Chapter IX: Liszt and the Present Time 271 (5)

So also is it with the construction of the pieces. We find everywhere traces of the later sonata-style; and not less in the dance-forms than in free movements. It was too natural to repeat the beginning of the piece at the end, then to transpose a second theme into the main key, and in the centre to work out the main motive in a kind of free fantasia. But so long as the author held fast to the binary form of the piece, and to the Da capo of each half, as was the case at this time, so long did the parts of the “developments” and repetitions fail to concentrate themselves so completely as not to leave a rich field of varied forms in which fancy could move at ease. Bach’s imagination was keen enough to give to every one of these forms, as they developed themselves each moment, a natural and elemental strength. A toccata by him, although they are all very various in form, or a fantasia, like the C minor, which is of sonata-character, is built up so firmly and self-evidently that the later uniformity of the sonata seems rather to betray a weakening than a strengthening of style.

[That the severe forms of Prelude and Fugue are abundantly capable of expressing poetical ideas is easily shown. Turn only to the D minor Prelude and Fugue in the second part of the Wohltemperiertes Klavier. Although the casual reader perceives in the one movement merely an exercise in two parts, in the other, one in three parts, it requires only a slight exercise of imagination to see that the work really pictures some such feelings as the following: In the Prelude, a man suddenly realises himself in the true “out-of-doors” of this life, with the rain and hail of difficulties and troubles sensibly battering him. Bravely, but ineffectually, he tries to push through the tempest, and sinks wearily into half-sleep, is awakened by a renewed riot of the elements around, tries harder than before, and longer too, to impress himself on his circumstances, and be master of things, and succeeds in a sorrowful kind of way, for the storm passes, sighs itself out, and he at last can rest. In the Fugue, he tries to begin his work in the world. His efforts are strong in their intention, but die down as weakly as the devil himself could wish, one after another. But though these messengers of his will return to him empty again and again, he still goes on. “It is the best I can do, and something may come of it in the end,” he seems to say. And there is in the final bars, where the subject occurs for the last time, a certain expression of savage pleasure at the thought of not having given in, mingled with the abiding knowledge of an abundant measure of continual failure, such as is no imagination to any man who cares about his work, and has arrived at the sorrowful conviction that most of his walking must be done in the dark.][82]

Perhaps the Bach Preludes show this freedom on the most liberal scale. For the Prelude is not so much a kind of form, like the Toccata, but a mere Piece before a Piece; it lays down the lines to be followed, but in itself is uncertain, unfixed in form. The Prelude may be a Toccata or a Sonata, a Symphony or an Invention; it can let its upper part, in arioso style, wander over the continuo, or it may burst forth in fullest polyphony. It may have the rhythm and regularity of beat of the dances, or may speak with the freedom of recitative without thought of a repetition. The abundance of possibilities which Bach found at his disposal in the working out of themes, construction, and style, are mirrored in the Preludes, from the real fugue to the playful method of the court-musicians.[83] Anyone who undertakes the pleasant task of simply running through the Preludes of the “Wohltemperiertes Klavier” (vol. ii.), will be able to appreciate the full spring-like freshness in which the free music of this time, so rich in promise for the future, lived out its life. And, like the discriminating observer of nature, he will admire, in just these yet unspoilt forms, the great harmony and natural unity which is exhibited by the young life of the creation. The Prelude in E major will always seem to me a blossom of this spring-time (“Wohlt. Kl.” i.)--one of the daintiest pieces ever written for the clavier. In an easy 12/8 time the poem begins with an allegretto theme, ingeniously invented, and playful in style. It is supported by two voices; but they soon take part canonically in the delightful movement. We have, in the play of cheerful thought, come to the dominant of the dominant[84] (F sharp), and from this F sharp we rest, in a humorous change, a moment on D, and even G, till, just as rapidly, we emerge through a chromatic maze at B natural once more (Bar 8). The repose of the succeeding dominant passage is gently stirred by ravishing transient modulations, on which the very spirit of happiness seems to rest. A beautiful chain of syncopations leads us through F sharp minor, and a jubilant run of semiquavers, built on a dominant chord on E, brings us to the recapitulation of the opening subject in the key of A (Bar 15), starting from which the movement repeats itself accurately (for eight bars) in its eternal cheerfulness, the piece closing with a couple of bars in Schumann’s ingenious manner, still sweetly suggesting the spring-song of its earlier strains.

We find, then, that nothing essentially new in “form” has been used by later artists, of which the germ did not already exist in Bach. Nay, even in programme-music (supposed by many to be an invention of modern times) for the clavier, which Kuhnau so quaintly worked out in his Biblical Stories,[85] Bach has entered the field in a youthful composition. He is singing the departure of his brother. The first adagio movement in anapæstic rhythms represents the flattery of the friends, who are trying to dissuade the traveller from his journey. It is time for the fugue, and this is the picture of various misfortunes which may befall him in foreign parts. A mournful arioso passage on a ground bass,[86] chromatic in character, is a universal lament of his friends. In a full-chorded Intermezzo they come and bid him good-bye, seeing that it cannot be otherwise. Now the postillion sings his air, broken with octave passages, representing the smacks of his whip; and since a fugue is the end of all good things, we hear one in four parts raise itself above the post-horn, with whip episodes to increase the realism. The young Bach did not go as far as Frohberger, who represented the assaults of robbers, crossings of the Rhine, and even forcible ejectments with violence, on the clavier; or as Kuhnau, who had given the cheating of Laban in “deceptive” cadences,[87] and Hezekiah’s doubtings in the rehearsal of a choral; yet this kind of programme-music declined in the eighteenth century precisely as it has grown up again in the nineteenth.

