Bach Keyboard Music
Historical Background, 1600-1750

Keyboard Music: Historical Background, 1600-1750

William L. Hoffman wrote (April 23, 2019):
Bach represented the epitome and culmination of keyboard composition in the Baroque Era, as he composed using pan-national styles, forms and techniques, sometimes in "mixed" (misto) format. He embraced a century-long tradition of keyboard composition and practice, created the greatest variety of keyboard works, and demonstrated a performing capability beyond virtually all other contemporary composer-performers. Composition of keyboard music dominated Bach's early compositional interests with the harpsichord enabling Bach to project the contrapuntal textures essential in composition, observes David Schulenberg in his study of the Baroque keyboard tradition.¹

Keyboard composition as a distinct form began with the Baroque about 1600 and its first major proponent was the Italian master Girolamo Frescobaldi, who absorbed the principles primarily involving Claudio Monteverdi through vocal madrigals in the contemporary Second Practice. Frescobaldi's best known work is Fiori musicali (Musical flowers), liturgical organ music (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiori_musicali), first published in 1635. He was "the most copied and influential of all keyboard composers in Germany during the second half of the seventeenth century," says Anthony Newcomb in his monograph.² The European-traveling Johann Jacob Froberger's influence in northern Germany impacted most on Buxtehude while Bach as a young man owned the Fiori musicale. The Italian keyboard style of composition progressed through French stylistic emphases on dance music suites (pieces) and ornamentation which Bach absorbed, used and taught. Later in the 17th century the North German Organ School amalgamated these traditions with its own special, nationalistic style and perspective through the art of fugue and the adaptation of the Lutheran chorale. In the first half of the 18th century the virtuosi Frenchmen François Couperin and Jean Philippe Rameau perfected the dance suite and the art of ornamentation, the Italian Domenico Scarlatti developed the sonata form, and Bach embraced various traditions, summarized the teachings of the past while composing in the newest styles, thereby bringing to poerfection the new "Common Practice Period" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_practice_period).

Girolamo Frescobaldi

The training of keyboard players emphasized "the skills needed to accompany others and to improvise preludes with fugues, including training in counterpoint and figured bass realization," Schulenberg says (Ibid.: 229)."For this reason a large portion of the solo keyboard repertory of the Baroque consists of works that were intended not for public performance but for private study and practice, as models or examples of correct improvisation or counterpoint." Bach followed the Italian keyboard tradition established by Girolamo Frescobaldi (1583-1643, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girolamo_Frescobaldi), who flourished "in an environment of musical innovation and experimentation" at the beginning of the Baroque era, says Schulenberg, most notably in the development of the toccata (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toccata), an improvisatory work. With the traditional forms such as the chaconne (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaconne) and passacaglia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passacaglia), Frescobaldi developed these interrelated vocal forms into continuous, dance-like partita keyboard variations, "Partite sopra Passacagli" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=lJDUugxsiNM), the central work in his last (1637) collection of keyboard pieces, Toccate e partite d'intavolatura, Libro 1, observes Alexander Silberger in his keyboard essay in the Gustav Leonhardt 2003 festschrift.³ Typical Frescobaldi's multi-sectional work mixing free (improvisatory) and contrapuntal passages with "ceaseless invention" is his "Toccata 7" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELHjLVh1hlk) from his 1627 anthology, Toccatas and Partitas, Book 2.

"Frescobaldi was to have almost as great an impact on writing for the organ and other keyboard instruments in the later Baroque period as Claudio Monteverdi did on the era's vocal music," says encyclopedia.com (https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/culture-magazines/baroque-keyboard-music). "Like Monteverdi, though, Frescobaldi's compositions remained an amalgam of older Renaissance styles with those of the developing Baroque. He wrote many works for keyboard soloists that were intended to sound like improvisations and which also included stylistic elements of late-Renaissance polyphony. These include fantasias, toccatas, and variations, or, as Frescobaldi termed them, 'partitas'." "The word 'toccata' comes from the Italian for 'touch,' and works of this sort had developed in the sixteenth century to display a performer's virtuosity on the lute or at the keyboard. It became common, in part through Frescobaldi's published works for the organ, to pair these free, seemingly improvised pieces with a contrasting one in which the counterpoint was carefully worked out following strict rules. Frescobaldi used many terms to describe these contrapuntal movements, although in English they have come to be known as "fugues'."

