J. S. Bach

327 Pages·2013·4.97 MB·English

by  Albert Schweitzer

J. S. BACH
BY
ALBERT SCHWEITZER
DR. THEOL., DR. MED., DR. PHIL., STRASBOURG
HON. MUS. DOC., EDINBURGH. HON. D.D., OXON. HON. LL. D., ST. ANDREWS
TRANSLATED BY
ERNEST NEWMAN
PREFACE BY C. M. WIDOR
VOLUME I
WITH THREE PLATES
TO
FRAU MATHILDE SCHWEITZER
IN GRATEFUL REMEMBRANCE
TRANSLATOR’S FOREWORD.
Within the last few years Bach research has made a notable advance. Among
the books that have contributed to this progress, that of Dr. Albert Schweitzer
takes a leading place. It is equally valuable on the æsthetic and the practical
sides; its convincing demonstration of the pictorial bent of Bach’s mind must
necessarily lead to a reconsideration not only of the older view of Bach as a
mainly “abstract” musician, but of the aesthetics of music in general; while the
chapters on the right manner of performing Bach’s works throw many a new
light on this obscure subject. Most of all are correct ideas on this latter point
invaluable now, when Bach is beginning, as one hopes, to win his due popularity
among not only musicians but music lovers as a whole.
The present translation has been made from the German version of Dr.
Schweitzer’s book (1908), which is itself a greatly expanded version of a French
original published in 1905. The text, however, has been largely altered and
added to at Dr. Schweitzer’s request. The English edition is thus fuller and more
correct even than the German.
Like most other translators I have found it convenient—and indeed necessary
—to preserve the word “clavier” to cover all the seventeenth and eighteenth
century instruments—the harpsichord, clavichord, clavicembalo, &c.—of the
type now represented by the pianoforte.
For the benefit of the English reader I have given all the references to Spitta’s
“Life of Bach” in the corresponding pages of the English edition of that book,
published by Messrs. Novello & Co.
The index to the German original of Dr. Schweitzer’s book being hardly
adequate, I have prepared a fuller one of my own, which I hope will increase the
usefulness of the volumes.
ERNEST NEWMAN
PREFACE TO THE GERMAN EDITION (1908.)
In the autumn of 1893 a young Alsatian presented himself to me and asked if
he could play something on the organ to me. “Play what?” I asked. “Bach, of
course”, was his reply.
In the following years he returned regularly for longer or shorter periods, in
order to “habilitate” himself—as they used to say in Bach’s day—in organ
playing under my guidance.
One day in 1899, when we were going through the chorale preludes, I
confessed to him that a good deal in these compositions was enigmatic to me.
“Bach’s musical logic in the preludes and fugues”, I said, “is quite simple and
clear; but it becomes cloudy as soon as he takes up a chorale melody. Why these
sometimes almost excessively abrupt antitheses of feeling? Why does he add
contrapuntal motives to a chorale melody that have often no relation to the mood
of the melody? Why all these incomprehensible things in the plan and the
working-out of these fantasias? The more I study them the less I understand
them.”
“Naturally,” said my pupil, “many things in the chorales must seem obscure to
you, for the reason that they are only explicable by the texts pertaining to them.”
I showed him the movements that had puzzled me the most; he translated the
poems into French for me from memory. The mysteries were all solved. During
the next few afternoons we played through the whole of the chorale preludes.
While Schweitzer—for he was the pupil—explained them to me one after the
other, I made the acquaintance of a Bach of whose existence I had previously
had only the dimmest suspicion. In a flash it became clear to me that the cantor.
of St. Thomas’s was much more than an incomparable contrapuntist to whom I
had formerly looked up as one gazes up at a colossal statue, and that his work
exhibits an unparalleled desire and capacity for expressing poetic ideas and for
bringing word and tone into unity.
I asked Schweitzer to write a little essay upon the chorale preludes for the
benefit of French organists, and at the same time to enlighten us as to the nature
of the German chorale and the German church music of Bach’s epoch, as we
knew too little of them to enter thoroughly into the spirit of the cantor’s music.
He set to work at this. A few months afterwards he wrote to me that it was
necessary to include the cantatas and Passions in his essay, since the vocal works
explained the chorale works, and vice versâ. “Your essay”, I replied, “will
simply be so much the more valuable to us.”
The remarks upon the chorale and the church service in Bach’s time grew into
an epitome of the history of Protestant church music; the observations upon the
nature of Bach’s musical expression became a chapter upon “Bach’s tone-
speech”; a short literary portrait of the composer was seen to be desirable; then
there came chapters on the practical performance of Bach’s works; and so the
essay upon the chorale preludes grew, in the space of six years, into a complete
book upon Bach. The author sent me each chapter as it was written. When I
wrote a preface to the book in Venice, on 20th October 1904, it was with the
joyous feeling that the work would open up for us a free road to Bach.
Now, as I sketch the preface to the German edition, I cannot rid myself of a
certain feeling of embarrassment. Is it not presumption for me, a Frenchman, to
draw the attention of Germans to a work upon Bach?
