The Musical Times AND SINGING-CLASS CIRCULAR. RECENT BACH LITERATURE. I. possession of the chief part, to have been constantly in search of what was new and difficult, without the least attention to nature and facility.' In his 'Present state of music in Germany,' Burney carefully explains that the admired harpsichord style of composition of Emmanuel Bach, his 'taste and refinement, could neither have been inherited nor adopted' from his father; 'for that venerable musician, though unequalled in learning and contrivance, thought it so necessary to crowd into both hands all the harmony he could grasp that he must inevitably have sacrificed melody and expression.' IF a being from another planet could visit us to-day, and read some of the Bach literature of the last ten years or so, he would probably come to the conclusion that this Bach of whom so much Apart from one or two of his pupils, who no was being spoken and written could have only doubt had some intuition of the superlative recently died, for how otherwise could he explain greatness of their master, no one in the latter half the keenness with which everyone was studying of the 18th century seems to have been able him, and the ever new things that this student and to estimate him all round at his true value. that was daily discovering in his music? His Johann Christian Bach-the 'London Bach'stupefaction on learning that Bach lived some two spoke of his father as 'the old perruque.' hundred years ago would probably be pitiful to Emmanuel and Friedemann had more filial see. How is it, he would ask, that all these piety, but still saw little in his music of the characteristic qualities of his were not discovered glory that we see there. In a list of the great long ago and his true place given him among the German composers of the day that is given in the musicians of the past and present? We of this same number of Mizler's Bibliothek that contained planet are sometimes inclined to ask the same the celebrated obituary notice of Bach, his name question. Even in the half-century or so that comes seventh-after Hasse, Handel, Telemann, Bach has been the unquestioned head and fount the two Grauns, and Stölzel, and only one ahead of almost all the music we can imagine, research of Pisendel, Quanz, and Bümler. The growing has revealed a dozen new aspects of him, and Handel worship of that epoch, the new developments slowly changed our general view not only of him but in music generally, and the changed spirit in religion, of æsthetics in general. A historical account of the all helped to retard the due recognition of Bach's various critical estimates of Bach from generation genius. As Dr. Schweitzer says, 'at the end of to generation would be very interesting. In his the 18th century it seemed, on the whole, as if own day, and for some time afterwards, as everyone Bach were for ever dead.' Then came the revival, knows, he was primarily reverenced as a great headed by Forkel, Rochlitz and Zelter, and carried organist, and only secondarily considered as a on by Mendelssohn and others. But here we composer. The reference to him in the index to have to note again the curious fact to which I Hawkins's History (1776) summarises this attitude have already called attention that with all their most amusingly: 'BACH, Johann Sebastian, a most admiration for Bach, not one of these pioneers, famous organist, v. 254. Is sent for by the King of with the exception of Mosevius, quite saw him as Poland to answer a challenge of Marchand, the we see him now, as not only a great musician but French organist; accepts it, and obtains a a great poet and painter in music. To some complete victory, 255. A composition of his, extent, of course, this is explained by the fact 256 et seq. All Hawkins has to say of him as a that a number of his works were unknown to composer is that 'Amongst a great variety of them, and that probably not one of them knew excellent compositions for the harpsichord he well as a whole even such works as were published, in 1726, a collection of lessons entitled accessible. What may be called in broad Clavierübung, or Practice for the Harpsichord. He terms the purely musical point of view of Bach— composed a double fugue in three subjects, in one the recognition of him as a consummate craftsof which he introduced his name.' Burney knows man, and a man of profound musical moods, hardly any more. Bach is still merely the great but with little sense of the definitely poetical organist. His harpsichord music has been put in quality of his imagination and his constant search the shade by the more elegant and expressive for drastic poetic and pictorial expression-is compositions of C. P. Emmanuel Bach.' He has exemplified in the 'Bach letters' of Samuel Wesley, heard which apparently Hawkins had not-that who fought Bach's battle with magnificent courage Bach wrote music for the Church; but he follows in the early years of the 19th century. It does a German critic in ranking him, in this department, one good to see this glorious old fellow with second to Fux. He quotes Marpurg's encomium his