of it as Chopin, that one of Schumann's few plagiarisms occurs in his use of a phrase from Chopin's F minor Étude (written for the Méthode des méthodes) as the subject of a fugue (Op. 72, No. 3). And, apart from fugues, which Schumann cultivated assiduously at a late stage in his career, the influence of Bach pervades the texture and rhythm of his work in more ways than I can easily be followed.

Bach's importance in the history of music cannot be exag- | phonic style even over a writer so little apt to make direct use gerated. His art, neglected as old-fashioned and crabbed by his younger contemporaries, survived only in certain limited aspects as the subject of a desultory and unintelligent academic study, until its re-discovery by Mendelssohn. And yet, whatever disguise may have been foisted on it by corrupt traditions and ignorance of its idioms, whenever any fragment of it gained the inner ear of a true composer the effect on the history of music was immediate and profound. Indeed his influence is by no means In a more external, but not less significant way, the Passion chiefly manifested in the time when his work became known in according to St Matthew made its mark on Mendelssohn from its larger aspects, though the Bach-revival is very obviously the time when he discovered it at the age of twelve, and suggested connected with certain tendencies in the "Romantic" movement to him many features in the general design of oratorios, by means in music. But, however clear we may consider Bach's claim to of which he rescued that branch of art from the operatic influences the title of "the first of Romanticists," the full influence of his that ruined Beethoven's Mount of Olives. Without the example whole work has hardly yet begun to show itself. Schumann died of Bach, Wagner's schemes of Leitmotif would never in his before even such enthusiasts as the editors of the Back-Gesell-lifetime have become woven into that close polyphonic texture schaft began to find more beauty than extravagance in Bach's which secures for his music a flow as continuous as that of drama ordinary musical language (see, for example, Hauptmann's itself:-and intimately connected with this is the whole subject letters passim, The Letters of a Leipzig Cantor, trans. by A. D. of Wagner's harmonization, which in many of its boldest charColeridge, London, Novello, Ewer, 1892), or, indeed, to grasp acteristics was foreshadowed by Bach. A close study of the the main features of his designs. The labours of the Bach- texture of Brahms's work shows that he develops Bach's and Gesellschaft have occupied more than fifty years, during which Beethoven's artistic devices pari passu, and that the result is a about four-fifths of Bach's choral works have been published for complete unification of that opposition between polyphony and the first time; and it would be surprising if another fifty years form which in the infancy of the sonata (as in every transitional sufficed to make these adequately known to the world at large. stage in musical history) threatened to wreck the art as a false It is difficult to make an anthology of such bulky works as church- antithesis wrecks a philosophy. Perhaps the only great comcantatas, nor does an anthology meet the purpose where the posers who escaped the direct influence of Bach are Gluck and whole work so constantly attains that excellence for which the Berlioz. Even Gluck reproduced in every detail of harmony anthologist seeks. Except for practical difficulties (as when and figure the first twelve bars of the Gigue of Bach's B flat Bach writes for obsolete instruments) the only reason why some Clavier-Partita in the aria "Je t'implore et je tremble" in cantatas are better known than others is that a beginning must Iphigénie en Tauride. But plagiarism, however unconscious, be made somewhere. Indeed, a cantata was recently selected, is a very different thing from that profound indebtedness which on the ground of its popularity, for a choral competition in a makes a great man attain his truest originality; and Gluck's small English country towr. the year before it was performed training practically deprived him of Bach's direct influence, as a novelty in Berlin! useful as that would have been to the attainment of his aims in harmonic and choral expression. The indirect influence no one could escape, for whatever in modern music is not traceable to Sebastian Bach is traceable to his sons, who were encouraged by their father in the cultivation of those infant art-forms which were so soon to dazzle the world into the belief that his own work was obsolete.