If we believe Spitta, Bach also left behind him one of those anagram-pieces which were so in the taste of his time--the fugue on the letters B A C H. But the composition seems too leathern and insipid for us to be able to express a decided opinion. There is in literary criticism a well-known false method--the wish utterly to deny insipidity to the great. But since Bach’s authorship of the “B A C H” fugue is not vouched for, and since he never elsewhere put together so many dull pages, we are not compelled to load his memory with its weight.

As we find in Bach the possibilities of all the great forms of the succeeding centuries, so we find in him also all the germs of future expression, rhythm, harmony, and melody. Nothing is more perverse than to regard this music as academic and expressionless. Expression is never absent from counterpoint except when it sacrifices impressionism to the mere display of technical mastery. We shall even to-day seek in vain for piano compositions more full of expression than some of the preludes contained in the Wohltemperiertes Klavier. In the remarkably decadent C sharp minor, in the B minor, so full of gentle mournfulness, in the E flat minor with its grandiose solemnity, in the B flat minor with its organ-like seriousness, or in the F major with its Meister-singer melody[88] (in Part II. Wohlt. Kl.), there is an unsurpassed depth of expression. Nowhere is there a greater variety of characters than would be presented by a comparison of the fugal themes in this work. Merely to turn over a few of its pages is to see before us an abundance of content which no other music-book would easily conceal in so narrow a space. It is in the service of expression that the motives for the architecture of the fugues are unfolded; in the service of expression the rhythms are developed, whose skilful planning is only clearly seen in a piece like the G major Prelude (Wohlt. Kl. i.); in the service of expression are formed the harmonies, from their simple successions, as in the C major Prelude (W. Kl. i.) or of the C sharp major Prelude (W. Kl. ii.) to the complicated retardations and tied notes of the B flat minor Prelude (Wohl. Kl. i.), or in the B minor fugue (W. Kl. i.) on a theme so wonderfully sad that no bolder chords can be found in the days of the most furious chords of the seventh. In Bach, says Marpurg, the different talents of a hundred other musicians were united.

Bach played very quietly. In his time technique began to change its principles. The hand was no longer to be held out flat, but curved, so as to provide a series of hammers rather than levers. The passing of the fingers over each other, as practised by Mattheson, a player of distinction almost equal to Bach and Handel, gave way to a systematic _under_-passing; and the thumb, which Bach had seen applied by former generations only to wide stretches, began its important part as the “linking” finger. The remains of Bach’s finger-exercises, and the directions which stand in the lesson-book of his son Philip Emanuel, have been usefully compared[89] by Spitta, who has drawn a picture of the technique of John Sebastian, which in its grandeur well fits with his work. “It was a system of under-moving fingers, worked out by unparalleled practice and talent, applying not merely to the thumb but to the middle fingers, and usually so arranged that only a longer finger can pass over a shorter.[90] This produced a technique which, like Bach’s work, united past and future in one classic method. Our thumb-technique, which in essentials goes back to Philip Emanuel, is a mere fragment of Bach’s method, just as the whole succeeding art was, compared with Bach, but a fragment on a large scale.” But it is hard to be clear on these matters. Before the time of “schools” technique was a matter of personality; and reconstruction to us of a later age is utterly out of the question.

Should a diligent scholar try to reconstruct from Bach’s pieces his technique, so far as it had influenced musical form, he would soon be brought to a pause. For when we examine this literature, we see that to the master everything was possible, and that he never gave form to a conception for the sake of technique. He is a stupendous genius who does not write for everybody, and therefore his compositions are often difficult; but the difficulties are never against the genius of the clavier, and can be conquered by anything but idleness. He has, again, written some taking show-pieces, like the Prelude and Fugues in A minor (Steingräber, vii. 29), which, as “paying” salon pieces, sound much harder than they are; and, alongside of these again, are pieces which spring from the very joy in the abundance of possible techniques and of new conceptions. To this class belongs, if genuine, the Fantasia in A minor (Steingräber, vii. 8), in which pure technical fireworks are let off, of short scale passages for both hands, swinging chords and octaves, running motives with astonishing passage effects, passages of sixths with over and under accompaniments, and melodious phrases with embellishing harmonies. But here the first rank is taken by the famous “Goldberg” variations, already printed by Bach, partly set for two manuals, an album of thirty technical conceptions, in which everything possible in tone-material is contained, from arioso to canon, from _grave_ to _presto_; everything, in fact, which Bach ever adopted for the setting of his ideas. The twenty-ninth variation, which can also be played on one manual, brings before us chords and passages of interwoven beauty which prepare beforehand the way for Liszt. Even in technique, then, the genius of Bach stretches over centuries.

