CHAPTER XVIII

Bach—The Giant

Bach and Handel rescued the Germans from the reputation of being musical barbarians, for Germany had not had a Lully or a Palestrina! But just in time, Bach and Handel entered and Bach carried composition to maturity and religious musical art to its highest point, while Handel was one of the foremost opera and oratorio composers of his day.

And indeed not until Mozart’s day did the Italians think that Germany was anything but barbarous, not in fact until they were outranked in Italian Opera by a German.

Of all the unassuming men of genius Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750) is the most lovable. Never did he seem to realize that he was doing anything, but the will of God, never did he seem to care what people thought of his work, but went on composing, supporting twenty children, often with so little money that he tutored and played at funerals to eke out a living. In his life there was little glitter. Bach was a saint, if there was ever a saint. Although some few admired Bach during his lifetime, it was not until one hundred years after his death that his works were known and that he received the fame he deserved.

The Bach family for six generations were musicians, beginning with his grandfather “to the 5th power,” Veit Bach, a Thuringian baker in the 16th century whose pleasure “was to use a small zither, which he took with him to play, while the mill was moving.” All his descendants became musicians down to and beyond Johann Sebastian.

The Bachs were great family lovers and every year they held reunions, at which all of the different members living in various parts of Germany, met together and enjoyed a jolly time singing and playing.

Sebastian was born in 1685 in Eisenach, the town where Martin Luther wrote his stirring chorales. His father Ambrosius began very early to teach him music, the family profession, and Sebastian started with the violin.

But the poor little boy lost both father and mother when only ten years of age, and he was left to be brought up by his elder brother, Johann Christopher. Sebastian was passionately fond of music and although Christopher taught him to play the clavier, nevertheless this sad little tale is told:

Sebastian had seen Christopher with a book of music including pieces by Froberger, Pachelbel, Buxtehude, and others. Sebastian was very anxious to get it and play bits from it. Christopher forbade him to touch it and put it away in a cupboard, which fortunately had a lattice door, for Sebastian, every night during the full moon, (because he did not dare to use a candle), copied the book note for note. When Christopher discovered this, the little lad was soundly scolded and was witness to Christopher’s burning it before his poor eyes!

It did not seem to daunt him, for from this time on, he copied the great works whenever he could.

It became necessary for Sebastian to earn money to save Christopher’s purse, and in 1700 he became a choir boy at St. Michael’s in Lüneburg, where he received lessons without paying for them. He was happy here, with a library where he could copy music to his heart’s content, and every vacation he went on foot to Hamburg to learn of the great organist, Reinken. He visited too the court of Celle where he heard Couperin’s music, which no doubt helped to develop his style.

Soon he left Lüneburg and went to Saxe-Weimar where he entered the orchestra of Prince Johann Ernst. But his interest was in the church and when he was eighteen he tried for the post of organist in the Church at Arnstadt. He played so delightfully, despite his youth, that he was accepted at the first hearing!

He composed many works here and learned much about the organ, that was to be valuable to him and to us. He was well liked, too, and his playing was enjoyed. Nevertheless, his interest in others was so great, that he decided to go to see Buxtehude in Lübeck, and he was so interested in the master’s art that he forgot about his church in Arnstadt and stayed four months instead of one! When he returned he was severely reprimanded. Later, he received a second reprimand which is of tremendous interest for he was accused of “interspersing the chorale with many strange variations and tones, to the confusion of the congregation.” He was charged with the crime of being original!

Due to this lack of sympathy, he accepted a post as organist at Mühlhausen in 1707 and later in the year married his cousin, Maria Barbara, with great rejoicings. They had seven children, two of whom were the famous Wilhelm Friedemann and Karl Philip Emanuel.

The next year he became Concertmaster (first violinist), to the Duke of Weimar and remained there until 1718. This was a very fruitful composing period, for he had no money worries. He studied the Italian masters, especially Vivaldi, and wrote some excellent cantatas. However, he went soon to the Prince of Anhalt-Cothen, as Court Choir Master.

He made concert trips from here to Dresden and Leipsic, and it was in Dresden that he challenged the proud Marchand, the French organist, to a public improvisation contest on a theme, new to both of them. But the contest never took place, because, unknown to Bach, Marchand heard him play and when the time for the contest came, Marchand had left town hurriedly in an early post-chaise. And strange as it may seem, Emperor Frederick I gave Marchand one hundred ducats and Bach got nothing!

Bach’s new patron was a fine man and a Protestant and gave Bach every chance. At Weimar, he had become well known for his religious works and beautiful playing. But, as he had no organ, he wrote music for harpsichord, violin, chamber music and the orchestra, which was far from “grown up.” Here, too, he wrote the Brandenburg Concertos and the first part of his epoch-making work _The Well-tempered Clavichord_ (48 Preludes and Fugues, 1722) which he finished in 1744. It is still the greatest work of its kind. In it he reaches the highest point of contrapuntal writing.

