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Johann Sebastian Bach by Johann Nikolaus Forkel and Charles Sanford Terry

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Johann Sebastian Bach by Johann Nikolaus Forkel and Charles Sanford Terry The Project Gutenberg EBook of Johann Sebastian Bach by Johann Nikolaus Forkel and Charles Sanford Terry This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at http://www.gutenberg.org/license Title: Johann Sebastian Bach Author: Johann Nikolaus Forkel and Charles Sanford Terry Release Date: January 24, 2011 [Ebook 35041] Language: English ***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH *** Johann Sebastian Bach. About 1720. (From the picture by Johann Jakob Ihle, in the Bach Museum, Eisenach). Johann Sebastian Bach His Life, Art and Work. Translated from the German of Jo- hann Nikolaus Forkel. With notes and appendices by Charles Sanford Terry, Litt.D. Cantab. Johann Nikolaus Forkel and Charles Sanford Terry Harcourt, Brace and Howe, New York 1920 Contents Introduction . xi FORKEL'S PREFACE . xxi CHAPTER I. THE FAMILY OF BACH . .3 Chapter II. THE CAREER OF BACH . 11 CHAPTER IIA. BACH AT LEIPZIG, 1723-1750 . 31 CHAPTER III. BACH AS A CLAVIER PLAYER . 47 CHAPTER IV. BACH THE ORGANIST . 57 CHAPTER V. BACH THE COMPOSER . 65 CHAPTER VI. BACH THE COMPOSER (continued) . 73 CHAPTER VII. BACH AS A TEACHER . 83 CHAPTER VIII. PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS . 95 CHAPTER IX. BACH'S COMPOSITIONS . 101 CHAPTER X. BACH'S MANUSCRIPTS . 125 CHAPTER XI. THE GENIUS OF BACH . 129 APPENDIX I. CHRONOLOGICAL CATALOGUE OF BACH'S COMPOSITIONS . 137 APPENDIX II. THE CHURCH CANTATAS AR- RANGED CHRONOLOGICALLY . 151 APPENDIX III. THE BACHGESELLSCHAFT EDI- TIONS OF BACH'S WORKS . 299 APPENDIX IV. BIBLIOGRAPHY OF BACH LITERA- TURE . 369 APPENDIX V. A COLLATION OF THE NOVELLO AND PETERS EDITIONS OF THE ORGAN WORKS 377 APPENDIX VI. GENEALOGY OF THE FAMILY OF BACH . 389 Footnotes . 389 Illustrations Johann Sebastian Bach. About 1720. (From the picture by Johann Jakob Ihle, in the Bach Museum, Eisenach). .. iii Bach's Home at Eisenach . .9 The Church and School of St. Thomas, Leipzig, in 1723. 29 Johann Sebastian Bach, circa 1746. From the picture by Haussmann. ....................... 45 Divided Harmony, Bach treatment . 59 Divided Harmony, conventional treatment . 59 The Bach Statue at Eisenach . 72 Johann Sebastian Bach. From the picture discovered by Professor Fritz Volbach ................. 82 The Bach Statue at Leipzig . 133 Genealogy Table, p. 303 . 390 Genealogy Table, p. 304 . 391 Genealogy Table, p. 305 . 392 Genealogy Table, p. 306 . 393 Genealogy Table, p. 307 . 394 Genealogy Table, p. 308 . 395 Genealogy Table, p. 309 . 396 Genealogy Table, p. 310 . 397 Introduction [ix] Johann Nikolaus Forkel, author of the monograph of which the following pages afford a translation, was born at Meeder, a small village in Saxe-Coburg, on February 22, 1749, seventeen months before the death of Johann Sebastian Bach, whose first biographer he became. Presumably he would have followed the craft of his father, the village shoemaker, had not an insatiable love of music seized him in early years. He obtained books, and studied them with the village schoolmaster. In particular he profited by the “Vollkommener Kapellmeister” of Johann Mattheson, of Hamburg, the sometime friend of Handel. Like Handel, he found a derelict Clavier in the attic of his home and acquired proficiency upon it. Forkel's professional career, like Bach's half a century earlier, began at Lüneburg, where, at the age of thirteen (1762), he was admitted to the choir of the parish church. Thence, at the age of seventeen (1766), he proceeded to Schwerin as “Chorpräfect,” and enjoyed the favour of the Grand Duke. Three years later he betook himself (1769), at the age of twenty, to the University of Göttingen, which he entered as a [x] law student, though a slender purse compelled him to give music lessons for a livelihood. He used his opportunity to acquire a knowledge of modern languages, which stood him in good stead later, when his researches required him to explore foreign literatures. Concurrently he pursued his musical activities, and in 1774 published at Göttingen his first work, Ueber die Theorie der Musik, advocating the foundation of a music lectureship in the University. Four years later (1778) he was appointed its Director of Music, and from 1779 to 1815 conducted the weekly concerts of the Sing-Akademie. In 1780 he received from the University the doctorate of philosophy. The rest of his life was xii Johann Sebastian Bach spent at Göttingen, where he died on March 17, 1818, having just completed his sixty-ninth year. That Forkel is remembered at all is due solely to his monograph on Bach. Written at a time when Bach's greatness was realised in hardly any quarter, the book claimed for him pre-eminence which a tardily enlightened world since has conceded him. By his generation Forkel was esteemed chiefly for his literary activity, critical ability, and merit as a composer. His principal