It cannot be exactly maintained that Bach treated the clavier wholly individually, but he nevertheless has helped to individualise it. At the beginning of last century, when the clavier was still for the most part an accompanying instrument, when it sustained in the orchestra the foundation-harmonies, even if at the same time another clavier entered in concerto-wise, genius itself could not release the instrument from this corporate conception without running against the whole spirit of the time. It is remarkable how Bach left it the character of a thorough-bass instrument, and yet allowed it so much independence. It has at one time the divided nature of the unifying organ, as organ-pieces were then regarded still as practically ready for the clavier; at another the pizzicato and running character of the lute. Bach could entitle his formally interesting E flat major piece, Prelude, Fugue, and Allegro (Steingräber, vii. 30) as Prélude pour le luth _ò çembal_.[91] From the traditions of the lute and organ the peculiar nature of the clavier comes into existence, and it was in the maintenance of the _via media_ between these less delicately expressive extremes that its future lay. How _individually_ Bach regarded the clavier is seen in the pieces in which it is combined with flute and viol da gamba or violin, or in the concertos with one, two, three, or even four claviers. Among these the C major and D minor concertos with three claviers, now combined, now isolated, represent the highest points of this older form of the concerto, as yet not adapted for solo-virtuosity. But yet plainer is his insight in the direct transcriptions which he has made of violin pieces for the clavier. He interpolates in the freest fashion middle voices, which are kept together by “pedals;” ornamentations which draw out the air of the melody in clavier-style; or rapid vibrating over-parts which make up for the loss of the long-drawn violin tones. And by this insight into the peculiar character of the clavier, he makes it more capable not only of speaking with its own voice, but also of spreading over wider circles the literature of other instruments by means of suitable and self-intelligible transcriptions. Bach’s extreme love of this instrument, which so often gave him the means of expression for his musical conceptions, contributed not the least to such an interpretative mission. Slowly the world accustomed itself to understand music, not _per chorum_, but _per instrumentum_.

It is at this point that the great need is felt. A mechanical advance is required to bring the expressive capacity of the clavier into a line with the demands of genius upon it. The rivalry between the clavicymbal and the clavichord[92] was not yet quite decided. In Romance lands the former was the favourite; in Germany the latter. On the former great effects could be better produced; on the latter the more soulful tone, and the unique embellishment called “Bebung.” Bach wrote much, including the Wohltemperiertes Klavier, for the clavichord, which even his son Philip Emanuel still preferred to the clavicymbal. But he was so unable to disguise from himself the counter advantages of the fuller and broader quill-instrument, that he published pieces for “Kiel-flügel”[93], with two manuals and registers for forte and piano. These registers were the only means for giving light and shade to the monotonous note of the “cymbal”; to give light and shade by turns, as in the organ, so that on the upper manual a melody could be played loud, and on the lower the accompaniment could be played soft. In Kuhnau we see the forte and piano, which he aimed at by simply striking on the clavichord, used as a means of expression. In the Biblical Stories Jacob has just been cheated by Laban, in receiving Leah for Rachel. “The bridegroom is contented,” as a minuet shows us; but “his heart prophesies misfortune,” and the measure rushes on, becomes piano and più-piano; suddenly Jacob takes heart again--forte; after a bar or two he goes to sleep--piano; he wakes--forte; falls into deep slumber--piano. In his “Italian Concerto” Bach had made a much more specialised use of this by the register. He had mingled loud and soft parts, and each hand alternately is marked forte or piano. In these, and similarly in the echo-movement of the suite with “Ouverture à la manière française,” we are led to think of a splendid clavicymbal, such as the one preserved ostensibly as Bach’s in the Berlin Museum of Instruments. In that, every one of the combinations of four strings can be altered by pulling a register: the manuals admit of coupling, and a soft lute-stop is provided.

Pedal-clavichord. Consisting of two manual clavichords, with two strings to each note, of (8 ft. and) 4 ft. tone, and a pedal-clavichord with four strings to each note, two 16 ft. and two 8 ft. Inscribed “Johann David Herstenberg, Organ-builder at Geringswald, made us, 1760.” De Wit collection. ]

We know of a hundred attempts to improve the sound of the clavier, and make it more expressive. Here, too, the eighteenth century is the experimental preparation for the happy successes of the nineteenth. Now the string-choruses were tuned in octaves, now pedals were added for low notes, now the sound-boards were strengthened, now the lower strings were made of copper, and the higher of steel; and throughout a rich experience was acquired as to the best way of constructing the separate parts. Leather plectrums appear everywhere in order to make the tone softer and less metallic. The clavier, in fact, was made to imitate all possible orchestral instruments, and even such natural phenomena as thunder and lightning, by means of register-stops. Or, the forte and piano stops were combined, ever more artistically, into as many as two hundred and fifty permutations, so that an endless number of shades was possible.

The solution of the problem was the modern hammer-clavier or pianoforte, in which the strings are no longer plucked but struck with hammers, so that every _nuance_ of touch depends on the fingers. The story of the pianoforte is the usual Story of Inventions. While people were labouring to solve the problem by theoretical calculation, it had long lain solved in an unsuspected fashion before them, and those who were slowly working at the practical realisation were personally forgotten, until a positively sufficient experience made the new invention popular. The beginnings of the pianoforte are therefore, as usual, obscure. The striking of the strings with hammers had long been the method employed in the dulcimer. At the beginning of the last century an artist named Pantaleon Hebenstreit was much talked of, who played the dulcimer so perfectly, that everyone was astounded at the new sound-effects. It is possible that his success gave the impulse: in any case, in the year 1711 there emerges in Italy an instrument called the pianoforte--because it could be played piano as well as forte--elaborated by a certain Bartolommeo Cristofori, who was soon forgotten. This instrument is clearly pictured in writings recently recovered as a hammer-clavier; Cristofori, as curator to Ferdinand de’ Medici, had a splendid collection of Belgian, French, and Italian Flügel-instruments to look after, the study of which, without doubt, aided him in his invention. His pianoforte, which at first shows a still more primitive technique, gradually draws sensibly nearer to the modern system; yet, on account of its unaccustomed tone and touch, it was unable to gain any appreciable results in the following decades. Cristofori could not have dreamt that an Italian society of our time would build a monument to him as inventor of the world-charming pianoforte, in the national sanctuary, the Santa Croce of Florence.

