Another autumn journey of Bach took him to Cassel (1714), where he played a pedal solo on the organ, a feat of miraculous agility, which few, one relates, could equal with their hands. The hereditary prince, who was present, took a precious ring from his finger and expressed by the oriental gift his admiration of the performance.12 Other years Bach went to Leipzig, perhaps to Meiningen, and his excursions from Weimar end with the celebrated visit to Dresden. Just before this, in 1716, Mattheson, one of the most influential musical critics of his day, had asked for his biography, and wrote of him as the renowned organist; in the following year his mere name vanquished a redoubtable harpsichord-player, Marchand, who had never before been confronted by an equal. The Frenchman was so popular at the Dresden court that some friends of Bach in the orchestra there seem to have induced the German master to stand forward in defence of his national music. It is certain that a challenge was sent to Marchand, and that a large company awaited the contest of the pianists in the house of one of the royal ministers. Bach was there, but not Marchand. After long expectation, a messenger at last was sent to his lodging, only to bring back the news that he had left Dresden by express post that morning. No defeat could be more decisive, especially when we remember that Bach’s fame had hitherto rested upon his consummate powers as an organist. It may be added that he was so far from being prejudiced by his personal relations with Marchand that he always valued the gracefulness and exuberant variety of the French composer; and Adlung, who tells the story, says that he only once was able to appreciate his music, and that was when Bach played it to him. Success never affected Bach’s judgment: his generosity was always without vanity.
In leaving Weimar in 1717, Bach ceased for ever to be by calling an organist, though the instrument remained always his chief delight, and once at least he was tempted again to resume it as a profession. As a performer he seems to have grown every year in mature strength. In 1720, when he visited Hamburg, his performance at S. Katharine’s Church was attended by the aged organist, Reincke, and an assemblage of many of the principal men of the city. How he impressed Reincke has already been related, and no doubt it was partly the enthusiasm with which he was greeted that made him view Hamburg as a congenial home for him. An organistship was vacant at one of the other churches there, and Bach directly offered himself for the place. He had to leave before the trial of the candidates took place, but was so eager for the appointment that he wrote from Coethen to repeat his willingness to accept it. The post as it turned out, was given to the man who paid the highest premium, and Mattheson was not the only man in Hamburg who expressed indignation at the well-to-do tradesman’s son, who could prelude better with dollars than with fingers, being preferred to the great virtuoso whose mastery excited the admiration of every one. Neumeister, who was chief preacher of the church, took occasion to remark in a sermon just after, that he was sure enough that if one of the angels who sang at Bethlehem were to come down from heaven and play divinely and desire to be organist of S. James’s, nevertheless if he had no money he might as well fly back again straight.
There are constant and innumerable proofs, besides the few we have noticed, of the impression Bach made as an organist: not the least striking among these is a note by Gesner, with whom Bach was closely connected in later years at Leipzig, illustrating a musical passage in Quintilian. After describing in vigorous rhetoric the almost superhuman powers of his friend, he adds, Though none can surpass me in my support of the ancients I opine that many Orpheuses and twenty Arions are comprehended singly in my Bach and any, if such there be, like to him.13 The characteristics which gave Bach his quite unique position as an organist are partly those of an extraordinary originality in the application of the mechanical resources of the instrument. How minutely he knew its structure is shewn by the frequency with which he was chosen, almost from boyhood, to pronounce upon the necessity and the detail of repair in organs, and to judge the success of the result. His arrangement of stops before he played was so singular as to make connoisseurs absolutely incredulous of the possibility of so producing harmonious combinations, but when he began the doubt was changed into amazement at the swiftness, the precision, and the power of his movements both of feet and hands. If, however, a by-stander expressed astonishment, he would silence him with quiet modesty. There is nothing to wonder at in that, he would say: you have only to touch the right key at the right time and the instrument plays itself. As a rule he gave the pedal a real part of its own, often of incredible difficulty; and by this means he left his hands free to develop the theme in the