Encyclopaedia Britannica Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 Part 30

The writing of the MS. is a fine uncial. It presents some traits of a distinctly Ptolemaic type, though it lacks some features found in the earlier Ptolemaic MSS. (those of the 3rd or 2nd century B.C.). Among the characteristic forms of letters is the [form of Upsilon], with a shallow curve on the top of the upright; a form found in MSS. ascribed to the 1st century B.C., and different from the more fully formed upsilon of the Roman period. Another very significant letter is the [Xi], written as [form of Xi], a form which begins to go out after _c._ 50 B.C., giving place to one in which the middle stroke is connected with the other two. From these and other indications it is probable that the MS. is not later than the middle of the 1st century B.C.

The scribe, though he sometimes corrected his own mistakes, was, on the whole, careless of the sense, as of the metre; he seems to have been a mechanical copyist, excellent in penmanship, but [v.03 p.0124] intent only on the letters. The MS. has received corrections or small supplements from at least two different persons. One of them (Kenyon's A) was contemporary, or nearly so, with the scribe. The other (A) was considerably later; he wrote a Roman cursive which might belong to the end of the 1st century A.D., or to the early part of the 2nd. The correctors seem to be generally trustworthy; though, like the scribe, they were inattentive to metre, pa.s.sing over many metrical faults which could easily have been removed.

They appear to have compared their MS. with another, or others; but they sometimes made a bad use of such aid, intruding a false reading where their text had the true one.

Breathings are generally added, especially rough breathings; the form is usually square, but sometimes partially rounded. Accents are added, not to all words, but only, as a rule, to those which might cause doubt or difficulty to the reader. This was the Alexandrian practice, accents being regarded as aids to correct reading, and more liberally used when the dialect was not Attic. In accordance with the older system, the accent is not written on the last syllable of a word; when the accent falls there, a grave accent is written on the preceding syllable, or on two such syllables (_e.g._ [Greek: blechras, pauthales]).

As Kenyon observes, no MS. of equal antiquity is so well supplied with accents. The MS. which comes nearest to it in this respect is the Alcman fragment in the Louvre, which is of similar or slightly higher age, belonging perhaps to the early part of the 1st century A.D.; and in that MS. the comparatively frequent accents were doubtless designed to aid readers unfamiliar with Alcman's Laconian Doric. With regard to other grammatical or metrical signs ([Greek: prosoidiai]) used in the Bacchylides MS., there is not much that calls for special remark. The punctuation, whether by the scribe or by correctors, is very spa.r.s.e, and certainly cannot always be regarded as authoritative. The signs denoting the end of a strophe or antistrophe (_paragraphus_), of an epode (_coronis_), or of an ode (_asterisk_), are often omitted by the scribe, and, when employed, are sometimes placed incorrectly, or employed in an irregular manner.

EDITIONS.--F. G. Kenyon, _Ed. princeps_ (1897); F. Bla.s.s, 3rd ed. (1904); H. Jurenka (1898); N. Festa, text, translation and notes (1898). [The latest edition is by Sir Richard Jebb (1905), with introduction, notes, translation, and bibliography; text only (1906). See also T. Zanghieri, _Studi su Bacchilide, Bibliografia Bacchilidea, 1897-1905_ (1905)].

(R. C. J.)

[1] The references are given according to the numbering in Jebb's edition.

[2] For other explanations suggested, see Jebb's edition, Introd. p. 18.

BACCIO D'AGNOLO (_c._ 1460-1543), Florentine wood-carver, sculptor and architect, had the family name of Baglioni, but was always known by the abbreviation of Bartolommeo into Baccio and the use of d'Agnolo as meaning the son of Angelo, his father's name. He started as a wood-carver, and between 1491 and 1502 did much of the decorative carving in the church of Santa Maria Novella and the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence. Having made his reputation as a sculptor he appears to have turned his attention to architecture, and to have studied at Rome, though at what precise date is uncertain; but quite at the beginning of the 16th century he was engaged with Simon Pollajuolo in restoring the Palazzo Vecchio, and in 1506 he was commissioned to complete the drum of the cupola of the metropolitan church of Santa Maria del Fiore. The latter work, however, was interrupted on account of adverse criticisms from Michelangelo, and it remained unexecuted. Baccio d' Agnolo also planned the Villa Borghese and the Bartolini palace, with other fine palaces and villas. The Bartolini palace was the first house to be given frontispieces of columns to the door and windows, previously confined to churches; and he was ridiculed by the Florentines for his innovation. Another much-admired work by him was the campanile of the church of Santo Spirito. His studio was the resort of the most celebrated artists of the day, Michelangelo, Sansovino, the brothers Sangallo and the young Raphael. He died in 1543, leaving three sons, all architects, the best-known being Giuliano.

BACH, JOHANN SEBASTIAN (1685-1750), German musical composer.

[Sidenote: Family.]

