Angelo does not include a Rembrandt, nor a Rembrandt a Monet; but in Bach there is a Beethoven, a Schumann, a Wagner. I believe that if the Almighty had wished to offer to men in sensible form what at that time was called music, he would then have given them the work of Bach. In it there are the deepest secrets of musical polyphony, as well as the most intense degrees of decadent expression; the mysticism of the Middle Ages is there no less than the perspective of the future. But content and form are not dissociated as they are in history; they are identical, they are one and the same, as they are in the philosophic concept of music. Once, and perhaps once only, in this world has the “Thing in Itself” been realised, and the difference between concept and actuality been reduced to nothing. The history of music can be written with almost exclusive reference to Bach. We might show how it has converged towards him and again diverged from him in search of its special partialities. We might point out how it revolves round him, comes to him, and goes from him in the course of the centuries, just as in the case of the imitative arts we show that they come from Nature and go to her.

Bach’s life was the most uneventful conceivable. He made no journeys to Rome and Paris; he learned musical literature by studying and copying. A true “Old Master,” he sits with his serious, almost severe countenance, in the midst of his large family of twenty children, all musical, and composes for instruction or for his own pleasure, without seeing many of his compositions printed. His renown had no wide extent;[75] his bold extravagances aroused only that hostility which does not bring honour, and in his successive posts at Arnstadt, Weimar, Köthen, and Leipzig, he had little opportunity for sunning himself in the rays of princely favour. A single moment of his life perhaps stands out prominently, when Frederick the Great at one of his concerts received the list of strangers in Potsdam, and interrupted the playing to say to his officers, “Gentlemen, old Bach has arrived.” He was instantly summoned, and, in his travelling dress as he was, improvised on a theme of the King’s, which, when completed and published, he dedicated to the King as “Musikalisches Opfer.” When two great men meet, the whole world feels the electric shock.

With the appearance of Bach the whole history of music turns to Germany. And clavier-music, so far as it has a particular meaning, is henceforth German. England, France, and Italy, sink either gradually or suddenly into the background.

Bach’s clavier-music is a complete world, a mirror of his music as a whole. As Nature is her whole self in every leaf, so in every piece or group of pieces Bach is the whole Bach. Thus for the first time it came about that the clavier became capable of interpreting the whole nature of a great man. With the early Englishmen it was the embodiment of the whole tone-poet; with Couperin the whole man, indeed, but a man who was nothing but a dancer; with Scarlatti a whole clavier-player; but with Bach the whole nature of a man of whom it is impossible to say whether the musician or the intellect in him was the greater. This was the first outstanding peak attained by the clavier.

The natural creative principle from which Bach works, that which gives unity to his being, is the conception of counterpoint. Music can be written in which every single voice is treated as an independent line, and in which the art of combining these lines reaches the highest possible development, as in a picture of Holbein--and this is counterpoint. Or music could be written, in which an upper melody, clearly illuminated, runs on an advancing basis of accompanying harmony without much attention to purity of voice, as in a work of Ribera--and this is the style resting on “accompaniment.” Bach’s essence lies in the contrapuntal method. He conceives the voices _over against_ one another; and at the very moment in which he interjects a motive, there is a second or third motive introduced, embracing the other in contrapuntal wise.

Yet he has taken the accompaniment-style also into himself. Just as little as he can ever be censured for defect in melody, so little has he ever neglected the newer “secular” harmony--rather, he has carried on his counterpoint in accordance with its laws. He has of course as little respect as any other first class musician for the common Italian accompaniment with its singing melody alone. If he adopts it, it is in very discreet fashion; the richly decorated arioso soaring above the vigorously moving _basso continuo_ in such delicate arrangement that we think rather of an ornamented contrapuntal passage than of a light singing voice accompanied by the cembalo with _figured_ bass.

In this secularisation of counterpoint by means of the contrasting features of an arioso, the foundation of a bass, and the modern system of a network of harmony, he exhibits the characters of both musical styles in one, and gives us the unification of two epochs, which necessarily opened a boundless prospect into the future.