broadest manner, and to apply the stops, each as it appeared most appropriate and characteristic, with wonderful insight and ingenuity. He liked also to use the pedal to announce a tenor part whenever (as was the case at Weimar) he could find a four-foot register. Of difficulties he seemed unconscious, and this was equally true when he was elaborating a simple bass or a chorale, or improvising a fugue, as when he was playing from a written score. Indeed Forkel, who knew Bach’s sons, relates that “his unpremeditated voluntaries on the organ, where nothing was lost in writing down, are said to have been still more devout, solemn, dignified, and sublime,” than those which stand in record of his supreme command of the instrument. Forkel instances Bach and the son to whom his gifts were transmitted in a special measure, Wilhelm Friedemann, as solitary examples of consummate skill equally on clavichord and organ. “Both,” he says, “were elegant performers on the clavichord; but when they came to the organ, no trace of the harpsichord-player was to be perceived. Melody, harmony, motion, &c., all was different, that is, all was adapted to the nature of the instrument and its destination. When I heard Will. Friedemann on the harpsichord, all was delicate, elegant, and agreeable. When I heard him on the organ, I was seized with reverential awe. There, all was pretty; here, all was grand and solemn. The same was the case with John Sebastian, but both in a much higher degree of perfection. William Friedemann was here too but a child to his father, and most frankly concurred in this opinion.”14
I have already taken occasion to trace the studies by which Bach prepared himself to become the greatest organ composer as well as the greatest organist of all time. At the present break in his life it will be convenient to give a summary account of his total production in this department,15 though it must be little more than an enumeration of the works that survive; since organ music least of all lends itself to any but a scientific analysis, such as would be altogether out of place here. My references are to the compositions contained in the Fifth Series of Peters’ collected edition of Bach’s instrumental works.16
Bach’s organ works divide themselves into three great branches, the first of which is connected most closely with his religious office. It is well known that the German chorale since the days of Luther has always held its regular place in the service of the church. This form of melody, however much more beautiful, is essentially the same with what we in England used to sing as psalm tunes, at a time when one metrical version of the Psalter was employed and the modern hymn with its new words and heterogeneous structure had not yet made its voice heard. In Germany words and music were alike familiar to every one; they formed in fact the nucleus of Lutheran worship both in church and at home. We shall see hereafter how Bach collected two hundred and forty chorales for use in his household; and there are hardly any of his church cantatas which do not contain at least one. In church, whenever a chorale was announced, every one present could be trusted to sustain the melody, and it was allowed to the organist to vary the harmonies almost to any extent he pleased without fear of confusing the people.17 In this way it came to be a recognised part of the organist’s function, at least in Middle Germany, to adorn the simple grandeur or pathos of the chorale by means of preludes, interludes, and variations, generally improvised at the moment; and this treatment of chorales was so popular, through the influence of Johann Christoph and Michael Bach, Pachelbel, and a number of leading organists just before Sebastian Bach’s time, that it became extended so as
to form the basis of independent instrumental compositions, for use at other intervals in the church service. It was a custom of which Bach was peculiarly fond, giving him, as it did, a firm groundwork, with high associations, upon which his fancy could build with the utmost freedom. And though he wrote down but a minute part of what he composed, we possess in print no less than a hundred and thirty elaborations of chorales (parts 5-7), besides twenty-eight of which the genuineness is disputed (suppl. 9-36). They range from short and slight preludes to works of the most intricate brilliancy, abounding in all the science as well as in all the melodious art of which Bach was master. Those to whom the organ chorales are inaccessible may learn their spirit by unravelling the harmonies he has used in the fivefold setting of one chorale in the S. Matthew Passion or from other no less remarkable instances in that according to S. John, to quote only from works which are best known in England. The inexhaustible invention which is pressed into the brief compass of these verses, is in the organ-chorales distributed over a long composition; but the extension is never for the purpose of display, and the fundamental motive insistently maintains itself throughout.