Whether Hebenstreit built on Cristofori, Cristofori on the French, or the French on the Germans, is unknown. Possibly the pianoforte was invented thrice over, in Italy, France, and Germany. In France appears Marius in the year 1716 as the inventor; in Germany it would seem that a certain Schröter, incited by the success of Hebenstreit, invented it in 1717; at least he himself says so in a writing first published in Freiberg in 1763, ten years after the death of the instrument-maker, Silbermann. But Silbermann had in any case the merit of having, at a more fortunate time than Cristofori, worked so hard at the perfecting of the pianoforte, that from him its increasing spread and the gradual displacement of the clavicymbal and clavichord may be dated. Yet this very Gottlieb Silbermann had constructed a “cimbal d’amour,” which by a cleverly devised mechanism heightened the tone of the clavichord--so “lonesome, melancholy, and inexpressibly sweet.” But his later renown rests on his exquisitely manipulated pianoforte. He had a good master in this difficult work--John Sebastian Bach. When he brought his first model to Bach the latter found it too weak in the treble and too hard to play. Silbermann was first vexed, then stimulated by this censure. He then sold no more, and went on making improvements in it until the old Bach, as Agricola[94] says, gave him unmixed commendation.

If we play Bach to-day on our extremely refined pianofortes, we are inclined to imagine that his fine effects are solely due to the perfection of the instrument. And this opinion is not wholly false. Though in the cembalo there sounded in his ear something of the accustomed solemnity of the organ, there is yet in his music a cry for a subtle and expressive instrument which he as little possessed as Beethoven possessed an orchestra suited to his ideas. In every great tone-creator lives a superabundance of imaginative form which the instruments of the time cannot embody, and to which the instruments instantly strive to become equal. Because Berlioz was, the modern orchestra is. Because Bach was, the pianoforte is, which knows how to express with justice the subtleties of his soul-music. I think for example of the never-to-be-forgotten theme of the C sharp minor prelude in the first volume of the Wohltemperiertes Klavier. The clavichord could only give this theme in a thin lament; the spinet in a rigid and unmanageable form. But what features does not the motive show as the piece runs on! Now it has the slow-breathing rhythm of a noble aspiration, now the opening eyes of an expectant Cecilia, now the heavy oppression of a martyr soul, now the holy rage of a last noble complaint, now the sweet weariness of Christian humility. And with these various tints the piece builds itself up into a broad picture, which leads from renunciations through pain to renunciations; with these tints every line, every note of the theme is given an active life, as it pursues its course. Composition like this demanded an instrument which should be capable of a new expression in every touch. All that Bach dreamed of, the pianoforte gave, awakening the gentle soul of the clavichord to an unthought-of fulness of existence, and changing the mechanical force of the clavicymbal to a sudden consciousness of personality. The voices of a fugue-passage would now be personally separated from each other; every line in the great lacework could be brought out at the moment according to the feelings of the performer. What, under the sacred laws of Bach’s music, slumbered in the depth of the breast, found in the new instrument its unreserved interpretation.

[95]It seems at first sight almost tragic that Bach himself can never have realised these effects, which are so familiar to us in connection with his music as it is nowadays interpreted on the pianoforte. But perhaps it is the wisdom of Fate to ordain that the cup of the artist should ever be dashed by a certain bitterness, the conscious falling short of attainment as it appears in complete idea before his mind.

When an artistic form reaches perfection, its active life is over, and it is a subject of contemplation, no longer a tool to be used.

And just so, when the instrument necessary to the full interpretation of Bach’s clavier-music, the pianoforte, had arrived within measurable distance of perfection, then did Bach’s own Art reach its highest formal expression, then once more did the fashion of things suffer a change, and his work began to take its place as a colossal monument pointing on the road towards the House Beautiful.

Bach is, as it were, the priest of modern music. His congregation sit at his feet daily. Wherever a pianoforte is found, there is his temple. But though the priest cannot utterly control the worship of his hearers (nay, many will bow the knee to Rimmon in the house of the God), still his voice is strong, his words are true, and they may hear if they will.] This is the significance of Bach, and the longer we live, the more we shall believe it.

[73] The word “Intavolata” was used about 1600 to describe
the “arrangement” of a many-voiced madrigal for the
keyed instrument. Hence “intavolatura” comes to mean a
“copy” presenting all the parts at one view, and such
“arrangements” for clavier were common and popular.

[74] More than a century before Kuhnau, an English
clavier composer, John Munday, composed a piece of
“programme-music,” with the various sections labelled,
_e.g._--Faire Wether, Lightening, Thunder, Calme Wether,
A Cleare Day. It is the third piece in the Fitzwilliam
Virginal Book.

[75] Bach died in 1750. Hawkins published his great History
of Music in 1776, and in spite of the fact that he had his
information direct from Bach’s son, John Christian Bach,
then living in London, he appears quite ignorant of any of
his works but the Clavierübung (1731-42), from which he
prints three short harpsichord pieces.

[76] This is certainly not so, historically speaking.
The strict canon is far older than what we understand by
“imitation.”

