<h2>II</h2>
<h3>BACH’S SERVICE TO MUSIC</h3></div>
<p>So important has been the r�le played by the pianoforte
in the evolution of music that it is possible
in these chapters on a pianoforte recital to give
a general survey of the art, and thus prepare the
reader to enjoy not only what he will hear at such a
recital, but enable him to approach it with a more comprehensive
knowledge than that would imply. This is
one reason why I elected to lead with the chapters on
the pianoforte instead of with those on the orchestra,
as usually is done, because the orchestra is something
“big.” In point of fact, however, the pianoforte, so
far as its influence is concerned, is quite as “big,” if
not, indeed, bigger than the orchestra; for often, in
the evolution of music (as I pointed out in the previous
chapter), this instrument, which is so sufficient
in itself, has led the orchestra. In reviewing a pianoforte
recital it therefore is quite possible to review
many phases of musical history.</p>
<p>Take as an example a composition by Bach, one of
the preludes and fugues from “The Well-Tempered
Clavichord,” with which a pianoforte recital is quite
apt to open. The selection illustrates a whole epoch
in music which Bach rounded off and brought alike to
its climax and its close. You will be apt to find this
<span class='pagenum pncolor'><SPAN name='page_49' name='page_49'></SPAN>49</span>
fugue rather complicated and, I fear, somewhat unintelligible,
and this makes it necessary for me to point
out at once that in some respects music has had a
curious development. A Wagner music-drama, a Richard
Strauss tone poem, seem elaborate and complicated
affairs compared with a Beethoven sonata or symphony.
Yet even the most advanced work of
a Wagner or Strauss is neither as complicated nor as
elaborate as a fugue by that past master of his art,
Johann Sebastian Bach, who, although he was born
in 1685 and did not live beyond the middle of the following
century, was so far ahead of his age that not
even to this day has he fully come into his own. The
result is that the early classicists, Haydn and Mozart,
who belong in point of time to a later epoch, may more
readily be reckoned as “old-fashioned” than Father
Bach. When at a recital you listen to a fugue by Bach
and find it hard and labored—many people regard it
simply as a difficult species of finger exercises—you
think that is because it is so very ancient, something
in the same class with Greek or Sanscrit. In point of
fact it is because in some respects it is so very modern.</p>
<p>Were it not for the importance of preserving an
orderly historical sequence in a book of this kind, and
that Bach usually is found at the beginning of a recital
program, it would be almost more practical, and certainly
far easier, for the author to leave Bach until
later. When you write of Mozart, or of Beethoven and
the moderns, you can depend upon more or less familiarity
with their works on the part of your readers,
whereas, comparatively few laymen know much about
Bach. They associate the name with all that is formal
<span class='pagenum pncolor'><SPAN name='page_50' name='page_50'></SPAN>50</span>
and labored. Yet among my acquaintances is a young
woman who was brought up in a very musical family,
and who, having as a child heard her mother play the
preludes and fugues of the “Well-Tempered Clavichord,”
finds Bach as simple as the alphabet. But hers
is a most exceptional case. The appreciation of Bach,
as a rule, comes only with advanced age. My music
teacher used to say to me: “You rave over Schubert
and Wagner now, but when you get to be as old as
I am you will go back to Father Bach.” While I cannot
say that his prophecy has come true, while I still
am ultra-modern in my musical predilections, my musical
gods being Schubert, Chopin, Schumann, Liszt,
Brahms, Richard Strauss and, above all, Wagner, I
should consider myself unfit to write this book if I
failed to realize the debt modern music owes to Bach,
and that the more modern the music the greater the
debt.</p>
<h4>Bach in Modern Music.</h4>
<p>One of the most remarkable phenomena in the history
of the art—and a generalization like this is as
much in place in discussing pianoforte music as elsewhere,
because the instrument has had so much to do
with the evolution of music—is the gap between Bach
and modern music. While the following must not be
taken too literally, it is true in general that Bach had
little or no influence on the age that immediately came
after him, the classical age of music, that age which we
sum up in the names of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven,
the age of the sonata and the symphony. The three masters
mentioned probably would have developed and
<span class='pagenum pncolor'><SPAN name='page_51' name='page_51'></SPAN>51</span>
composed much as they did had Bach never lived. But
when a more modern composer, a romanticist like
Wagner, wanted to enrich the means of musical
expression handed down to him from the classical
period, he reached back to Bach and combined Bach’s
teeming counterpoint with the harmonic system which
had been inherited from Beethoven. To understand
just what this means, to appreciate the influence Bach
has had upon modern music and why he had little or
none on the classical composers, it is necessary for the
reader to have at least a reasonably clear conception of
what that counterpoint is and wherein it differs from
harmony; for with Bach counterpoint reached its climax,
and all the possibilities of the style having been
exhausted by him, music of necessity took a turn in
another direction under the classicists and developed
harmonically instead of contrapuntally; so that it
can be said that modern music derives its counterpoint
from Bach, its harmony from Beethoven,
and its combination of the two systems from
Wagner.</p>
<p>There is another reason why the meaning of counterpoint
should be explained and the difference between
counterpoint and harmony be made clear to the reader
now. Nearly all the early music, the music that preceded
Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, and that sometimes
is to be found on recital programs, is contrapuntal—written
in counterpoint. As I have said before, it
would be much easier to start with the sonata form,
with harmony instead of counterpoint, for of the two
harmony is the simpler. But we must “face the music”—the
music of the old contrapuntal composers—and
<span class='pagenum pncolor'><SPAN name='page_52' name='page_52'></SPAN>52</span>
the best way to do this is to explain what harmony and
counterpoint are and wherein they differ.</p>
<h4>Harmony and Counterpoint.</h4>
<p>A melody or theme is a rational progression of single