The Bach family was of importance in the history of music for nearly two hundred years. Four branches of it were known at the beginning of the 16th century, and in 1561 we hear of Hans Bach of Wechmar who is believed to be the father of Veit Bach (born about 1555). The family genealogy, drawn up by J. Sebastian Bach himself and completed by his son Philipp Emanuel, describes Veit Bach as the founder of the family, a baker and a miller, "whose zither must have sounded very pretty among the clattering of the mill-wheels." His son, Hans Bach, "_der Spielmann_," is the first professional musician of the family. Of Hans's large family the second son, Christoph, was the grandfather of Sebastian Bach. Another son, Heinrich, of Arnstadt, had two sons, Johann Michael and Johann Christoph, who are among the greatest of J. S. Bach's forerunners, Johann Christoph being now supposed (although this is still disputed) to be the author of the splendid motet, _Ich la.s.se dich nicht_ ("I wrestle and pray"), formerly ascribed to Sebastian Bach. Another descendant of Veit Bach, Johann Ludwig, was admired more than any other ancestor by Sebastian, who copied twelve of his church cantatas and sometimes added work of his own to them.

The Bach family never left Thuringia until the sons of Sebastian went into a more modern world. Through all the misery of the peasantry at the period of the Thirty Years' War this clan maintained its position and produced musicians who, however local their fame, were among the greatest in Europe.

So numerous and so eminent were they that in Erfurt musicians were known as "Bachs," even when there were no longer any members of the family in the town. Sebastian Bach thus inherited the artistic tradition of a united family whose circ.u.mstances had deprived them of the distractions of the century of musical fermentation which in the rest of Europe had destroyed polyphonic music.

[Sidenote: Biography.]

Johann Sebastian Bach was baptized at Eisenach on the 23rd of March 1685.

His parents died in his tenth year, and his elder brother, Johann Christoph, organist at Ohrdruf, took charge of him and taught him music.

The elder brother is said to have been jealous of Sebastian's talent, and to have forbidden him access to a ma.n.u.script volume of works by Froberger, Buxtehude and other great organists. Every night for six months Sebastian got up, put his hand through the lattice of the bookcase, and copied the volume out by moonlight, to the permanent ruin of his eyesight (as is shown by all the extant portraits of him at a later age and by the blindness of his last years). When he had finished, his brother discovered the copy and took it away from him. In 1700 Sebastian, now fifteen and thrown on his own resources by the death of his brother, went to Luneburg, where his beautiful soprano voice obtained him an appointment at the school of St Michael as chorister. He seems, however, to have worked more at instrumental than at vocal music. Apart from the choristers' routine, his position provided only for his general education, and we know little about his definite musical instructors. In any case he owed his musical development mainly to his own incessant study of cla.s.sical and contemporary composers, such as Frescobaldi (_c._ 1587), Caspar Kerl (1628-1693), Buxtehude, Froberger, m.u.f.fat the elder, Pachelbel and probably Johann Joseph f.u.x (1660-1741), the author of the _Gradus ad Parna.s.sum_ on which all later cla.s.sical composers were trained. A prettier and no less authentic story than that of his brother's forbidden organ-volume tells how, on his return from one of the many holiday expeditions which Bach made to Hamburg on foot to hear the great Dutch organist Reinken, he sat outside an inn longing for the dinner he could not afford, when two herring-heads were flung out of the window, and he found in each of them a ducat with which he promptly paid his way, not home, but back to Hamburg. At Hamburg, also, Keiser was laying the foundations of German opera on a splendid scale which must have fired Bach's imagination though it never directly influenced his style. On the other hand Keiser's church music was of immense importance in his development. In Celle the famous _Hofkapelle_ brought the influence of French music to bear upon Bach's art, an influence which inspired nearly all his works in suite-form and to which his many autograph copies of Couperin's music bear testimony. Indeed, there is no branch of music, from Palestrina onwards, conceivably accessible in Bach's time, of which we do not find specimens carefully copied in his own handwriting. On the other hand, when Bach, at the age of nineteen, became organist at Arnstadt, he found Lubeck within easy distance, and there, in October 1705, he went to hear Buxtehude, whose organ works show so close an affinity to Bach's style that only their lack of coherence as wholes reveals to the attentive listener that with all their n.o.bility they are not by Bach himself. Bach's enthusiasm for Buxtehude caused him to outstay his leave by three months, and this, together with his [v.03 p.0125] habit of astonishing the congregation by the way he harmonized the chorales got him into trouble. But he was already too great an ornament to be lightly dismissed; and though his answers to the complaints of the authorities (every word of which makes amusing reading in the archives of the church) were spirited rather than satisfactory, and the _consistorium_ had to add to their complaints the grave scandal of his allowing a "strange maiden" to sing in the church,[1] Bach was able to maintain his position at Arnstadt until he obtained the organistship of St Blasius in Muhlhausen in 1707.

Here he married his cousin, easily identified with the "strange maiden" of Arnstadt; and here he wrote his first great church cantatas, _Aus der Tiefe_, _Gott ist mein Konig_ and _Gottes Zeit_.

