Chapter 9 No.9

Climax of the Polyphonic Piano Style

The development of the instrumental fugue-What is a fugue?-Its combination of polyphony with development of a theme-Johann Sebastian Bach and his organ and clavichord fugues-Fundamental traits of this music.

WHEN instrumental music began to develop independently it naturally followed the lines already followed by vocal music. That had been wholly contrapuntal, and instrumental music was at first entirely polyphonic. In its development the art of music inevitably fashioned certain forms, for no art can exist without form, which is the external demonstration of design. Without design there is no art. Musicians very soon learned that the first principle of form in music was repetition. A phrase of melody once heard and never repeated is quickly forgotten. A dozen different phrases in succession would not make a recognizable tune. The germinal part of the tune has to be heard often, and there must be a beginning, a middle and an end. For example:-

[|--germinal part--|--middle--|--germinal part--|--end--|]

Now this is a melody in the pure song form, such as the earliest popular music contained. But the church composers, the only scientific musicians of the early day, in ignoring that form, as we have seen, developed a scheme of repetition of the identifying parts of their tunes by making the different voices sing them at different times. And this scheme evolved the art of polyphonic writing, which we have seen developed so beautifully by the Netherlands masters and the early Italian church composers. The reader will remember that the principle which lies at the foundation of polyphonic writing is "imitation." After instrumental music began to develop independently it clung for a time to the forms based on imitation, but when the vocal style became dominant in Italy, owing to the enormous popularity of the opera, imitation and its forms fled into Germany, where they found their highest embodiment in instrumental music in the North German fugue. The fugue is the most complex and highly organized polyphonic form we have, and it is necessary that the reader should know something of its construction.

A fugue has been defined as "a musical composition developed, according to certain rules of imitation, from a short theme or phrase called the subject. This subject is from time to time reproduced by each of the two, three, four, or more parts or voices for which the fugue is written." The subject, then, is a definite theme, of from four to eight measures, from which the fugue is developed. The next essential part is the answer. This is the first appearance of the subject in one of the subsidiary voices. This appearance is always in the dominant key, and usually has its last notes changed so as to make an ending. The counter-subject is that part of the theme of the first voice which forms the accompaniment to the answer. The announcement of these parts of the fugue is called the exposition. After the exposition the composer works up the melodic ideas of his material in passages of double counterpoint, free imitation, and various other polyphonic devices, all distributed so as to give interest and variety to the fugue, until he reaches the stretto, a portion in which by ingenious changes he brings out a climax, after which he may add a coda (tail-piece) and come to an end. Here is an example by Sir Frederic A. Gore-Ouseley:-

[Fugue]

[-----] [---Answer---] [-Subject-]

[-Subject-] [-Counter-subject-] [--etc.--]

The reader will see at once that the exposition part of a fugue is built on the principles of double counterpoint, and that it is in its essentials the same kind of music as that written by the Netherlands masters for voices to sing in church. The distinguishing part of the fugue is the working out of the thematic ideas by devices suitable solely to instrumental music with its freedom from text, the development of a climax, and the restatement of the original ideas before closing. It is in this well ordered discussion of musical ideas which have been laid down as primary propositions, that we find the immense advance of the fugue as an intellectual form over the polyphonic works of Lasso or Palestrina. I have already quoted Dr. Parry's statement that those writers rarely employed the "modern practice of using a definite subject throughout a considerable portion of a movement." This practice is at the foundation of all modern instrumental music, and its first complete systematization was reached in the fugues of Bach. Scarlatti and others were developing the principle in its application to monophonic music, but Bach, clinging to the polyphonic style, which was already far more advanced than the monophonic, and having a singularly deep insight into the soul of his art, attained perfection in the application of the new and vital principle to contrapuntal composition while the monophonic sonata was yet in its infancy.

