***





                         [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 Johann 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
FORKEL'S PREFACE
CHAPTER I. THE FAMILY OF BACH
Chapter II. THE CAREER OF BACH
CHAPTER IIA. BACH AT LEIPZIG, 1723-1750
CHAPTER III. BACH AS A CLAVIER PLAYER
CHAPTER IV.  BACH THE ORGANIST
CHAPTER V. BACH THE COMPOSER
CHAPTER VI. BACH THE COMPOSER (continued)
CHAPTER VII. BACH AS A TEACHER
CHAPTER VIII.  PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS
CHAPTER IX. BACH'S COMPOSITIONS
CHAPTER X.  BACH'S MANUSCRIPTS
CHAPTER XI. THE GENIUS OF BACH
APPENDIX I. CHRONOLOGICAL CATALOGUE OF BACH'S COMPOSITIONS
APPENDIX II. THE CHURCH CANTATAS ARRANGED CHRONOLOGICALLY
APPENDIX III.  THE BACHGESELLSCHAFT EDITIONS OF BACH'S WORKS
APPENDIX IV. BIBLIOGRAPHY OF BACH LITERATURE
APPENDIX V.  A COLLATION OF THE NOVELLO AND PETERS EDITIONS OF THE ORGAN
WORKS
APPENDIX VI. GENEALOGY OF THE FAMILY OF BACH
Footnotes





ILLUSTRATIONS


_Johann Sebastian Bach.  About 1720. (From the picture by Johann Jakob
Ihle, in the Bach Museum, Eisenach)._
Bach's Home at Eisenach
The Church and School of St. Thomas, Leipzig, in 1723.
Johann Sebastian Bach, circa 1746. _From the picture by Haussmann._
Divided Harmony, Bach treatment
Divided Harmony, conventional treatment
The Bach Statue at Eisenach
Johann Sebastian Bach. _From the picture discovered by Professor Fritz
Volbach_
The Bach Statue at Leipzig
Genealogy Table, p. 303
Genealogy Table, p. 304
Genealogy Table, p. 305
Genealogy Table, p. 306
Genealogy Table, p. 307
Genealogy Table, p. 308
Genealogy Table, p. 309
Genealogy Table, p. 310





INTRODUCTION


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
Lueneburg, 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 "Chorpraefect," and enjoyed the favour of the
Grand Duke.  Three years later he betook himself (1769), at the age of
twenty, to the University of Goettingen, which he entered as a 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 Goettingen 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 spent at Goettingen,
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 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 Kuehnel, 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 Cantor at St. Thomas's, Leipzig, he was also
associated with 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 Kuehnel's "Bureau de Musique" his _Ueber Johann
Sebastian Bachs Leben, Kunst und Kunstwerke. Fuer 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
Swieten(1) (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 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 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 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.  The authors of this appreciation give it an
intimacy which renders it precious.  But Mizler's periodical was the organ
of a small Society, of which Bach had been a member, and outside its
associates can have done little to extend a knowledge of the subject of
the memoir.

Johann Friedrich Agricola contributed notes on Bach to Jakob Adlung's
_Musica mechanica Organoedi,_ published in two volumes at Berlin in 1768.
The article is valuable chiefly for Agricola's exposition of Bach's
opinions upon Organ and Clavier building.

With the intention to represent him as "the coryphaeus of all organists,"
Johann Adam Hiller, who a few years later became Cantor at St. Thomas