Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/103

HISTOKY.] MUSIC 91 point from profounder musicians, he owed his views of plan or design in the structure of a composition to his fami liarity with the concertos of Antonio Vivaldi and Tomaso Albinoni, both Venetian violinists who visited Germany, and he gained this familiarity by arranging for the organ many of the concertos for several instruments, as also much that the same authors wrote for a single violin. His arrangement consisted in adding parts to the original, which he kept intact, and so retained the plan while en riching the harmony. To his latest days he was wont to retouch his own music of former years, doubtless with the purpose of improvement, and he thus showed himself to be still a student to the very end of his career. A class of oratorio of which Luther had planted the earliest germ, the recitation of the Divine Passion, had grown into extensive use in North Germany prior to the period of Bach, and to this belongs his largest if not most important work. This is his setting of the portion of St Matthew s Gospel which narrates the incidents, interspersed with re flective passages, some taken from the chorals of common use in the Lutheran and Calvinistic churches (the tunes proper to which have special harmonic treatment when here appropriated), and some set in the form of airs, duets, and choruses to verses written for the occasion. Bach set also St John s version of the Passion, and others. He wrote likewise for church use cantatas peculiar to every Sunday s requirement in the Lutheran service, and left five series of these, each for an entire year. He produced other sacred and many secular cantatas, a mass of such colossal proportions that it is unavailable for the purpose of celebration, other pieces for the Roman Church, very much for the organ alone that has never been equalled in its intrinsic qualities or as a vehicle for executive display, many concertos and suites for the orchestra of the day, and a vast number of pieces for the harpsichord or clavecin. Among these last must be signalized Das wohltemperirte Clavier (1722), and a sequel to the same, XXIV. Pre- ludien und Fugen durch alien Tonarten, sowohl mit der grossen als kleinen Terz (1740). 1 These two distinct works are now commonly classed together as Forty-eight Preludes Temper- and Fugues. To describe their purpose reference must tment. be made to the discrepancies between the tuning of intervals by 3ds, or by 8ths, or by 5ths. The B$, which is reached by successive 3ds above C, has 250 vibrations in the same period that the C, which is reached by 8ths from the same starting note, has 256, and in the same period that the B$, which is reached by 5ths from the original C, has 259 and a fraction. The same is true of every other musical sound as of C, namely, that tuning by 3ds, or 8ths, or 5ths, yields a different note from the other two. Hence it results that notes which are in tune in one key are out of tune in other keys, and consequently musical composition was of old limited to those very few keys that have several notes in common with the key of C. 2 The organ Handel presented to the chapel of the Foundling Hospital, London, had the raised or black keys divided, with each half to act on pipes different from the other half, and thus gave dif ferent notes for C$ and for Db, and the like ; and other organs of the period were similarly constructed. Bach s notion was so to temper the intonation that, while the tuning of no key should be perfect, the discrepancies should be divided so nicely between all keys that no one would be offensive to the hearer, and to illustrate this he wrote in his 38th year a series of pieces in every one of the keys in its major and minor form, calling it "The clavier with equal temperament." This bears on a supposition, once 1 Supposed by some to have been completed in 1744. 2 It is supposed that early organs were tuned with true 3ds and flattened 5ths (the "mean tone" system of Zarlino and Salinas), and Mersenne enunciates, though obscurely, a rule for this division. diffidently advanced and since confirmed by men who have soundly studied the subject, as much as by constant observa tion of him who first conceived it, although disputed by others ; it is, that the ear receives tempered sounds as they should be, instead of as they are, perceiving a different effect from the note whose tonal surroundings prove it to be Gb from that which is yielded by the same string on a pianoforte when it is required to represent F$. Such is the practical application in modern use of the term enharmonic with reference to keyed instruments when it Enhar- means the giving different names to one note ; on the voice, moni cs. however, and on bowed instruments the smallest gradations of pitch are producible, and so all notes in all keys can be justly tuned, which, among others, is one reason for the exceptional delight given by music that is represented by either of these means. The enharmonic organ and har monium of Mr Bosanquet are provided with a keyboard of a general nature in which the restriction to closed circles of 5ths is avoided. Systems reducible to series of 5ths of any character can therefore be placed on this keyboard. As the relative position of the keys determines the arrange ment of the notes, the fingering is the same in all keys, and depends only on the intervals employed. The modern use of the word chromatic has already been stated, and it only remains to say of the other of the three Greek genera, diatonic, that the term now defines music consisting of Diatonic, notes according to the signature of the prevailing key. 3 To return to Bach, his orchestration is completer than Handel s, though yet needing the addition of an organ part that he did not write, but his scores are liable to misrepresentation in modern performance because several of the instruments are obsolete for which they were designed ; Bach s orches tral treatment differs from that of later days in having often a special selection of instruments for a single move ment in a work, which are engaged throughout that piece with small variety of interchange, and likewise in having mostly the separate counterpoint for every instrument employed instead of combining instruments of different tone in one melody. But seldom Bach wrote in one or other of the ecclesiastical modes, as did Handel more rarely, and he used more freely than his contemporary the extreme chromatic discords. He may indeed be regarded as a double mirror, reflecting the past in his contrapuntal writing and forecasting the future in his anticipation of modern harmonies. Notice of these two extraordinary men would be incom plete without an attempt to parallel if not compare them. Born within a month and within walking distance of each other, speaking the same tongue, professing the same religious tenets, devoting themselves to the same art and to the same productive and executive branches of that art with success that cannot be surpassed, they were as different in the character of their works as in their personal traits and their courses of life. The music of Handel for its simple, massive, perspicuous grandeur may be likened to a Grecian temple, and that of Bach to a Gothic edifice for its infinite involution of lines and intricacy of detail. The greater complexity of the one makes it the more diffi cult of comprehension and more slow in impression, while the sublime majesty of the other displays itself to a single glance and is printed at once on the mental vision. Handel wrote for effect and produces it with certitude upon thousands ; Bach wrote as a pleasurable exercise for mastery, and gives kindred pleasure to those who study his work in the spirit that incited him to produce it. Contemporary with the working of these two glorious Rameatu Saxons were the labours of Jean Philippe Rameau (1683- 3 Some theorists use the generic terms in limited sense : diatonic, proceeding by 2ds ; chromatic, proceeding by semitones ; enharmonic, changing the name of a note.