coat perpetually off, hitting out lustily at every of Bach as an organist and a writer of fugues-that nose that seemed to have in it a sneer or a challenge he is 'many great musicians in one; profound in for his idol-especially if it happened to be a science, fertile in fancy, and in taste easy and Handelian nose. The English language will natural'-only to disagree with the latter part of it. hardly supply him with epithets adequate to express This truly great man,' he remarks gravely, 'seems his adoration of Bach-'our demi-god,' 'the by his works for the organ, of which I am in greatest master of harmony in any age or country,' our grand hero,' 'the greatest master in the world,' during the past decade. But beyond this, the 'our matchless man, if man he may be called,' infallibility of Spitta's judgment and his very 'our idol,' 'the very quintessence of all musical competence as a musician have been sharply called excellence,' the author of 'a musical Bible in question by one or two writers, notably by unrivalled or unlimited,' one certainly dropped Johannes Schreyer in his 'Beiträge zur Bachdown among us from heaven,' and finally The Kritik.' Schreyer's main contention is that Spitta MAN.' Yet withal Wesley, knowing mostly only has sometimes been superficial in his examination the clavier and organ works, and certainly not of the music and uncritical in his application of perceiving the poetic symbolism of many tests to it, with the result that undoubtedly of the latter, could hardly have had more unauthentic works have been accepted as genuine than the merest glimpse into those recesses compositions of Bach. Here we are obviously of Bach's soul that constitute for us of at the beginning of a line of research that may to-day the essential Bach. Even Zelter, whose have important results. Schreyer holds that correspondence with Goethe is full of not merely Spitta placed too much reliance on the old enthusiastic but wise judgments of the composer, Necrology and on Forkel, and moreover that though he saw that 'in the vocal works there is 'his musical endowments and training were not often much more than the words imply,'-for on a par with his historical.' After showing the example, a passus and sepultus introduces the last importance universally attached to purity of style pulsations of the silent powers, a resurrexit or a in the 18th century, Schreyer argues that the Gloria Dei Patris the eternal regions of sanctified works in which we find parallel octaves and fifths suffering, in contrast with the hollowness of earthly in profusion have been falsely ascribed to Bach, or things,' remarks that as yet one can scarcely could at best be only juvenile compositions of his. venture to style him a poet of the highest order, (The argument is not at all a pedantic one. Tests although he belongs to those who, like your of style of this kind, if carried out thoroughly and Shakespeare, are far above childish playthings.'* sanely, are of the highest value in determining One could not, however, more pointedly illustrate authorship. It is by these means, for example, the difference between the older and the modern that the non-Shakespearean authorship of Titus appreciation of Bach than by imagining a book Andronicus' has at last been placed beyond such as Alfred Heuss's 'Johann Sebastian dispute.) It is clearly the duty of those who Bach's Matthäus-Passion,' † or the analysis of the contend that Bach is the composer of these Passion by Schweitzer, to be communicable to works to prove their case and to answer every Mendelssohn. His performance of the 'Matthew' objection that negative criticism can bring against Passion in Berlin, in 1829, did much to set Bach it. In some instances no original autograph exists. on his feet again after so many generations of Some manuscripts do indeed bear Bach's name, neglect. No one, surely, could have worked but that, as Spitta himself recognised, is no proof harder at the Passion than he. Yet how much of of authenticity. Two of his reasons for Bach's purpose-particularly his pictorial purpose -must have remained unrevealed to him! II. attributing the 'Luke' Passion to Bach were that a manuscript exists in Bach's writing, and that though this bears no express notice that this is his own composition, on the other hand we find on the In the latter half of the 19th century it must title the letters J.J. (Jesu Juva), which Bach was have seemed as if at last Bach had come into accustomed to add only to his own works, and not his own. The great Bachgesellschaft edition gave to copies from those of other composers.' To this to the world all that was, and perhaps is, to be Schreyer rejoins that 'the greater part of the discovered of his music. Between 1873 and 1880 supposed autograph of the 'Luke' Passion is not appeared Spitta's monumental biography, that up in Bach's writing-for which belief he proceeds to to almost yesterday was regarded as nearly the last give cogent reasons and that, as Prieger has word on the subject of Bach; even in the new shown, the letters J.J. occur on at least eleven edition of 'Grove' it is