Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 Part 32 (1/2)
4 Vivaldi concertos arranged for organ.
Many of these arrangements contain much original matter, such as entirely new slow movements, large cadenzas, &c.
Concerto in A minor for 4 claviers and orchestra, from Vivaldi's B minor concerto for 4 violins. This, though the most faithful to its original, is the richest and most Bach-like of all these arrangements, and is well worth performing in public.
2 sonatas from the _Hortus Musicus_ of Reinken, arranged for clavier. (The ends of the slow movements are Bach.)
Finis.h.i.+ng touches to cantatas by his uncle Johann Ludwig Bach. Also a very characteristic complete ”Christe eleison” inserted in Kyrie of Johann Ludwig's.
VI.--DOUBTFUL AND SPURIOUS WORKS
Bach's autographs give the name of the composer on the outside sheet only.
He was constantly making copies of all that interested him; and where the outside sheet is lost, only the music itself can tell us whether it is his or not. The above-mentioned _Pa.s.sion according to St Luke_ is the chief case in point. The little music-books he and his second wife wrote for their children are full of pieces in the most various styles, and the editors of the _Bach-Gesellschaft_ have not completely identified them, even Couperin's well-known ”Les Bergeries” escaping their scrutiny. A sonata for two claviers by Bach's eldest son, Wilhelm Friedermann, was detected by the editors after its inclusion in _Jahrgang_ xliv. The second of the 3 sonatas for clavier and flute is extremely suggestive of Bach's sons, but Philipp Emanuel ascribes it to his father. However, he might easily have docketed it wrongly while arranging copies of his father's works. It has a twin brother (_B.-G._ ix. Anhang ii.) for which he has not vouched.
Four absurd church cantatas are printed for conscience' sake in _Jahrgang_ xliii. More important than these, because by no means too obviously ridiculous to deceive a careless listener, is the well-known 8-part motet, _Lob, Ehr' und Weisheit_ (blessing and glory and wisdom). A closer acquaintance shows that it is really very poor stuff; and it was finally crowned with absurdity by the discovery that its composer was a contemporary of Bach,--and that his name was Wagner.
The beautiful motet, _Ich la.s.se dich nicht_, has long been known to be by one of Bach's uncles (Johann Christoph).
EDITIONS
Almost the only works of Bach published during his lifetime were the instrumental collections, most of which he engraved himself. Of the church cantatas only one, _Gott ist mein Konig_ (written when he was nineteen, but a very great work), was published in his lifetime.
Of modern editions that of the _Bach-Gesellschaft_ is, of course, the only complete one. It is, inevitably, of very unequal merit. Its first editors could not realize their own ignorance of Bach's language; their immediate admiration of his larger choruses seemed to them proof of their competence to retain or dismiss details of ornamentation, figured ba.s.s, variants between score and parts, &c., without always stopping to see what light these might shed on questions of _tempo_ and style--especially in the arias and recitatives, which they regarded as archaic almost in direct proportion to the depth of thought really displayed in them. In the 9th _Jahrgang_ Wilhelm Rust introduced scholarly methods, with the happiest results. The _Wohltemperirtes Klavier (Jahrgang_ xiv.) was edited by Kroll, who also made his text accessible in the _Edition Peters_ (which till then had only Czerny's--an amazing result of corrupt tradition, still widely accepted).
Kroll's and Rust's volumes are far the best in the _B. G._ On Rust's death the standard deteriorated; his immediate successor seems more interested in reprinting in full an early version of a work of which Rust had given only the variants, than in digesting his own materials (_Jahrgang_ xxix.); and in his next volume (_Jahrgang_ x.x.x. p. 109) the ba.s.s and violin are a bar apart for a whole line. The last ten volumes, however, are again satisfactory, and in _Jahrgang_ xliv. the French and English suites are re-edited. Part of the B minor ma.s.s was also worked over again; and Kroll's text of the _Wohltemperirtes Klavier_ was supplemented by the evidence of the British Museum autograph. The Steingraber edition of the clavier works, edited by Dr Hans Bischoff, is incomparably the best, giving all the variants in footnotes and clearly distinguis.h.i.+ng the extremely intelligent nuances and phrasing signs of the editor from the rare but significant indications of Bach himself. Nor does this wealth of scholars.h.i.+p interfere with the presentation of a straightforward, single text; though in addition there is every necessary explanation of the ornaments and kindred matters.