Bach's place in music is thus far higher than that of a reformer, or even of an inventor of new forms. He is a spectator of all musical time and existence, to whom it is not of the smallest

It is clear, then, that the influence of Bach's art as an understood whole is still undeveloped. In the past history of music his part was hardly suspected except by the great composers themselves; and, to any one contemplating the art of the generation after him, it might have seemed that both he and Handel had worked in vain. Yet his was the most subtle and universal force in the development of music, even when his musical language seemed hopelessly forgotten. Mozart, when rapidly advancing to the height of his mastery, had but to read the Baron von Swieten's manuscript copies of the motets and of the Wohl-importance whether a thing be new or old, so long as it is true. temperirtes Klavier, and his style, quite apart from his immediate essays in the old art-forms, and apart also from the influence of his study of Handel, developed a new polyphonic richness and depth of harmony which steadily increased until his untimely death. Beethoven studied all the accessible works of Bach profoundly, and frequently quoted them in his sketch-books, often with a direct bearing on his own works. His rendering of the Wohltemperirles Klavier is said to be recorded in the marks of expression and tempo given in Czerny's edition; and if that record is true, Beethoven must have been completely in the dark as to Bach's meaning in many important respects; but art is full of such illustrations of the way in which great minds influence each other in spite of every barrier which diversity of language and time can set. Beethoven's great Thirty-three Variations on a Waltz by Diabelli were actually described in the publisher's puff as worthy of their kinship with the "Goldberg Variations" of Bach; and that kinship is revealed in its truest light by a comparison between Beethoven's 31st variation and Bach's 25th; for here, just where the resemblance is most obvious, each composer utters his most intimate expression of feeling.

It is doubtful whether even the forms most peculiar to him (such as the arpeggio-prelude) are of his invention. Yet he left no form as he found it,-not even that most conventional of all, the Da Capo Aria, which he did not outwardly alter in the least. On the other hand, with every form he touched he said the last word. All the material that could be assimilated into a mature art he vitalized in his own way, and he had no imitators. The language of music changed at his death, and his influence became all-pervading just because he was not the prophet of the new art, but an unbiassed seeker of truth. Whether so great a man becomes "progressive or "reactionary" depends on the artistic resources of his time. He will always work at the kind of art that is most complete and consistent in all its aspects. The same spirit of truthfulness that makes Sebastian Bach hold himself aloof from the progressive art which he encourages in his sons, drives Beethoven to invent new forms and new means of expression with every work he writes. Gluck abolished the Da Capo Aria, because it was unfit for dramatic music. Bach did not abolish it, because he did not intend to write dramatic music in the strict sense of the term. Mature musical art in In the same way, Chopin is nowhere more characteristic than Bach's time could not be dramatic, except in the loose sense in where he shows his love of the Wohltemperirtes Klavier in his which the term may be applied to an epic poem. Dramatic Études and Preludes; and so subtle is the influence of poly-expression, properly so called, can only be attained in music

1 See the wild conjectures of the editor of the Four Short Masses as to the "displacing" of structure in the kyrie of the G minor Mass (B.-G., Jahr. viii. preface, with Rust's answer in the preface to Jahr. xxiii.).

by the full development of resources that do not blend with those of Bach's art at all. Meanwhile there are many things unsuitable for the stage which are nevertheless valuable on purely musical grounds; and the Da Capo Aria was one.

Bach

developed it in a great variety of ways, while retaining even the minor details of what in other hands had long before become its Conventional form; but the one thing he did not do was to abuse it according to time-honoured custom as the staple form for opera. For that he had too much dramatic insight. His treatment of other important art-forms is illustrated in the articles on CONTRAPUNTAL FORMS; CONCERTO and INSTRUMENTATION. Here we may attempt to illustrate his methods by such forms and characteristics as cannot be classified under those headings.

Bestra tions of Bach's method.

