E NG AGI NG BAC H

More than any other part of his output, the Bach keyboard works
conveyed to generations of admirers the essence of his inimitable
art. heir varied responses to this repertoire – in scholarly and more
popular kinds of writing, public lectures, musical composition and
transcription, pedagogical programs, performances, and in edi-
tions – ensured its survival and broadened its creator’s appeal. he
early reception of this music also continues to affect how we under-
stand and value it, though we rarely recognize that historical con-
tinuity. Organized around key episodes in the reception of Bach’s
keyboard works from his own day to the middle of the nineteenth
century, Engaging Bach shows how his remarkable and long-lasting
legacy took shape amid epochal changes in European musical
thought and practice.

m at t h e w di r s t is Associate Professor of Music at the Moores

School of Music, University of Houston, and also serves as Artistic
Director of the period-instrument group Ars Lyrica Houston. An
acclaimed harpsichordist and organist, he is the first American
musician to win major international prizes in both instruments.
Winner of the William H. Scheide Prize (2004) from the American
Bach Society for an essay on the reception of Bach’s music in
America, he pursues research and performance in more or less equal
measure. His publications address the music of Bach and its recep-
tion, while his recordings feature music of François and Armand-
Louis Couperin, Alessandro and Domenico Scarlatti, Johann Adolf
Hasse, and J. S. Bach.
M USIC A L PE R FOR M A NC E A N D R EC E P T ION
General editors John Butt and Laurence Dreyfus

his series continues the aim of Cambridge Musical Texts and Monographs to
publish books centered on the history of musical instruments and the history of
performance, but broadens the focus to include musical reception in relation to
performance and as a reflection of period expectations and practices.

Published titles
John Butt
Playing with History: he Historical Approach to Musical Performance
James Garratt
Palestrina and the German Romantic Imagination: Interpreting Historicism in
Nineteenth-Century Music
John Haines
Eight Centuries of Troubadours and Trouvères: he Changing Identity of Medieval
Music
Christopher Hogwood (ed.)
he Keyboard in Baroque Europe
Daniel Leech-Wilkinson
he Modern Invention of Medieval Music: Scholarship, Ideology, Performance
Michael Musgrave and Bernard Sherman (eds.)
Performing Brahms: Early Evidence of Performance Style
Stewart Pollens
Stradivari
Tilman Skowroneck
Beethoven the Pianist
David Ponsford
he French Organ in the Reign of Louis XIV
David Yearsley
Bach’s Feet: he Organ Pedals in European Culture
Bettina Varwig
Histories of Heinrich Schütz
Matthew Dirst
Engaging Bach: he Keyboard Legacy from Marpurg to Mendelssohn
 E NG AGI NG BACH
he Keyboard Legacy from Marpurg to Mendelssohn

M AT T H E W DI R S T
University of Houston
 c a mbr idge u ni v er sit y pr ess
Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town,
Singapore, São Paulo, Delhi, Mexico City
Cambridge University Press
he Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK

Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York

www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521651608

© Matthew Dirst 2012

h is publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception

and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 2012

Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge

A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data

Dirst, Matthew Charles.
Engaging Bach : the keyboard legacy from Marpurg to Mendelssohn / Matthew Dirst.
p. cm. – (Musical performance and reception)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
I S B N 978-0-521-65160-8 (hardback)
1. Bach, Johann Sebastian, 1685–1750–Criticism and interpretation. 2. Bach, Johann
Sebastian, 1685–1750. Keyboard music. 3. Keyboard instrument
music–18th century–History and criticism. 4. Music–18th century–
History and criticism. I. Title.
ML410.B13D59 2012
786.092–dc23
2011048384

I S B N 978-0-521-65160-8 hardback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or

accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in
this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is,
or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
 Contents