We have seen no other editions that distinguish Bach's text from the editor's taste--the disappointing publications of the _Neue Bachgesellschaft_[4] by no means excepted. We may remark that the older vocal scores of cantatas in the _Edition Peters_ are, though unfortunately but a selection, far better than the complete series issued by Breitkopf and Hartel in conformity with the _Bach Gesellschaft_, and therefore accepted as authoritative (see INSTRUMENTATION). The English vocal scores published by Novello are generally very good though covering but small ground. The Novello score of the Christmas oratorio contains a fine a.n.a.lytic preface by Sir George Macfarren.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.--J. N. Forkel, _uber Bach's Leben, Kunst und Kunstwerke_, translated (London, 1820); C. H. Bitter, _John Sebastian Bach_ (Berlin, 1865); Ernest David, _La Vie et les oeuvres de Bach_ (Paris, 1882); P.
Spitta, _Johann Sebastian Bach_ (Leipzig, 1873 and 1880); E. Heinrich, _Sebastian Bach's Leben_ (Berlin, 1885); A. Pirro, _L'Esthetique de Jean Sebastian Bach_ (Paris, 1907); and _L'Orgue de Jean Sebastian Bach_ (Paris, 1907); A. Schweitzer, _J. S. Bach: Le Musicien poete_. Spitta's biography superseded everything written before it and has not since been approached.
With corrections in the light of Rust's _B. G._ prefaces it contains everything worth knowing about Bach, except the music itself.
(D. F. T.)
[1] Spitta points out that this cannot mean singing in the choir at a service, but making music in church privately.
[2] The same surgeon operated unsuccessfully on both composers.
[3] See the wild conjectures of the editor of the Four Short Ma.s.ses as to the ”displacing” of structure in the _kyrie_ of the G minor Ma.s.s (_B.-G., Jahr. viii._ preface, with Rust's answer in the preface to _Jahr. xxiii._).
[4] The object of the _Neue Bachgesellschaft_ is to render the completed results of the first _Bachgesellschaft_ generally accessible by holding frequent Bach festivals and issuing cheap and practical editions. The activities of this society, together with the new movement to restore Bach's vocal music to its place in the Lutheran Church, cannot fail to have a salutary effect on the future of music.
BACH, KARL PHILIPP EMANUEL (1714-1788), German musician and composer, the third son of Johann Sebastian Bach, was born at Weimar on the 14th of March 1714. When he was ten years old he entered the Thoma.s.schule at Leipzig, of which in 1723 his father had become cantor, and continued his education as a student of jurisprudence at the universities of Leipzig (1731) and of Frankfort on the Oder (1735). In 1738 he took his degree, but at once abandoned all prospects of a legal career and determined to devote himself to music. A few months later he obtained an appointment in the service of the crown prince of Prussia, on whose accession in 1740 he became a member of the royal household. He was by this time one of the first clavier-players in Europe, and his compositions, which date from 1731, included about thirty sonatas and concerted pieces for his favourite instrument. His reputation was established by the two sets of sonatas which he dedicated respectively to Frederick the Great (1742) and to the grand duke of Wurttemberg (1744); in 1746 he was promoted to the post of _Kammermusikus_, and for twenty-two years shared with Karl Heinrich, Graun, Johann Joachim, Quantz and Johann Gottlieb Naumann the continued favour of the king. During his residence at Berlin he wrote a fine setting of the _Magnificat_ (1749), in which he shows more traces than usual of his father's influence, an Easter cantata (1756), several symphonies and concerted works, at least three volumes of songs,--_Geistliche Oden und Lieder_, to words by Gellert (1758), _Oden mit Melodien_ (1762) and _Sing-Oden_ (1766), and a few secular cantatas and other _pieces d'occasion_. But his main work was concentrated on the clavier, for which he composed, at this time, nearly two hundred sonatas and other solos, including the set _mit veranderten Reprisen_ (1760-1768) and a few of those _fur Kenner und Liebhaber_. Meanwhile he placed himself in the forefront of European critics by his _Versuch uber die wahre Art das Clavier zu spielen_ (first part 1753, second, with the first reprinted, 1762), a systematic and masterly treatise which by 1780 had reached its third edition, and which laid the foundation for the methods of Clementi and Cramer. In 1768 Bach succeeded Georg Philipp Telemann as _Kapellmeister_ at Hamburg, and in consequence of his new office began to turn his attention more towards church music. Next year he produced his oratorio _Die Israeliten in der Wuste_, a composition remarkable not only for its great beauty but for the resemblance of its plan to that of Mendelssohn's _Elijah_, and between 1769 and 1788 added over twenty settings of the Pa.s.sion, a second oratorio _Der Auferstehung [v.03 p.0131] und Himmelfahrt Jesu_ (1777), and some seventy cantatas, litanies, motets and other liturgical pieces. At the same time his genius for instrumental composition was further stimulated by the career of Haydn, to whom he sent a letter of high appreciation, and the climax of his art was reached in the six volumes of sonatas _fur Kenner und Liebhaber_, to which he devoted the best work of his last ten years. He died at Hamburg on the 14th of December 1788.