In 1720, while Bach was traveling with the Prince, his wife died. After a year and a half he married a charming singer, Anna Magdalena Wulkens, one of his pupils. They had twelve children and lived very happily. The lovely little tunes that he wrote for Anna Magdalena and his children have come down to us and many of us have played them in the first years of our music study. Isn’t it wonderful to think that the great Bach, who wrote some of the masterpieces of the world, could also write simple little Minuets and Preludes that any child can play?

But with all Bach’s comfort he missed an organ! Deep in his soul, he craved the making of religious music—it was part of his thinking. His religious ideas tied up with his music, were his life. So we see this saint leaving happiness at Cothen for an ill-paid post in Leipsic, as Cantor (1723) at the school of St. Thomas, where, succeeding Johann Kuhnau, he stayed the rest of his life and wrote his greatest works.

Bach wrote to a friend that he thought a long while before leaving his “gracious, music loving and discriminating Prince ... but it happened that my master married a ... princess who ... weaned my master from the loving interest he had ... toward our glorious art. And so God arranged that the post of Cantor at St. Thomas’ should fall vacant.... I took three months to consider the future and was induced to accept, as my sons were studious and I was desirous ... of gratifying their bent by entering them in the school ... and thus, in the name of the Most High, I ventured and came to Leipsic.”

Note, dear reader, the nobility, spirituality and sweetness here, thinking of his children and not of his career!

He struggled against the unsympathetic town council, the school, and lack of money. He wrote to his friend Erdman, “My present income averages $700. When funerals are numerous I make more, but if the ‘air is healthy’ then my income falls. During the past year I have earned $100 less, owing to the small number of deaths.”

In 1732 he wrote one of his few attempts at comedy.—the _Coffee Cantata_ set to music on a text by Picander. Leipsic had become a slave to the new luxury, coffee, and in this Picander found material for a satire.

Besides his regular work, he had to teach dull, undisciplined pupils, attend to services in four churches, and be satisfied with the few singers and players he found for the performances he directed.

Yet, fed with the spirit of love that was within him, he was happy and his home was a center of joy. He never became too sad until he lost his sight three years before his death. Even then he dictated his compositions and conquered discouragement!

Bach’s life was made happier when Philip Emanuel became Court musician and clavier player to Frederick the Great, and he talked so much of his father that Bach was invited to Potsdam.

When Frederick the Great, who was playing the flute in his orchestra, heard that Bach was in Potsdam, he put down his flute and interrupted the concert saying, “Gentlemen, old Bach has arrived.” Bach appeared in his traveling clothes and was invited to improvise a fugue in six parts, which he did to the great admiration of all.

Yet many felt that his writings were lacking in charm! This was no doubt because people were getting accustomed to the Italian melodies which had become popular in Germany. Furthermore, when he wrote “The Art of Fugue” his son could sell but thirty copies and finally sold the plates for the mere cost of the metal! Students are grateful that copies of this work were saved, for it is still the greatest authority on fugue writing.

In 1749, Bach underwent an operation on his eyes but lost his sight and in 1750 died of apoplexy. So little was he appreciated that his grave was destroyed in the renovation of the Johanneskirche grounds. His supposed remains were discovered in 1894 and re-interred one hundred and forty-four years after his death. But—what remains of Bach, no known or unknown grave can bury.

A quarter of a century after Bach’s death, Mozart said, on hearing a Bach Cantata, “At last I have heard something new and have learned something.” Then later Mendelssohn re-discovered him, and Schubert, too, helped to bring him to the world’s notice. And not until 1850, a century after his death, was the Bach Society formed to honor Bach, the corner-stone of modern music.

Bach was a stalwart man with fine deep eyes, broad forehead and a grave face, lit with kindly humor. He had dignity and calm, was always courteous, and criticised only his pupils whom he wanted to help. When asked one time, how he played so well, he remarked, “I always have had to work hard.” He could stand no one who was pretentious and conceited. He wanted his rights but never boasted. One year besides fulfilling his other duties he wrote a cantata every Sunday! He wrote them as a preacher writes sermons. They had to be done and he never neglected his duty.

Bach was a devoted father and husband and his home was one of the happiest of any great genius. Many of his children were musical and he said that he had an orchestra in his own home!

Even his little half-witted son had genius and during the last years of Bach’s life when the dear old man had become blind, the little boy sat at the clavier, Bach’s favorite instrument, and improvised to the joy of his father.

BACH’S WORKS

It is impossible to describe in words just what Bach accomplished, so surpassing in beauty are his best works.

He brought the art of polyphonic writing to its highest and most sublime point. His value to the student cannot be exaggerated, for he is the musical Bible to all who would be musicians.

The organ was the core of his musical thinking and it is in the things which center about the organ that his art is loftiest.

Although he was most ingenious in writing counterpoint, he was never dry and tricky as were other writers. His subjects were always original and his melodic line always of rare beauty.