Two or more voices running alongside are treated in their relation to one another. Here the simple contrapuntal exercise, which sets them neatly together, and enfolds their rhythms into each other, will soon cease to satisfy. The best-sounding contrapuntal relations are those in which the voices show some slight traces of imitation. From the lighter imitations rises the stricter canon,[76] and at last the exact and regular succession of canonic repetitions is reached. The ideal is then an exercise in which every note of every voice has its imitative relations, and in which the whole is so interconnected that not a stone can be removed without bringing about the fall of the whole structure.

We see Bach himself at this work. He works more lightly and elegantly, or more heavily and massively, not by arbitrary choice, but according to his subject. He begins with a Prelude, in which a gentle interlacing of voices answers to his mood; imitations, arising as if of their own accord, are inserted here and there. Then there is the final gigue of a suite, in which a rapid 6/8 theme has to be treated, in spite of its rapidity, with a certain canonic severity, which gives solidity to the conclusion of the whole suite. Then again we have a slow movement of intertwining voices, such as is found after the first preluding bars of the F sharp minor and C minor Toccatas; the voices alternately take up the mournful themes, with no strict regularity of exact succession, wonderfully floating, according to a fixed purpose, and gently swimming in their harmonies, with no recognisable support, almost a fairy-like echo of mediæval counterpoint. Or, finally, there is a regular fugue, which stands there like a monument, with hardly a superfluous note; in regular succession the voices present the theme in single or double counterpoint, always alternately imitating at the fourth or fifth, with a never-failing reference to the tonic key; and near the close, where still greater closeness of imitation is demanded, proudly and stiffly vaulted over with diminutions or augmentations of the theme.

Bach has left us clavier-works in which we see perfected the simplest form which the contrapuntal conception could assume in his hands. These are the fifteen “Inventions” and the fifteen “Symphonies,” which in the manuscript appear with the inscription, “Straightforward directions, by which the amateur of the clavier, but especially the one anxious to learn, is shown a plain method, not only of playing properly in two parts, but also, on further progress, to undertake three obbligato parts; at the same time also not only gaining good inventions, but also personally performing them, and, above all, attaining a cantabile style in playing, as well as a good foretaste of composition.” This curious preface ends, “Verfertiget von Joh. Seb. Bach, hochf. Anhalt-Cöthenischen Capell-meister, Anno Christi 1723.”

The simple homeliness of the time speaks in this title-page; and it is well to appropriate to-day as much of this as possible, in order to lose nothing in the enjoyment of these fifteen two-voiced Inventions and these fifteen three-voiced Symphonies. Even to-day Bach demands the desire of learning in amateurs, who should feed their pleasure with diligence, and enter into the feelings of the composer. One who sits at the clavier with a zeal worthy of Bach’s compositions, will find in these thirty simple contrapuntal pieces a small storehouse of treasures. He will be captivated by the elegance of this canonic music as soon as his fingers are able to play in parts; but he will never be released from the influence of the many-coloured glittering character of these compositions. They are the drawings of a master, which in a few strokes depict great objects; sketches of a great artist, so full of scholarship that they cover the whole of life. The solemn Invention in F minor, the eccentric one in B flat major, the Symphony which sounds so mournfully in E flat major, or the chromatically gloomy F minor, the sprightly staccato G minor, the graceful A major whose traces are to be found in so many works of a later time, and the rhythmical, freely-singing B minor, with its harp-like strokes, in which Beethoven and Chopin, yet unborn, seem to meet--these pieces were then unique in literature, and still remain so.