Bach's mastery of the keyboard attracted universal attention, and prevented his ever being unemployed. In 1708 he went to Weimar where his successes were crowned by his appointment, in 1714, at the age of twenty-nine, as _Hofkonzertmeister_ to the duke of Weimar. Here the composition of sacred music was one of his most congenial duties, and the great cantata, _Ich hatte viel Bek.u.mmerniss_, was probably the first work of his new office. In 1717 Bach visited Dresden in the course of a concert tour, and was induced to challenge the arrogant French organist, J. Louis Marchand, who was making himself thoroughly disliked by the German musicians who could not deny his powers. Bach was first given an opportunity of listening secretly to Marchand's playing, then a compet.i.tion on the organ was proposed, and a day was fixed for the tournament at which all the court and all the musical celebrities of the town were to be present, to see nothing less than the issue between French and German music. Marchand took up the challenge contemptuously, but it would appear that he also was allowed to listen secretly to Bach's playing, for on the day of the tournament the only news of him was that he had left Dresden by the earliest coach.

This triumph was followed by Bach's appointment as _Kapellmeister_ to the duke of Cothen, a post which he held from 1717 to 1723. The Cothen period is that of Bach's central instrumental works, such as the first book of the _Wohltemperirtes Klavier_, the solo violin and violoncello sonatas, the Brandenburg concertos, and the French and English suites.

In 1723, finding his position at Cothen uninspiring for choral music, he removed to Leipzig, where he became cantor of the Thoma.s.schule, being still able to retain his post as visiting _Kapellmeister_ at Cothen, besides a similar position at Weissenfels. His wife had died in 1720, leaving seven children, of whom Friedermann and Philipp Emanuel had a great future before them. (For his sons see BACH, K. P. E., below.) In December 1721 Bach married again, and for the beautiful soprano voice of his second wife he wrote many of his most inspired arias. She was a great help to him with all his work, and her musical handwriting soon became so like his own that her copies are difficult to distinguish from his autographs. In 1729 Bach heard that Handel was for a second time visiting Halle on his way back to London from Italy. A former attempt of Bach's to meet Handel had failed, and now he was too ill to travel, so he sent his son to Halle to invite Handel to Leipzig; but the errand was not successful, and much to Bach's disappointment he never met his only compeer. Bach so admired Handel that he made a ma.n.u.script copy of his _Pa.s.sion nach Brockes_. This work, though almost unknown in England then as now, was, next to the oratorios of Keiser, incomparably the finest Pa.s.sion then accessible, as Graun's beautiful masterpiece, _Der Tod Jesu_, was not composed until four years after Bach's death. The disgusting poem of Brockes (which was set by every German composer of the time) was transformed by Bach with real literary skill as the groundwork of the non-scriptural numbers in his _Pa.s.sion according to St John_.

All Bach's most colossal achievements, such as the _Pa.s.sion according to St Matthew_ and the _B Minor Ma.s.s_ (for discussion of which see ORATORIO and Ma.s.s), date from his cantorship at Leipzig. But, important and congenial as was his position there, and smooth as the course of his life seems to have been until his death in 1750, he must have had quite as much experience as can have been good for him. He was often ruffled by the town councillors of Leipzig, who (like his earlier employers at Arnstadt) were shocked by the "unecclesiastical style" of his compositions and by his independent bearing. But he had more serious troubles. Of his seven children by his first wife only three survived him. By his second wife he had thirteen children, of whom he lost four of the six sons. For the head of so large a family his post was dignified rather than lucrative, and few doc.u.ments tell a prouder tale of uncomplaining thrift than the inventory of his possessions made after his death. One can only be thankful that he did not live to see anything but the wonderful promise of his son Friedermann, who, in the words of the brilliantly successful K. Philipp Emanuel Bach, was more nearly capable of replacing his father than all the rest of the family together. The prospect of complete loss of the tradition of his own polyphonic art he faced with equanimity, saying of the new style, which in the hands of his own son, Philipp Emanuel, was soon to eclipse it for the next hundred years, "The art has advanced to great heights: the old style of music no longer pleases our modern ears." But it would have broken his heart if he had forseen that Friedermann Bach was to attain a disreputable old age after a dissolute and unproductive life.

The brilliant successes of Philipp Emanuel led to his appointment as court-composer to the king of Prussia and hence, in 1747, to Sebastian's being summoned to visit Frederick the Great at Potsdam, an incident which Bach always regarded as the culmination of his career, much as Dr Johnson regarded his interview with George III. Bach had to play on the numerous newly invented pianofortes of Silbermann which the king had bought, and also to try the organs of the churches of Potsdam. Frederick, whose musical reputation rested on a genuine if narrow basis, gave him a splendid theme on which to extemporize; and on that theme Bach afterwards wrote _Das musikalische Opfer_. Two years after this event his sight began to fail, and before long he shared the fate of Handel in becoming perfectly blind.[2]

Bach died of apoplexy on the 28th of July 1750. His loss was deplored as that of one of the greatest organists and clavier players of his time. Of his compositions comparatively little was known. At his death his MS. works were divided amongst his sons, and many of them have been lost; only a small fraction of his greater works was recovered when, after the lapse of nearly a century, the verdict of his neglectful posterity was reversed by the modern upholders of polyphonic art. Even now some important works are still apparently irrecoverable.