spoken of as 'an accurate compositions by other men that Bach has simply and perfectly exhaustive treatise of all relating to the copied ; to which Professor Buchmayer adds that subject, while a somewhat similar eulogium is passed they are to be found on the title-pages of church upon it in the newest Encyclopædia Britannica. No music before the time of Bach, and that it is not lover of Bach can ever speak or think of Spitta's even certain that they stand for 'Jesu Juva.' Their work without the deepest admiration and respect; evidential value is therefore plainly slight. When yet, careful and copious as it is, and firmly as its there is a total lack of any real external evidence foundations stand, it can no longer be regarded as for the Bachian authorship of a certain work, and the complete and unerring guide it was formerly moreover the work itself contains numerous thought to be. Schweitzer and others have examples of a contrapuntal slovenliness to which corrected its occasional historical errors, and there is no parallel in the genuine works of Bach, expanded from other sources Spitta's information we are, so Schreyer maintains, justified in as to the musical life of Bach's time,-for research has been particularly busy in this latter department See the letter of June 9, 1827, pp. 289 ff. of the Bohn' translation by Mr. A. D. Coleridge. ↑ Leipsic, 1909. rejecting it. He would thus score out the 'Eight Little Preludes and Fugues' for the organ, the three Sonatas for flute and general bass, the last of the Dresden, 1910. III. six Violin sonatas, and the Fugue in G minor for violin and general bass. It is impossible, with all Meanwhile we may congratulate ourselves on one's respect for Spitta, to overlook the errors of the vitality of the general Bach criticism of recent musical judgment, and the proneness to jump at years, and the new lines of thought that some of it historical conclusions, that his remarks on some of has opened out. Two great books,-those of these works exhibit. A cursory examination of Albert Schweitzer‡ and André Pirro§ have largely the Eight Little Preludes and Fugues,' one would transformed the older notions of the aesthetic basis have thought, would have prevented him from of Bach's music. The tendency for the last decade declaring the style of them to be 'masterly.' In or so has been to delve deeper and deeper into his the violin Fugue in G minor the writing is at vocal works, and to look there for a key that will times exceptionally crude. How many works, we unlock not only these but a number of the are bound to ask ourselves, have been included in instrumental works as well. Bach the musical poet the Bachgesellschaft edition on an arbitrary now bulks more largely even than Bach the master certification of their genuineness by Spitta or of architectonics. The first significant study of this someone else, after a quite insufficient examination kind was perhaps that of Arnold Schering.|| of the evidence for and against them? The larger He pointed out the constant reaction of the part of the musical world, from Mendelssohn poetic side of Bach's mind upon the musicalto Sir Hubert Parry, has decided, for example, how he loved to 'preach' in music upon the texts that the 'Luke' Passion is not by Bach. It was given him in the cantatas, the variety of poetic forced upon the Bachgesellschaft by Spitta against conception he exhibits, his Romantic sense of the opposition of many of the leading musicians something 'beyond' music that nevertheless has to of that day, including Brahms.* As we have be expressed in it, the many ways in which he treats seen, Spitta's examination of the manuscript could the chorale and the symbolism he imports into it,¶ not have been a very critical one. Mendelssohn, and so on. The full extent of the influence upon like Brahms, had detected the badness of the style Bach of what may be called literary or pictorial of some of it, though he apparently had not done images was only revealed, however, in the books much more than skim the manuscript. Spitta of Schweitzer and Pirro. The tendency among seemingly was unaware of the crudity of the style, æstheticians had hitherto been to minimise the for he expressly says that 'we cannot deny the importance of the words in what was comprehenaccuracy [Sorgfältigkeit] of the writing in the sively called the old music. In an article in the chorales.' Moreover Schreyer affirms that the worst New Music Review for September, 1908, on The is not known to the general public, for Dörffel, Relative Importance of the Verbal Factor in who edited the work for the Bachgesellschaft, Classical Vocal Music,' Dr. Ernest Walker argued has himself corrected many of the grossest that the modern passion for accurate musical errors in the manuscript. He also disputes characterization of the words is a new thing,— the authenticity of the larger Notenbüchlein of that 'the great classical composers Anna Magdalena Bach. Here again he has troubled about words to this extent,' especially in examined the manuscript carefully, and decides choral music, that Monteverde's practice of