In these fantasy-pieces the fugal conception is dealt with on a small scale; in the Toccatas on a large scale. The clavier-toccatas of Bach are free pieces of that wonderful many-sidedness of construction which a music might still possess that had not yet stiffened into conventionalism. When we sit down to play the Inventions and Symphonies, we point our fingers as if for miniature work. But when we sit down to the Toccatas, we dispose our arms and hands, as would have been said in Bach’s time, “in einer gewissenen grossartigen Freyheit,” with a certain large freedom. These Toccatas will be eternal favourites, because of their air of improvisation which develops the fughetta out of the preludic movement, and scatters the playful, pleasant technique in the midst of the severities of imitation. Inexhaustible in the apparent formlessness of their form, they stand on the threshold of modern literature as the great models of that true clavier-style which will always have a touch of the extempore as one of its characteristic features.

In the Toccatas it can be seen how Bach permits his fugal conceptions organically to grow. It is in them that we see the psychology of the fugue more purely than in the strictest formal fugal movements. Take, for example, the F sharp minor Toccata. Here the fingers preludise over the keyboard, gradually growing slower, the passages differentiate themselves into motives, which gently imitate each other, until at length they come to rest on a solid bass. This is the moment of lyric inspiration; and the soul sighs itself out in a slow movement, which weaves itself in fugal style, speedily sweeping forth in its own free, harmonious woven-work. A staccato-motive breaks in; rolling semiquavers soon crystallise around it; it grows and swells in a three-voiced fugue; loosens itself, becomes lighter, and passes off into an operatic joyousness, circling round in repetitions, which to us seem almost too wide for the narrow significance of this motive. A pause, and in the new-won freshness emerges the first chromatic adagio-motive as a lively floating fugue, soon breaking forth into four voices, and ending in a stirring finale.

Take the D major Toccata. Here there is a joyous prelude of ascending scales, running off in chords and tremoli. An insertion of a fresh capriccioso motive follows, which pursues its course mingled with playful figures. A pause in adagio; mournfully moving melodies, freely accompanied by tremoli; softly passing over into a quiet three-voice fugue, which again leads to preluding passages, speaking recitatives, broken chords, till the great wild hunt of triplets surges in its fugal power. This D major piece is in content and technique Schumann all over.

Similarly, one easily recognises the development of soul in the solemn C minor Toccata, which is dominated almost throughout by a charmingly-constructed fugue; or in the D minor Toccata, with its stirring and beautiful adagio-movement; the G minor with its bacchanalian finale; the rapid G major; and the never-to-be-forgotten E minor with its clearness and restraint. They are all built up on an inner meaning, and show a grandeur in their intimate nature such as only Beethoven has dared to express on the clavier, and a soulfulness never surpassed by a programme-musician in our century in his own style. But the fugue has in them become the indwelling soul, and the whole speech of music has absolutely ascended into their form. We see it come, grow, and depart.

One who has investigated the psychology of Bach’s fugue in the Toccatas, will no longer fail to recognise it in his pure and absolute fugues. A fugue of Bach--this sounds to the _lay_ musical ear as the very sum of all that is academic. But in reality never were fugues written which were developed less academically, or which flow so entirely from the soul. Only take the fugal form not as the end in itself, and not as a mere example of musical architecture--only take pains to discover the spirit of its unfolding--and we shall be astounded at the endless variety of the inward musical life which is profusely showered into this form. The essence of a fugue of Bach is just this freedom from all architecture, this suppression of all calculation in favour of the spiritual development. The fugal form, that well-known series of enlargements and arrangements of the pure canon, is to him a prime _datum_, from which, nevertheless, he has formed no unbending principle. But he works with this material in such a way that he keeps the development of a piece always subordinate to the character which the fugal theme imposes on him. The theme is the title, the piece the contents.

His genius reveals itself in perception of the thousand possibilities of unfolding which lie in his themes--some advancing diatonically, some studded over with pauses, some with sudden stops on sevenths, some marching on in massive choral style, some humorously staccato, especially those with startling false accents, others drawn in large outlines which excite curiosity and scarcely stand forth in their clear rhythm till the ninth or tenth bar, and which he was so fond of because they gave the strongest stimulus to the coming development.

Bust by Carl Seffner. Modelled on the actual skull. After His, J. S. Bach (Vogel, Leipsic).]