[77] Long before Bach was born, we find an English composer
anticipating this comprehensive treatment of the scales.
Before 1667, John Jenkins wrote a series of “Fancies” on
each degree of the alphabetical scale, three movements to
the set. The keys actually used are C, D, E, F, G, A, B
flat, all minor except F and B flat. But, as is mentioned
in a previous note, in one of the three movements in F,
Jenkins modulates nearly through all the flat keys, at
any rate as far as D flat, thus showing that already
in the middle of the seventeenth century an Englishman
contemplated Bach’s accomplished work of using the scale
on every semitone. And this by no means fixes the ultimate
limit. Bull’s fantasia on Ut, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La--piece
number 51 in the Fitzwilliam book--modulates into all the
twelve keys. Though this does not _prove_ that instruments
were as yet tuned with an equal temperament, it does prove
that Bach was in no sense the originator of the idea,
and the probability is very great that the system was in
practical use in England in Elizabethan times. Bull was
flourishing in 1590.

[78] The date of the first edition of the “Forty-eight” is
uncertain, namely, 1799 or 1800, London. (Author’s note.)

[79] August Gottlieb Muffat, of Vienna, 1690-1770, son of
Georg Muffat, organist of Strassburg Cathedral.

[80] This movement is in three parts, and the allusion
is to the two upper voices, which maintain a duet in
_cantabile_ on a gently moving quaver bass.

[81] The idea of the two subjects, and of the “free”
section after the central double bar, was already realised
incompletely. In the shortest “binary” movements the scheme
of _keys_ is found to be P, Q. (double bar) || Q, various,
P.

[82] This paragraph is suggested by a corresponding one in
the author’s German edition.

[83] The author means such composers as Rameau, Galuppi,
Couperin, who wrote for their audience to a great extent.

[84] This expression may be misunderstood unless reference
is made to the music. The passage arrives at the key of B
(the “dominant” key), but the F sharp mentioned is merely
the bass note.

[85] See above, p. 92.

[86] A “ground” bass is a short passage repeated an
indefinite number of times through an extensive movement.
In this case it consists of four bars, and is not repeated
so strictly as usual, though its general figure is kept up
throughout.

[87] This expression, “deceptive” cadence, is a translation
of _cadenza d’inganno_, one of the several cadences or
closes which had names given to them by the old theorists.
The “inganno” cadence was something like the “interrupted”
cadence, but was supposed to lead into _another key_, hence
the “deception.”

[88] The author possibly refers to the flowing freedom of
the counterpoint in the quintet in Wagner’s opera. But
there is no need nowadays to demonstrate that the Bayreuth
master is as necessarily a contrapuntist as he of Weimar.

[89] Meaning, of course, that the fingering methods of
the father and son are by no means identical. The former
employed the crossing of the fingers over one another
freely; whereas Philip Emanuel’s notions of fingering
are practically ours. See his “Exempel nebst achtzehn
Probe-Stücken, etc.,” date 1780.

[90] This method is still commonly practised. Chopin,
Liszt, and others, supply innumerable examples,
particularly of the passing of 4 over 5.

[91] That is, “for the lute _or_ clavier.”

[92] It is necessary once more to remind the reader of the
_essential_ difference in “action,” power of expression,
and strength of tone, between these two instruments; and of
the unfortunate ambiguity which exists in the use of the
name “clavichord.” _Vide supra_, pp. 21 and 89, note.

[93] Kiel = quill, flügel = wing, _i.e._ a keyed instrument
with a plucking “action” of _quill_ plectrums, with a case
made in the shape of a bird’s _wing_. Grand pianofortes
are still made in this shape, and therefore are still
called “flügel” in Germany. Kiel-flügel is synonymous with
clavicymbal (hence “cembalo”), and means “harpsichord.”

[94] Agricola was a pupil of John Sebastian Bach, and in
1754 helped Bach’s son Emanuel to write a biography of his
father.

[95] Suggested by corresponding paragraphs.

The “Galant” School

When Bach died, the musical centre of gravity tended to Germany; but it was doubtful what precise line would be followed. On Bach anything could be built. A great period of counterpoint might rise in which voices might go through a new series of harmonic complexities, similar to, and yet so different from those of the Middle Ages. Or there might come a period of great suites in which the simple dance-forms might grow in many-sided development. A high pathetic style might be introduced, or the details of expression might attract the attention of the amateur. The forms of the various compositions might alter in either direction, of new freedom or new restraint. Counterpoint might be deserted, concerted playing might be improved in the direction of increased grace.

For all or any of these possibilities Bach laid a foundation, and it only remained for the taste of the time to decide on the choice that should be made.

The taste of the time, leaving on one side both the pathetic and the scholarly, went off into the domain of the graceful. The experience of music was similar to that of architecture, which had already gone through the epoch of the “baroque” and “rococo,”[96] by which designers had sought to give variety to the lines of their work. Compared with the energy and manly swing of the Italian Concerto, a sonata of Philip Emanuel Bach is fairly characterised as “rococo.” In place of the sober delight in bold outline appears the “galant” appreciation of eccentricities and wayward curvings. Passion is ashamed of confessing itself openly, and offers the amusing spectacle of a natural emotion wilfully covering itself with an incongruous vesture of conventional form.

The newly formed tendency towards simple sensuousness does not obtrude itself; it merely smiles in the graceful oscillations of subtle harmonies.

Caprice is the true ruler, and in improvised outpourings, speaking pauses, piquant leaps, stupefying enharmonic changes, purposed perverseness of motive, she places the same material under the hands of the fair performers, which, a short time before, had taken such a scholarly form.

