Bach Keyboard Music
Keyboard Composition, Bach Revival Reception

Keyboard Composition, Bach Revival Reception

William L. Hoffman wrote (May 4, 2019):
Various recent studies of Bach's playing, teaching and composing of keyboard music, beginning with the Bach Tricentenary in 1985, reveal facets of his compositional characteristics and their historical reception. These qualities are initially found in his early works with French stylistic similarities to early Handel pieces, as well as the Bach-Handel "beguiling coordinated dance . . . as reflecting the geniuses' inevitable intuition of the course of musical history," involving the use of obbligato keyboard in the development of the keyboard concerto, says John Butt in his essay on the genealogy of the keyboard concerto.¹ Beyond these striking keyboard parallelisms are Bach's "historical role as a path-finder" between 1716 and 1720 in keyboard music leading "towards the musical language of Viennese Classicism," observes Ludwig Finscher;² Bach's subsequent development of three keyboard pedagogical devices which also aid in compositional development in his interaction with his students, says Christoph Wolff;³ and Bach's full flowering in keyboard music with his first publication of the Six Partitas as Clavierübung I. Beyond these biographical benchmarks are subsequent studies in reception history of the impact of the iconic Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue in D minor, BWV 903; the emergence of the pianoforte as the leading keyboard instrument after 1750, with utilization of articulation techniques in ornamentation and fast passages; the refinement of keyboard accompaniment during this period; and the subsequent keyboard legacy from Marpurg to Mendelssohn.

Earliest Bach Musical Experiences, Works

Bach's first formative musical training was with his older brother, organist Johann Christoph (1671-1721, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Christoph_Bach_(organist_at_Ohrdruf) at Ohrdorf from 1695 to 1700. Christoph copied two books, the Möller Manuscript (http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2004/mar04/bach_moller.htm) and Andreas Bach Book (https://www.gramophone.co.uk/review/the-andreas-bach-book) of 100 keyboard works in a cross-section of German, French and Italian composers of the later 17th and early 18th century (http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674588943), says Robert Hill.⁴ "About one quarter of the pieces are attributed to J. S. Bach," says Hill. "Yet many of these attributions have long been controversial, because the style of these works was difficult to reconcile with the keyboard style of the mature Bach." The two books are music for organ or clavier with similar forms, primarily early studies of preludes, fugues and fantasias in improvisatory style as well as overtures (dance suites) and individual pieces for keyboard, and a few chorale settings for organ. With the French dance style, Bach absorbs the German tradition found in sonatas, toccatas, preludes and fugues," observes David Schulenberg.⁵ The best-known early pieces are the Capriccio on the Departure of a Beloved Brother in B flat major, BWV 992 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnYNjhkBNiw), and Aria & Variations in the Italian Style in A minor, BWV 989 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpgCkQXmz8g).

Both the teenage Bach and Handel in the first years of the 18th century composed miniature French dance suites, then called ouvertures or suites de pièces, which show their beginning mastery of compositional style as well as remarkable similarities, says Peter Williams,⁶ that continued throughout their musical careers. The two works are Bach's Ouverture in F Major, BWV 820 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_W9nBfu3j0, and Handel's Ouverture (Suite) in D minor, HWV 449 https://video.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?fr=yhs-GenieoYaho-INTtraffic&hsimp=yhs-INTtraffic&hspart=GenieoYaho&p=handel+suite+hwv+449+youtube#id=3&vid=80d91a4d5a2f01e81270a10ff06303b5&action=click. The music traditionally begins with an expansive bi-partite overture, prelude and fugue in dotted figurae, which both composers would exploit in various settings throughout their lives. The two treatments "convey two methods used by Lully and his successors," says Williams, with various idiomatic subtleties and "very French elements" in their harmonies." Handel uses motivic voice to voice figures and Bach provides characteristics ornaments. They show "a precociously clever and musical ability to pick up foreign idioms and stylistic nuance." The succeeding "fugue subjects themselves are both very typical of the genre and may well have the same [slow] tempo despite the different notations," as well as having "that fleeting, scurrying quality which is not actually jig-like," he says (Ibid.: 187).

Bach-Handel Connections

The chief difference in the two works is Handel's use of the typical suite dances (Allemande, Courante, Sarabande, Aria: Variations 1-7, Gigue, Menuet) while Bach resorts to more generic movements Overture, Entree, Menuet-Trio, Bouree, Gigue). Bach's greatest influence was "hearing French music at the [Lüneberg] Celle Court," he suggests. Handel's exposure most likely was during his stay in Hamburg (1703-06), under the influence of multi-national opera where his Almira has French dances (https://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/dc.asp?dc=D_CDH55324). Recently Williams and Ton Koopman (http://bach-cantatas.com/NVP/Koopman-T-Profile.htm: last paragraph, "Koopman concluded . . .") have suggested that Bach met Handel at the Hamburg Opera, about December 1705 to January 1706. Williams offers a more recent special perspective on authenticity in Bach's Ouverture in F Major, BWV 820, in his second Bach biography:⁷ "Unfortunately, too little is certain about such 'early works of J. S. Bach' as the F-Major Overture, BWV 820, for anyone to be confident that it is totally authentic and thus an index of how well he had assimilated style-details. It's very fidelity to the harmony, rhythms and melody typical of a Parisian composer c. 1690 leaves one to wonder whether it was an arrangement of an imported work or a very clever and musical imitation." Thus some questionable Bach compositions may be his assimilation of others' works.