tones. Here is the melody or theme with which Beethoven
begins the familiar “Moonlight Sonata”:</p>
<div class='figcenter'>
<div class='figtag'>
<SPAN name='linki_1' id='linki_1'></SPAN></div>
<SPAN href='images/big_illus-052a.png'>
<ANTIMG src='images/illus-052a.png' alt='' title='' width-obs='500' height-obs='52' /><br/></SPAN>
<p class='caption'>
<i>Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata”</i><br/>[<SPAN href="music/052a.mid">Listen</SPAN>]<br/></p>
</div>
<p>It is a melody, but it does not constitute harmony, for
harmony is the rational combination of several tones,
as distinguished from the rational progression of single
tones which constitute melody. But when Beethoven
adds an accompaniment to his theme and it becomes:</p>
<div class='figcenter'>
<div class='figtag'>
<SPAN name='linki_2' id='linki_2'></SPAN></div>
<SPAN href='images/big_illus-052b.png'>
<ANTIMG src='images/illus-052b.png' alt='' title='' width-obs='500' height-obs='349' /><br/></SPAN>
<p class='caption'>
<i>Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata”</i><br/>[<SPAN href="music/052b.mid">Listen</SPAN>]<br/></p>
</div>
<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><SPAN name='page_53' name='page_53'></SPAN>53</span></div>
<p>the passage also becomes harmony, since it is an example
of the rational combination of several tones. As
has often been pointed out in books on music, and probably
often will have to be pointed out again, because
as a mistake it is to be classed with the hardy perennials,
melody is not harmony, but only a part of it.
When, however, a composer conceives a theme or melody
he usually does so with the purpose of combining
it with an accompaniment that shall support it and
throw it into bold and striking relief. Composers of
the contrapuntal school, on the other hand, conceived
a theme, not for the purpose of supporting it with an
accompaniment, but in order to combine it with another
or with several other equally important themes. That,
in a general way, is the difference between harmony
and counterpoint.</p>
<p>In harmony, then, or, more strictly speaking, in
music composed according to the harmonic system, of
which the “Moonlight Sonata” is a good example, the
theme, the melody, stands out from the accompaniment,
which is subordinate. Counterpoint, on the other hand,
rests on the combination of several themes, each of
equal importance. This is the reason why, when there is
a fugue or other complicated contrapuntal work on the
program of a pianoforte recital, the average listener
is apt to find it dry and uninteresting. His ear readily
can distinguish the themes of a sonata, which usually
are heard one at a time and stand out clearly from the
accompaniment, but it has not been trained to unravel
the themes of the fugue as they travel along together.
Counterpoint, the term being derived from the Latin
<i>contra punctum</i>, which means point against point or
<span class='pagenum pncolor'><SPAN name='page_54' name='page_54'></SPAN>54</span>
note against note, when complicated, as in a fugue, is
about the most elaborate kind of music there is, and
a person who is unable to grasp a fugue may console
himself with the thought that, excepting for the elect,
it is a pretty stiff dose to swallow at the very beginning
of a recital.</p>
<p>There are, however, simpler pieces of counterpoint
than a fugue. Sometimes, as in the charming little “Gavotte”
by Padre Martini, which now and then figures
among the lighter numbers on the programs of historical
recitals, the contrapuntist combines a theme with
itself, or, rather, “imitates” it, which is a simple form
of the canon. Another form of canon is the round of
which “Three Blind Mice” is a familiar example. How
many people, when singing this, have realized that
they were being initiated into that mysterious thing
known as counterpoint? A comparatively simple form
of counterpoint is well illustrated by a dapper little
piece in Bach’s “Two-Part Inventions,” in which the
spirited theme given out by the right hand answers itself
a bar later in the left, an “imitation” which crops out
again and again in the piece and gives it somewhat the
character of a canon.</p>
<div class='figcenter'>
<div class='figtag'>
<SPAN name='linki_3' id='linki_3'></SPAN></div>
<SPAN href='images/big_illus-054.png'>
<ANTIMG src='images/illus-054.png' alt='' title='' width-obs='500' height-obs='155' /><br/></SPAN>
<p class='caption'>
[<SPAN href="music/054.mid">Listen</SPAN>]<br/></p>
</div>
<p>For any one who wishes to become acquainted with
<span class='pagenum pncolor'><SPAN name='page_55' name='page_55'></SPAN>55</span>
Bach there is nothing better than these “Two-Part Inventions,”
especially the fascinating little piece from
which I have just quoted, compact, buoyant and gay,
even “pert,” as I once heard a young girl characterize
it; a perfect example of old Father Bach in moments
of relaxation when he has laid aside his periwig and
is amusing himself at his clavichord.</p>
<h4>What a Fugue Is.</h4>
<p>Bach’s fugues, and especially his “Well-Tempered
Clavichord,” forty-eight preludes and fugues in all the
keys, form the climax of contrapuntal music. Goethe
once said that “the history of the world is a mighty
fugue in which the voice of nation after nation becomes
audible.” This is a freely poetic definition of
that highly complicated musical form, the fugue. Let
me attempt to illustrate it in a different way.</p>
<p>Imagine that a composer who is an adept in
counterpoint places four pianists at different pianofortes,
and that he gives a different theme to each of
them, or a theme to one and modified versions of it to
the others. He starts the first pianist, after a few bars
nods to the second to join in with his theme, and so
on successively with the other two. It might be supposed
that when the second player joins in, the two
themes sounding together would make discord, which
would be aggravated by the addition of the third and
fourth. But, instead, they have been so conceived by
the contrapuntist that they sound well together as they
chase and answer each other, or run counter to and
<span class='pagenum pncolor'><SPAN name='page_56' name='page_56'></SPAN>56</span>
parallel and enter into many different combinations,
sometimes flowing along smoothly, at other times surging
and striving, yet always, in the case of a truly
great fugue, borne along by a momentum as inexorable
as the march of Fate. Of course, it must not be supposed,
because I have called four pianists into action
in order to emphasize how distinct are these themes,
which yet, when united, are found to blend together,
that several players are required for the performance
of a complicated piece of counterpoint like a fugue.