Let the “layman” accustom himself not to be frightened by fugues. The fugue in the grand style of Bach, constructed with that unparalleled art which the first C major fugue in the “Wohltemperiertes Klavier” displays, or which is shown in the C sharp minor fugue, with its three themes gradually stratified one above the other, or rolling themselves off with that extraordinary ease which we daily admire in the famous A minor--this kind of fugue is a necessary speech of music: it is melody, it is a natural language which can never disappear. To grasp it, to assimilate it, until the many voices or even many themes of its development stand clearly before our eyes in their full characteristic value, is a feast for the musical epicure to which hardly anything else can be compared. Bach’s fugues are _playable_. They are not too easy; but they are so in the spirit of the clavier that the fingers soon lose their timidity, and the work is as a mirror in which they speedily recognise the necessary nature of their motion. And there is an eternally fresh animation in this activity, in which no deception, no dilettantism, no superfluity can exist for a moment.

The great artist, to whom the “Fantasy” is a presupposition, does not work on it, however much it may seem to the crowd a chief aim; he works on the form which requires this kind of work. We see Bach, through his whole life, labouring at the fugue; and the encyclopædic work, in the midst of which he died, “The Art of Fugue,” shows us heights of power in this form which make us dizzy. Besides certain scattered fugues, he has made a collection of different periods in the two volumes of the “Wohltemperiertes Klavier.” Here every major and minor mode of every semitone is doubly treated, with a prelude and fugue--a comprehensiveness of arrangement which was partly due to the taste of the time,[77] and partly can be referred to the secondary aim of the work, which was the introduction of a system of clavier-tuning which should be sufficient for practical purposes, in which no acoustic solecisms should be committed to suit convenience, and in which all the keys should be used indifferently and in their completeness by pupils. It is not hard to detect that the unity of these two volumes is not very complete. Even Spitta, a meritorious but somewhat tasteless biographer, who seeks to find the “higher” unity in all Bach’s works, is compelled to grant that there are varieties of style and intrusions of alien matter in the “Wohltemperiertes Klavier.” But that is no loss. The brilliant many-sidedness of its contents can support even this discontinuity of style (which, by the way, is but a slight discontinuity) and this artistic fusion of certain preludes and fugues, which originally were not composed with a view to each other. No one will fail to perceive how wonderfully the preludes combine with each other and with many of the fugues. The whole, perhaps, gains something of the character of the old composite epics, such as Homer or the Bible. Bach’s autograph of the first part bears the date 1722; there is no complete autograph of the second part, and this Bible of clavier-playing was first printed in 1800, two or three generations after its production.[78]

If we look at the original editions of the six works which were printed in Bach’s time, they speak in no uncertain tone of the taste of the age. From 1726 to 1730 appeared the “Klavierübung”--the first part, with the suites which are known as “Partiten.” In 1735 we have the second part of the Klavierübung, containing the Italian Concerto and the “Ouverture nach französischer Art” (also a suite). In 1739 appeared the third part, in which are found organ chorales along with four duets for two claviers. In these the distinction between organ and clavier is as feebly marked as it always was before the invention of the pianoforte. The fourth part, which appeared in 1742, contains the great Variations for clavicymbal with two keyboards. Besides these, in 1747 appeared the “Musikalisches Opfer,” in which the theme of Frederick the Great is elaborated; and, in 1752, two years after Bach’s death, was published the “Kunst der Fuge.” He could only venture on the printing of the “Kunst” in his later years, when the Bach fugue had made some way in the world. The “Musikalisches Opfer” came out under the protection of the King; all the other clavier-pieces which seemed to him likely to pay for the printing are of a lighter kind--suites and concertos “for the delight of amateurs,” as it stands on the title-page. The three types of the great Bach counterpoint--the miniature Invention, the free Toccata, and the absolute Fugue--then, as now, appealed to too select a circle to attain the popularity of dances and concertos.