verbal that the Bachgesellschaft edition of it-for which emphasis represented 'merely an eddy in the Count Waldersee is responsible-is so bad a stream of musical development,' that Bach's reproduction as to be simply a caricature of a occasional adaptation of the same piece of music critical edition.' Were it to be faithfully reproduced, to two different sets of words shows him to have he says, every one could see that the collection had no strong views on the matter, his main could not have been put together under Bach's business' being simply to write magnificent eyes. Altogether Schreyer seems justified in music,' and that to Bach 'words were in the claiming that a great deal yet remains to be done long run a hindrance rather than a help.' This with regard to the critical scrutiny of Bach.' The view will hardly stand historical investigation. first essential is that there should be no more Not only did Bach deliberately aim at finding a 'editing' of Bach's works, or of works attributed musical phrase that should be the exact to him. The manuscripts should be printed counterpart of this or that sentence or even exactly as they are, and suggested editorial amendments confined to prefaces or foot-notes. Only in this way can we be sure of having the proper data to go upon in our inquiries. A fresh expert examination should also be made of every manuscript the authenticity of which is not beyond dispute. I cannot see the slightest evidence,' he wrote, 'that this Passion is a Bach manuscript, and I would not stir a hand to have it appear under his name. The perpetually faulty contrapuntal writing, the bad declamation, the illogical modulations, all show quite clearly that Bach could not have written it. + Schreyer also runs counter to the received opinion in contending that the Albinoni sonata, which is supposed to represent Bach's way of realising figured basses (See Spitta II. 293, and III. 388 ff.) cannot really have been corrected throughout by him. ... never word, but his predecessors and contemporaries did the same thing, and the theorists insisted upon the necessity of it. Wolfgang Caspar Printz, in 1696, says that a composer should not only observe the general sense of his text but express each word of it in such a way that the tones shall seem to say again what the words signify'-though of course 'J. S. Bach, le Musicien-Poète,' Leipsic, 1905. Expanded edition, in German, Leipsic, 1908. English version by Ernest Newman, 2 vols. 1911. Paris, 1907. There is 'L'Esthétique de Jean-Sebastien Bach.' also an admirable short study of Bach by Pirro in the series of 'Les Maitres de la Musique. Bachs Textbehandlung; Ein Beitrag zum Verständnis Joh. Seb. Bach'scher Vokal-Schöpfungen.' Leipsic, 1900. This point had of course been already touched upon by several writers. he is not to illustrate isolated words to the words, the suggestions at the back of them; and detriment of the sense of the passage as a whole.* the true æsthetic interest of the question is in the Daniel Speer, in his 'Grundrichtiger. light it throws on the old controversy over 'poetic' Unterricht der musikalischen Kunst' (1697), shows music and 'abstract' music-if we may adopt how and why the composer should throw salient that crude and fallacious distinction for the sake words into relief. It was a general rule that in of argument. The advocates of 'abstract' or expressive passages the natural inflections of 'absolute' music have always held that this is the the speaking voice should be observed as far as pure, original form of the art, and that poetic music, possible. The works of one composer after another pictorial music, programme music, or whatever -besides Bach-show that they took the most else we choose to call it, is a mere by-product, the scrupulous care to translate words and temporary aberration of an inferior musical mind images into tone, often in ways that seem here and there. The truth rather seems to be primitive to us. Important words were driven that there has scarcely ever been a composer of home to the hearer's consciousness by repeti- any value who has not, at some time or other, tion-a device which Mattheson expressly tried to make his music the expression of what may recommends in his 'Neue Göttingische Ephorus.' be called-again merely for the sake of argumentMithobius, in 1665, commended composers for extra-musical concepts; the plain reason being that, this kind of repetition 'in motets and concertos.' as a composer's experience of life largely comes to Calvisius, in 1592, and Crüger, in 1624, advise the him through his eyes and his ears, only a man use of harsh harmonies where the sense of the enclosed in a soundless and viewless room from words can be expressed in no other way. Scheibe his birth could be expected to write music that insists (1739) that the words should be distinctly would not be the conscious or unconscious limning audible, even in choruses. Schütz and his of such experiences. All attempts to shut up the successors often inflect their musical phrase in 'musical mind' in a kind of watertight and airorder to make it a graphic