How to Appreciate Music Part 3

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 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!

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 Weinlig, one of Bach's successors as Cantor of the Thoma.s.schule 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.

Bach in the Recital Hall.

Bach is so supreme in his own line that contrapuntal music, so far as the pianoforte is concerned, may be dismissed with him. Handel, 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 "Part.i.tas," the six "French Suites" and the six "English Suites."

These part.i.tas 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, bourrees, sarabandes, minuets, gavottes, gigues, with airs thrown in for good measure; the part.i.tas and English suites furnished with more elaborate introductions, while the French suites begin with allemandes. Cheerful and even frisky as 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.

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 cla.s.sical 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 (_agrements_) 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.

Rubinstein and the "Triple Concerto."

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 _agrements_. "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.

"'Let me see the old book,' said Rubinstein. Running over the leaves he came to the ill.u.s.trations 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.

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."

"The Well-Tempered Clavichord."

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 meaning of "well-tempered" as used in this t.i.tle. 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 ent.i.tled 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 compa.s.s. The system was not actually the invention of Bach, but he did so much to promote its adoption that it is a.s.sociated 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 ill.u.s.trated by Bach in "The Well-Tempered Clavichord," each major and minor key being represented by a prelude and fugue.

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.

A King's Tribute to Bach.

Besides being a great composer, Bach's traits as a man were most admirable. He was uncompromising in his convictions, st.u.r.dy, 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 ma.n.u.script 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.

While it is true that Bach remained unappreciated by the great ma.s.s of his contemporaries, there were exceptions, a notable one being the music-loving king, 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.

The king had purchased several of the pianofortes recently constructed by Gottfried Silbermann and had them distributed throughout the palace. Bach and the a.s.semblage 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 fas.h.i.+on 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 ent.i.tled "The Musical Sacrifice"

(or offering), which he based upon the fugue theme the king had given him.

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, 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.

III

FROM FUGUE TO SONATA

If a pianoforte recital which begins with a Bach fugue continues with a Beethoven sonata, it does not require a very discriminating ear to note the difference between the two. The Beethoven sonata is in a style so entirely distinct from that of the fugue, and sounds so wholly unlike it, that it seems as if Bach had exerted no influence whatsoever upon the greatest master of the period that followed his death. Although Haydn and Mozart were nearer Bach in point of time than Beethoven was, a sonata by either of them, if it chanced to be on the program, would show the same difference in style, the same radical departure from the works of the master of counterpoint, as the Beethoven sonata.

The question naturally suggests itself, did Bach's influence cease with his death? And the fact that this question calls for an answer and that this answer leads to a general consideration of the interim between Bach and Beethoven, again shows how broad in its scope as an instrument is the pianoforte and how comprehensive in its application to music as a whole is the music of that instrument. Two works on a recital program furnish a legitimate basis for a discussion of two important periods in the development of music! Who would have thought there was so much to a pianoforte recital?

"It would have been an eminently pardonable mistake for any intelligent musician to have fallen into, in the third quarter of the eighteenth century, if he had concluded that Johann Sebastian Bach's career was a failure, and that his influence upon the progress of his art amounted to the minimum conceivable. Indeed, the whole course of musical history in every branch went straight out of the sphere of his activity for a long while; his work ceased to have any significance to the generation which succeeded him, and his eloquence fell upon deaf ears. A few of his pupils went on writing music of the same type as his in a half-hearted way, and his own most distinguished son, Philipp Emanuel, adopted at least the artistic manner of working up his details and making the internal organization of his works alive with figure and rhythm. But even he, the sincerest composer of the following generation, was infected by the complacent, polite superficiality of his time; and he was forced, in accepting the harmonic principle of working in its Italian phase, to take with it some of the empty formulas and conventional tricks of speech which had become part of its being, and which sometimes seem to belie the genuineness of his utterances and put him somewhat out of touch with his whole-hearted father."

This pa.s.sage from one of the most admirably thought-out books on music I know, Sir Hubert Parry's "Evolution of the Art of Music," is no exaggeration. For many years after Bach's death, for nearly a century in fact, his influence was but little felt. And yet so aptly does the development of art adjust itself to human needs and aspirations, the very neglect into which Bach fell turned music into certain channels from which it derived the greater freedom of expression essential to its progress and gave it the tinge of romanticism which is the essence of modern music.

The greatness of Johann Sebastian Bach, on the technical side at least, now is so universally acknowledged, and professional musicians understand so well what their art owes to him, we are apt to think of him as the only musician of his day, whereas his significance was but little appreciated by his contemporaries. There were, in fact, other composers actively working on other lines and turning music in the direction it was destined to follow immediately after Bach's death--and for its own ultimate good, be it observed. The simple fact is, that pure counterpoint culminated in Bach. What he accomplished was so stupendous that his successors could not keep up with him. They became exhausted before they even were prepared to begin where he left off. And yet the reaction from Bach was, as I have indicated, absolutely necessary to the further progress of music.