What is demanded of the player is entire independence
of the fingers, so that he can clearly differentiate between
the themes and enable the hearer to distinguish
them apart, even in their most complicated combinations.
An edition of Bach’s “Well-Tempered Clavichord”
by Bernardus Boekelman prints the themes in
different colors, so that they are easy to trace through
all their interweaving, and is interesting to study from.</p>
<h4>The Fugue and the Virtuoso.</h4>
<p>In his book, “Beethoven and His Forerunners,” Daniel
Gregory Mason devotes a paragraph toward dispelling
the mystery regarding the fugue that prevails
with the public, and points out that “the actual formal
rules, despite the awe they have immemorially aroused
in the popular mind, are few and simple. After the
first announcement of the subject by a single voice, it
is answered by a second voice, at an interval of a fifth
above; then again stated by a third voice, and answered
by a fourth. This process goes on until each voice has
<span class='pagenum pncolor'><SPAN name='page_57' name='page_57'></SPAN>57</span>
had a chance to enunciate the motif, after which the
conversation goes on more freely; the subject is announced
in divers keys, by divers voices; episodes, in a
congruous style, vary the monotony; at last the subject
is emphatically asserted by the various voices in
quick succession (<i>stretto</i>), and with some little display
or grandiloquence the piece comes to an end.”</p>
<p>Further along in the same book Mr. Mason has a
page of apostrophe to the Bach fugues. When he characterizes
them as “the first great independent monuments
of pure music,” and refers to their “consummate
beauty of structure,” he pays them an eminently just
tribute. But when he speaks of the “profundity,
poignancy and variety of feeling they express,” I am
inclined to quote his own qualifying sentence from the
next page of his book: “It is true, nevertheless, not
only that the fugue form makes the severest demands
on the attention and intelligence of the listener, but
also that, because of the ecclesiastical origin and polyphonic
style, it is incapable of the kind of highly personal,
secular expression that it was in the spirit of
the seventeenth century to demand.” The same is even
more true of the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth
centuries. The progress of music toward individual
freedom of expression on the part of the composer, and
equally so on the part of the interpreter, has been
steady, and when, through the very perfection which
Bach imparted to counterpoint, it ceased to attract
composers as a means of expression because he had
accomplished so much there was nothing more left
for them to do along the same lines, the progress I
have indicated received a great lift and stimulus.</p>
<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><SPAN name='page_58' name='page_58'></SPAN>58</span></div>
<h4>What Counterpoint Lacks.</h4>
<p>The lack of highly personal expression in contrapuntal
compositions explains why most concert-goers
find them less attractive than modern music. The
“D Minor Toccata and Fugue” or the “Chromatic Fantasie
and Fugue” by Bach, even in the arrangements of
Tausig and Liszt, on the program of a pianoforte recital,
are tolerated because of the modern pieces that
come later. Nine out of ten persons in the house would
rather omit them. Why deny so obvious a fact, especially
when it is easy enough to explain? To follow
a contrapuntal composition intelligently requires a
highly trained ear. Moreover, in such a work as a
Bach fugue the individuality of the player is of less
importance than in modern music. Yet a virtuoso’s
individuality is the very thing that distinguishes him
from other virtuosos and attracts the public to his concerts,
while those of other players may be poorly attended.
I firmly believe in personality of the virtuoso
or singer or orchestral conductor, for in it lies the secret
of individual interpretation, the reason why the performance
of one person is fascinating or thrilling and
that of another not. Modern music affords the player
full scope to interpret it according to his own mood
and fancy, to color it with his own personality, whereas
contrapuntal music exists largely for itself alone. It
is music for music’s sake, not for the sake of interpreting
some mood, some feeling, or of painting in tone
colors something quite outside of music. The player
of counterpoint is restricted in his power of expression
<span class='pagenum pncolor'><SPAN name='page_59' name='page_59'></SPAN>59</span>
by the very formulas of the science or art of the contrapuntist.
