Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 Part 30 (1/2)

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 penmans.h.i.+p, 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 astonis.h.i.+ng 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 organists.h.i.+p 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 cantors.h.i.+p 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 wors.h.i.+ppers 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 scholars.h.i.+p could prove not only the possibility but the incomparably greater beauty of a strict adherence to Bach's own scoring. The Porson of Bach-scholars.h.i.+p, 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 editors.h.i.+p 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-fas.h.i.+oned 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!