Part 6
Young Bach had received no great instruction in the schools of composition. That which he had he gathered with a catholicity of taste from all the renowned masters. Not one of his immediate ancestors had stirred beyond the confines of their simple home. Well for him was it so. No late meretricious Neapolitan tinsel could exist in the quiet, calm beauty of his Thuringian dwelling-place. Nature lay before him. "Come," she said, "seek to understand me. I have treasures that ye know not of, treasures that can only be gathered by the pure in heart and patient in spirit. Here around you, in your quiet German home, are the elements of all your strength. Here there is no distraction. Riches shall not allure you. Honorable poverty shall minister to your purity"; and young Bach knew that the voice was true, and, heeding it, there came to him likewise an inner voice, relating spiritual things, even as the voice of Nature related natural things.
Comprehending, then, his character, we pass on. His work at this period was formal. He felt, but could not express. But at Lubeck the noble-hearted Buxtehude was endeavoring to bring home to the hearts of the people the mission of music. Bach went thither. Fascinated by the grand organ-playing of the Lubeck master, and listening with heart-felt love to those memorable concerts of which we have previously spoken, Bach forgot both time and engagements. When he returned to Arnstadt, the spirit of Buxtehude was upon him. Henceforth the quiet people of Arnstadt knew no rest. Variations, subtle, beautiful, a refined and fuller contrapuntal treatment, mingled with the chorale. The conservatism of Arnstadt received a severe shock--a dreadful experience, doubtless, to the quiet German town. Such genius could come to no good end, and so the consistory and Bach agreed to part.
Bach had married in October, 1707. In 1708, while at Muehlhausen, his first considerable work, composed for the municipal elector, appeared. His election at Saxe-Weimar was undoubtedly owing to his playing before the Duke Wilhelm Ernst, and we can imagine with what pleasure the young musician, conscious of great power, looked forward to the intellectual and cultured life for which Weimar was renowned. In the course of a few years Bach was appointed orchestral and concert director to the Duke.
The liberal atmosphere of Weimar, the appreciation of men whose opinion was of worth, could but stimulate the mental faculties and widen the range of thought, and there is a breadth of conception and majesty in Bach at this period unknown before. With the assiduity of genius he labored for the realization of his ideal. Palestrina, Lotti, and Caldara were laid under contribution. The master transcribed the works of these composers with his own hands, and arranged the violin concertos of Vivaldi for the harpsichord and organ. It is ever with the greatest artists. They assimulate all the forms of kindred art, yet never sacrifice their individuality. The means enabling them to express their inmost soul must be found, but their soul will alone dictate the form which its expression will assume.
But Bach is approaching the close of the first period of his career. An invitation has been given him (1717) to become conductor of the orchestra at the court of Leopold of Anhalt-Koethen, a prince remarkable for his benevolence and cultured attainments. Here his duties were comparatively slight and his leisure abundant. Hitherto he had been engaged, as it were, in the temple service. At Weimar he had developed into a great tone-poet of sacred song. With refined strength and exquisite perception he had gathered up the related parts of song, weaving them into a unity of impassioned and majestic utterance.
But the great poet must have a wider experience. He must enter, as it were, into the great deeps of sacred emotion in things natural; he must perceive in the universe a deeper, a more majestic beauty even than in the temple. Then he will become a great prophet among his fellows, and illumine for all time the pathway of life, giving strength to the weak, consolation to the weary, and song to the blithe and pure of heart. This is what Bach became in tone. His attention at Koethen was directed mainly to instrumental music.
We have previously remarked upon the endeavors which certain German masters made to bring home to their countrymen an appreciation of instrumental music. How long the seed lay germinating in Bach's mind we know not. A new idea had taken possession of him, or, rather, he contemplated the application of the principle of his former labors in polyphony to instrumental music pure and simple.
At Koethen he supplemented his labors at Weimar. At Leipsic, whither we shall presently follow him, he brought them to completion.
But we are anticipating. We have seen how patiently, how toilsomely, Music has broken one by one the fetters of conventionality; how she has grown in strength and beauty, anticipating the moment of her final deliverance. It has come at last. With the patience and impatience of genius Bach strikes in twain the last fetter of conventionality. He has realized his quest. The boy who, far away in future thought, studied the art-forms of his great predecessors and contemporaries in the lowly chamber or by the light of the silent moon, has found his beloved, the Tonal Muse. She stands free before him to serve his will--his will purified by conception and incessant effort--and he will lead her in her new-found freedom and place her in the path of progress.