and those that imply the composer's dissatisfaction with the original version. In Bach's case this seldom causes much difficulty; his methods of adaptation are so logical and so varied as to form a scheme of musical morphology with all the interest and none of the imperfections of the geological record; and the few cases in which a work owes its changes to the need for improvement as well as adaptation cause no confusion, but rather form a link between the pure adaptations and the numerous revisions of his favourite works without change of medium. There is, for example, no difficulty in separating the element of 1. The toccatas of Buxtehude and his predecessors show how corrective criticism from that of the impulse to give an already an effective musical scheme may be suggested by running over successful composition a larger or more permanent form, in such the keyboard of an organ as if to try (loccare) the cases as the transformations undergone by the movements of touch, then bursting out into sustained and full the birthday cantata, Was mir bekagt ist nur die muntre Jagd, harmony, and at last settling down to a fugue. But during their distribution among the church cantatas, Also hat before Bach no one seemed able to keep the fugue in Gott die Welt geliebt and Man singet mit Freuden vom Sieg. The motion long enough to make a convincing climax. Very soon it fine bass aria, "Ein Fürst ist seines Landes Pan," was obviously collapsed and the process of quasi-extemporization began again, ill-proportioned, with its breakneck return to the tonic and its to culminate in a new fugue which often gave the whole work perfunctory close; and Bach's chief concern in adapting it for a happy but deceptive suggestion of organic unity by being its place as the aria, "Du bist geboren mir zu Gute," in Also hat founded on an ingenious variation of the subject of the first Gott, was to remedy this defect. On the other hand, the use fugue. But in Bach's hands the toccata becomes one of the of the delightful ritornello for violoncello from the little aria, noblest and most plastic of forms. The introductory runs may "Weil die wollenreichen Heerden," in the birthday cantata, be disjointed and exaggerated to grotesqueness, until the gaps and the restoration of the rejected long instrumental fugato between them gradually fill out, and they build themselves up that was to follow, were obviously brought about by the concepinto grand piles of musical architecture, as in the organ toccata tion of the entirely new material for the voice in the famous aria, in C; or they may be worked out on an enormous scale in long" Mein gläubiges Herze." And when the last chorus of Was and smooth canonic passages with a definite theme, as in the mir behagt became the first chorus of Man singet mit Freuden, greatest of all toccatas, that in F for organ, which is most it was expanded to the proportions necessary for a triumphant artistically followed by a fugue unusually quiet for its size. In opening (as distinguished from a cheerful finale) by the adroit one instance, the toccata at the beginning of the E minor clavier-insertion of new material between every joint in the design. partita, the introductory runs, though retaining much of the extempore character from which the form derives its name, take shape in a highly organized and rounded-off group of contrasted themes. The fugue follows without change of time, and is developed in so leisurely a manner that it is fully as long as a normal fugue on a large scale by the time it reaches what sounds like its central episode. At this point some of the introductory matter quietly enters, and leads to a recapitulation of the whole introduction in the key now reached. The obvious sequel would be a counter-development of the fugue, at least as long as what has gone before, as in the clavier-toccata in C minor; but Bach does not choose to weary the hearer and weaken the impression of breadth he has already made here. Instead, he expands this restatement of the introduction, and makes its harmonies deliberately return to the fundamental key, and thus in an astonishingly short time the toccata is brought to a close with the utmost effect of climax and finality. The same grasp of all the possible meanings of an artistic device shows itself in his treatment of the other features of toccata form. With his variety of proportion and flow he has no need to break off the fugue like earlier composers: but all the old devices by which the division into sections was managed are turned to account by him, and almost every toccata has its own scheme of contrasted movements, always based on the oid natural idea of the growth of an organized music from a chaos of extemporization.

If this is Bach's treatment of a comparatively small and specialized art-form, it is obviously impossible to reduce the scantiest account of the rest of his work into practical limits here, nor is there as yet a sufficient body of accepted criticism of Bach for such an account to carry further conviction than an expression of individual opinion. Fortunately, however, Bach was constantly re-arranging his own compositions; indeed he evidently regards adaptability to fresh environment as the test of his finest work: and we cannot do better than review the evidence thus given to us,-evidence which only Beethoven's sketch-books surpass in significance.

2. The successful transplanting of a work of art to a fresh environment is obviously a convincing test of our definitions of the art-forms concerned, if only we take care to distinguish between the alterations produced by the change of environment

This material, being new, could not produce the effect of diffuseness that would result from the expansion of the old materiai already complete in its simplest form, and thus this instance does not imply criticism.

A highly interesting example of pure self-criticism is the Passion according to St John,which was twice revised, and each time reduced to a smaller scale by the omission of some of its finest numbers. The final result was a work of perfect proportions, and of the rejected numbers one (a magnificent aria with chorale) remained unused, two were replaced by finer substitutes, others took shape as one of the most complete and remarkable of the church cantatas, Du wahrer Gott, while the greatest of the figured chorales was transferred to the Passion according to St Matthew, of which it now crowns the first part.

3. Such instances of self-criticism might be paralleled in the works of other composers; but there is no parallel in music to Bach's power of reproducing already perfect works in different media. Here Bach reveals to us identities in difference which we should otherwise never have suspected. Of course it is possible to arrange works in different ways without illustrating any profound identities at all. Handel, for instance, collected several of his favourite choruses in an enormous instrumental concerto (see vol. 46 of the Händel-Gesellschaft), and the result in the case of a chorus like "Lift up your Heads " was ridiculous. Bach, however, does not arrange old work merely to please a court where it was already admired. He never leaves it in a state of mere make-shift, though he cannot always attain his evident aim of a new originality. His methods of orchestration and the profoundly significant identity of certain forms of chorus with certain concerto forms may better be described under their proper headings (see articles INSTRUMENTATION and CONCERTO). Here we will attempt first to show, by illustrations of Bach's power of adding parts to already complete harmonic and contrapuntal schemes, what was his conception of the nature of an art-form, and secondly, by means of a short analysis of cases in which he adapts the same music to different words, to define his range of expression.