I may partly plead in excuse that in a limited sense I am the joint originator of
the book. It was at my request that Schweitzer undertook the work; it was I who
induced him to persevere with it when the difficulties of the undertaking
increased and began to look, at times, almost insurmountable.
I believe, therefore, that it is not only my right but my duty to prepare the way
for this book in Germany—if that be necessary—since it seems to belong to a
special category in the German literature of the arts. I rank it among the works
the significance of which consists in the fact that while they are founded on a
thorough professional knowledge, they treat their subject from the standpoint not
of a single art but of art and science in general. Schweitzer is a philosopher
through and through, as is shewn by his work on Kant; at the same time he is a
theologian with a profound historical faculty, as may be seen from his well-
known and comprehensive studies in the life of Jesus and in the literature of that
subject; moreover he is an exceptionally good organist,—one of the most skilful
and experienced players that any conductor could desire to have at the organ
during the performance of a Bach cantata or Passion.
The not unreasonable complaint is sometimes heard that our æstheticians are
so seldom executive artists also, and therefore cannot view things from the
standpoint of the musician. There is no community of feeling between the
philosophy of art and creative and executive art. For this reason works by
practical men who are at the same time conversant with philosophical æsthetic
are always an event in the literature of music. To read Schweitzer’s Bach is not
only to get to know the composer and his work, but to penetrate also into the
essence of music in general—the “art per se”. It is a book with “horizons”. Who
could have supposed that a study of the great master of the “Zopf” epoch would
throw a light on the modern—even the most modern—problems of music, as is
done in the three chapters—“Poetic and Pictorial Music”, “Word and Tone in
Bach”, and “Bach’s Musical Language”—with which Schweitzer prefaces his
discussion of the cantatas and the Passions?
An introductory note by a Frenchman to a German book on Bach may further
show that we on this side of the Vosges have also some rights in the composer.
We have won them by the veneration we have felt for him. Our Bach worship
does not date from yesterday. For a generation now our organists have been
almost exclusively occupied with Bach; he is the master who has revealed afresh
to us the true art of the sacred instrument. People speak of a new French organ
school: it is founded on Bach. It was a curious dispensation of Providence that at
the very time we were being led to Bach by the Belgian Lemmens—who had
become acquainted with the classical organ-art through old Hesse, of Breslau—
there arose an organ-builder after Bach’s own heart, who gave us organs that
made us the envy of Bach enthusiasts in every land. Cavaillé-Coll’s instruments
have revealed to us the beauty of the master’s preludes and fugues; with these
organs Bach has made his entry into our cathedrals and churches.
If he has not as yet taken his due place in our public concert life, that is to be
accounted for on purely external grounds. Our public is enthusiastic for Bach,
our singers and instrumentalists not less so. I myself have had proof of this
during my ten years’ conductorship of the “Concordia”, when we performed
many cantatas, the Magnificat and the St. Matthew Passion.
There are German artists whose works we admire, while at the same time we
know that they will never be domesticated among us. When we try to
appropriate them to ourselves, we feel that a certain something remains that,—
how shall I say it?—does not come to us from the soul. We never have this
feeling with Bach; there seem to be bonds of affinity between his art and ours.
The correctness of this feeling is confirmed by the interest and the admiration
that Bach himself evinced for contemporary French art. What he thought of
Couperin and the others is shewn by the copies that have come down to us in his
handwriting and that of his pupils. His first biographer, Forkel, whose
information came from Bach’s own sons, expressly says that the composer
thought a great deal of the old French organists,—whose works have now at last
been rescued from oblivion. And Zelter himself, the old Bach enthusiast and
grumbler, rather wrathfully proves to his friend Goethe that his idol did not
escape the influence of the French, “especially of Couperin”. His works seem to
Zelter to be covered with a kind of elegant “tinsel” that must be attributed to
foreign art. He would have liked to skim it off and show the true German Bach
underneath.
The present-day German admirers of Bach do not share Zelter’s view of the
“tinsel”. The finish, the elegance and the formal charm of Bach’s work do not
strike them as a disavowal of the German spirit. We, however, who aim at form
and plastic clearness in every art, find ourselves again in Bach. And when
Schweitzer, without being at all one-sided, again and again insists upon the
“pictorial” as the fundamental tendency in Bach’s music, he only makes it clear
to us what it is that attracts us to it. The time will come when Bach will be one of
the most popular of composers in France,—not merely because we can discover
in him traces of French influence and of our own sense of form, but because
Bach is on the whole the most universal of artists. What speaks through his
works is pure religious emotion; and this is one and the same in all men, in spite
of the national and religious partitions in which we are born and bred. It is the
emotion of the infinite and the exalted, for which words are always an
inadequate expression, and that can find proper utterance only in art. For me,
Bach is the greatest of preachers. His cantatas and Passions tune the soul to a
state in which we can grasp the truth and oneness of things, and rise above
everything that is paltry, everything that divides us.
By thus conquering artistic and religious mankind, Bach fulfils a mission to
our time, which will never rise above the barriers that the past has erected unless
the great souls of the past come to its aid. We are made one by what we admire
in common, revere in common, comprehend in common.
Paris, 20th October 1907,
CHARLES MARIE WIDOR.