The scheme of musical development which the reader should bear in mind if he desires to understand music, and to arrive at that understanding with some kind of system in his progress, was briefly as follows:

Three Periods of Musical Development.

First we have counterpoint, the welding together of several themes each of equal importance. This style of composition culminated in Bach. Its most elaborate form of expression was the fugue; but it also employed the canon and impressed into its service certain minor forms like the allemande, courant, chaconne, gavotte, saraband, gigue, and minuet.

Next, after Bach music began to develop according to the harmonic system, or, if I may be permitted for the sake of clarity to use an expression which technically is incorrect, according to the melodic system. That is, instead of combining several themes, composers took one theme or melody and supported it with an accompaniment so that the melody stood out in clear relief. This first decided melodic development covers the cla.s.sical period, the period after Bach to Beethoven, and its highest form of expression was the sonata, which in the orchestra became the symphony.

The romantic period comes after Beethoven. This, to characterize it by the readiest means, by something external, something the eye can see, is the "single piece" period, the period in which the impromptu of Schubert, the song without words of Mendelssohn, the nocturne of Chopin, the novelette of Schumann, takes the place of the sonata, which consists of a group of pieces or movements. Composers begin to find a too exacting insistence upon correctness of form irritating.

Expression becomes of more importance than form, which is promptly violated if it interferes with the composer's trend of thought or feeling. Pieces are written in certain moods, and their melody is developed so as to follow and give full expression to the mood in which it is conceived. New harmonies are fearlessly invoked for the same purpose. Everything centres in the idea that music exists not as an accessory to form, but for the free expression of emotion. In his useful and handy "Dictionary of Musical Terms," Theodore Baker defines a nocturne as a t.i.tle for a piano piece "of a dreamily romantic or sentimental character, but lacking a distinctive form." When we see the t.i.tle "Sonata" over a composition we think of form. When we see the t.i.tle "Nocturne" we think of mood, not manner. The t.i.tle arouses within us, by antic.i.p.ation, the very feeling, the very mood, the very emotional condition which the composer is seeking to express. The form in which he seeks to express it is wholly a secondary matter. A composition is a sonata because it follows a certain formal development. It is a nocturne because it is "dreamily romantic or sentimental." In no better way, perhaps, could the difference between the cla.s.sical period of music and the romantic period which set in after Beethoven be explained. The romanticist is no more hampered by form than the writer of poetry or fiction is by facts. Form dominates feeling in cla.s.sical music, feeling dominates form in romantic music.

We still are and, happily, ever shall remain in the romantic period.

The greatest of all romanticists and, up to the present time, the greatest of all composers is Richard Wagner, whose genius will be appreciated more and more as years go by until, as may be the case, a still greater one will arise; although as dramatic literature culminated in Shakespeare, so music may have found its greatest master for all time in Wagner. Wagner, of course, was not a composer for the pianoforte, but when he reached back and to the fuller harmony inherited from Beethoven added the counterpoint of Bach, thus combining the two great systems of composition, he indicated the only method of progress possible for music of all kinds.

Rise of the Melodic School.

It must not be supposed that the melodic school which came in after Bach and which, so far as the cla.s.sical form of the sonata is concerned, culminated in Beethoven, was the mushroom growth of a night. So much has been said of Bach that a person unfamiliar with the history of music might draw the erroneous conclusion that Bach was the only composer worth mentioning before the cla.s.sical period and Germany the only country in which music had flourished. On the contrary, Bach was the climax of a school to which several countries had each contributed its share, partly vocal, partly instrumental. Palestrina's name naturally comes to mind as representative of the early period of Italian church music; there also was the "Belgian Orpheus," Orlandus La.s.sus (or La.s.so), the greatest composer of the Flemish school; and England had its Gibbons and other madrigal composers. Their music was vocal and requires to be considered more thoroughly under the head of vocal music, but it also was contrapuntal and played its part in the general development of the art before Bach came upon the scene. Of course, there also was instrumental music in counterpoint before Bach's day. There is "Queen Elizabeth's Virginal Book," a ma.n.u.script collection of music made either during her reign or shortly afterward and containing pieces for the virginal by Tallis, Bird, Giles, Dr.

John Bull and others, including also the madrigalist, Gibbons. The Englishman, Henry Purcell (1658-1695); the Frenchman, Francois Couperin (1668-1733), who wrote a harpsichord method; the Germans, Hans Leo von Hasler (1564-1612) and Froberger; and the Italian, Frescobaldi--these were some among many composers of counterpoint more or less noted in their day.