Bach's compositions at this time include the early part of one of the greatest of his works, the _Wohltemperirte Clavier_. In this work--the second part of which was composed at Leipsic--Bach attained the full mastery of form. The strivings and efforts of the great Netherland masters found completion in this work of Bach. In it are compressed the labors of centuries. The works of the masters, Okeghem, Dufay, Josquin des Pres, and others, are but prophecies in tone, announcing a realization of their ideal in the centuries yet to come, that ideal which they felt so particularly, yet could not express. The _Wohltemperirte Clavier_ then marks the first great climax of musical art.
The evolution was certain, and it consummated in a kindred mind. The deepest expression of human feeling, the agony of the dire distress and conflict of life, the calm majesty of faith which enables the soul to overcome every obstacle, its pathetic appeal to God for rest and comfort, the strength of victory, are possible in music, are expressed in music as no other art can express them, because of Bach.
True to his trust, he extracted all that was best in the works of his predecessors and, vivifying it by his genius, created forms of expression which the greatest that have followed him have utilized and extolled.
But, as we have said, the great poet must perceive in things natural, in the beauty of the universe around him, in the sacred feelings of human emotion, a sacredness as worthy and as earnest, though less concentrated in character, as that which exists in the more direct function of religious worship. To the great poet, however he works, all things are sacred. He it is who reveals the heaven that lies around us. He opens the portals of Nature, and we enter in to find strength and consolation.
Bach does all this in the masterly work we are considering. Not to the Italian, but to the German, did Nature at length disclose her choicest method of expression, and this because the German had ever lived in close contact with her. In all Bach's works at this period the work of emancipation goes forward. Take, for instance, the Brandenburg concertos leading to the combination of the present orchestra.
But a new sphere of action here again opens to Bach. His master and friend, the Prince of Koethen, was distracted from the pursuit of music by his wife's want of interest therein, and so Bach sorrowfully looks around him for a more congenial appointment. This he found at Leipsic, in 1723, as cantor to the school of St. Thomas. Leipsic, like Weimar, was celebrated for its intellectual life; but the various vexations which the great musician encountered from the action of the authorities reflects but little credit upon them. Bach's labors here were simply Titanic. There were four churches at Leipsic, the principal being St. Nicholas and St. Thomas. Bach seems to have been responsible for the musical service at each. How innate and healthy was his genius may be inferred from the fact that for these musical services alone three hundred eighty cantatas seem to have been composed. Bach entered upon his labors at Leipsic at the age of thirty-eight, and continued therein until his death, in 1750. Let us examine briefly the nature of these labors, and endeavor to glean from them their characteristic principles.
When Bach came to Leipsic he came full of experience and power. As a youth he had devoted himself to the perfecting of church music. Untiringly, unceasingly, with steadfast love, he had brought the laws of counterpoint and fugue to mingle with the grace of melody and the genius of a noble imagination. At Koethen his poetic and artistic temperament roamed through the realms of nature, and brought us near to the understanding of their varied utterance. At Leipsic he finished the education of his life and his career as a tone-poet. He seeks again the shelter of the temple, but his genius has matured and ripened. He has examined the mysteries of life. His enthusiasm for the pure and good is stronger than ever, but life is still a mystery. Evil, pain, love deep as hell and high as heaven, the Titanic conflict of opposing principles, Nature and her decrees, sorrow, remorse, sweet, unaffected joy, and tranquil resignation--what mean they all? The answer, the solution, is on Calvary. There is no other solution. Intellect, deny it how it will, is baffled by the complex problem. The solution is of love through trouble and anguish. The Passion music of Bach rises to the sublime understanding of this grand mystery, and again the evolution of the old mystery and Passion-play consummates in a kindred mind. Again the triumph of faith is with the German. Luther frees the understanding from tyranny. Bach raises it to the region of genius and sympathy, and closes the labors of a thousand years of Christian tonal effort by his Passion music of the Redeemer. But while this is so, he initiated the modern period of tonal art, leaving, however, this Passion music as his noblest legacy, as if to warn men that no other solution of life exists.
But though Bach's genius was thus supreme, it was not because he was undisturbed by the vexations of daily life. Rarely, if ever, has an artist equally great produced in such boundless profusion the highest works of genius, when engaged with men most frequently unable to understand his thought, and immersed in the arduous duties of teacher in an art noteworthy of producing fatigue and exhaustion of spirit. But his enthusiasm and strength were equal to the task. With grand integrity, and desire for the welfare of the congregations of the churches alluded to, he obtained from their respective ministers the texts of their discourses for the ensuing Sundays, and produced, apparently without effort, hundreds of cantatas to convey to the hearers the inner meaning of the words which fell from the preacher's lips. These cantatas frequently opened with orchestral introduction followed by a chorus, usually very impressive, and imbued with the meaning of the text. The recitatives and solo airs would still further convey this meaning, while a chorale or hymn in four parts, with elaborate instrumental accompaniment, served to express the feelings of the whole congregation. To each instrument was assigned a separate part, and the whole accompaniment was separate from the singing.