If Bach’s greatness is in the former works stupendous, in the latter it is loveable. Here we learn to know his other side. It is his “other manner.” Here, instead of the severe canonic development of a theme, attention is paid to the voices as parts of a harmonious whole; he steps down from the cothurnus, and moves familiarly in pleasant comedy. Still, the contrapuntal conception is the basis of the structure; but simply harmonised floriations of melody are interwoven, so that the clavier almost rivals the arioso of a violin. Between the extremes of the first movement of the “Chromatic Fantasia,” with its free rhythms, arpeggios, recitatives, and song-passages, and of the second movement, the regular fugue--extremes which mark the two limits of Bach’s style--there is an endless abundance of methods of treatment, in which now the contrapuntal element and now the arioso takes the lead. We see Bach in this second group of his clavier-works, the suites and concertos, pass over into the enchanting fields of Italian sensuous music. But it is remarkable how he never loses for a single moment his unique depth and his insatiable delight in form. There is a very abyss between a suite of Bach, founded on the Eternities, and one of Handel’s, owing its popularity to the transitory charms of dexterous trivialities.

There are three great groups of Bach’s clavier-suites: the so-called Partiten, which appeared in print in his own life-time, the “English Suites,” and the “French Suites.” The Partiten, which were first published separately, must, as the earliest work of this author known to the public, have struck the whole world with bewilderment. It was the first bound of a unique genius, the elevation of a traditional form of art into quite unparalleled shapes, a storm of intellectual lightning in a region long regarded as exclusively owned by Frenchmen and Italians. Even to-day the Partiten belong to the most select class of clavier-literature; and I cannot for a moment conceive how they are not to be regarded as superior by many degrees to the English and French suites. In no book is the future of music more clearly foretold. To see in the B flat major corrente, Chopin; in the B flat major gigue, Schumann; in the C minor sinfonia, Beethoven; in the C minor Rondo and Capriccioso, Mendelssohn; in the A minor Scherzo, Mozart, is no mere enthusiastic fancy.

The Partiten outgrew the ordinary scheme of the suites (allemande, corrente, saraband, gigue) as Beethoven’s sonatas outgrew the old scheme of sonatas. They have given a new life and a new spirit to a traditional form. The suite, which at the end of the seventeenth century has become merely conventional, is so elevated by the spirit of Bach that it thenceforward stands in the world of actuality. Even Schumann selects a similar form for the expression of modern emotions. The suite having been thus despatched, the sonata is in similar fashion put into precise and regular form, to be transfigured later by Beethoven with the same modern spirit. Bach had the fortune and the genius to relegate the traditional suite into the past, and to see the conventional sonata dawning in the future. Thus with him the dance-piece and the free piece remained fresh and lively. Suite and sonata were only different external ways for reducing several pieces to unity. There, men took their stand on the old familiar series of dance-tunes, without ever thinking of the dances themselves; here, they found for the first movement a practical form, and, in the event, ranged the adagio, scherzo, and rondo together, just as their predecessors had used the saraband, minuet, and gigue. On this tendency to unity on the part of the clavier-pieces, from the first English variations, through Couperin’s Ordres, to Bach’s suites, Italian sonatas and German sonatas, Chopin’s Albums, Schumann’s Scenes, Liszt’s Epics, too much stress need not be laid. Even more than the orchestra, the clavier leans to short pieces, but the intellect demands some excuse for binding them together.

If we take a striking liveliness as the characteristic of the Partiten, we indeed find a feature in which they are distinguished from the French Suites, but which is far from exhausting their qualities. Solid melodies, humorous capriccios, enchanting dances, tuneful airs, everything is included in these works. In their pages we realise how the spirit of Bach strives to utter the very utmost of which it feels itself capable. And in these introductory preludes, toccatas, or symphonies, in these flowing allemandes, gliding correntes, heavy sarabands, filigree-worked gigues, in those numerous intermezzo movements, such as burlesques, rondos, airs, minuets, and passepieds, there are turns of genius, the form of which is impressed for ever on the mind. I think of the sweet running movements of the astonishing B flat major Gigue; of the brilliant structure of the C minor Capriccio, which concludes the Partita in place of a Gigue; of the D major aria, in which breathes the whole grace of the eighteenth century; of the bold and rhapsodical Saraband in D major; of the rich colouring of the introductory E minor Toccata; the rocking melody of the allemande, the sombre glow of the saraband, the wayward syncopations of the gigue.