Bach arranged all his violin concertos for clavier, including two that are lost in the original version. Here his power of providing new and apparently necessary material for the left hand of the cembalist (or, in the double concertos, two left

Not one bar or harmony of the framework differs; yet the two versions are two independent works of art. In the cantata the beginning is for instruments only; when the slow movement (here adequately scored for a flute and two oboe d' amore) begins, the basses, permanently separated from the rest of the chorus, sing "Peace be unto you." The other voices then sing the triumph of the faithful helped by the Saviour in their battle against the world. The slow movement is, of course, set for bass alone throughout, and at the last recurrence of the allegro the bass continues to sing "Friede sei mit euch" through the rest of the chorus, as if leading the chorus of humanity through strife to the kingdom of heaven, and then the single voice of peace remains to the end. Hardly a bar of the chorus-material is on the same themes in the two versions.

hands) without disturbing the already complete score, is astonish- | regard this as superseding the last chorus of Halt im Gedächtniss. ing; and it fails only in the slow movements, which he prefers to leave obviously in the condition of an arrangement rather than to spoil their broad cantabile style by a too polyphonic bass. But these cases are insignificant compared with such transformations as that of the prelude of the E major partita for unaccompanied violin into the sinfonia for organ obligato accompanied by full orchestra (including three trumpets and a pair of drums) at the beginning of the church cantata, Wir danken dir, Goll. The original version is perhaps the most complete and natural of the violin solos, for its arpeggios produce full harmony without recourse to that constant attempt to play on all four strings at once, which makes the performance of the polyphonic movements a tour de force in which steady rhythm is nearly impossible. Yet in the sinfonia its proportions seem to reveal themselves for the first time. Not a bar is displaced and not a note of the new accompaniment is unnecessary. The whole is almost entirely without themes; for even this, the largest of all arpeggio-preludes, consists essentially of the gradual unfolding of a scheme of harmony in which rhythmic and melodic organization is reduced to a minimum. Only in the first line does the incisive initial figure persist a little longer in the new accompaniment than in the original solo, but on the last page it reappears and pervades the whole orchestra, even the drums thundering out its rhythm at the climax where the holding-notes of the trumpet span the torrent of harmony like a rainbow.

Deeper still is the thought that underlies the transformation of two movements of the great violin-concerto in D minor (unfortunately lost except in its splendid arrangement for clavier) into parts of the church cantata, Wir müssen durch viel Trübsal in das Reich Gottes eingehen. In both movements the violin is replaced by the organ an octave lower, the orchestral accompaniment remaining where it was. This treatment, with the addition of new and plaintive parts for wind instruments, turns the already very long and sombre first movement into an impressive idealization of the "much tribulation" that lies between us and the kingdom of heaven. The slow movement is still more solemn, and is arranged in the same way as regards the instruments; but from the first note to the last a four-part chorus sings, to the words of the title, a mass of quite new material (except for the bass and for numerous imitations of the solo-part), treated with every variety of vocal colouring and a grandeur of conception which is not dwarfed even by the Passion according to St Matthew.

4. The four short masses, the Christmas oratorio and the B minor mass, contain every variety of adaptation from earlier work. The four short masses are indeed obviously compiled for use in a church where the orchestra was small. Only four movements in the whole collection are not traceable to other extant works; all the rest comes from church cantatas. The adaptations are not always significant; no attempt, for example, is made in the G minor mass to conceal how unfit for a Kyrie eleison is the tremendous denunciatory chorus, Herr, deine Augen sehen nach dem Glauben. But the F major and G major masses are very instructive; and the A major mass, except for the damage done to the instrumentation, is a work that no one would conceive to be not original. The Kyrie is one of Bach's most individual utterances and could surely never have fitted any other text, but we should say the same of the Gloria if we did not possess the church cantata, Halt im Gedächtniss. The Gloria begins with a triumphant polyphonic chorus accompanied by a spirited symphony for strings. At the words et in terra pax" the time changes, and two flutes softly accompany a single solemn melody in the altos. At the "laudamus te" the material of the beginning returns, and is interrupted again by the calm slow movement, this time in another key and for another voice, at the words "adoramus te." Twice the "laudamus" and "adoramus" alternate in a finely proportioned design; at last the words "gratias agimus tibi propter magnam gloriam tuam " are set for the full chorus to the music of the slow movement, the strings join with the flutes, and this most appropriate setting of those words is finished. And yet it is quite impossible to