Where strict canons of the voices used to be carried honestly through, we now observe a pleasant trifling with imitation which becomes coquettish, and the pedantic old Dux and Comes[97] put up very well with the change in their conditions of service. Counterpoint turns into mere accompaniment, and daintiness with humorous ornament is the object of the composer.

The new auditor is the delicate dilettante who listens no longer so much to the inner parts, the ancient severity of which vanishes and is replaced by chord music. Now we listen to the melody, to the over-part, and we unfold its whole charm, revealing a hundred secrets of melodic pleasure, and disentangling them at ease. And in all this capricious enlivening of music there remains the same delightful contradiction as in the paintings and buildings of the time--the contradiction between inner freedom and the aim at a fixed form. The external form is to replace what was offered by the inner; and yet, from these new free figures, the intention is primarily to gain this form. The aim is not at collections of suites, but at the type of the free movement, of the piece, of the sonata. It is the same spectacle as when we see Hogarth and Greuze expressing a definite moral lesson in their pictures, or architectural principles conveyed in the play of childhood. In music, however, that exclusive predominance of form, which the French Revolution caused to prevail in the representative art, has never been quite attained. It is important to notice that this was only possible since music had emancipated itself from French influence. It was only in Germany that a Beethoven could arise.

The distinction between “professional” and “amateur” is one to which our attention is always more and more drawn. “Tablatures” and apparatus for the scholar vanish gradually, and titles meant to attract the amateur become more frequent. Bach’s inscription--“for the delight of amateurs”--over suites and concertos, appears on more than one title-page. We read “Cecilia playing on the clavier and satisfying the hearing,” or “Manipulus musices, a Handful of Pastime at the Clavier,” or again, “the Busy Muse Clio,” or even “Clavier-practice for the delight of mind and ear, in six easy _galanterie parties_ adapted to modern taste, composed chiefly for young ladies.” A certain Tischer has put it very shortly on some suites--“The Contented Ear and the Quickened Soul.” As the most complete refiner of this taste, relying on the public at large, appears Philip Emanuel Bach, who inscribes his sonatas “easy” or “for ladies,” and thus openly confessed, much as he was censured therefor by the pedants, that he had systematically introduced the light _genre_ as a music for the future.

Like the princes in the seventeenth century, or the middle classes in the nineteenth, it was the nobles in the eighteenth who played the part of Maecenas; and under their patronage appears, for the first time, a precisely marked musical society. Here too, in music, the nobility became an invaluable link between the artistic court and that public interest in art which, it would seem, is the necessary condition of all future advance. Even in the didactic musical romance which old Kuhnau wrote in 1700 under the title of “The Musical Quack,” we miss the type of the amateur Maecenas. In the background, invisible, stands the prince who keeps the chapel; in the foreground there are only musicians and quacks. The amateur who is not a quack, the genuine dilettante, first attains importance in the beginning of the century; but very shortly the concerts which are given in the salons of the Fürnbergs, Esterhazys, and Schwarzenbergs, do more for the beneficial advancement of art than even the devotion of a keenly musical court such as that of Frederick the Great at first was. The greater courts, like Dresden and Munich, begin somewhat to decline, while the smaller advance, and in England, Italy, and elsewhere, the nobility, who are not unlike small sovereign princes, aid the spread and development of music. The nobility are soon followed by the gentry; but it was not till the Revolution had shattered the nobles that the bourgeois Maecenas steps upon the scene. In this displacement of old relations it was inevitable that the clavier should play its important part; in accordance with its social nature it advanced more and more from an accompanying or supplementary instrument into an independent centre of drawing-room existence, as well as of bourgeois evening parties. Thus, in the attractive and successful pieces of the generation from 1750 to 1800, its popularity was for the first time established. Old Bach had as yet been the most serious professional musician who had yielded to “galant” impulses; and his concessions to the popular taste were only by the way. The distinction between public improvisation on set themes, and public interpretation of written works, was not yet sharply defined. The player was at his highest when he extemporised variations or fugues on a given subject. Such had been the improvisations of Sebastian Bach; but the spirit of improvisation, as it lives in the works of Philip Emanuel, is something quite different. In him the hand directly follows the inner feeling, constructs easily and simply, and plays for the sake of the playing, not for the sake of the art. Before the clavier had become a social instrument, this division of labour between composers and players had become imperative; reproduction was bound to diverge into a separate branch. The amateur, on whom more and more the art depends, is incapable of composing, but he will, on his clavier, hear the works of the masters, which are now so numerous, or even play them himself. He desires to have acts of operas, arrangements of concertos, or many dainty short pieces. The old clavier-books, which we can trace from the Elizabethan Virginal Book to the volumes of Bach’s children, now gradually disappear. Instead of copying with its personal character, the press is more and more in requisition, and the musical treasury is more and more thrown open to the public. The engraving of notes, during the eighteenth century, rapidly improves, and the clefs and types become more simple. The ornamental devices become constantly more fixed, and the player has less and less liberty in his use of them. And whereas, in earlier times, the instruction-books did not always distinguish between composition and playing, now, since Couperin’s time, the instruction-book of pure playing became constantly more common; while Philip Emanuel, to whom, perhaps with justice, we trace the systematisation of the principles of modern clavier-playing, wrote a book on playing, and then waited eight years before publishing a second part on the thorough bass.