The authoritative biography of the father of modern music is "The Life of Bach," by Dr. Philip Spitta, of Berlin. An excellent English translation is published. Johann Sebastian Bach, a member of a family devoted to music through several generations, was born at Eisenach, in March, 1685. He received his early instruction from one of his brothers. His life was almost devoid of incident. He served as organist and concert-master in Arnstadt, Mülhausen, Weimar, and Anhalt-Koethen. He became cantor of the Thomas School in Leipsic in 1723, and retained that post till his death, July 28, 1750. In every department of music known to his time Bach demonstrated that he was a genius of the highest order. He is regarded as the most excellent of all models for students of composition because his works combine, in the highest beauty, originality of melodic ideas with profundity of design. His mastery of the formal material of his art enabled him to imbue the severest form, such as the fugue, with grace, beauty, and expressiveness. His melodic diction is not of the kind popular with the masses, and his music today is enjoyed only by those who truly love the best. But it is always played by artists and orchestras of high rank, and will continue to be heard probably for centuries.

Bach was a master of composition for the organ, for the clavichord, for the orchestra, for the solo voice, and for chorus. It is not possible in a book like this to give detailed consideration to his works. His famous settings of "The Passion" will be noticed in their proper place, and so will the influence of his orchestral compositions. At present we are to review briefly his piano compositions, which were written for the clavichord. This, perhaps, is one of the most remarkable features of these great works. Played on a modern piano, with all its power and brilliancy, they seem to be perfectly suited to it. The clavier compositions of Bach consist of "inventions," suites, preludes, fugues, sonatas, concertos, and fantasias. In his "Well-Tempered Clavichord," already mentioned, Bach left us a set of preludes and fugues which have never been surpassed. He also left us a treatise, "The Art of Fugue," in which the laws of the form are illustrated by sixteen fugues and four canons for one piano, and two fugues for two pianos all on the same theme.

Bach's organ toccatas and fugues grew directly out of the old style introduced by Merulo and the Venetian masters. They sought to bring out the power and variety of their instrument by contrasting chord passages of breadth and majesty with scale passages of brilliant character. Bach systematized this style of composition by showing how to produce contrast and variety while developing logically by the devices of counterpoint a definite subject and working up to a climax of great eloquence. In his works for the clavichord he demonstrated the same principle of subject and development, but in a style adapted to the nature of the instrument. His preludes and fugues are amazing not only in the extent of their mastery of the technics of composition, but also in their almost prophetic insight into the possibilities of the piano as a means of expression. All these preludes and fugues have a note of personal intimacy. Some are playful, some are bold, some are sad, some are full of celestial calm, some are passionately pathetic. The higher qualities of these compositions are their consistency, their sense of fitness, their apparent inevitableness. The subject of a Bach piano fugue not only suggests the answer and the logical development, but it fixes the character of the musical mood of the composition. The harmonies, the changes of key, the action and reaction of the imitative passages in double counterpoint, all are not only marvellous in their exhibition of technical skill, but all are of such a nature that they sustain and expound the feeling contained in the subject. It is this mastership of artistic organization that places the music of Sebastian Bach above that of all his contemporaries, all of his predecessors, and most of his successors. He moulded the rigid materials of canonic art, which held earlier composers in its grasp, to his own ends and left us instrumental polyphonic works which have never been equalled and which are still the fountainheads of our musical learning.

It ought to be noted that his own perfection of the system of equal temperament enabled him to do much that his predecessors could not have done, even had they possessed his genius. By making it possible to play in all twenty-four keys, and to modulate from the tonic of a composition into very remote keys, Bach introduced into instrumental polyphony an elasticity, a pliancy, a freedom, which it had never before possessed. He was able to fill his polyphonic writing with the passionate utterance of chromatic harmony; and in his "Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue" he produced a work which was actually a bridge between the style that went before him and the style that followed him. With Bach the development of instrumental polyphony came to an end. Nothing has been added to its technic except the application of the most recent laws of harmony. Bach was ahead of his time, and music was working out simpler problems than his when his work was completed. They were problems in monophonic style, and to these we must now turn our attention.

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