List of illustrations page vi

List of musical examples vii
List of tables x
Preface xi
List of abbreviations xiii

pa r t i t h e p o s t h u mou s r e a s s e s s m e n t
of s e l e c t e d wor k s 1
1 Why the keyboard works? 3
2 Inventing the Bach chorale 34
3 What Mozart learned from Bach 55

pa r t i i di v e rg e n t s t r e a m s of r e c e p t ion
i n t h e e a r ly n i n e t e e n t h c e n t u r y 87
4 A bürgerlicher Bach: turn-of-the-century German advocacy 89
5 he virtuous fugue: English reception to 1840 119
6 Bach for whom? Modes of interpretation and performance,
1820–1850 143
Epilogue 169

Select bibliography 172

Index 183

v
 Illustrations

2.1 Christoph Graupner, Neu vermehrtes Darmstädtliches

Choral-Buch (1728), no. 29 (courtesy of the Music Division,
New York Public Library for the Performing Arts; Astor,
Lenox, and Tilden Foundations) page 42
2.2 Chur Pfälzisches allgemeines reformirtes Gesang-Buch (1763),
no. 392 (courtesy of the Music Division, New York Public
Library for the Performing Arts; Astor, Lenox, and Tilden
Foundations) 42
2.3 Daniel Vetter, Musicalische Kirch- und Hauss-Ergötzlichkeit
(Leipzig, 1709/1713; Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 1985),
no. 15 (courtesy of Georg Olms Verlag) 43
2.4 Daniel Vetter, Musicalische Kirch- und Hauss-Ergötzlichkeit
(Leipzig, 1709/1713; Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 1985),
no. 16 (courtesy of Georg Olms Verlag) 43
2.5 Johann Friedrich Doles, Melodien zu Herrn Prof. C. F. Gellerts
Geistlichen Oden und Liedern (1758), no. 38 (courtesy of the
Music Division, New York Public Library for the Performing
Arts; Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations) 44
2.6 J. S. Bach’s vierstimmige Choralgesänge, Vol. I, ed. C. P. E.
Bach (Berlin, Leipzig: F. W. Birnsteil, 1765), nos. 1–2
(courtesy of the British Library Board) 47
3.1 G. F. Handel, sketch of the “Amen” fugue from Messiah (no. 1)
(courtesy of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge) 63
3.2 G. F. Handel, sketch of the “Amen” fugue from Messiah (no. 2)
(courtesy of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge) 64
3.3 G. F. Handel, sketch of the “Amen” fugue from Messiah (no. 4)
(courtesy of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge) 72

vi
 Musical examples

1.1 J. S. Bach, “Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis,” BWV 21/2,

mm. 1–6 page 7
1.2 J. S. Bach, Fugue from Sonata in A minor, BWV 1003/2,
mm. 1–18 13
1.3 J. S. Bach, Fugue in B flat major from WTC, Book II,
BWV 890/2, mm. 32–36 14
1.4 J. S. Bach, “Nimm, was dein ist, und gehe hin,” BWV
144/1, mm. 1–15 15
1.5 J. S. Bach, Sarabande from Suite in E major, BWV 817/3,
mm. 1–8 21
1.6 J. S. Bach, Fugue in F minor from WTC, Book II,
BWV 881/2, mm. 1–14 26
1.7 J. S. Bach, Prelude in G sharp minor from WTC, Book I,
BWV 863, mm. 1–11 33
2.1 (a) J. S. Bach, “Christ lag in Todesbanden,” BWV 277; (b)
G. P. Telemann, “Christ lag in Todesbanden,” Fast allgemeines
Evangelisch-Musicalisches Lieder-Buch (1730) 52
3.1 (a) W. A. Mozart, “Kyrie eleison,” from Requiem, K. 626;
(b) J. S. Bach, Fugue in A minor from WTC, Book II, BWV
889/2; (c) G. F. Handel, “And with His Stripes,” from Messiah;
(d) Joseph Haydn, Finale to String Quartet in F minor,
Op. 20/5 58
3.2 Extract from F. W. Marpurg, Abhandlung von der Fuge,
Vol. II (1754), Tab. LII (example provided by C. P. E. Bach) 62
3.3 Hypothetical continuation of G. F. Handel, “Amen” from
Messiah 64
3.4 W. A. Mozart, “In te Domine speravi” from Te Deum,
K. 141 (1769) 68
3.5 W. A. Mozart, “Cum sancto spiritu” from Mass in
C major, K. 66 (1769), mm. 386–393 68
3.6 W. A. Mozart, Finale to String Quartet in F major,
K. 168, mm. 1–7 68
3.7 W. A. Mozart, Finale to String Quartet in F major,
K. 168, mm. 72–77 69