The extension of musical interest led further to such a multitude of musical magazines as even to-day is not to be found. For the most part they disappear after a few years, but we have, as a matter of fact, in a year’s issue of such a paper, a very fair picture of musical tendencies. I have before me a volume of the last of these, published in 1762, by George Ludewig Winter, in Berlin. It is well printed, with dainty rococo borders. Very amusing and characteristic is the sanguine Preface, in which also is to be discerned the inability of the German tongue to restrain itself while talking of our classics. “Music,” says the publisher, “serves either to delight with its mere art the professor, whether he be such by nature or by cultivation--as a well-built house, or a well-laid out garden, satisfies the connoisseur; or, on the other hand, it is the language of emotion. Then roar forth tones teeming with revenge, sorrow glides over the strings, passion frantically beats the air, joy revels in the blue æther, friendship and love sigh forth on the delicate notes, praise and thankfulness well from a full heart on the vigorous melody, or rise, cleaving the clouds on the tongues of men, to the very throne of the Almighty.”

The good man, with his fearful fluency, declares that he is going to bring forward much of the lighter kind--meaning what we call the dilettante class of music. The numbers appeared week by week, and the continuation was always postponed for the next, often at the most thrilling passages--in the approved style of the clever magazine. The authors’ names are only given when they are very well known. Among these distinguished men are many whose names have not remained in the memory of history--fashionable composers, such as every epoch has in plenty. But there are also Philip Emanuel Bach, Kirnberger, and many others of the great Bach School. Most of it is clavier-music. Operatic airs, which occasionally appear, are so arranged that the voice part, under which the words are printed, is played by the right hand, and the completing orchestral notes are written small in the upper staves. There are also popular songs in abundance. A French spirit breathes through these pages; a fashionable spirit of enjoyment. The short character-pieces, which the French loved so dearly to introduce with significant titles, are mingled plentifully with sonatas and rondos, arranged in the Italian manner. Under the character-pieces, in the appropriate places, as in the biblical stories of Kuhnau, the explanatory programme-text is printed. Thus in a piece called “La Spinoza,”[98] the developments are marked as being philosophic reflections on a certain theme. Two pieces, called “Wonderment” and “Youthful Joy,” easily explain themselves. In one piece entitled, “Two friends grumbling over their wine,” by the arrangement and form of the two voices, in right and left hands, is represented how they converse, console each other, gain courage, and wait for a friendly glance of fortune. The most humorous is a short clavier-piece, “A Compliment,” which, usually in two voices, exhibits the following spirited contents: “If you are well, I am charmed.” “Rather I am glad that I see you so well” (Repeated). “I have heard that you have been poorly: I am sorry to hear it.” “Heaven be praised I am recovered.” “But I am ashamed”--“allow me”----They quarrel who shall bring the chair, and finally sit down. “I recommend myself”--“and _I_ recommend _myself_”--“to your friendship.”

It was precisely at this period, when the clavier first became truly popular, that its construction was rapidly and constantly improved. It was then that the separation of the two systems of mechanism--the so-called English, and the Viennese--took place. The names mean nothing, for both systems alike arose in Germany proper. The distinction lies in the fact that in the English the hammer rests on a separate bracket from which the key strikes it, while in the Viennese the hammer rests directly, though loose, on the end of the key-lever.[99]

Although Germany was so partial to the clavichord with its intimate intellectuality--a quality which even to-day we can only reproduce in its fulness by reproducing the clavichord--yet it was the German pianoforte which for a long time took the lead. It was one of the first triumphs of German manufacture, and perhaps precisely because so little manufacture lay in it. In Italy the invention of Cristofori had vanished without leaving a trace. So utterly indeed was it forgotten, that when Italy decided, though very tardily, to replace the Gravicembalo by the pianoforte, instruments of this construction were preferably brought out there with the notice, “built in the Prussian manner.” Alongside of the Silbermann pianofortes, those of Friederici of Gera--which were known as “Fort Bien” and were still built largely on the clavichord model--and those of Spath of Regensburg, enjoyed a great renown in the second half of the century. But soon, chiefly through emigration, the best manufactories were transported to foreign parts, and it is only in the latest advance of German industry, especially by the labours of Bechstein and Blüthner, that pianos built in Germany itself have again achieved a world-wide repute.

The great French, English, American, and Austrian piano-factories can almost all be traced back to Germans. The three great Parisian houses, those of Erard, Pleyel, and Pape, were founded by Germans. Steinway emigrated from Brunswick to build in America those pianos which are to-day regarded as the best. Johann Zumpe carried the hammer-clavier to England,[100] where it was played by German executants, and brought into repute. It was, however, English houses, with that of Broadwood at their head, that effected the improvements which have resulted in the appropriation of the name “English” to the mechanism of Silbermann.

Factories alone, however, would never have brought about the final victory of the piano if there had been no virtuosos to play them. Clementi in England, Mozart in Germany and Austria, were the workers who won the decisive triumph of the piano. Even Philip Emanuel Bach had much preferred the clavichord to the newer instrument. But Mozart, the first world-virtuoso, the idol of the concert hall, thinking solely of sound-effects in the great halls, never hesitated for a moment between clavicymbal and piano. In 1777, at the age of twenty-one, he made, at Augsburg, the acquaintance of Silbermann’s disciple, Stein, the inventor of the Viennese mechanism. This received the name of “Viennese” when Stein’s children came to Vienna, and there, along with Streicher, the well-known friend of Schiller, established the world-renowned business. Here in this family for the first time appears a new phenomenon in musical society. Round the king of clavier-builders and his musical wife, young Streicher and Nanette Stein, there moves a brisk circle of musical spirits. It is a type which in our time has further gained in importance. With the greater popularity of the art, the social standing of the piano manufacturer has risen; and nothing contributed more to the introduction of the piano into middle-class houses than the reputation of this much-envied Viennese coterie.