We may marvel that Bach was able to
move so freely within its restricted forms. But I think
it true that it is far more interesting for a person
even of only moderate proficiency as a player to work
out, however awkwardly, a Bach fugue for himself
on the pianoforte than to hear it played by some one
else, however great; for, cheap and easy as it is to protest
in high-sounding phrases about the duty of the
interpreter to subordinate himself to the composer, and
against what I am about to say, I nevertheless make
bold to affirm that it is the province of the virtuoso to
express himself, his own personality, his moods, his
temperament, his subjective or even his subconscious
self, through music; and in music that is purely contrapuntal
there is a barrier to this individual power of
expression.</p>
<h4>The Mission of the Player.</h4>
<p>We often hear it said of the greatest contemporary
pianist that he is a great Chopin player, but not a great
Bach player. He could not be, and at the same time
be the greatest living virtuoso. It is the worshiper
of tradition, the reserved, continent, scholarly player,
the player who converts a Chopin nocturne into an
icicle and a Schubert impromptu into a snowball, who
revels in counterpoint—the player who always is
slavishly subordinating himself to what he is pleased
to call the “composer’s intentions” and forgets that the
truly great virtuoso creates when he interprets. Some
times the virtuoso may go too far and depart too much
<span class='pagenum pncolor'><SPAN name='page_60' name='page_60'></SPAN>60</span>
from the character of the piece he is playing, subjecting
it more than is permissible to his temporary mood;
but it is better for art to err on the side of originality,
provided it is not bizarre or freakish, than on the side
of subserviency to tradition.</p>
<p>While I have no desire, in writing as above, to exalt
unduly the virtuoso, the interpreter of music, at the expense
of the composer, I must insist that the great
player also is creative, in the sense that every time he
plays a work he creates it over again from his own
point of view, and thus has at least a share in its parentage.
Indeed, it seems more difficult to attain exalted
rank as a virtuoso than to gain immortality as
a composer. The world has produced two epoch-making
virtuosos—Paganini on the violin, Liszt on the
piano. Within about the same period covered by the
careers of these two there have been half a dozen or
even more composers, each of whom marks an epoch
in some phase of the art. “The interpretive artist,”
says Henry G. Hanchett in his “Art of the Musician,”
“deserves a place no whit beneath that of the composer.
No two composers have influenced musical progress
in America more strongly than have Anton Rubinstein
by his <em>playing</em>, and Theodore Thomas, who was not a
composer.”</p>
<h4>Music as a Science.</h4>
<p>But, to return to Bach and the other contrapuntists,
music owes them an immense debt on the technical
side. And right here, so universal are the deductions
that can be drawn from the program of a pianoforte
<span class='pagenum pncolor'><SPAN name='page_61' name='page_61'></SPAN>61</span>
recital, it should be pointed out that music differs from
other arts in having for its basis a profound and complicated
science, a science that concerns itself with the
relations of the notes of the musical scale to each other.
Upon this science are based alike the “coon song” and
the Wagner music-drama. What is true of “Tristan” is
true also of “Bedelia.” Each makes its draft upon the
science of music; the music-drama, of course, in a far
greater degree than the song. This science has its textbooks
with their theorems and problems, like any
other science, and theoretical musicians have produced
learned and useful works on the subject which the
great mass of laymen, many virtuosos, and indeed the
average professional musician, may never have heard
of, let alone have read. For a person not intuitively
predisposed toward the subject would find the science
of music as difficult to master as integral calculus; nor,
in order to appreciate music, or even to interpret it,
is it necessary to be versed in this science. A virtuoso
can play a chord of the ninth, the listener can be thrilled
by the virtuoso’s playing of the chord of the ninth,
without either of them knowing that there is such a
thing as the chord of the ninth.</p>
<h4>Science versus Feeling.</h4>
<p>In fact, the person who is so well versed in the science
of music that he can mentally analyze a composition
while listening to it is apt to be so absorbed in the
mere process of technical analysis that he misses its
esthetic, its emotional significance. Thus a person may
<span class='pagenum pncolor'><SPAN name='page_62' name='page_62'></SPAN>62</span>
be very musical without being musical at all. He may
have profound knowledge of music as a science and
remain untouched by music as an art, just as a physicist
may be an authority on the laws of light and color,
yet stand unmoved before a great painting. With
some people music is all science, with others all art,
and I think the latter have the better of it. A musical
genius is equipped both ways. The great composer
employs the science of music as an aid in giving expression
to his creative impulse. He makes science
of service to the cause of art. Otherwise, while he
might produce something that was absolutely correct,
it would make no artistic appeal whatsoever. Thousands
of symphonies have been composed, performed
and forgotten. They were “well made,” constructed
with scientific accuracy from beginning to end, but
had no value as art; and music is a profound science
applied to the production of a great art.</p>
<p>The composer, then, masters the science of music
and bends it to his genius. If he is a great genius, he
soon will discover that certain rules which his predecessors
regarded as hard and fast, as inviolable, can
be violated with impunity. He will discover new tone
combinations, and thus enrich the science and make it
serve the purposes of the art with greater efficiency
than before he came upon the scene. And always the
composers who have grown gray under the old system,
the system upon which the new genius is grafting his
new ideas, and the theorists and critics, who are slaves
of tradition, will throw up their hands in horror and cry
out that he is despoiling the art and robbing it of all that
is sacred and beautiful, whereas he is adding to its scope
<span class='pagenum pncolor'><SPAN name='page_63' name='page_63'></SPAN>63</span>
and potency. Did not even so broad-minded a composer