Bach, however, brought the art of counterpoint to perfection, so that, so far as it is concerned, he neither required nor even so much as left room for a successor. It may not be pertinent to the argument, yet it may well be questioned whether, had the cla.s.sical trio, Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, endeavored to carry on the contrapuntal school, they would not, in spite of their genius, have relegated music to a more primitive state than it occupied when Bach died. It seems a fortunate circ.u.mstance to me that Bach's son appears to have realized his inferiority to his father and that, in consequence, he turned from counterpoint to the development of harmony--the working out of a clearly defined theme or melody supported by accompaniment.

Counterpoint is said to be polyphonic, a term composed of two Greek words signifying many-voiced, the combination in music of several parts or themes. Opposed to it is h.o.m.ophonic, or single-voiced, music, in which one melody or part is supported by an accompaniment. Italy, with its genius for the sensuous and emotional in music, already had developed a school of melodic music, and to this Philipp Emanuel Bach turned for a model. In Italy the pianoforte, through its employment for the freer harmonic support of dramatic solo singing in opera, an art form that is indigenous to Italy, gradually had emanc.i.p.ated itself there from counterpoint and acquired a style of its own. Girolamo Frescobaldi (1583-1644), a famous Italian pianoforte and organ virtuoso, whose first organ recital in St. Peter's, Rome, is said to have attracted an audience of thirty thousand, and whose mantle fell upon his two most renowned pupils, the German, Johann Jacob Froberger, and the Italian, Bernardo Pasquini, not only experimented with our modern keys, seeking to replace with them the old ecclesiastical modes in which Palestrina wrote, but also simplified the method of notation.

For even what seems to us so simple a matter as the five-line staff is the result of slow evolution.

Scarlatti's Importance as Composer and Virtuoso.

The Italian genius who gave the greatest impulse to the progress of pianoforte music and who, for his day, immensely improved the technique of pianoforte playing, was Domenico Scarlatti (1683-1757), the famous son of a famous father, Alessandro Scarlatti, the leading dramatic composer of his time. Domenico Scarlatti interests us especially because he is the only one of the early Italians whose work retains an appreciable foothold on modern recital programs. Von Bulow edited selections from his works, and I recall from personal experience, because I was at the concert, the delight with which some of these were received the first time Von Bulow played them on his initial visit to this country during the season of 1875-76. Amateurs on the outlook for something new (even though it was very old) took up Scarlatti, and this early Italian's suddenly acquired popularity was comparable with the "run" on the Rachmaninoff "Prelude" when it was played here by Siloti many years later.

Scarlatti has been called the founder of modern pianoforte technique.

Although he composed for the harpsichord, he understood the instrument so thoroughly and what he wrote for it accords so well with its genius, that by unconscious antic.i.p.ation it also was adapted to the genius of the modern pianoforte. It still is pianistic; more pianistic and more suitable to the modern repertoire than a good deal of music by greater men who lived considerably later. I should say, for example, that Scarlatti's name is found more frequently on pianoforte recital programs than Mozart's, although Mozart was incomparably the greater genius. But there is about Scarlatti's music such a quaint and primitive charm that one always listens to it with the zest of a discoverer, whereas Mozart's pianoforte music, although more modern, just misses being modern enough. This clever Italian gives us the early beginnings of the sonata form. He merely lisps in sonata accents, it is true, but his lisp is as fascinating as the ingenuous prattle of an attractive child. His best, known work, "The Cat's Fugue," the subject of which is said to have been suggested to him by a cat gliding over the keyboard, is indeed contrapuntal. But even this is a movement in a sonata, and the characteristic of his works as a whole is the fact that in most of them he developed and worked out a melody or theme, and that he established the fundamental outlines of the sonata form.

Comparatively few laymen have more than a vague idea of what is meant by sonata form. To them a sonata simply is a composition consisting of several movements, usually four, three of them of considerable length, with a shorter one (a minuet or scherzo) between the first and second or the second and fourth. A sonata, however, must have one of its movements (and generally it will be found to be the first) written in a certain form. Regarding the Scarlatti sonatas, suffice it to say here that with him the form still is in its primitive simplicity. For example, the true sonata movement as we now understand it employs two themes, the second contrasting with the first. As a rule, Scarlatti is content with one theme. It is the peculiar merit of Philipp Emanuel Bach that he introduced a second theme into his sonatas, or suggested it by striking modulations when he employed only one theme, and thus paved the way for its further elaboration by Joseph Haydn. Mozart elaborated the form still further, and then came Beethoven, with whom the cla.s.sical period reached its climax and whose sonatas for all practical purposes have completely superseded those of his forerunners.