His works are most varied: fugues, motets, cantatas, passions, oratorios, concertos, sonatas and suites. He was a radical in his day, for he threw over conventional notions of harmony as to proper keys and insisted upon a new system of tuning the clavier, so as to use the whole range of tones. The “Well-tempered Clavichord,” two groups of 24 Preludes and Fugues in 24 keys, was the outcome of this. It was so called because it was written to show the possibilities of a clavier (or clavichord) tuned according to an idea of his, enabling one to play in all keys. This was one of the greatest discoveries in the whole story of music, for it made possible all the music which has followed. The keyboard was divided into equal half-steps. This made twelve half-steps within each octave and thus all the intervals became fixed, and modulation from key to key was possible. Heretofore, if one went from one key to another, the instrument sounded out of tune, but now instruments were tuned, as we glibly say, “to scale.”

He invented a new fingering in which the thumb and little finger were used for the first time. We wonder why the thumb had been snubbed!

The pianoforte was just coming into prominence in Bach’s day but he preferred the clavier, on which he felt he could play with more expression.

He developed the fugue to its highest point. A fugue is an enlarged canon in which the fragments of theme or melody are taken up and answered by two, or more, voices. One voice declares the subject and the answer is repeated usually in the dominant key a fifth above, while the first voice gives the counter-subject. There are various kinds of fugues, depending on their construction. After the voices have all entered, separated sometimes by little passages called “episodes,” a section in which the subject is freely developed comes, and then the stretto, in which all the parts enter racing and overlapping, building up to a climax; then follows the cadence or ending.

To write a noble or lofty fugue, neither dry nor pedantic, takes art to the _nth_ power! Bach had the art that touched Heaven’s borders! In truth you can safely divide fugues into two classes—Bach’s and all others!

None of Bach’s works were published until he was forty years old, and most of them not until long after his death, and many of his manuscripts were lost and never published at all.

The list of his works is stupendous; the Bach Gesellschaft (Bach Society, 1850) published them in sixty volumes! Among them were the 48 Preludes and Fugues (The Well-tempered Clavichord Collection); 12 Suites; many Inventions in 2 and 3 parts; partitas; 12 concertos for 1, 2, 3 and 4 claviers with orchestra; many sonatas and concertos for violin, flute, viola da gamba, clavier, and orchestra; several overtures for orchestras; vocal works; 200 motets and cantatas; 5 _Passions_, of which the greatest are the St. Matthew and the St. John; 5 masses of which his _B Minor Mass_ is a world masterpiece; oratorios; magnificats; many organ works, and old German chorales harmonized for voices.

When you can, try to hear Wanda Landowska play Bach compositions on the harpsichord. It is a glimpse into the beauty of the saintly Bach.

Also try to hear the great Bach Festival, directed by Frederick Wolle held yearly in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in the Moravian Church.

In a list of great men, Bach would be classed with Euripides, Sophocles, Shakespeare, Milton, da Vinci, Michael Angelo and Goethe.

Bach did not write for people, he wrote for his own soul. He never seemed able to write theatric music, for his was the drama of the spirit. Always, his music was the result of his musings, the confessions of his ideals. So he attained a loftiness, grandeur and sublimity far removed from even some of the most dramatic writers.

BACH’S SONS

Bach’s sons reached great eminence. The eldest was Wilhelm Friedemann (1710–1784), an unusually talented man on whom the father built great hopes. But while Friedemann inherited his father’s musical talent he did not have his character, and was looked upon as a disgrace to the family on account of his dissolute ways. He was the greatest organist of his time and most of his compositions, which were considered very fine, have been lost to the world, for he did not take the trouble even to write them down, but played them from memory.

The third son, Karl Philip Emanuel (1714–1788), although trained to be a lawyer, could not resist the urge of music, and after going through two universities decided to become a musician to Frederick the Great. He was “general manager” of all the music at court until the Seven Years’ War put an end to his position after almost thirty years’ service. He then spent the rest of his life in Hamburg. As composer, conductor, teacher and critic his influence was great. He was loved and respected by the whole city. In his day he was regarded as being as important as his father, but we know that he was not in the same class, although he was the greatest of his contemporaries. He did not imitate his father’s style but developed the sonata into the form that Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven perfected. He was an innovator, not only in form, but in the treatment of melody and harmony. His best sonatas were written at the court of Frederick the Great.

In the growth of music he is the link between his immortal father and Haydn. Haydn was more gifted than he and made the seeds planted by Philip Emanuel blossom luxuriantly.

Johann Christoph (1732–1795) was an upright, modest, amiable man, and a splendid musician keeping up the family traditions.

Johann Christian (1735–1782), the youngest of those who outlived the father, might be called the Italian Bach, because he went to Italy in 1754, became organist of the Milan Cathedral, and wrote vocal music in the Neapolitan style. He left his position as organist, married an Italian prima donna, wrote many operas and spent the last twenty years of his life in London, as director of concerts.

Curious as it may seem, the great and gifted Bach family died out in 1845, with a grandson of Johann Sebastian. Out of twenty children there seems not to have been one to carry the line to the present day.