But if Bach in the consummation of the chorale perfected Luther's work in the realm of music, he in his Passion music finds worthy expression of a nation's devotion. His genius, as it were, felt the spirit-life of the past. His soul vibrated to the yearnings of the unknown millions of his race who had passed away in the centuries preceding him, and whose consolation in their humble toil, in the various hardships of their lives, was the narrative of this Passion music of the Saviour Christ. The rough, dramatic presentation accorded to this narrative gathered, as time went on, elements of beauty and traditional treatment around it. It was powerfully to affect the drama proper and oratorio, but in its direct and proper functions it was to inspire the first, and in some respects the greatest, of the great musicians of Germany to his utmost effort, to his most lofty flight of genius, as his winged spirit soared through the ages of the past toward the future ages yet to come.
This Passion music of St. Matthew is the noblest presentment of the characteristics of the German mind, and is unsurpassed in the realm of religious art. It is an unfolding of the German spirit, and evidences qualities the possession of which makes for national greatness.
As we have said, Bach is the great lyric poet of his nation, the first great German genius after the devastating horrors of war. Looming on the sight, or as contemporaries, are Handel, Leibnitz, Wolf, Klopstock, Lessing, and Winckelmann. The modern era, with its philosophy and revolution, has arrived. The domain of thought is enwidened, and the Middle Ages blend and fade in the historic vista of the past. But the modern era commences with these great affirmations in art and poetry. Bach takes the narrative of the Passion, and erects the Cross anew with sympathetic genius of art and love. Handel, as if he had caught Isaiah's prophetic fire, gave to Europe its most beautiful and noble epic, the _Messiah_; and Klopstock, the first of the great line of Germany's modern poets, devoted his genius and labor to the same subject. But with Bach and Handel no miserable conflicting elements of theology sully the conception of the Saviour Christ. These great artists rise to the universal and the true. The highest art is absolute and knows no appeal. It is in harmony with universal law, both spiritual and physical.
FOOTNOTES:
[28] Naumann.
SETTLEMENT OF GEORGIA
A.D. 1732
WILLIAM B. STEVENS
It was not only the beginning of a new commonwealth, destined to become an important State of the American Union, but also the spirit and purpose which led to it, that made the English colonization of Georgia a great and unique event in the history of this country.
Seldom have military and philanthropic achievements been combined in the career of one man. James Oglethorpe was already a distinguished soldier and a member of the English Parliament when in 1732 he sailed with one hundred twenty men and founded Savannah. His express object was the settlement of Georgia, not only as a home for insolvent debtors, who suffered in English jails, but also for persecuted Protestants of the Continent. It was not the least of his services that on his second visit to the future "Empire State of the South" he took with him John and Charles Wesley, whose influence has been so marked among the American people.
Prior to the undertaking of Sir Robert Montgomery in 1717, with which Stevens' narrative begins, few white men had visited the Georgia country, which was the home of various Indian tribes. De Soto traversed it on his great westward expedition (1539-1542), but little was known of it when in 1629 it was included in King Charles I's Carolina grant to Sir Robert Heath, or even at the time of the next Carolina grant (1663), when it passed to Monk, Clarendon, and others. Under the later proprietors it became known to Englishmen through such glowing descriptions as naturally aroused an interest in its settlement.
It was not until 1717 that any effort was made to improve the lands between the Savannah and the Altamaha. In that year Sir Robert Montgomery, Bart., whose father was joined with Lord Cardross in his measures for establishing a Scots colony in Port Royal, published _A Discourse Concerning the Designed Establishment of a new Colony to the South of Carolina_, in what he termed "the most delightful country in the universe." This pamphlet was accompanied by a beautiful but fanciful plan representing the form of settling the districts or county divisions in his province, which he styled "the Margraviate of Azilia." In his description of the country he writes "that Nature has not blessed the world with any tract which can be preferable to it; that Paradise, with all her virgin beauties, may be modestly supposed, at most, but equal to its native excellencies."