[Sidenote: Work and influence.]

The rediscovery of Bach is closely connected with the name of Mendelssohn, who was amongst the first to proclaim by word and deed the powers of a genius too gigantic to be grasped by three generations. By the enthusiastic endeavours of Mendelssohn, Schumann and others, and in England still earlier by the performances and publications of Wesley and Crotch, the circle of Bach's worshippers rapidly increased. In 1850, a century after his death, a society was started for the correct publication of all Bach's remaining works. Robert Franz, the great song-writer, did good service in arranging some of Bach's finest works for modern performance, until the experience of a purer scholarship could prove not only the possibility but the incomparably greater beauty of a strict adherence to Bach's own scoring. The Porson of Bach-scholarship, however, is Wilhelm Rust (grandson of the interesting composer of that name who wrote polyphonic suites and fantasias early in the 19th century). During the fourteen years of his editorship of the _Bach-Gesellschaft_ he displayed a steadily increasing insight into Bach's style which has never since been rivalled. In more than one case he has restored harmonies of priceless value from incomplete texts, by means of research and reasoning which he sums up in a modest footnote that reads as something self-evident. His prefaces to the _Bach-Gesellschaft_ volumes are perhaps the most valuable contributions to the criticism of 18th-century music ever written, Spitta's great biography not excepted.

[v.03 p.0126] Bach's importance in the history of music cannot be exaggerated. His art, neglected as old-fashioned and crabbed by his younger contemporaries, survived only in certain limited aspects as the subject of a desultory and unintelligent academic study, until its re-discovery by Mendelssohn. And yet, whatever disguise may have been foisted on it by corrupt traditions and ignorance of its idioms, whenever any fragment of it gained the inner ear of a true composer the effect on the history of music was immediate and profound. Indeed his influence is by no means chiefly manifested in the time when his work became known in its larger aspects, though the Bach-revival is very obviously connected with certain tendencies in the "Romantic" movement in music. But, however clear we may consider Bach's claim to the t.i.tle of "the first of Romanticists," the full influence of his whole work has hardly yet begun to show itself. Schumann died before even such enthusiasts as the editors of the _Bach-Gesellschaft_ began to find more beauty than extravagance in Bach's ordinary musical language (see, for example, Hauptmann's letters _pa.s.sim_, _The Letters of a Leipzig Cantor_, trans. by A. D. Coleridge, London, Novello, Ewer, 1892), or, indeed, to grasp the main features of his designs.[3] The labours of the _Bach-Gesellschaft_ have occupied more than fifty years, during which about four-fifths of Bach's choral works have been published for the first time; and it would be surprising if another fifty years sufficed to make these adequately known to the world at large. It is difficult to make an anthology of such bulky works as church-cantatas, nor does an anthology meet the purpose where the whole work so constantly attains that excellence for which the anthologist seeks. Except for practical difficulties (as when Bach writes for obsolete instruments) the only reason why some cantatas are better known than others is that a beginning must be made somewhere.

Indeed, a cantata was recently selected, on the ground of its popularity, for a choral compet.i.tion in a small English country town the year before it was performed as a novelty in Berlin!

It is clear, then, that the influence of Bach's art as an understood whole is still undeveloped. In the past history of music his part was hardly suspected except by the great composers themselves; and, to any one contemplating the art of the generation after him, it might have seemed that both he and Handel had worked in vain. Yet his was the most subtle and universal force in the development of music, even when his musical language seemed hopelessly forgotten. Mozart, when rapidly advancing to the height of his mastery, had but to read the Baron von Swieten's ma.n.u.script copies of the motets and of the _Wohltemperirtes Klavier_, and his style, quite apart from his immediate essays in the old art-forms, and apart also from the influence of his study of Handel, developed a new polyphonic richness and depth of harmony which steadily increased until his untimely death.

Beethoven studied all the accessible works of Bach profoundly, and frequently quoted them in his sketch-books, often with a direct bearing on his own works. His rendering of the _Wohltemperirtes Klavier_ is said to be recorded in the marks of expression and _tempo_ given in Czerny's edition; and if that record is true, Beethoven must have been completely in the dark as to Bach's meaning in many important respects; but art is full of such ill.u.s.trations of the way in which great minds influence each other in spite of every barrier which diversity of language and time can set. Beethoven's great Thirty-three Variations on a Waltz by Diabelli were actually described in the publisher's puff as worthy of their kinship with the "Goldberg Variations" of Bach; and that kinship is revealed in its truest light by a comparison between Beethoven's 31st variation and Bach's 25th; for here, just where the resemblance is most obvious, each composer utters his most intimate expression of feeling.

In the same way, Chopin is nowhere more characteristic than where he shows his love of the _Wohltemperirtes Klavier_ in his etudes and Preludes; and so subtle is the influence of polyphonic style even over a writer so little apt to make direct use of it as Chopin, that one of Schumann's few plagiarisms occurs in his use of a phrase from Chopin's F minor etude (written for the _Methode des methodes_) as the subject of a fugue (Op. 72, No. 3). And, apart from fugues, which Schumann cultivated a.s.siduously at a late stage in his career, the influence of Bach pervades the texture and rhythm of his work in more ways than can easily be followed.