Of particular interest in the use of keyboard instruments in obbligato roles as a forerunner to the keyboard concerto is the initial, coincidental use of the organ in vocal compositions of Handel and Bach in 1707/8, the former in Rome and the latter in Mühlhausen, says Butt (Ibid.: 93ff).⁸ Handel in the spring of 1707 in his first oratorio, Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno, uses in the instrumental sonata (No. 19) the organ as a solo with strings and oboe, followed by another obbligato role in the ensuing Pleasure aria, observes Butt. A year later, on Easter Sunday, Handel's second oratorio, La Resurrezione, also used the harpsichord as part of a massive ensemble of more than 40 instruments. Earlier, on 4 February 1708, Bach premiered his Town Council Cantata 71, "Gott is mein König," with a solo part for organ (no 2), Ich bin nun achtzig Jahr (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKAMnyl80Ho: SHOW MORE, 2:00). Handel's 1707 Salve Regina, HWV 241, in the central movement [Largo] employs a solo organ in dialogue with the strings (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXXMJMuHYqM: 5:45). In these cases the young composers had an opportunity to demonstrate their abilities as keyboard performers.

"Bach's study of Italian instrumental concertos through transcriptions for organ and harpsichord begins around 1713 [as Bach focused on organ music]; he formulates his first concerto with harpsichord obbligato, shared with flute and violin, in the fifth Brandenburg Concerto towards the end of the decade," says Butt (Ibid.: 85f). Meanwhile Handel revisits the keyboard obbligato concept within a larger work in his opera Rinaldo in 1711 although his first actual organ concertos appear in 1733-34, while Bach is presenting his harpsichord concertos in the Leipzig Collegium musicum concerts about the same time. Bach in Cöthen (1718-22) focused on harpsichord music and again exploited the use of the keyboard as both an accompaniment and an obbligato instrument, for example, in the "Sonata in E Major for Violin and Harpsichord, BWV 1016 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RluDzSDTJZo), and even later used the keyboard organ obbligato in choruses and arias in his cantatas for the third cycle in the summer of 1726 (http://www.bach-cantatas.com/NVD/Organ-Transcriptions.htm).

Cöthen Years: Compositional Flowering, Keyboard Collections

In Cöthen, the beginning of Bach's mature keyboard watershed years, two factors stand out: a possible encounter between Bach and Handel in 1719 in Dresden at the dedication of the new opera house, according to Peter Williams, and Bach's first significant keyboard compositions about 1719-20, says Finscher. In Dresden following the Bach notorious contest with Louis Marchand in late 1717 and Bach's unsuccessful attempt to meet Handel in Halle in the summer of 1719 (Dok 3: 443, 927), Bach and Handel may have met during September when Handel may have been seeking to succeed Antonio Lotti as royal opera-composer, suggests Peter Williams in his third and final Bach biography.⁹ Perhaps Dresden premierminister Count Jakob Heinrich von Flemming "was contriving to get Bach and Handel together in the city," although there is no documentation. About 1720 various keyboard compositional breakthroughs are recorded, according to Finscher, citing Heinrich Bessler (Ibid.: 281f). Bach's Weimar "cantabile organ style was joined by the expressive keyboard style," which Emmanuel introduced into the Empfindsamkeit Styl (sentimental style) in the 1750s. Expressive polyphony and dynamics are found in the Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue in D minor, BWV 903 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHTMq-5B9Co), a surprise forerunner of Sturm und Drang (storm and stress, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturm_und_Drang). Other keyboard developments involve "character subjects" in keyboard fugues, the shift "from predominantly structural to predominantly individual ways of composing," such as poignant slow movements, and thematic development for structural unity in individual, contrasting movements in instrumental concertos.

The Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue is both a unique composition, foreshadowing later styles, and a work which Bach evolved over 10 years in three stages and which was subjected in reception history to intense accretions through broad dissemination by successive generations, observes George B. Stauffer in his essay.¹⁰ At the same time, it reveals a "perpetual state of modernity" while being equally suitable to performance on the clavichord, harpsichord and fortepiano, observes Stauffer (Ibid.: 164f). This progressive free-fantasia experienced "a prolonged period of gestation." The earliest version dates to about 1720 with an exploratory fantasia and a fully formed fugue, the second stage reworked the opening, and the third stage in Bach's hand about 1730 is his final version. "The plethora of small variants suggests that Bach may have owned several autographs with slightly different readings," says Stauffer (Ibid.: 173), "lending them out intermittently to students for the purpose of copying. Or he may have possessed only one autograph , but verbally passed on recommendations for improvements in the piece as his students wrote it out. Or it may be that Wilhelm Friedemann and Johann Christian Kittel willfully introduced the variants that distinguished the manuscripts of their circles from those of others. The lack of pre-1750 source materials prevents us from determining which case was true." Various accretions starting after 1750 involved numerous changes in markings and notations as well as individual dynamic markings, notations, arpeggios, and additional chords and ornaments. Prints beginning in 1802 show further changes, reflecting "a performance tradition from Sebastian to Friedemann to Johann Nikolaus Forkel to his students in "a prolonged period of gestation," says Stauffer (Ibid.: 164). "And the work's rapid changes in emotion and bold harmonic digressions insured its adoption by a generation of composers ruled by Sturm und Drang passions."

During his Cöthen period, Bach's keyboard music evolved into varied collections that include the home studies for Friedemann's Klavierbüchlein (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klavierbüchlein_für_Wilhelm_Friedemann_Bach); contrapuntal studies of the 15 three-part Inventions, BWV 772-786, and the 15 two-part Sinfonias, BWV 787-801, completed in Leipzig in 1723 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inventions_and_Sinfonias_(Bach); and Book 1 preludes and fugues of the Well-Tempered Clavier (WTC), BWV 846-869 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notebook_for_Anna_Magdalena_Bach). Laid out in its final 1723 version as a miniature of the WTC in traditional keys, the inventions offer "absolute rigor while maintaining great expressiveness," says Nicholas Kenyon,¹¹ while presenting both contrapuntal and dance passages (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYukikOyC8Q). "Bach seems to have encouraged his pupils, not only to copy and ornament these works but probably to imitate them in a new inventions as well — gaining in this way a partial sense, as he expressed in the Foreword, of the compositional process," says David Montgomery.¹² The Friedemann 1720 teaching collection includes the inventions and 11 of the WTC preludes and fugues, as well as individual menuets and preludes (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ild-QmTGLuc). The full first 24 WTC preludes and fugues of the two-volume "Great 48" in all keys, were the treasure of Bach performers in the second half of the 18th century (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fiTTjIFR30).

Leipzig: Pedagogy, Publication

In order to demonstrate his abilities to teach music as part of the duties of cantor in Leipzig, including keyboard and composition, Bach had available in early 1723 three exemplary practical textbooks of keyboard music "inventions" which he then applied with his students at the Thomas School, observes Wolff in an essay (Ibid.: 133ff): the Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1; the Aufrichtige Anleitung (Upright Instruction) book, and the Orgel-Büchlein (Little Organ Book). These served both as learning tools to play the keyboard as well as to "acquire a foretaste of composition," says Wolff.

Blending poetic aesthetics, modern psychology, and musical exegesis, Peter Williams explores the genesis of Bach's first publication of the Six Partitas (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partitas_for_keyboard_(Bach)), in the Clavierübung I.¹³ The precedents for the dance music's quality and originality involved various antecedent facsuch as the German keyboard tradition of Johann Adam Reincken's transcriptions and Johann Kuhnau's published suites derived from Italian tradition, and the French dance tradition of Jean-Philippe Rameau, Handel's Eight Suites (1719-20), and Christoph Graupner's studies (1718, 1722).¹⁴ To their harmonic plans Bach forges a new programmatic genre from varieties of dance forms and contemporary performance techniques — a "calculated diversity" and "systematic variety." "A case could probably be made for Rameau's book of c. 1728 contributing to the melting pot from which was to come the Goldberg Variations," says Williams (Ibid.: 147). "And yet, try as he might, Bach does not quite catch popular taste," Williams suggests. "It eludes him, the music is too uncanny," freshly conceived, discreet virtuosity, and "the intimacies of the harpsichord with a deftness and economy unique ion the German repertory," he concludes (Ibid,: 155f).

|Finally, Bach establishes a keyboard accompaniment tradition that may seem an anachronism in the succeeding galant and "sentimental style," found in Emmanuel's 1753 treatise on a different approach to figured bass realization," observes David Schulenberg in an essay.¹⁵ Emmanuel "most elegant taste" ignores traditional temperament and intonation, instead emphasizing the "singing style," thin textures, harmonic and melodic simplicity, and aversion to harsh and aggressive sonorities. Even the execution of ornaments becomes more simple yet striking as the more subtle pianoforte gains ascendency. Schulenberg suggests that Bach's improvisation of the royal theme in Berlin in 1747 shows that "the pianoforte may already have been the preferred instrument for accompaniment at the court," and cites Mary Oleskiewicz's belief that the instrument "be considered for the continuo part of the trio sonata in the Musical Offering (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6Nb1tpHnlw).