as Schumann say, “The trouble with Wagner
is that he is not a musician”? So far was Wagner
ahead of his time! While the great composer nearly
always begins where his predecessors left off, he is sure
to outstrip them later on. Even so rugged a genius
as Beethoven is somewhat under Mozart’s influence in
his first works, and Wagner’s “Rienzi” is distinctly
Meyerbeerian. But genius soon learns to soar with its
own wings and to look down with indifference upon the
little men who are discharging their shafts of envy,
malice and ignorance.</p>
<h4>That “Ear for Music.”</h4>
<p>And while I am on the subject of the scientific musician
<i>versus</i> the music lover, the pedant <i>versus</i> the innovator,
I might as well refer to those people who have
in a remarkable degree what is popularly known as “an
ear for music,” and who are able to remember and to
play “by ear” anything they hear played or sung, even
if it is for the first time. This ear for music, again,
is something quite different from scientific knowledge
of music or from the emotional sensitiveness which
makes the music-lover. It is a purely physical endowment,
and may—in fact, usually does—exist without
a corresponding degree of real feeling for music. It
is, of course, a highly valuable adjunct to a genuine
musical genius like a Mozart or a Schubert and to a
genuine virtuoso. It is related of Von B�low that his
ear for music and his memory were so prodigious that
once, while traveling in the cars, he read over the
<span class='pagenum pncolor'><SPAN name='page_64' name='page_64'></SPAN>64</span>
printed pages of a new composition, and on arriving at
his destination, played it, from memory, at his concert.
William Mason, who studied with Liszt, witnessed his
master perform a similar feat. The average untrained
person with a musical ear, however, instead of being
a genius, is apt to become a nuisance, playing all kinds
of cheap music in and out of season—a sort of peripatetic
pianola, without the advantage of being under
control. Such persons, moreover, usually are born
without a soft pedal.</p>
<h4>Bach and the Weather Bureau.</h4>
<p>This digression, which I have made in order to discuss
the difference between music as a science and music
as an art, a distinction which, I have pointed out, often
is so marked that a person may be thoroughly equipped
on the scientific side of music without being sensitive
to its beauty as an art, seemed to me necessary at this
stage. I am reminded by it of the distinction which
Edmund Clarence Stedman, in his “Nature and Elements
of Poetry,” so wittily draws between the indications
of a storm as described by a poet and by the
official prognostications of the Weather Bureau. Mr.
Stedman quotes two stanzas:</p>
<table summary=''><tr><td>
<p class='cg'>“When descends on the Atlantic the gigantic<br/>
<span class='indent2'> </span>Storm-wind of the Equinox,<br/>
Landward in his wrath he scourges the toiling surges,<br/>
<span class='indent2'> </span>Laden with seaweed from the rocks.”</p>
</td></tr></table>
<p>And this stanza by a later balladist:</p>
<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><SPAN name='page_65' name='page_65'></SPAN>65</span></div>
<table summary=''><tr><td>
<p class='cg'>“The East Wind gathered, all unknown,<br/>
<span class='indent2'> </span>A thick sea-cloud his course before;<br/>
He left by night the frozen zone,<br/>
<span class='indent2'> </span>And smote the cliffs of Labrador;<br/>
He lashed the coasts on either hand,<br/>
And betwixt the Cape and Newfoundland,<br/>
<span class='indent2'> </span>Into the bay his armies pour.”</p>
</td></tr></table>
<p>All this impersonation and fancy is translated by the
Weather Bureau into something like the following:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“An area of extreme low pressure is rapidly moving
up the Atlantic Coast, with wind and rain. Storm-center
now off Charleston, S. C. Wind N. E.; velocity,
54. Barometer, 29.6. The disturbance will reach New
York on Wednesday, and proceed eastward to the
Banks and Bay of St. Lawrence. Danger signals ordered
for all North Atlantic ports.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Far be it from me to imply that contrapuntal music
in general or Bach in particular represents the Weather
Bureau. None the less is it true that Bach appeals
more strongly to the scientific musician than to the
music-lover who seeks in music a secondary meaning—love,
passion, grief; the mood awakened by the contemplation
of a forest landscape with its murmuring
foliage, a boundless prairie, or the unquiet sea.</p>
<p>The technical indebtedness of modern music to Bach
is so immense, and the artistic probity of the man himself
was so wonderful, for he worked calmly on, in
spite of what was worse than opposition—neglect—that
I think the tendency on the part of Bach enthusiasts,
<span class='pagenum pncolor'><SPAN name='page_66' name='page_66'></SPAN>66</span>
while not overrating the importance of the influence
he has had during the past fifty years or more, is
to underrate others as compared with him. When
critics declare that one virtuoso or another is not a
great Bach player, are they not ignoring what is a
simple fact—that no player can make the same appeal
through Bach that it is possible for him to make
through modern music, and that, as a rule, when
a virtuoso, however good a musician he may be,
places Bach on his program, he does so not from predilection,
but as a tribute to one of the greatest names
in musical history? It seems to me that the extreme
Bach enthusiasts can be divided into two classes—musicians
who are able to appreciate what he did for
music on its technical side, and people who want to
create the impression that they know more than they
really do.</p>
<h4>The Bacon, Not the Shakespeare, of Music.</h4>
<p>Bach’s greatest importance to music lies in his having
treated it in the abstract and for itself alone, so
that when he penned a work he did this not to bring
home to the listener the significance of a certain mood
or situation, but from pure delight in following out a
musical problem to its most extreme development. Algebra
makes mighty interesting study, but furnishes
rather a poor subject for dramatic reading. This simile
must, of course, be taken with a grain of salt, and
merely as illustrating in a general way my contention
that Bach’s great service to music was technical and
intellectual. He was the Bacon, not the Shakespeare,
<span class='pagenum pncolor'><SPAN name='page_67' name='page_67'></SPAN>67</span>
of music, and the contrapuntal structure that he reared
is to the art what the Baconian theorem is to logic.