Johann Jacob Froberger

Frescobaldi's influence extended far beyond Italy to Germany and France where composers "emulated his mastery of strict counterpoint and his improvisatory freedom," says Schulenberg (Ibid., "Baroque Keyboard Music in France and German," 236). By 1650 a distinctive French style of keyboard composition was well established" while there and in Germany "clear distinctions were emerging" between music for organ and stringed keyboard instruments, led by the harpsichord. "German composers combined elements of the French and Italian styles, creating their own varieties of music" "that often reflected a special interest in complex counterpoint." The French school of keyboard composers, notably Jacques Champion de Chambonnières, Jean Henry d'Anglebert and the Couperin family, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Couperin_family), were preceded by German composer Johann Jacob Froberger (1616-67), who studied with Frescobaldi in Rome in 1641 and was widely traveled throughout Europe at mid-century, initially influencing the development of the French dance suite and later the North German organ music school. Froberger developed the French keyboard suite (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suite_(music)), comprised of allemande, courante, sarabande, and gigue, establishing them as representative of the genre which continued well into the next century, notably in Bach's keyboard Partitas, BWV 825-830) and orchestral suites which add other dances. His three part "Suite 20 in D," FbWV 620 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwQ4mzaj-PY), is a later (1660) memorial tribute omitting the opening allemande but including emblems, stylistic symbols such as descending bass lines in the manner of a French tombeau memorial work or the style brisé, broken chordal style also found in lute music. Frescobaldi also composed toccatas as well as contrapuntal free-form fantasias and ricercars. Meanwhile, he also composed several character pieces bearing descriptive titles.

Froberger's "historical importance has always rested on his 30 harpsichord suites," says J. Buelow in his monograph. They are grouped by tonality usually in the standard form of allemande, courante, sarabande, and gigue and these dances are in symmetrical, binary form, being largely homophonic, "developing to a considerable extent the style brisé, "to maintain an interesting keyboard texture suggesting contrapuntal independence of parts," says Buelow (Ibid.: 163).⁴ While his individual dances resemble the earlier music of the French school, Froberger "expanded significantly the expressive dimension of the allemande, and in most of the suites it is the most elaborate piece." His trips throughout Europe in the mid century increased his skills, brought an amalgamation of Italian and French styles of composition, and "encouraged a widespread dissemination of his works," says Rudolf Rasch in his study.⁵

"Although only two of Froberger's works were published during his lifetime, his music was widely spread in Europe in hand-written copies, and he was one of the most famous composers of the era," says Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Jakob_Froberger). "Because of his travels and his ability to absorb various national styles and incorporate them into his music, Froberger, along with other cosmopolitan composers such as Johann Kaspar Kerll and Georg Muffat, contributed greatly to the exchange of musical traditions in Europe. Finally, he was among the first major keyboard composers in history and the first to focus equally on both harpsichord/clavichord and organ. Froberger's compositions were known to and studied by, among many others, Johann Pachelbel, Dieterich Buxtehude, Georg Muffat and his son Gottlieb Muffat, Johann Caspar Kerll, Matthias Weckmann, Louis Couperin, Johann Kirnberger, Johann Nikolaus Forkel, Georg Böhm, George Handel and Johann Sebastian Bach. Furthermore, copies in Mozart's hand of the Hexachord Fantasia survive, and even Beethoven knew Froberger's work through Albrechtsberger's teachings. The profound influence on Louis Couperin made Froberger partially responsible for the change Couperin brought into the French organ tradition (as well as for the development of the unmeasured prelude, which Couperin cultivated)."

North German Organ School, French Influences

During the 17th century, German musicians developed "new genres that extended both free and contrapuntal idioms present in the Fresobaldian toccata," says Schulenberg (Ibid.:, "Music for Solo Instruments II": 248). The geographical emphasis was in northern Germany and its proximity to the Netherlands, particularly beginning with organist Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck (1562-1621). "Sweelinck's pupils included the core of what was to become the north German organ school: Jacob Praetorius II, Heinrich Scheidemann, Paul Siefert, Melchior Schildt and Samuel and Gottfried Scheidt," says Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Pieterszoon_Sweelinck. The keyboard emphasis shifted to organs, both the building of instruments and the development of idiomatic repertory, beyond equal in the music world. The North German organ school's most distinctive work was in the stylus fantasticus (fantasy style) of improvisatory, virtuoso writing in preludes. This tradition continued with "later northerners like Franz Tunder, Georg Böhm and Johann Adam Reincken, all cultivated a harmonically and rhythmically complex improvisatory style rooted in the chorale improvisation tradition," says Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_organ_schools). This tradition continued with Bach in his early organ works, who had studied with Buxtehude in 1705 and played before Reincken in 1719. 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.⁶