Epilogue

Although the pianoforte was invented about 1700, with its hammered instead of plucked strings for variable dynamics, it did not find widespread use until after 1750, supplanting the harpsichord and organ as the primary keyboard instrument. The "Italianate keyboard sonata finally superseded the suite as the preferred form for keyboard music in the 1740s," says Davitt Moroney in his keyboard essay.¹⁶ Bach represented a true fusion of German and French harpsichord traditions. "Descriptions of Bach at the keyboard mention the total immobility of his body, the closeness of his hands to the keyboard, the fact that the fingers hardly seem to move at all," he says (Ibid.: 120). "All these points, along with many more precise precepts, are absolutely central to the French classical technique . . . ."

Keyboard music was at the heart of the Bach Revival in the 19th century. Whereas theorists and students in the second half of the 18th century championed the four-part chorales as the sone qua non of harmony and the fugues in counterpoint, "the diversity of engagement of his keyboard works during that time" is central to the flowering of detail and diversity. Here are "the dissemination of sources, production of editions, performance traditions, widespread influence, and ever-expanding reach of Bach's music during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries," says Matthew Dirst.¹⁷ "I have tried to highlight that diversity by looking closely at the manifestations, some independent, some overlapping, of the keen interest in Bach's keyboard works between 1750 and 1850," says Dirst (Ibid: 169).

FOOTNOTES

¹ John Butt, Chapter 5, "Towards a genealogy of the keyboard concerto," in The Keyboard in Baroque Europe, ed. Christopher Hogwood (Cambridge University Press, 2003, 93ff), Festschrift for Gustav Leonhardt.
² Ludwig Finscher, "Bach in the eighteenth century," in Bach Studies (1), ed. Don O. Franklin (Cambridge University Press, 1989: 281ff).
³ Christoph Wolff, "Apropos Bach the teacher and practical philosopher," in The Keyboard in Barque Europe (Ibid.: 183ff).
⁴ Robert Hill, "Harpsichord Music of the young Johann Sebastian Bach (Vol. 1); Edition Bachakademie, Vol. 102, http://www.bach-cantatas.com/NVP/Hill-Robert.htm: K-4; short biography, http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Bio/Hill-Robert.htm.
⁵ David Schulenberg, "The Early Keyboard Works," in The Keyboard Music of J. S. Bach, 1st edition (New York: Schirmir Books, 1992: 23).
⁶ Peter Williams,"French overture conventions in the hands of the young Bach and Handel," in The Keyboard in Baroque Europe (Ibid.: 183ff).
⁷ Peter Williams: "Early years, 1685-1703: French tastes," in J. S. Bach: A Life in Music (Cambridge University Press< 2007: 31).
⁸ Cited in Bach Yahoo Group, "Keyboard Music Intro.: Repertory, Development, Reception," https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/BachCantatas/conversations/messages/39701).
⁹ Peter Williams, Bach: A Musical Biography (Cambridge University Press, 2016: 177).
¹⁰ George B. Stauffer, "'This fantasia . . . never had its like': on the enigma and chronology of Bach's Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue," BWV 903, in Bach Studies (1) (Ibid.: 160ff).
¹¹ Nicholas Kenyon, "Keyboard Music," in The Faber Pocket Guide to Bach (London: Faber & Faber, 2011: 394ff).
¹² David Montgomery, "Bach: Inventions / Sinfonias," liner notes to the Gustav Leonhardt 1974 recording, https://www.bach-cantatas.com/NVP/Leonhardt.htm#SoloKey: K-7.
¹³ Peter Williams, "Is there an anxiety of influence discernible in J. S. Bach's Clavierübung I?, in The Keyboard in Barque Europe (Ibid.: 140ff).
¹⁴ For the historical influences on Bach's keyboard music, see "Keyboard Music: Historical Background, 1600-1750," https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/BachCantatas/conversations/messages/39712.
¹⁵ David Schulenberg, "Developments in keyboard accompaniment from J. S. to C. P. E. Bach," in The Keyboard in Baroque Europe (Ibid.: 157ff).
¹⁶ Davitt Moroney, "A Germanic Art de Toucher, or a French Wahre Art?," in The Keyboard in Baroque Europe (Ibid.: 116).
¹⁷ Matthew Dirst, in Engaging Bach: The Keyboard Legacy from Marpurg to Mendelssohn (Cambridge University Press, 2012: xii); details, http://assets.cambridge.org/97805216/51608/frontmatter/9780521651608_frontmatter.pdf.

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To come: Keyboard Recordings, Historical, Contemporary.