Having obtained, from the Lords Proprietors of Carolina a grant of the lands between Savannah and the Altamaha, he issued his proposals for settling this "future Eden"; but, though garnished with the most glowing descriptions, and set forth under the most captivating attractions, they were issued in vain; and the three years having expired within which he was to make the settlement or forfeit the land, the territory reverted to Carolina, and his scheme of colonization came to an end. The Margraviate of Azilia was magnificent upon the map, but was impracticable in reality.
The Lords Proprietors of Carolina having failed in their scheme of government, and their authority being crushed by the provincial revolution of 1719, they sold their titles and interest in that province to Parliament in 1729; reserving to Lord John Carteret, one of their number, the remaining eight shares of the country, as he refused to join the others in disposing of the colony. After the purchase of the territory of Carolina, which then extended from the St. John's to Albemarle Sound, it was deemed too large for one government, and was therefore divided into two provinces, under the respective titles of North and South Carolina. The territorial boundary of South Carolina, however, on the south, was the Savannah River; the remaining portion being then held in reserve by the British Crown.
The same year that the House of Commons resolved on an address to the King to purchase the rights of the Lords Proprietors to this territory, a committee was appointed by Parliament "to inquire into the state of the gaols of the kingdom, and to report the same and their opinion thereupon to the House." This committee, raised on the motion of James Oglethorpe, Esq., in consequence of the barbarities which had fallen under his own observation while visiting some debtors in the Fleet and Marshalsea prisons, consisted of ninety-six persons, and Oglethorpe was made its chairman. A more honorable or effective committee could scarcely have been appointed. It embraced some of the first men in England; among them thirty-eight noblemen, the chancellor of the exchequer, the master of rolls, Admiral Vernon and Field Marshal Wade. They entered upon their labors with zeal and diligence, and not only made inquiries, through the Fleet prison, but also into the Marshalsea, the prison of the king's bench, and the jail for the county of Surrey.
The philanthropy of Oglethorpe, whose feelings were easily enlisted in the cause of misery, rested not with the discharge of his Parliamentary duty, nor yet in the further benefit of relaxing the rigorous laws which thrust the honest debtor into prisons which seemed to garner up disease in its most loathsome forms--crime in its most fiend-like works--humanity in its most shameless and degraded aspect; but it prompted still further efforts--efforts to combine present relief with permanent benefits, by which honest but unfortunate industry could be protected, and the laboring poor be enabled to reap some gladdening fruit from toils which now wrung out their lives with bitter and unrequited labors. To devise and carry out such efforts himself Lord Percival and a few other noblemen and gentlemen addressed a memorial to the privy council, stating "that the cities of London, Westminster, and parts adjacent do abound with great numbers of indigent persons who are reduced to such necessity as to become burthensome to the public, and who would be willing to seek a livelihood in any of his majesty's plantations in America if they were provided with a passage and means of settling there."
The memorialists promised to take upon themselves the entire charge of this affair, to erect a province into a proprietary government, provided the crown would grant them a portion of the land bought in 1729 by Parliament from the Lords Proprietors of South Carolina, lying south of the Savannah River; together with such powers as shall enable them to receive the charitable contributions and benefactions of all such persons as are willing to encourage so good a design.
This petition, referred at first to a committee of the privy council, was by them submitted to the consideration of the board of trade, who, after a second commitment, made their report, that the attorney and solicitor-general should be directed to prepare a draft of the charter. This report, being laid before his majesty, was by him approved and he directed the proper officer to make out the charter. The charter thus prepared was approved by the King, but in consequence of the formalities of office did not pass under the great seal until June 9, 1732.
This instrument constituted twenty noblemen and gentlemen a body corporate, by the name and style of "The Trustees for establishing a Colony of Georgia, in America"; giving to the projected colony the name of the monarch who had granted to them such a liberal territory for the development of their benevolence.
The charter revealed two purposes as the object of this colonization: the settling of poor but unfortunate people on lands now waste and desolate, and the interposing of this colony as a barrier between the northern colonies and the French, Spanish, and Indians on the south and west. These designs the trustees amplified and illustrated in their printed papers and official correspondence.
Oglethorpe, in his _New and Accurrate Account_, declares: "These trustees not only give land to the unhappy who go thither, but are also empowered to receive the voluntary contributions of charitable persons to enable them to furnish the poor adventurers with all necessaries for the expense of the voyage, occupying the land, and supporting them till they find themselves comfortably settled. So that now the unfortunate will not be obliged to bind themselves to a long servitude, to pay for their passage, for they may be carried gratis into a land of liberty and plenty, where they immediately find themselves in possession of a competent estate in a happier climate than they knew before; and they are unfortunate, indeed, if here they cannot forget their sorrows."