In a more external, but not less significant way, the _Pa.s.sion according to St Matthew_ made its mark on Mendelssohn from the time when he discovered it at the age of twelve, and suggested to him many features in the general design of oratorios, by means of which he rescued that branch of art from the operatic influences that ruined Beethoven's _Mount of Olives_. Without the example of Bach, Wagner's schemes of _Leitmotif_ would never in his lifetime have become woven into that close polyphonic texture which secures for his music a flow as continuous as that of drama itself:--and intimately connected with this is the whole subject of Wagner's harmonization, which in many of its boldest characteristics was foreshadowed by Bach. A close study of the texture of Brahms's work shows that he develops Bach's and Beethoven's artistic devices _pari pa.s.su_, and that the result is a complete unification of that opposition between polyphony and form which in the infancy of the sonata (as in every transitional stage in musical history) threatened to wreck the art as a false ant.i.thesis wrecks a philosophy. Perhaps the only great composers who escaped the direct influence of Bach are Gluck and Berlioz. Even Gluck reproduced in every detail of harmony and figure the first twelve bars of the _Gigue_ of Bach's B flat Clavier-Part.i.ta in the aria "Je t'implore et je tremble" in _Iphigenie en Tauride_. But plagiarism, however unconscious, is a very different thing from that profound indebtedness which makes a great man attain his truest originality; and Gluck's training practically deprived him of Bach's direct influence, useful as that would have been to the attainment of his aims in harmonic and choral expression. The indirect influence no one could escape, for whatever in modern music is not traceable to Sebastian Bach is traceable to his sons, who were encouraged by their father in the cultivation of those infant art-forms which were so soon to dazzle the world into the belief that his own work was obsolete.

Bach's place in music is thus far higher than that of a reformer, or even of an inventor of new forms. He is a spectator of all musical time and existence, to whom it is not of the smallest importance whether a thing be new or old, so long as it is true. It is doubtful whether even the forms most peculiar to him (such as the arpeggio-prelude) are of his invention.

Yet he left no form as he found it,--not even that most conventional of all, the Da Capo Aria, which he did not outwardly alter in the least. On the other hand, with every form he touched he said the last word. All the material that could be a.s.similated into a mature art he vitalized in his own way, and he had no imitators. The language of music changed at his death, and his influence became all-pervading just because he was not the prophet of the new art, but an unbia.s.sed seeker of truth. Whether so great a man becomes "progressive" or "reactionary" depends on the artistic resources of his time. He will always work at the kind of art that is most complete and consistent in all its aspects. The same spirit of truthfulness that makes Sebastian Bach hold himself aloof from the progressive art which he encourages in his sons, drives Beethoven to invent new forms and new means of expression with every work he writes. Gluck abolished the Da Capo Aria, because it was unfit for dramatic music. Bach did not abolish it, because he did not intend to write dramatic music in the strict sense of the term. Mature musical art in Bach's time could not be dramatic, except in the loose sense in which the term may be applied to an epic poem.

Dramatic expression, properly so called, can only be attained in music by the full development of resources that do not blend with those of Bach's art at all. Meanwhile there are many things unsuitable for the stage which are nevertheless valuable on purely musical grounds; and the Da Capo Aria was one. Bach [v.03 p.0127] developed it in a great variety of ways, while retaining even the minor details of what in other hands had long before become its conventional form; but the one thing he did not do was to abuse it according to time-honoured custom as the staple form for opera. For that he had too much dramatic insight. His treatment of other important art-forms is ill.u.s.trated in the articles on CONTRAPUNTAL FORMS; CONCERTO and INSTRUMENTATION. Here we may attempt to ill.u.s.trate his methods by such forms and characteristics as cannot be cla.s.sified under those headings.

[Sidenote: Ill.u.s.trations of Bach's method.]

1. The toccatas of Buxtehude and his predecessors show how an effective musical scheme may be suggested by running over the keyboard of an organ as if to try (_toccare_) the touch, then bursting out into sustained and full harmony, and at last settling down to a fugue. But before Bach no one seemed able to keep the fugue in motion long enough to make a convincing climax. Very soon it collapsed and the process of quasi-extemporization began again, to culminate in a new fugue which often gave the whole work a happy but deceptive suggestion of organic unity by being founded on an ingenious variation of the subject of the first fugue. But in Bach's hands the toccata becomes one of the n.o.blest and most plastic of forms. The introductory runs may be disjointed and exaggerated to grotesqueness, until the gaps between them gradually fill out, and they build themselves up into grand piles of musical architecture, as in the organ toccata in C; or they may be worked out on an enormous scale in long and smooth canonic pa.s.sages with a definite theme, as in the greatest of all toccatas, that in F for organ, which is most artistically followed by a fugue unusually quiet for its size. In one instance, the toccata at the beginning of the E minor clavier-part.i.ta, the introductory runs, though retaining much of the extempore character from which the form derives its name, take shape in a highly organized and rounded-off group of contrasted themes. The fugue follows without change of time, and is developed in so leisurely a manner that it is fully as long as a normal fugue on a large scale by the time it reaches what sounds like its central episode. At this point some of the introductory matter quietly enters, and leads to a recapitulation of the whole introduction in the key now reached. The obvious sequel would be a counter-development of the fugue, at least as long as what has gone before, as in the clavier-toccata in C minor; but Bach does not choose to weary the hearer and weaken the impression of breadth he has already made here.