The six English Suites, which we may certainly assume to have been put into juxtaposition by Bach himself, stand between the six printed Partiten and the six French Suites, whose combination was only probably, not certainly, due to Bach. They would seem to have been called “English” suites, because they were arranged for some Englishman; the original title was apparently “suites avec prélude.” For the English suites, like the Partiten, have each a fairly long introduction, fugal in style, but not conforming to the strictest laws of the fugue. The intermezzi, also, are as numerous as in the case of the Partiten. But that extreme intellectual severity is wanting; they are more graceful and polite. This character is especially noticeable in the introductory fugal movements and the intermediate dance pieces; and one who seeks rather a play of tone than grandeur of soul will perhaps find here a richer yield than in the Partiten. Neat, volkslied-like sarabands, ravishing bourrées, rococo gavottes, ornamental minuets, the exquisitely delicate passepied in E minor--these all lie so thick one on another, that one cannot recall a more sparkling album of dainty dances in the whole eighteenth century. It is true that in the Vienna school (as in the case of the younger[79] Muffat and others) there is in this class of dances a gentle soothing quality, which gives us the first hint of the coming beautiful Viennese dance-music; but they are, like those of Handel, too short in duration and too featureless for us to be able to return to them with the extraordinary affection with which we return to those of Bach. These are so rich in invention that they cannot in many centuries lose their flavour. The dancing underpart of the D major gavotte in the D minor suite, the multiform air of the D minor, E minor, and A minor sarabands, the filigree-counterpoint of the E minor Passepied, the extreme daring of the A minor bourrée, the transport of the A minor prelude, which even grows into a roundelay,--what a depth of originality is there in all these pieces, in which the repetitions so wonderfully satisfy the laws of the mind without becoming mechanical!

How the French Suites came by their name is hard to say. More French than the English suites they are certainly not, for they are quite as Bach-like as the latter. Without Preludes and without too many Intermezzi or “Doubles” (repetitions with variations), they are of astonishing variety. The Allemandes especially, as first movements in every suite, display such a manifoldness of form, that in fact nothing is left in common to them but the four-time beat. The song in the Saraband and the dance in the Intermezzi appear to the same effect as in the English suites, and a light tone runs through the whole. But the tone is lightest of all in the E major suite, which with its rolling allemande and courante, its singing saraband, its stiff and formal gavotte, its characteristic polonaise, its tricksy bourrée, and its cheerful gigue, is a perfect paradise of dainty devices. The flowing courante in it strikes our fancy; for it is precisely in the courantes of these suites with their heavy old-fashioned movements that we shall most often hit on the rare occasions on which we must regard Bach as already obsolete. The ornamentations tend to appear less befitting to us, scattered so profusely as they are in these movements. But to Bach, little as he could as yet succeed in emancipating himself from ornamentations, they were no longer such a matter of course as with the old French clavecinists. If we compare the different manuscripts of his works, we see the uncertainties and alterations. Bischoff, in his excellent critical edition of Bach’s clavier-music (Steingräber) has therefore only engraved large those ornamentations which were without doubt always played by Bach. Taste will fill them in in certain places on grounds of symmetry and “thematic”; but they are no longer bewildering in their profusion.