Old Stein and young Streicher are two clearly-marked types. The latter is a romantic spirit, raves over the just-played “Robbers” of his school-fellow Schiller, forms the plan of going to Hamburg to perfect himself in clavier-playing under Philip Emanuel Bach, but never gets there, since he spends all his time running from town to town with the restless Schiller. Then he gives music lessons; next he meets Nanette Stein, marries her, goes to Vienna, becomes manager of the factory, and makes the invention associated with his name, in which the hammers strike from above. Finally, he becomes a centre of Viennese musical life. What a contrast is this modern industrial prince to the old Stein, working like a mediæval crafts-master there in Augsburg at his claviers, and giving equal devotion to every single part! He has been sketched by Mozart in a well-known letter; and I reprint this picture of the last of the old patriarchal clavier-builders, because it is not less interesting as showing the type than as showing the condition of technique at that time.

“I must now,” writes Mozart, “begin at once with Stein’s pianoforte. Before I saw anything of Stein’s work I liked Spath’s best; but now I must give the preference to Stein’s, for they damp much better than the Regensburg instruments. If I strike hard, whether I let the fingers lie on the keys or lift them up, the sound is over and done with the very instant I lift my hand. I may come down on the keys as I like, the tone will always be the same; it never hangs fire; it doesn’t get weaker, or grow stronger, or stay on; it’s just all _one_. It’s true you can’t get a pianoforte like that under three hundred florins, but the trouble and diligence he shows is not to be repaid. His instruments have this point that makes them better than others: they are made with an escapement which there isn’t a man in a thousand knows anything of; and without this it is just impossible for a pianoforte to help blocking or sounding again. His hammers, when the piano is played, fall back again the very moment they touch the strings, whether you hold the key down or let it go. When he has finished a piano, so he says, he sits down to it and tests all kinds of passages, runs and leaps, and works and scrapes until the piano’ll do anything; for he works only for the good of music, and not his own merely, or he would be done long before. He often says: ‘If I myself didn’t love music so passionately, or couldn’t do a little on the piano, I should long ago have lost all patience in my work; but I’m just a lover of instruments which don’t try the player and will last.’ His pianos _do_ last, too. He guarantees that the sounding-board won’t warp or break. When he has got a sounding-board ready for a piano, he puts it in the air, rain, snow, sun, or any beastly thing, to warp it, and then he glues crossbars in until it is strong and firm. He’s quite glad when it warps, for you’re about certain nothing more can happen to it. He often cuts into it himself, and glues it again, and so makes it strong. He has three of these pianos ready, and I have played to-day on them for the first time.

“The machine which you move with the knee is also made better by him than by others. I scarcely touch it, when off it goes; and as soon as I take my knee the least bit away, you can’t hear the slightest after-sound.”

We see from this letter of Mozart’s that in 1777 the “escapement,” which lets the hammers fall back immediately after the strings are struck, was as yet by no means universal, but that the pedal, which was pressed at the side by the knee and raised the dampers, was already a usual feature. What numberless small modifications and improvements must have been introduced before the developed mechanism exhibited by the key-levers, the hammers, the dampers, the escapements, the pedals, the sounding-boards, could have advanced to the self-evident simplicity which made possible the meteoric splendours of piano-technique about the middle of this century! Prices for pianos were still fairly high. The younger Ruckers obtained three thousand francs for a clavier, but it had painted on it those rich pictures with which the spinet, when it began to take its place among household furniture, was so captivatingly adorned. We hear also that the Parisian pianos with leather-plectrums (jeu de buffle) fetched, in their finest specimens, as much as three thousand francs. A Wagner clavicymbal from Dresden, which was a so-called _Deckenclavier_, in which the tone could be softened or strengthened by fan-shaped dislocations of the inner lid, fetched six hundred and sixty thalers; and Frederick the Great actually gave seven hundred thalers to Silbermann for the first hammer-claviers. If Stein, with his three hundred florins, seems to fall off from this price, we must remember the difference in the purchasing power of money. But, to-day, two thousand marks for a good pianoforte is cheap in comparison with the prices of those days. It is only through the growth of popularity that the greater demand and the lower price have become possible.

I turn to the works themselves. Our step falls very heavy, and our judgment may easily be unduly harsh, when we have just parted with old Bach. This meeting with genius, which we celebrate in every bar--this earnest greatness which meets us at every turn, has made us very exacting in our demands for the higher beauty. In the first moment the “Galant” School seems to us a school of pigmies, until the sight has again adjusted itself, and the vision has again become awake to the miniature beauties of this smaller art. A good transition is provided by Handel, for, against Handel, Philip Emanuel Bach appears an astonishing genius.

The tendency of the public, to group celebrities in pairs, has brought not merely Goethe and Schiller, but Bach and Handel, into juxtaposition. How little the scholarly hermit had in common with the grandiose world-musician--who first followed the wise prescription, glory in Italy, gain in England--would be seen from a comparison of their clavier-writings, which are a fair average of their general work. Handel is the negation of the classic. He gets his results from materials close at hand; brings them into plastic clearness, and writes from the point of view of the vulgar herd; he is never troubled by an exacting inward conception, or overwhelmed by his own imagination, as are all true classic artists.[101]