Instead, he expands this restatement of the introduction, and makes its harmonies deliberately return to the fundamental key, and thus in an astonishingly short time the toccata is brought to a close with the utmost effect of climax and finality. The same grasp of all the possible meanings of an artistic device shows itself in his treatment of the other features of toccata form. With his variety of proportion and flow he has no need to break off the fugue like earlier composers: but all the old devices by which the division into sections was managed are turned to account by him, and almost every toccata has its own scheme of contrasted movements, always based on the old natural idea of the growth of an organized music from a chaos of extemporization.

If this is Bach's treatment of a comparatively small and specialized art-form, it is obviously impossible to reduce the scantiest account of the rest of his work into practical limits here, nor is there as yet a sufficient body of accepted criticism of Bach for such an account to carry further conviction than an expression of individual opinion. Fortunately, however, Bach was constantly re-arranging his own compositions; indeed he evidently regards adaptability to fresh environment as the test of his finest work: and we cannot do better than review the evidence thus given to us,--evidence which only Beethoven's sketch-books surpa.s.s in significance.

2. The successful transplanting of a work of art to a fresh environment is obviously a convincing test of our definitions of the art-forms concerned, if only we take care to distinguish between the alterations produced by the change of environment and those that imply the composer's dissatisfaction with the original version. In Bach's case this seldom causes much difficulty; his methods of adaptation are so logical and so varied as to form a scheme of musical morphology with all the interest and none of the imperfections of the geological record; and the few cases in which a work owes its changes to the need for improvement as well as adaptation cause no confusion, but rather form a link between the pure adaptations and the numerous revisions of his favourite works without change of medium. There is, for example, no difficulty in separating the element of corrective criticism from that of the impulse to give an already successful composition a larger or more permanent form, in such cases as the transformations undergone by the movements of the birthday cantata, _Was mir behagt ist nur die muntre Jagd_, during their distribution among the church cantatas, _Also hat Gott die Welt geliebt_ and _Man singet mit Freuden vom Sieg_. The fine ba.s.s aria, "Ein Furst ist seines Landes Pan,"

was obviously ill-proportioned, with its breakneck return to the tonic and its perfunctory close; and Bach's chief concern in adapting it for its place as the aria, "Du bist geboren mir zu Gute," in _Also hat Gott_, was to remedy this defect. On the other hand, the use of the delightful ritornello for violoncello from the little aria, "Weil die wollenreichen Heerden," in the birthday cantata, and the restoration of the rejected long instrumental _fugato_ that was to follow, were obviously brought about by the conception of the entirely new material for the voice in the famous aria, "Mein glaubiges Herze." And when the last chorus of _Was mir behagt_ became the first chorus of _Man singet mit Freuden_, it was expanded to the proportions necessary for a triumphant opening (as distinguished from a cheerful finale) by the adroit insertion of new material between every joint in the design. This material, being new, could not produce the effect of diffuseness that would result from the expansion of the old material already complete in its simplest form, and thus this instance does not imply criticism.

A highly interesting example of pure self-criticism is the _Pa.s.sion according to St John_, which was twice revised, and each time reduced to a smaller scale by the omission of some of its finest numbers. The final result was a work of perfect proportions, and of the rejected numbers one (a magnificent aria with chorale) remained unused, two were replaced by finer subst.i.tutes, others took shape as one of the most complete and remarkable of the church cantatas, _Du wahrer Gott_, while the greatest of the figured chorales was transferred to the _Pa.s.sion according to St Matthew_, of which it now crowns the first part.

3. Such instances of self-criticism might be paralleled in the works of other composers; but there is no parallel in music to Bach's power of reproducing already perfect works in different media. Here Bach reveals to us ident.i.ties in difference which we should otherwise never have suspected.

Of course it is possible to arrange works in different ways without ill.u.s.trating any profound ident.i.ties at all. Handel, for instance, collected several of his favourite choruses in an enormous instrumental concerto (see vol. 46 of the _Handel-Gesellschaft_), and the result in the case of a chorus like "Lift up your Heads" was ridiculous. Bach, however, does not arrange old work merely to please a court where it was already admired. He never leaves it in a state of mere make-shift, though he cannot always attain his evident aim of a new originality. His methods of orchestration and the profoundly significant ident.i.ty of certain forms of chorus with certain concerto forms may better be described under their proper headings (see articles INSTRUMENTATION and CONCERTO). Here we will attempt first to show, by ill.u.s.trations of Bach's power of adding parts to already complete harmonic and contrapuntal schemes, what was his conception of the nature of an art-form, and secondly, by means of a short a.n.a.lysis of cases in which he adapts the same music to different words, to define his range of expression.