In opposition to these the second branch of Bach’s organ works stands remote from the church. It was not choice only but also the determined bent of musical taste at Weimar that directed his study again to the instrumental music of Italy; and the influence for the present lay strongly upon his organ music as well as upon the rest of his compositions. Three of Vivaldi’s violin-concertos with a movement of a fourth (part 8, 1-4) he arranged for his instrument; he wrote fugues on themes by Legrenzi and Corelli18 (4. 6, 8), and a fugue and canzone (8. 6; 4. 10) recalling the manner of the great Roman organist, Frescobaldi, whose Fiori Musicali, published in 1635, he possessed.
But it would be a great mistake to imagine that Bach was at this time engrossed by the Italian masters. On the contrary Weimar was the place where he wrote the bulk of his organ works of the third branch, the preludes, fantasias, toccatas, and fugues, in which his strong religious sense united with his power of musical creation to build up masterpieces of a perfection never approached either before or since. The list of his works of this period is as follows: —
1. Three Preludes, in A minor, C, and G (4. 13; 8. 8, 11):
2. Three Fugues, in G minor, C, and G minor (4. 7; 8. 10, 12):
3. Fifteen Preludes and Fugues in A, F minor, C minor, G minor, E minor, C, G, and D; besides a collection of eight shorter ones (2. 3, 5, 6; 3. 5, 10; 4. 2, 3; 8. 5. i-viii.):
4. Three Toccatas and Fugues, in F, C, and D minor (3. 2, 8; 4. 4):
5. Two Fantasias and Fugues both in C minor (3. 6; 4. 12): to which must be added three single works, namely a Fantasia in C (8. 9); a Pastorale in F (1. 3); and the superb Passacaglio in C minor, well known to all organists worthy of the name (1. 2).
For the years succeeding those he spent at Weimar, Bach has left us, with one grand exception, no certain record on the organ; we shall see hereafter that he was otherwise occupied. But there is hardly a doubt that he took advantage of the exceptional opportunity offered by his Hamburg visit in 1720, to produce his famous Fantasia and Fugue in G minor (2. 4). It does not surprise us to find that the Fugue, which English musicians have personified as the Giant, left an abiding impression among the listeners.19 As we possess it, it has undergone a rigorous revision, to which, in common with the major part of his younger works, Bach afterwards submitted it when at Leipzig.
Accordingly the short series which he is believed to have composed in later years does not represent more than a fraction of his activity in this direction; since revising in his case usually meant re-writing, certainly re-thinking. The compositions which are presumed to date originally from the year 1723 onwards, consist of seven Preludes and Fugues, in C, G, A minor, E minor, B minor, E flat, and D minor,20 (2. 1, 2, 8, 9, 10; 3. 1, 4), and a Toccata and Fugue in D minor, known as the Doric toccata (3. 3); together with six Sonatas written to exercise the growing skill of Bach’s eldest boy, Wilhelm Friedemann (1. 1).21
It is impossible to characterise in a few words the works which gave Bach his chief renown among contemporaries, and the familiarity of many of the greatest of them renders such an attempt unnecessary. It may suffice to direct attention to the majestic motion of the august Passacaglio, as contrasted with the idyllic grace of the Pastorale which follows it in the printed edition, and which remains lamentably a fragment; — to the broad directness of the Fugue in C (2. 1), the daring invention of the longest of the fugues, that in E minor (2. 9), which proceeds almost entirely by chromatic intervals, the irresistible charm of the G minor, or the marvellously varied solemnity of the E flat, naturalised in England as the S. Ann Fugue. It is as an organ composer that Bach stands, as a colossus, absolutely unapproached and unapproachable.
CHAPTER IV.