illustration of a tight compartment from all the other faculties of particular word. Schütz, for instance, gives a the same brain are not only the poorest of poor long-held tone to ' æternum,'t and renders inclina psychology, but are condemned by the practice of aurem tuam' by a descending melody, while the composers themselves. These depraved fellows, words 'accelera ut eruas me,' are set to 'accelerated' ignorant of the necessity of conforming to certain notes. At the words 'und hernach lange sitzet,' supposed laws of aesthetics, are constantly doing in his motet, 'Wo der Herr nicht das Haus what the aestheticians say they should not and bauet,' the first syllable of the 'lange 'is set to a slow cannot do,-translating the outer world and its ascending phrase of thirteen notes, while the spatial symbols into the internal, non-spatial would be pictorial quality of the 'sitzet' is language of tone. One of the most interesting unmistakable, as it is again in the yawn on the word features of Pirro's book is the detailed demonstra 'schlafend,' and in the phrase set to the word tion of this practice among the predecessors and 'Pfeile' (arrows). Lasso, in one of his Penitential contemporaries of Bach. The simplest form of Psalms, tries to express the stubbornness of the symbolism, of course, is the suggestion of 'up' and mule by an unusual harmony.§ The Italian 'down' by ascending and descending phrases 'caccia of the 14th century was full of tone- respectively. From these external concepts it was painting. In some of the 16th century an easy transition to more internal ones of a madrigals, the words were graphically represented in tones-crudele,' for example, being set to a dissonance, 'nuovo' to 'new' chromatic harmonies, 'correre' to a nimble 'passage,' and 'aspero' to consecutive fifths. Evidence of this kind might be multiplied a hundredfold. The majority of the old composers, so far from finding words 'a hindrance rather than a help,' were often meticulously particular about the musical characterization of them. IV. But we shall be allowing ourselves to be led astray from the real point if we think of the question merely as one of words and music. The essential things are the images underlying the * I draw some of these historical evidences from Pirro's exhaustive book. In his motet No. 14, In te Domine speravi.' Hugo Leichtentritt, in his 'Geschichte der Motette' (p. 333), draws old composers give point to certain words. The cult of dissonance in these works goes beyond anything dared by German music for nearly two centuries and a-half-beyond even anything to be found in Bach, attention to the deliberate and audacious dissonances with which these who assuredly did not shrink from harmonic harshnesses.' See Sir Hubert Parry's third volume of the Oxford History of Music, pp. 7, 8. See Naumann, 'Illustrirte Musikgeschichte,' new ed. (1908), p. 160. similar nature; ascending phrases were used to suggest ideas of awakening, pride, courage, strength, and descending phrases to suggest ideas of discouragement, depression, humility, poverty, sin, and so on. These old composers even ventured upon a kind of musical symbolism from which the hardiest of realists of to-day would shrink. There was no spatial concept that they did not feel it possible for music to suggest. 'Far' or 'wide' is represented by a great leap in the melody. The whole' is expressed by a phrase revolving within an octave, the old idea being that the octave was the mother of all the intervals.' When Bach, for example, comes across such words as 'the whole world,' he sets them in this way to notes of which the upper and lower limits form an octave. Here' and 'there,' or 'right' and 'left,' are represented quasi-visually by two phrases set, as it were, one on either side of a pivot. The idea of 'reciprocity' is conveyed by reversing a phrase: when Bach, in the cantata 'Barmherziges Herze der ewigen Liebe,' has to set the Biblical passage telling us that according as we measure so shall it be meted out to us again, he makes the second half of " the melody an inverted image of the first half. The acquaintance of a Bach of whose existence I had concept of 'surrounding'-and, by analogy, of such previously had only the dimmest suspicion. In a things as crowns or garlands-is represented by flash it became clear to me that the cantor of St. 