Bach arranged all his violin concertos for clavier, including two that are lost in the original version. Here his power of providing new and apparently necessary material for the left hand of the cembalist (or, in the double concertos, two left [v.03 p.0128] hands) without disturbing the already complete score, is astonishing; and it fails only in the slow movements, which he prefers to leave obviously in the condition of an arrangement rather than to spoil their broad cantabile style by a too polyphonic ba.s.s.

But these cases are insignificant compared with such transformations as that of the prelude of the E major part.i.ta for unaccompanied violin into the sinfonia for organ obligato accompanied by full orchestra (including three trumpets and a pair of drums) at the beginning of the church cantata, _Wir danken dir, Gott._ The original version is perhaps the most complete and natural of the violin solos, for its arpeggios produce full harmony without recourse to that constant attempt to play on all four strings at once, which makes the performance of the polyphonic movements a _tour de force_ in which steady rhythm is nearly impossible. Yet in the sinfonia its proportions seem to reveal themselves for the first time. Not a bar is displaced and not a note of the new accompaniment is unnecessary. The whole is almost entirely without themes; for even this, the largest of all arpeggio-preludes, consists essentially of the gradual unfolding of a scheme of harmony in which rhythmic and melodic organization is reduced to a minimum. Only in the first line does the incisive initial figure persist a little longer in the new accompaniment than in the original solo, but on the last page it reappears and pervades the whole orchestra, even the drums thundering out its rhythm at the climax where the holding-notes of the trumpet span the torrent of harmony like a rainbow.

Deeper still is the thought that underlies the transformation of two movements of the great violin-concerto in D minor (unfortunately lost except in its splendid arrangement for clavier) into parts of the church cantata, _Wir mussen durch viel Trubsal in das Reich Gottes eingehen_. In both movements the violin is replaced by the organ an octave lower, the orchestral accompaniment remaining where it was. This treatment, with the addition of new and plaintive parts for wind instruments, turns the already very long and sombre first movement into an impressive idealization of the "much tribulation" that lies between us and the kingdom of heaven. The slow movement is still more solemn, and is arranged in the same way as regards the instruments; but from the first note to the last a four-part chorus sings, to the words of the t.i.tle, a ma.s.s of quite new material (except for the ba.s.s and for numerous imitations of the solo-part), treated with every variety of vocal colouring and a grandeur of conception which is not dwarfed even by the _Pa.s.sion according to St Matthew._

4. The four short ma.s.ses, the Christmas oratorio and the B minor ma.s.s, contain every variety of adaptation from earlier work. The four short ma.s.ses are indeed obviously compiled for use in a church where the orchestra was small. Only four movements in the whole collection are not traceable to other extant works; all the rest comes from church cantatas.

The adaptations are not always significant; no attempt, for example, is made in the G minor ma.s.s to conceal how unfit for a _Kyrie eleison_ is the tremendous denunciatory chorus, _Herr, deine Augen sehen nach dem Glauben_.

But the F major and G major ma.s.ses are very instructive; and the A major ma.s.s, except for the damage done to the instrumentation, is a work that no one would conceive to be not original. The Kyrie is one of Bach's most individual utterances and could surely never have fitted any other text, but we should say the same of the Gloria if we did not possess the church cantata, _Halt im Gedachtniss_. The Gloria begins with a triumphant polyphonic chorus accompanied by a spirited symphony for strings. At the words "et in terra pax" the time changes, and two flutes softly accompany a single solemn melody in the altos. At the "laudamus te" the material of the beginning returns, and is interrupted again by the calm slow movement, this time in another key and for another voice, at the words "adoramus te."

Twice the "laudamus" and "adoramus" alternate in a finely proportioned design; at last the words "gratias agimus tibi propter magnam gloriam tuam"

are set for the full chorus to the music of the slow movement, the strings join with the flutes, and this most appropriate setting of those words is finished. And yet it is quite impossible to regard this as superseding the last chorus of _Halt im Gedachtniss_. Not one bar or harmony of the framework differs; yet the two versions are two independent works of art.

In the cantata the beginning is for instruments only; when the slow movement (here adequately scored for a flute and two _oboe d' amore_) begins, the ba.s.ses, permanently separated from the rest of the chorus, sing "Peace be unto you." The other voices then sing the triumph of the faithful helped by the Saviour in their battle against the world. The slow movement is, of course, set for ba.s.s alone throughout, and at the last recurrence of the _allegro_ the ba.s.s continues to sing "Friede sei mit euch" through the rest of the chorus, as if leading the chorus of humanity through strife to the kingdom of heaven, and then the single voice of peace remains to the end. Hardly a bar of the chorus-material is on the same themes in the two versions.