The reasons which determined Bach to leave Weimar are not quite clear. He was in fact one of those quick-tempered men whom a small irritation might kindle to a resolve of disproportionate gravity. In the present case he had a real grievance in the appointment of a son as successor to the old capellmeister, whose work Bach had done for a long time and the reversion of whose office he might reasonably have counted upon. Leopold, the reigning prince of Anhalt-Coethen was no stranger at Weimar. A family alliance connected the two courts, and it is likely that he had heard Bach there. In any case Bach was known to him by report, and in 1717 was invited to take the post of capellmeister at Coethen.
The six years that Bach spent in the service of this prince make a kind of pause or breathing-space in his life. It is not that he was idle during this period: his work was different. He had, as it were, stepped aside from the road upon which he had journeyed all the years of his manhood, to follow a by-lane where he might loiter if it pleased him. And if this short abandonment of his peculiar art, dedicated to the service of the church, in favour of the writing of suites for strings or clavichord, hardly needs apology, it remains remarkable that Bach consented to take a position in which church music or even organ-playing had no place. In no one of the three churches in Coethen had he any control; perhaps he was not sorry in the present case, since two of them, with the bulk of the population, belonged to (his special aversion) the reformed or Calvinistic sect.22 The Castle Church could boast but an indifferent organ and was unprovided with a choir; so that even had Bach wished to overstep the limitations of his duty, there were no opportunities, but rather discouragement, in Coethen for him to return to his old work.
He was designated Capellmeister and Director of his Highness’s Chamber Music, but in the peculiar situation of the Coethen court the title imperfectly describes the nature of his post. Leopold was a young bachelor who gave to music the loving worship he had not yet consecrated to a woman. He cultivated his art with an eager enthusiasm, sang a full bass, and was no mean performer on violin, viola-da-gamba, and clavichord. He welcomed Bach as a brother in the craft, and not only employed him to compose for his varied requirements, but took him into his familiar fellowship,23 played with him, sang with him, insisted on his company whenever, as was his habit, he journeyed abroad.
Before this he had learned some knowledge of the world, had travelled in England and Italy, and made acquaintance with the music of Rome and Venice. For the future we find him and Bach making repeated visits to Karlsbad and other distant places, and the obedient capellmeister sometimes perhaps a little ennuyé, if we may credit a story which relates that on one of these journeys he consoled himself for the lack of all musical instruments by striking off the greater part of the Wohltemperirte Clavier. The incongruous performance recalls the tale of the famous printer, Henry Estiennes, that he divided the New Testament into verses, the verses which we still retain, on a ride from Paris to Lyons.
In spite of the widened experience, it was in truth a narrowing life to Bach. He was not one of a musical group as at Weimar; there is no record of his having any friends in the place. If he had the pleasantness of the grateful appreciation of the Prince,
he had no public to sustain his ambition. His days were divided between his house and the music-room of the castle; and he only came into contact with the musical society outside by the custom which he still maintained of employing his holiday in the autumn to visit towns where he was known, where he was invited to try organs and exhibit his skill, or to produce occasional cantatas. Once he went to Leipzig to prove the new organ at the University Church, another time, as has been already mentioned, to Hamburg. Once again he travelled to Halle in the hope of making Handel’s acquaintance, but just missed him.
A visit with Prince Leopold to Karlsbad in 1720, was sadly memorable to Bach. For while he was on his way home and no news could reach him, his wife suddenly fell sick and died. He arrived only to learn that she was already buried. How deep a grief this was to the family — the mother was but thirty-five — we know from the recollection of it which the second son, Philipp Emanuel, then a child of six, bore more than thirty years later. His tender, flexible nature reflected hers closely, as his elder brother Friedemann’s robust vigour did that of his father. And the fact that the two most striking figures, as also the most musical, among Bach’s twenty children sprang from this marriage may be taken in evidence of the near sympathy subsisting between the parents. Else we know nothing of Maria Barbara, and one is apt to depreciate her by comparison with the more gifted woman whom Bach chose for his second wife.
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