We can imagine the roamer in the field of higher mathematics
suddenly becoming excited as he sees the end
of the path leading to the solution of some complicated
problem in full view. Thus there may be moments
when even the cube root becomes emotional, the logarithmic
theory a dissipation, and differential calculus an
orgy. So, too, Bach put an enthusiasm into his work
that often threatens to sweep the student off his intellectuals
and make him regard a fugue as a scientifically
constructed fairyland. Moreover, there are Bach pieces
in which the counterpoint supports the purest kind of
melody, like the air for the G string which Thomas
arranged for his orchestra with all the strings, save the
double basses, in unison, and played with an effect that
never failed to secure a repeat and sometimes a double
encore.</p>
<h4>What Wagner Learned from Bach.</h4>
<p>If we bear in mind that counterpoint is the artistic
combination of several themes, each of equal or nearly
equal importance, and that Bach was the greatest master
of the contrapuntal school and forms its climax,
we can, with a little thought, appreciate what his service
has been to modern music. When Wagner devised
his system of leading motives it was not for the
purpose of employing them singly, like labels tacked
onto each character, thing or symbol in the drama, but
of combining them, welding them together, when occasion
arose, in order to give musical significance and
expression to each and every dramatic situation as the
<span class='pagenum pncolor'><SPAN name='page_68' name='page_68'></SPAN>68</span>
story unfolded itself. A shining example of this is
found in that wonderful last scene of “Die Walk�re,”
the so-called Magic Fire Scene. <i>Wotan</i> has said farewell
to <i>Br�nnhilde</i>; has thrown her into a profound
slumber upon the rock; has surrounded her with a circle
of magic flame which none but a hero may penetrate
to awaken and win her. How is this scene treated in
the score? In the higher register of the orchestra
crackles and sparkles the Magic Fire Motive, the Slumber
Motive gently rising and falling with the flames;
while the superb Siegfried Motive (signifying that the
yet unborn <i>Siegfried</i> is the hero destined to break
through the fiery circle) resounds in the brass, and
there also is a suggestion of the tender strains with
which <i>Wotan</i> bade <i>Br�nnhilde</i> farewell. The welding
together of these four motives into one glorious whole
of the highest dramatic significance is Wagnerian counterpoint—science
employed in the service of art and
with thrilling effect. Another passage from Wagner,
the closing episode in the “Meistersinger” Vorspiel,
often is quoted to show Wagner’s skill in the use of
counterpoint, although he employs it so spontaneously
that few people stop to consider how scientific his musical
structure is. W. J. Henderson, in his capital book,
“The Orchestra and Orchestral Music,” relates that on
one occasion a professional musician was engaged in
a discussion of Wagner in the corridor of the Metropolitan
Opera House, while inside the orchestra was
playing this “Meistersinger” Vorspiel.</p>
<p>“It is a pity,” said this wise man, in a condescending
manner, “but Wagner knows absolutely nothing about
counterpoint.”</p>
<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><SPAN name='page_69' name='page_69'></SPAN>69</span></div>
<p>At that very instant the orchestra was singing five
different melodies at once; and, as Anton Seidl was the
conductor, they were all audible.</p>
<p>Wagner scores, in fact, teem with counterpoint,
but counterpoint that palpitates, that thrills with emotion.
Note that Mr. Henderson speaks of melodies.
Wagner’s leading motives are melodies, sometimes very
brief, but always expressive, and not, like the themes
of the old contrapuntists, conceived mainly for the sake
of being combined scientifically with other themes
equally adaptable to that purpose. Counterpoint may
be, and usually is, something very dry and formal. But
from the crucible of the master magician, Richard
Wagner, it flows a glowing, throbbing, pulsating
stream of most precious metal.</p>
<h4>The Language of an Epoch.</h4>
<p>In the difference between the counterpoint of Bach
and the counterpoint of Wagner lies the difference between
two epochs separated by a long period of time.