The study of the sources of the Christmas oratorio will complete the evidence on which we support our estimate of Bach's methods and range of expression. It is certain that the occasional cantatas, from which all except the chorale-tune numbers and those set to words from the Bible were taken, date from shortly before the oratorio; and that Bach, being incapable of putting inferior work even into birthday odes, rescued it from oblivion by having the verses for the oratorio numbers built on the same rhythms as those of the odes in order that he might use those occasional works as a sketch (see _B.-G._, _Jahr._ x.x.xiv. preface). Be this as it may, the alterations are confined to details even where an aria is transposed a fourth or fifth; but the effect of them is startling. Pleasure (Woll.u.s.t) sings a lovely soprano aria to allure Hercules from the paths of Virtue, to which Hercules replies indignantly with an aria in a spirited staccato style. It is no doubt a shock to our feelings to find that Woll.u.s.t's aria became the Virgin's cradle-song, while Hercules's reply became the alto aria in which Zion is bidden to "prepare for the Bridegroom." But it does not warrant the inference that Bach's music lacks definite characterization: on the contrary, these two arias are the best demonstration of his profound insight into the possibilities of musical expression within his range. It is no part of his conception of art that Woll.u.s.t should be represented by a Wagnerian Venusberg-music; the obvious way to represent Pleasure was by writing pleasant music, and with Bach's ideas of pleasance the step from this to the solemn beauty of the sacred cradle-song was a mere matter of change of colour and _tempo_. The key is lowered from B flat to G, the strings are veiled with the tender reed tone of a group of _oboe d' amore_, the soprano becomes an alto whose notes are, as it were, surrounded with a nimbus by being doubled in the upper octave by a flute; and the aria becomes worthy of its new purpose, not by losing a grossness which it never possessed, but by gaining the richness which distinguishes the perfect work from the boldly executed draft.

As to the aria of Hercules the change is in manner, while the character, in the human sense of the term, is quite rightly the same. Both Hercules and the faithful Christian of the oratorio are renouncing pomps and vanities for the claims of a higher life; in the one case indignantly, in the other case inspired "mit zartlichem Triebe." A change to a _legato_ style, the subst.i.tution of a single _oboe d' amore_ for _tutti_ violins, the addition of delicate ornaments indicative of a slower pace, and the n.o.ble stream of melody preserve its ident.i.ty while changing its aspect. Bach's larger designs react on their changing contents as a cathedral reacts on the impressiveness of the rites performed within it, or as nature reacts on a poet's thoughts; and in the same way Bach's melody is greater than any possible mood of the moment, not because of that vague and negative pseudo-cla.s.sical quality misnamed "reserve," but because of its vital individuality. In their proper directions its changes are limitless; elsewhere change is inconceivable. No amount of "Umarbeitung" could, for instance, turn the aria of Hercules into the Virgin's cradle-song, or Woll.u.s.t's aria into the exhortation of Zion to prepare for the Bridegroom.

In short, Bach's melodies are characteristic, not like a mask with a set expression, but like a living face that is the more individual for the mobility of its features.

[v.03 p.0129] Within these limits, that is, short of dramatic expression in just so far as "the end of drama is not character but action," there is nothing good that Bach's art does not express. He has plenty of humour, if the term may be applied to art which is, so to speak, always literal,--art in which a jest is a jest and serious things are treated with familiar directness, and all, whether in jest or earnest, is primarily beautiful. In _Der Streit zwischen Phoebus und Pan_ Bach answers the critics who censured him for his pedantry and provincial ignorance of the grand Italian operatic style, by making effective use of that style in Pan's prize-aria ("Zum Tanze, zum Sprunge, so wack-ack-ack-ackelt das Herz"), n.o.bly representing his own style in Phoebus's aria, and promptly caricaturing it in the second part of Pan's ("Wenn der Ton zu muhsam klingt"). Midas votes for Pan--"denn nach meinen beiden Ohren singt er unvergleichlich schon." At the word "Ohren" the violins give a pianissimo "hee-haw" which is fully as witty in its musical aptness as Mendelssohn's clown-theme in the Overture to the _Midsummer Night's Dream_; and in the ensuing dialogue their prophecy is verified. As with many other great artists, Bach's playfulness occasionally showed itself inconveniently where little things shock little minds. The hilarious aria, "Ermuntre dich," in the church cantata, _Schmucke dich, o liebe Seele_, is one instance, and the quaint representation of the words "dimisit inanes" in the _Magnificat_ is another. This great work, one of the most terse and profound things Bach ever wrote, contains, among many other subtle inspirations, one conception with which we may fitly end our survey, for it strongly suggests Bach himself and the destiny of all that work which he finished so lovingly, with no prospect of its becoming more than a family heirloom and a salutary tradition in his Leipzig choir-school. In the _Magnificat_ he sets the words "quia respexit humilitatem ancillae suae" to a touchingly appropriate soprano solo accompanied by his favourite _oboe d'amore_. With the next sentence "ecce enim beatam me dicent" the tone brightens to a quiet joy, but Bach takes advantage of the syntax of the Latin in a way that defies translation, and the sentence is finished by the chorus. "Omnes generationes" seem indeed to pa.s.s before us in the crowded fugue which rises in perpetual stretto, the incessant entries of its subject now mounting the whole scale, each part a step higher than the last, and now collecting in unison with a climax of closeness and volume overwhelming in its impression of time and mult.i.tude.