CONTENTS
Volume I
Chapter I. The Roots of Bach’s Art
Subjective and Objective Art
Chapter II. The Origin of the Chorale Texts
The Reformation and the mediæval sacred song. The first hymn-book. Protestant poets of the hymns.
Chapter III. The Origin of the Chorale Melodies
Borrowings from the Middle Ages and new creations. Borrowings from the secular songs. The end of
the creative period.
Chapter IV. The Chorale in the Church Service
The organ and congregational singing at the time of the Reformation. The choir and the
congregational chorale. Osiander and Hassler. The organ undertakes the leading of the congregational
singing. Congregational singing in Bach’s time.
Chapter V. The Chorale Prelude before Bach.
Samuel Scheidt. Pachelbel, Böhm, Reinken, Buxtehude. Bach and his forerunners.
Chapter VI. The Cantata and the Passion before Bach
The old church music. Schütz. The influence of Italian art on the German church service. The
question of the text-form. Strophic song and madrigal. The achievements of Schütz. The tendencies of
the new church music in the period after Schütz. The chief representatives of church music in the 17th
century. The Lübeck Abendmusiken. The cantatas of the northern school. The new cantata. The
development of the older Passion. The German opera and its significance for church music. Neumeister
and Salomo Franck. The new form of Passion music.
Chapter VII. From Eisenach to Leipzig
Bach’s ancestors. Childhood and boyhood. Arnstadt and Mühlhausen (1704 to 1707). Weimar (1708
—1717) and Cöthen (1717—1723). Journey to Hamburg (1720) and appointment as cantor at St.
Thomas’s.
Chapter VIII. Bach in Leipzig
The cantor’s duties. The financial position. The conditions at St. Thomas’s school. The struggle over
the University service. Choir and orchestra. Music in the Leipzig service. The first conflict with the
Council. Application for the title of Court Composer. The struggle with the rector. Bach’s position in the
musical world of Leipzig. Bach’s children and their fate.
Chapter IX. Appearance, Nature and Character
Bach’s friendliness and modesty. His attitude towards other artists. His economy and hospitality.
Emmanuel inherits his father’s economic spirit. Portraits of Bach. The discovery of the skeleton. Bach’s
artistic personality. His religion.
Chapter X. Artistic Journeys, Critics and Friends
Journeys in the pre-Leipzig period. Journeys in the Leipzig period. Mattheson and Bach. Scheibe’s
criticism. Panegyrists in prose and verse. Acquaintances and friends.
Chapter XI. The Artist and Teacher
Bach’s general culture. The Mizler Musical Society. Bach studies and arranges the works of other
men. Bach’s own imagination stimulated by the work of others. His employment of other men’s themes.
Bach and the organ construction of his epoch. Clavichord, clavicembalo, and pianoforte. The lute-clavier
and the viola pomposa. Bach’s clavier touch and violin playing. Improvisation, registration, conducting.
The composer at work. Bach’s pupils. His method of teaching composition. The work of his pupils.
Chapter XII. Death and Resurrection
Illness and death. Obituary notices. Why he was forgotten. The revival. Forkel and Rochlitz. Zelter
and Goethe. The revival of the St. Matthew Passion. The results of the victory. Mosewius. Obstacles to
the proper appreciation of Bach. History of the Bachgesellschaft edition. Spitta’s biography. Liszt and
Wagner. Bach in France, England and Italy. Bach and the present day.
Chapter XIII. The Organ Works
Dates of composition. Youthful works. Preludes and fugues of the Weimar period. Preludes and
fugues of the Leipzig period. Smaller preludes, organ sonatas, and passacaglia. Early chorale preludes.
The Orgelbüchlein. The chorale preludes on the catechism hymns. The eighteen chorales. Paralipomena.
Chapter XIV. The Performance of the Organ Works
The Bach organ and the modern organ. Registration. The natural architecture of the preludes and
fugues. Changes of manual. Tempo, phrasing and ornamentation. Organ and clavier fugues.
Transcriptions.
Chapter XV. The Clavier Works
Publication of the Klavierübung. The French and English Suites. The Little Preludes, Inventions and
Sinfonias. Origin of the Well-tempered Clavichord. The autographs of the Well-tempered Clavichord.
The spirit of the Well-tempered Clavichord. Separate preludes, fantasias, sonatas and toccatas.
Capriccios.
Chapter XVI. The Performance of the Clavier Works
The ornaments. Cembalo or modern pianoforte. The dynamic nuances. The phrasing. The
accentuation of Bach’s themes. The tempo. Epilogue.
Chapter XVII. Chamber and Orchestral Works
The suites and sonatas for solo violin. Polyphonic violin playing in Bach’s time. The suites for cello
solo. The sonatas for clavier and violin and their performance. Sonatas for gamba and for flute.
Orchestral overtures. The Brandenburg concertos and their performance. The clavier concertos. The
concertos for three or four claviers. The violin concertos.
Chapter XVIII. The Musical Offering and the Art of Fugue
Origin and character of the Musical Offering. The canons. The origin of the Art of Fugue. The fate of
the Art of Fugue. The musical quality of the Art of Fugue.