'circular' or undulating themes. Every one knows Thomas's was much more than an incomparable the curvilinear themes by which Bach suggests contrapuntist . . . and that his work exhibits serpents or dragons, or Satan in his capacity as an unparalleled desire and capacity for expressing deceiver. Concepts of standing,' 'remaining,' poetic ideas and for bringing word and tone into 'steadfastness'—and, by analogy, of faith-are unity.' Many things in the clavier and orchestral represented by long-held notes. And so on in works also become clearer when read in the light hundreds of other cases for which abundant of this symbolism, and one has only to read evidence can be cited from Bach, Schütz, Erlebach, Schweitzer's chapter on the 'Matthew' Passion, or Franck, Krieger, Theile, Buxtehude, Kerl, Keiser, the solid book of Alfred Heuss on the same Hammerschmidt, Kuhnau, and a score of other subject, to realise how many passages in that work composers. that were once so hard to understand are now perfectly transparent to us. 6 * V. All students knew that examples of this 'realism' could be found here and there in the old masters; but until the results of the thorough research of Schweitzer and Pirro were put before us, no one I have been able to give only the barest summary realised the extent to which Bach and his of the main thesis of the books of Schweitzer and predecessors were preoccupied with this musical Pirro, compressing into a few lines a demonstration symbolism. It is now clear enough that Bach, in that fills hundreds of pages and is supported by this as in everything else, pressed the aesthetic copious musical quotations. Even from this principles of his epoch to their utmost. Schweitzer résumé, however, it will be seen that many of and Pirro prove conclusively that so far from the current ideas upon musical æsthetics, and being the most 'abstract' of musicians he particularly upon the supposed superiority of is the most 'poetic' or 'pictorial.' His absolute' to poetic and pictorial music, will have to realism is astounding; and so bent is he upon be revised. Bach, in fact, has been too long forced it that if a line or a verse offers him an opportunity to fight in the ranks of an army with whose cause for 'painting' he will seize upon it to the occasional he would have had little sympathy. Of all the neglect of the sentiment of the passage as a whole. older commentators, Mosevius alone (in the So fundamental in him was the disposition to middle of the 19th century) appears to have seen correlate music with literary or pictorial ideas that how essentially pictorial and symbolical the the same verbal image is generally sufficient to composer's style was. By the time Spitta came to evoke the same-or a similar-musical phrase. write, musical Europe was violently divided upon Hence arises that system of 'motives' that the subject of the true nature and ideal of music. Schweitzer and Pirro unfold before us at such On the one hand were Wagner and Liszt and length, generic types of melody or of rhythm that the New German' school, bent on 'fertilizing can be classified as symbolizing 'joy,' or 'grief,' or music with poetry.' On the other hand were 'terror,' or 'majesty,' or 'peace,' or 'exhaustion,' the 'classicists,' who held that their opponents or walking,' or 'felicity,' &c. Sometimes two were decoying music to its destruction, and that motives will be used in co-operation to express a its salvation lay in its remaining 'purely musical,' double idea, or to suggest the conclusion one is unsullied by contact with literature and external expected to draw from it. These discoveries throw things. It was not for nothing that Spitta was a new light upon not only the vocal but the brought up in Berlin, a city that prided itself instrumental music. The organ chorale preludes on its opposition to Weimar and the Wagneryield up some of their long and jealously-held Liszt spirit. The 'classicists' wanted a great secrets to us. In his preface to Schweitzer's book, banner to fight under. They chose that of C. M. Widor tells us his own experiences in this Bach as being perhaps the greatest of all; and respect. He had always felt that there was some- poor Bach, the most restless and uncompromising thing insolubly enigmatic in these works. 'Bach's of 'realists' and 'poetic musicians,' was held up musical logic in the preludes and fugues is quite as the supreme example of the 'abstract' musical simple and clear; but it becomes cloudy as soon imagination, a blessing to his own side and a warning as he takes up a chorale melody. Why these to the other. Spitta, it is true, was compelled sometimes almost excessively abrupt antitheses of every now and then to admit the composer's feeling? Why does he add contrapuntal motives pictorialism; but he did all he could to minimise to a chorale melody that have often no relation to it, sometimes passing it off as a mere piece of the mood of the melody? Why all these 'quaintness.' 'Ready as Bach was,' he says, 'to incomprehensible things in the plan and the working-out of these fantasies? The more I study them the less I understand them.' Whereupon his young pupil, Schweitzer, showed him that the explanation of all these apparently strange turns of Bach's imagination was to be found in the texts of the chorales that Bach had in his mind at the time of writing. Thus,' says Widor, 'I made the sprinkle his works with picturesque figures, he did not do so as a result of fundamental principles based on a sense of the graphic power of music.' [This, however, is precisely what he did do.] It * It is very curious that these two students should have hit upon the same ideas at the same time, and quite independently of each other. is a piquant reflection also that it should have been left to two French writers to see most penetratingly into the soul of the German Bach. |