With Bach counterpoint was everything; with Wagner
merely an incident. It will help us to a better
understanding of music if we bear in mind
that the two great composers of each epoch
spoke in the music of that epoch. Thus Bach
spoke in the language of counterpoint. His themes,
however greatly they may vary among themselves,
all bear the stamp of motives devised for the
purpose of entering into formal combinations and of
being developed according to the stringent rules of
counterpoint. Beethoven’s are more individual, more
<span class='pagenum pncolor'><SPAN name='page_70' name='page_70'></SPAN>70</span>
expressive of moods and emotions. Yet about them,
too, there is something formal. They, too, are devised
to be treated according to certain rules—to be molded
into sonatas. But with Wagner we feel that music has
thrown off the shackles of arbitrary form, of dry rule
and rote. His motives suggest absolute freedom of
expression and development, through previously undreamed-of
wealth of harmony and contrapuntal combinations
which are mere incidents, not the chief purpose
of their being. Each represents some person, impulse or
symbol in a drama; represents them with such eloquence
and power that, once we know for what they stand, we
need but hear them again or recall them to memory
to have the corresponding episode in the music-drama
in which they occur brought vividly before our eyes.
Bach’s language was the language of the fugue; Beethoven’s
the language of the sonata. Fugue and sonata
are musical forms. Wagner spoke the language of no
form. His language is that of the free, plastic, unfettered
leading motive—the language of liberated music,
of which he himself was the liberator!</p>
<p>Whether Wagner would have devised his system of
leading motives without the wonderful structure of
counterpoint left by Bach; whether Bach’s counterpoint,
his combination of themes, suggested the system
of leading motives to the greatest master of them all,
we probably never shall know. The system, in its completeness,
doubtless is Wagner’s own; but when he came
to put it into practical effect he found the rich heritage
left by Bach ready to hand. One of Wagner’s instructors
in musical theory, and the one from whose teaching
he himself declares he learned most, was Theodor
<span class='pagenum pncolor'><SPAN name='page_71' name='page_71'></SPAN>71</span>
Weinlig, one of Bach’s successors as Cantor of the
Thomasschule at Leipsic. Wagner quotes him as having
said: “You may never find it necessary to compose
a fugue, but the ability to do it often may stand
you in good stead.” And the Cantor set him exercises
in all varieties of counterpoint. There thus is presented
the phenomenon of a composer who for nearly
a century after his death had little or no influence on
the course of music, suddenly becoming a potent force
in its most modern development.</p>
<h4>Bach in the Recital Hall.</h4>
<p>Bach is so supreme in his own line that contrapuntal
music, so far as the pianoforte is concerned, may be dismissed
with him. H�ndel, too, it is true, was a master
of the contrapuntal school, but he belongs to the chapter
on oratorio. Bach’s pianoforte works in smaller
form are the “Two-Part Inventions” already mentioned;
the “Three-Part Inventions,” which go a step
farther in contrapuntal treatment, and the “Partitas,”
the six “French Suites” and the six “English Suites.”</p>
<p>These partitas and suites are the most graceful and
charming efflorescence of the contrapuntal school, and
much could be accomplished toward making Bach a
popular composer if they figured more frequently on
recital programs. They are made up of the dance forms
of the day—allemandes, courants, bourr�es, sarabandes,
minuets, gavottes, gigues, with airs thrown in for good
measure; the partitas and English suites furnished with
more elaborate introductions, while the French suites
begin with allemandes. Cheerful and even frisky as
<span class='pagenum pncolor'><SPAN name='page_72' name='page_72'></SPAN>72</span>
some of the dance pieces in these compositions are, it
must not be supposed that they were intended to be
danced to when contrapuntally treated—no more than
Chopin intended that people should glide through a
ballroom to the music of his waltzes.</p>
<p>Besides “sonatas” for pianoforte with one or more
other instruments, among them the six “Sonatas for
Pianoforte and Violin” (the term sonata as employed
here must not be confused with the classical sonata
form as developed by Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven),
Bach composed concertos for from one to four pianofortes.
Of these latter the one best known in this country
is the so-called “Triple Concerto,” for three pianofortes
with accompaniment of string quartet, which
can at will be increased to a string orchestra. In 1873,
during Rubinstein’s tour, I heard it played in New
York, under Theodore Thomas’s direction, by Rubinstein,
William Mason and Sebastian Bach Mills, and
three years later by Mme. Annette Essipoff, Mr.
Mason and Mr. Boscovitz. Mason, when he was studying
under Liszt in Weimar in 1854, had performed it
with two fellow-pupils, and Liszt had been very particular
in regard to the manner in which they played
the many embellishments (<i>agr�ments</i>) which were
used in Bach’s time. Later, Mason found that whenever
three pianists came together for the purpose of
playing this concerto they were certain to disagree regarding
“the agreements,” and usually wasted much
time in discussing them, especially the mordent.</p>
<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><SPAN name='page_73' name='page_73'></SPAN>73</span></div>
<h4>Rubinstein and the “Triple Concerto.”</h4>
<p>Accordingly, when Mason played the “Triple Concerto”
with Rubinstein and Mills, he came to the rehearsal
armed with a book by Friedrich Wilhelm Marburg,
published in Berlin in 1765, and giving written
examples of all the <i>agr�ments</i>. “I told Rubinstein
about my ancient authority,” says Mr. Mason in his
entertaining “Memories of a Musical Life,” “adding
that we should be spared the tediousness of a discussion
as to the manner of playing.</p>
<p>“‘Let me see the old book,’ said Rubinstein. Running
over the leaves he came to the illustrations of the
mordent. The moment his eyes fell upon them he exclaimed:
‘All wrong; here is the way I play it!’” And
that ended the usefulness of “the old book” for that
particular occasion, the other two pianists adopting,
without comment, Rubinstein’s method, which Mr.