Among the suites which do not belong to these collections, we recollect with great pleasure the dainty dances and intermezzi--for example in the E flat major suite, and especially that in B minor with overture in French style (Largo--Fuga--Largo) which appeared in the second part of the Klavierübung as a piece for two manuals. It presents, among the many intermezzi, a gavotte in the style of the orchestral Partiten, which links itself with the choicest dances, in graceful style, of the preceding century. From the clavier-suites we pass to the clavier-sonatas, which, still in the style of Italian art, mingled with dances, offer free combinations of different movements. The melodious andante of the D minor sonata, and its final allegro-movement rattling off almost in one part, are perfect pearls. A step further we reach the fantasias with fugues; especially the polyphonic one in A minor, the recitatival “Chromatische” and the concerto-like C minor, fugally treated, but still not a fugue. These three fantasia-pieces were Bach’s direct bequests to the future. In the polyphony of the brilliantly rushing fantasia in A minor, rising with endlessly delicate melody, we are reminded of the “Meistersinger”; in the chromatic fantasia, with its broad narration and grandiose concluding pedal point, the clavier seems to us to speak with the freedom of a drama; in the significantly constructed C minor fantasia rests the whole formal talent of the instrumental composers of the expiring eighteenth century.

The three “brilliant” fantasias incline naturally to the concerto style, which partly abandoned counterpoint in favour of a mere accompaniment, and partly subordinated it to the careful elaboration of a single voice-part. The problem of committing a whole concerto to the clavier alone, Bach has solved in his famous “Italian Concerto”--Italian in the conception of the style of execution proper to concertos, which in Italy developed itself specially on the violin--Italian in the form of a slow movement enclosed by two quicker movements, which had emerged as the most practical method for the violin (half in rivalry with the Tutti, half in the interest of solo virtuosity). Bach has in the Italian concerto perfectly attained the object of writing in several movements a clavier piece fit for execution. The grand sonatas of a later time have been able to add nothing essential to it. The first movement is an ingenious combination of pregnant motives, which reminds us of tutti-effects, of running semiquaver figures, and melodious passages on moving quaver accompaniment, which correspond to the second lyrical theme of sonatas. The slow movement is a great recitative song with a berceuse-like accompaniment, of a structure so delicate that we are irresistibly reminded of the contours of old primitive pictures. It has the dainty grace of archaic outline, just like that in the two-part interwoven arioso[80] of the B minor Prelude, or in the crisp melody of the E flat Prelude (Wohltemperiertes Klavier I.). The third movement, which is quicker, unravels the whole into the cheerful linked play of floating parts, unsurpassed in elegant construction by any of the great formalists. Floating passages run up and down among chords, falling like drops of rain, and the voices combine in pleasant unity.

The entire multiformity of music at the beginning of the eighteenth century is expressed in the clavier-works of Bach. As yet the sonata-form with its two themes, and its “free” section in the middle of the movement, has not become the consecrated scheme;[81] and all the forces which had gradually worked towards this form exert themselves unfettered, in order to make themselves effective now in this, now in that combination of movements and parts of movements. “Thematic” is not neglected. To a series of suite-movements similar commencing motives are given, and the motives of earlier parts are taken up in the later. But this tendency to unity does not act as a restraint upon form, and does not reduce everything to one stiff mould. There is a fugue with a prelude, by Bach, that in E flat major (Wohltemp. Kl. i.), which offers perhaps the most delicate example of this unrestrained unity of motive. The Prelude, which is much longer than the fugue, begins with semiquaver figures, whose characteristic is melodious sustained passages advancing by sixths and sevenths; after this introduction, begins in toccata-fashion a kind of slow fugue, which unfolds the just heard motive in a terser form; and finally, in a third part, mingles itself with the former semiquaver figure. The fourth part is so to speak moulded in the fugue form, which in its “subject” makes use of the characteristic leap of a seventh, found in the Prelude, as a main feature, and brings the play to a conclusion in a busy and lively manner. The relations of motive are only to be _felt_, not seen; but they are _there_, and give to the formal freedom of this piece a vigour of its own. Thus, in many of Bach’s pieces, apart from the direct thematic motives, we shall find this indirect assonance, which, springing from a general feeling of unity, is, in fact, a more dainty framework for the piece than any unity that could be impressed on it from outside.