work, Allgemeine Geschichte der Musik, was published in two volumes at Leipzig in 1788 and 1801. Carl Friedrich Zelter, Goethe's friend and correspondent, dismissed the book contemptuously as [xi] that of an author who had “set out to write a history of music, but came to an end just where the history of music begins.” Forkel's work, in fact, breaks off at the sixteenth century. But the curtailed History cleared the way for the monograph on Bach, a more valuable contribution to the literature of music. Forkel already had published, in three volumes, at Gotha in 1778, his Musikalisch-kritische Bibliothek, and in 1792 completed his critical studies by publishing at Leipzig his Allgemeine Literatur der Musik. Forkel was also a student of the music of the polyphonic school. He prepared for the press the scores of a number of sixteenth century Masses, Motets, etc., and fortunately received proofs of them from the engraver. For, in 1806, after the Battle of Jena, the French impounded the plates and melted them down. Forkel's proofs are still preserved in the Berlin Royal Library. He was diligent in quest of Bach's scattered MSS., and his friendship with Bach's elder sons, Carl Philipp Emmanuel and Wilhelm Friedemann, enabled him to secure precious relics which otherwise might have shared the fate of too many of Bach's manuscripts. He took an active interest in the proposal of Messrs. Hoffmeister and Kühnel, predecessors of C. F. Peters at Leipzig, to print a “kritisch-korrecte” edition of Bach's Organ and Clavier works. Through his friend, Johann Gottfried Schicht, afterwards Introduction xiii Cantor at St. Thomas's, Leipzig, he was also associated with [xii] Breitkopf and Haertel's publication of five of Bach's six extant Motets in 1802-3. As a composer Forkel has long ceased to be remembered. His works include two Oratorios, Hiskias (1789) and Die Hirten bey der Krippe; four Cantatas for chorus and orchestra; Clavier Concertos, and many Sonatas and Variations for the Harpsichord. In 1802, for reasons which he explains in his Preface, Forkel published from Hoffmeister and Kühnel's “Bureau de Musique” his Ueber Johann Sebastian Bachs Leben, Kunst und Kunstwerke. Für patriotische Verehrer echter musikalischer Kunst, of which a new edition was issued by Peters in 1856. The original edition bears a dedication to Gottfried Baron van Swieten1 (1734-1803), Prefect of the Royal Library, Vienna, and sometime Austrian Ambassador in Berlin, a friend of Haydn and Mozart, patron of Beethoven, a man whose age allowed him to have seen Bach, and whose career makes the association with Bach that Forkel's dedication gives him not undeserved. It was he, an ardent Bach enthusiast, who introduced the youthful Mozart to the music of the Leipzig Cantor. “I go every Sunday at twelve o'clock to the Baron van Swieten,” Mozart writes in 1782, “where nothing is played but Handel and Bach, and I am now making a collection [xiii] of the Fugues of Bach.” The merit and limitations of Forkel's book will be considered later. For the moment the fact deserves emphasis that, inadequate as it is, it presented a fuller picture of Bach than so far had been drawn, and was the first to render the homage due to his genius. In an illuminating chapter (xii.), Death and Resurrection, Schweitzer has told the story of the neglect that obscured Bach's memory after his death in 1750. Isolated voices, raised here and there, acclaimed his genius. With Bach's treatise on The Art of Fugue before him, Johann Mattheson (1681-1664), the foremost 1 “Seiner Excellenz dem Freyheren van Swieten ehrerbietigst gewidmet von dem Verfasser.” xiv Johann Sebastian Bach critic of the day, claimed that Germany was “the true home of Organ music and Fugue.” Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurg (1718-95), the famous Berlin theorist, expressed the same opinion in his preface to the edition of that work published shortly after Bach's death. But such appreciations were rare. Little of Bach's music was in print and available for performance or critical judgment. Even at St. Thomas's, Leipzig, it suffered almost complete neglect until a generation after Forkel's death. The bulk of Bach's MSS. was divided among his family, and Forkel himself, with unrivalled opportunity to acquaint himself with the dimensions of Bach's industry, knew little of his music except the Organ and [xiv] Clavier compositions. In these circumstances it is not strange that Bach's memory waited for more than half a century for a biographer. Forkel, however, was not the first to assemble the known facts of Bach's career or to assert his place in the music of Germany. Putting aside Johann Gottfried Walther's brief epitome in his Lexikon (1732), the first and most important of the early notices of Bach was the obituary article, or “Nekrolog,” contributed by his son, Carl Philipp Emmanuel, and Johann Friedrich Agricola, one of Bach's most distinguished pupils, to the fourth volume of Mizler's Musikalische Bibliothek, published at Leipzig in 1754.
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