Only a few composers — and no schools — dominated this interim keyboard period on the harpsichord in the first half. of the 18th century: in France, François Couperin (1668-1733, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/François_Couperin)) with dance suites, followed by Jean-Philipp Rameau (1683-1764, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Philippe_Rameau) with the Pièces de clavecin en concerts of 1741, obbligato and ensemble music; Italian Domenico Scarlatti on the Iberian peninsula (1685-1757, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domenico_Scarlatti) with 555 keyboard sonatas; and Bach, who had early exposure to French music at Celle and was well aware of the French art of ornamentation in Couperin's music. All these performers were virtuosi who composed extremely difficult music, the most involving Scarlatti's hand-crossings and wild leaps. Rameau's collection of concerted keyboard pieces shows the harpsichord in multiple roles as accompanist (basso continuo) but with obbligato and solo roles in instrumental sonatas, a technique that Bach 20 years before had defined in 1720 with his composition of the Sonatas for Violin and Harpsichord, BWV 1014-1019, in which the keyboard is an equal instrument. Here the trio sonata is played by two instruments and is labeled "trios for harpsichord and obbligato violin," a clear indication of where he placed the emphasis," says Moroney in his concise biography.⁷

This was a time of contests and certain situations are legion: the Bach 1719 encounter in Dresden with Louis Marchand (1669-1732, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Marchand); or Handel in Rome c.1708, related by biographer Mainwaring, instructing Corelli in new techniques or equaling Scarlatti (see https://www.classicfm.com/composers/bach/guides/bach-v-marchand-duel-never-was/). An interesting perspective on the Bach-Marchand contest is offered in Moroney's keyboard essay ("Couperin (1716) and Bach," Ibid.). A cultural subtext between the styles of playing is suggested where, "Contrary to a view that is still commonly held, the two men did indeed meet one evening, for a Franco-German contest in harpsichord playing. (It was only for the organ contest the next day that Marchand apparently decided that discretion was the better part of valor.)" At the same time, Bach was intimately familiar with Couperin's music, using French pieces for the family's household gatherings and teaching them to his pupils. "The True Art of Playing the Harpsichord" was codified by Emmanuel Bach in 1753 in his treatise, Versucht über die wahre Art das Clavier zu spielen (Essay on the true art of playing the keyboard). Here, he says in retrospect that the art is close to his father's as "a strict personal style, the product of a Germanic tradition but above all Bach's own reflection," says Moroney in his keyboard essay (Ibid.: 117). In his father's Obituary in 1754, Emmanuel says his father "very willingly gave Marchand credit for a beautiful and very correct style of playing," cites Moroney. Chauvinism aside, Couperin and Bach were "the two great players, who by their teaching and example, had taught a whole generation of harpsichordists how to touch both the heart and the ear, and thereby give the harpsichord a soul."

FOOTNOTES
¹ David Schulenberg, "Music for Solo Instruments," in Music of the Baroque, 2nd. ed. (New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008: 227).
² Anthony Newcomb, "Girolamo Frescobaldi," in The New Grove Italian Baroque Masters (New York: W. W. Norton, 1984: 103.
³ Alexander Silberger, "On Frescobaldi's recreation of the chaconne and the passacaglia," in The in Baroque Europe, ed. Christopher Hogwood (Cambridge University Press, 2003, 18), Festschrift for Gustav Leonhardt.
⁴ George J Buelow, "Johann Jacob Froberger," in The New Grove North European Baroque Masters (New York: W. W.Norton, 1985: 162f).
⁵ Rudolf Rasch, "Johann Jacob Froberger's travels 1649-1653," in The Keyboard in Baroque Europe (Ibid.: 31).
⁶ Davitt Moroney, "A Germanic art de Toucher, or a French Wahre Art?," in The Keyboard in Baroque Europe (Ibid.: 116).
⁷ Davitt Moroney, Bach: An extraordinary Life (London: Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music, 2000: 46).

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TO COME: Perspectives on Bach's keyboard playing, teaching, and composing.