Mason intimates was incorrect.</p>
<p>When, at the rehearsal with Essipoff, the mordent
came up for discussion she exclaimed: “‘I cannot play
these things; show me how they are done.’ After repeated
trials, however,” records Mr. Mason, “she failed
to get the knack of playing them, as indeed so many
pianists do; so at the rehearsal she omitted them and
left their performance to Boscovitz and me.”</p>
<h4>“The Well-Tempered Clavichord.”</h4>
<p>Bach’s monumental work for pianoforte, however, is
“The Well-Tempered Clavichord,” consisting of forty-eight
preludes and fugues in all keys. I find much
prevalent ignorance among amateurs regarding the
<span class='pagenum pncolor'><SPAN name='page_74' name='page_74'></SPAN>74</span>
meaning of “well-tempered” as used in this title. I
have heard people explain it by saying that when a
pianist had mastered the book he was “tempered” like
steel and ready for any difficulties that other music
might present! I even have heard a rotund and affable
person say that “The Well-Tempered Clavichord” was
so entitled because when you listened to its preludes
and fugues it smoothed out your temper and made you
feel good-natured! In point of fact, the word is difficult
to explain in untechnical language. It relates, however,
to Bach’s method of tuning his clavichord—another
boon which he conferred upon music. In general,
the system may be explained by the statement that
certain tone intervals, which theoretically are pure,
practically result in harmonic discrepancies, which
Bach’s “tempered” system corrected. In other words,
slight and practically imperceptible inaccuracies are introduced
in the tuning in order to counterbalance the
greater faults which result when tuning is absolutely
correct from a theoretical point of view; just as,
in navigating the high northern waters, you are
obliged to make allowance for variations of the compass.
The system was not actually the invention of
Bach, but he did so much to promote its adoption that
it is associated with his name. Before it was adopted it
was impossible to employ all the major and minor keys
on clavichords and harpsichords, and on the pianofortes,
just beginning to come into use. It became
possible under the tempered system of tuning, and was
illustrated by Bach in “The Well-Tempered Clavichord,”
each major and minor key being represented by
a prelude and fugue.</p>
<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><SPAN name='page_75' name='page_75'></SPAN>75</span></div>
<p>Besides the system of tuning in “equal temperament,”
Bach modernized the technique of fingering
by introducing the freer and more frequent employment
of the hitherto neglected thumb and little finger.
The services of this great man to music, therefore, were
threefold. He left us his teeming counterpoint, upon
which modern music draws so freely; he promoted the
system of tuning in equal temperament; and he laid
the foundation of modern pianoforte technique, and
so of modern virtuosity.</p>
<h4>A King’s Tribute to Bach.</h4>
<p>Besides being a great composer, Bach’s traits as a
man were most admirable. He was uncompromising
in his convictions, sturdy, honest and upright. His
fixedness of purpose is shown by an anecdote of his
boyhood. In his tenth year he lost his parents and
went to live with an elder brother, who was so jealous
of his superior talents that he refused him the loan of
a manuscript volume of music by composers of the day.
Obtaining possession of it without his brother’s knowledge,
Bach secretly copied it at night by moonlight, the
task covering something like six months. His reward
was to have it taken away by his brother, who accidentally
discovered him playing from it. Fortunately,
this brother died soon afterward, and Bach recovered
his treasure.</p>
<p>While it is true that Bach remained unappreciated
by the great mass of his contemporaries, there were
exceptions, a notable one being the music-loving king,
<span class='pagenum pncolor'><SPAN name='page_76' name='page_76'></SPAN>76</span>
Frederick the Great of Prussia, whose service the composer’s
second son, Philipp Emanuel Bach, entered in
1746. At the king’s earnest urging, Philipp Emanuel
induced his father to visit Potsdam the following year.
The king, who had arranged a concert at the palace,
was about to begin playing on the flute, when an officer
entered and handed him a list of the strangers who had
arrived at Potsdam. Glancing over it, Frederick discovered
Bach’s name. “Gentlemen,” he exclaimed,
“old Bach is here!” And nothing would do save that
the master must be brought immediately into the royal
presence, before he even had time to doff his traveling
clothes.</p>
<p>The king had purchased several of the pianofortes
recently constructed by Gottfried Silbermann and had
them distributed throughout the palace. Bach and the
assemblage went from room to room, the composer
playing and improvising on the different instruments.
Finally he asked the king to set him a fugue theme,
and on this he extemporized in such masterly fashion
that all who heard him, the king included, broke out
into rounds of applause. On his return to Leipsic,
Bach dedicated to Frederick the Great a work which
he entitled “The Musical Sacrifice” (or offering),
which he based upon the fugue theme the king had
given him.</p>
<p>No other instance of musical heredity is comparable
with that afforded by the Bach family. Dr. Theodore
Baker, in his “Biographical Dictionary of Musicians,”
gives a list of no less than twenty Bachs, all of the
same line, whom he deems worthy of mention, and
who covered a period ranging from 1604 to 1845,
<span class='pagenum pncolor'><SPAN name='page_77' name='page_77'></SPAN>77</span>
when the great Bach’s grandson and last male descendant,
Wilhelm Friedrich Ernst Bach, died in Berlin.
Thus for two hundred and forty-one years the Bach
family was professionally active in music.</p>
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