The study of the sources of the Christmas oratorio will complete the evidence on which we support our estimate of Bach's methods and range of expression. It is certain that the occasional cantatas, from which all except the chorale-tune numbers and those set to words from the Bible were taken, date from shortly before the oratorio; and that Bach, being incapable of putting inferior work even into birthday odes, rescued it from oblivion by having the verses for the oratorio numbers built on the same rhythms as those of the odes in order that he might use those occasional works as a sketch (see B.-G., Jahr. xxxiv. preface). Be this as it may, the alterations are confined to details even where an aria is transposed a fourth or fifth; but the effect of them is startling. Pleasure (Wollust) sings a lovely soprano aria to allure Hercules from the paths of Virtue, to which Hercules replies indignantly with an aria in a spirited staccato style. It is no doubt a shock to our feelings to find that Wollust's aria became the Virgin's cradle-song, while Hercules's reply became the alto aria in which Zion is bidden to "prepare for the Bridegroom." But it does not warrant the inference that Bach's music lacks definite characterization: on the contrary, these two arias are the best demonstration of his profound insight into the possibilities of musical expression within his range. It is no part of his conception of art that Wollust should be represented by a Wagnerian Venusberg-music; the obvious way to represent Pleasure was by writing pleasant music, and with Bach's ideas of pleasance the step from this to the solemn beauty of the sacred cradle-song was a mere matter of change of colour and tempo. The key is lowered from B flat to G, the strings are veiled with the tender reed tone of a group of oboe d' amore, the soprano becomes an alto whose notes are, as it were, surrounded with a nimbus by being doubled in the upper octave by a flute; and the aria becomes worthy of its new purpose, not by losing a grossness which it never possessed, but by gaining the richness which distinguishes the perfect work from the boldly executed draft.

As to the aria of Hercules the change is in manner, while the character, in the human sense of the term, is quite rightly the same. Both Hercules and the faithful Christian of the oratorio are renouncing pomps and vanities for the claims of a higher life; in the one case indignantly, in the other case inspired "mit zärtlichem Triebe." A change to a legato style, the substitution of a single oboe d'amore for tutti violins, the addition of delicate ornaments indicative of a slower pace, and the noble stream of melody preserve its identity while changing its aspect. Bach's larger designs react on their changing contents as a cathedral reacts on the impressiveness of the rites performed within it, or as nature reacts on a poet's thoughts; and in the same way Bach's melody is greater than any possible mood of the moment, not because of that vague and negative pseudo-classical quality misnamed "reserve," but because of its vital individuality. In their proper directions its changes are limitless; elsewhere change in inconceivable. No amount of "Umarbeitung" could, for instance, turn the aria of Hercules into the Virgin's cradle-song, or Wollust's aria into the exhortation of Zion to prepare for the Bridegroom. In short, Bach's melodies are characteristic, not like a mask with a set expression, but like a living face that is the more indivi lual for the mobility of its features.

The lost Passion according to St Mark must, judging by the | Steingräber edition of the clavier works, edited by Dr Hans Bischoff. movements preserved in the Trauer-Ode, have been larger than that is incomparably the best, giving all the variants in footnotes and according to St John. clearly distinguishing the extremely intelligent nuances and phrasing signs of the editor from the rare but significant indications of Bach himself. Nor does this wealth of scholarship interfere with the presentation of a straightforward, single text; though in addition there is every necessary explanation of the ornaments and kindred matters. We have seen no other editions that distinguish Bach's text from the editor's taste-the disappointing publications of the Neue Bachgesellschaft by no means excepted. We may remark that the older vocal scores of cantatas in the Edition Peters are, though unfortunately but a selection, far better than the complete series issued by Breitkopf and Härtel in conformity with the Bach Gesellschaft, and therefore accepted as authoritative (see INSTRUMENTATION). The English vocal scores published by Novello are generally very good though covering but small ground. The Novello score of the Christmas oratorio contains a fine analytic preface by Sir George Macfarren.