Through the latter half of the 18th century the reputation of K. P. E. Bach stood very high. Mozart said of him, ”He is the father, we are the children”; the best part of Haydn's training was derived from a study of his work; Beethoven expressed for his genius the most cordial admiration and regard. This position he owes mainly to his clavier sonatas, which mark an important epoch in the history of musical form. Lucid in style, delicate and tender in expression, they are even more notable for the freedom and variety of their structural design; they break away altogether from the exact formal ant.i.thesis which, with the composers of the Italian school, had hardened into a convention, and subst.i.tute the wider and more flexible outline which the great Viennese masters showed to be capable of almost infinite development. The content of his work, though full of invention, lies within a somewhat narrow emotional range, but it is not less sincere in thought than polished and felicitous in phrase. Again he was probably the first composer of eminence who made free use of harmonic colour for its own sake, apart from the movement of contrapuntal parts, and in this way also he takes rank among the most important pioneers of the school of Vienna. His name has now fallen into undue neglect, but no student of music can afford to disregard his _Sonaten fur Kenner und Liebhaber_, his oratorio _Die Israeliten in der Wuste_, and the two concertos (in G major and D major) which have been republished by Dr Hugo Riemann.
A list of his voluminous compositions may be found in Eitner's _Quellen Lexikon_, and a critical account of them is given in Bitter's _C. P. E. und W. F. Bach und deren Bruder_ (2 vols., Berlin, 1868), a mine of valuable though ill-arranged information.
Four more of Johann Sebastian Bach's sons grew to manhood and became musicians. The eldest of them, WILHELM FRIEDERMANN BACH (1710-1784) was by common repute the most gifted; a famous organist, a famous improvisor and a complete master of counterpoint. But, unlike the rest of the family, he was a man of idle and dissolute habits, whose career was little more than a series of wasted opportunities. Educated at Leipzig, he was appointed in 1733 organist of the Sophienkirche at Dresden, and in 1747 became musical director of the Liebfrauenkirche at Halle. The latter office he was compelled to resign in 1764, and thenceforward he led a wandering life until, on the 1st of July 1784, he died in great poverty at Berlin. His compositions, very few of which were printed, include many church cantatas and instrumental works, of which the most notable are the fugues, polonaises and fantasias for clavier, and an interesting sestet for strings, clarinet and horns. Several of his ma.n.u.scripts are preserved in the Royal library at Berlin; and a complete list of his works, so far as they are known, may be found in Eitner's _Quellen Lexikon_.
The fourth son, JOHANN GOTTFRIED BERNHARD BACH (1715-1739) was, like his elder brothers, born at Weimar and educated at Leipzig. From 1735 to 1738 he held successively the organists.h.i.+ps at Muhlhausen and Sangerhausen; in 1738 he threw up his appointment and went to study law at Jena; in 1739 he died, aged 24.
JOHANN CHRISTOPH FRIEDRICH BACH (1732-1795), the ninth son, was born at Leipzig, studied at the Thoma.s.schule and the university, and in 1750 was appointed _Kapellmeister_ at Buckeburg. He was an industrious composer, especially of church-music and opera, whose work reflects no discredit on the family name.