vii
viii List of musical examples

3.8 W. A. Mozart, Finale to String Quartet in F major,

K. 168: fugue subject. Unused device S – 0/+ 8 at 70
3.9 W. A. Mozart, Finale to String Quartet in D minor,
K. 173 (early version), mm. 26–29 70
3.10 W. A. Mozart, Finale to String Quartet in D minor,
K. 173 (final version), mm. 35–42 70
3.11 W. A. Mozart, Finale to String Quartet in D minor,
K. 173 (final version), mm. 62–72 71
3.12 G. F. Handel, “Amen” fugue from Messiah, mm. 132–135 72
3.13 W. A. Mozart, Finale to String Quartet in G major,
K. 487, mm. 1–8 73
3.14 (a) W. A. Mozart, Fugue in C major, K. 394/2,
mm. 1–3; (b) J. S. Bach, Fugue in C major from
WTC, Book I, BWV 871/2, mm. 1–3 74
3.15 (a) W. A. Mozart, Fugue in C major, K. 394/2, mm.
28–31; (b) J. S. Bach, Fugue in C minor from WTC,
Book II, BWV 871/2, mm. 14–16 75
3.16 W. A. Mozart, Fugue in C major, K. 394/2, mm. 6–7 75
3.17 W. A. Mozart, Fugue in C major, K. 394/2: fugue
subject. Unused device of S + 2/– 7 at � 76
3.18 W. A. Mozart, “Cum sancto spiritu” from Mass in
C minor, K. 427 76
3.19 W. A. Mozart, “Cum sancto spiritu” from Mass in
C minor, K. 427, mm. 165–177 (choral parts only) 77
3.20 W. A. Mozart, Fugue in C minor, K. 426, mm. 1–5 79
3.21 W. A. Mozart, Fugue in C minor, K. 426: (a) mm.
35–38 (keyboard I); (b) mm. 39–41 (keyboard II);
(c) mm. 44–46 (I, r.h.; II, l.h.) 80
3.22 W. A. Mozart, Fugue in C minor, K. 426, mm.
47–50 (II, r.h.; I, l.h.) 81
3.23 W. A. Mozart, Fugue in C minor, K. 426, mm. 82–87 81
3.24 W. A. Mozart, Fugue in C minor, K. 426, mm. 103–108 82
3.25 J. S. Bach, Fugue in C minor from WTC, Book II,
BWV 871/2, mm. 23–25 83
4.1 J. S. Bach: (a) Prelude in E minor, BWV 855a, mm. 1–2;
(b) Prelude in E minor, BWV 855, mm. 1–2 110
6.1 J. S. Bach/W. A. Mozart, Fugue in C minor,
K. 405/BWV 871/2, mm. 23–25 148
6.2 J. S. Bach/W. A. Mozart, Fugue in C minor,
K. 405/BWV 871/2, mm. 16–18 148
 List of musical examples ix

6.3 (a) W. A. Mozart/J. S. Bach, Fugue in C minor, K. 405/

BWV 871/2, mm. 9–10; (b) J. S. Bach, Fugue in C minor,
BWV 871/2, mm. 9–10 149
6.4 J. S. Bach, Chromatic Fantasy, BWV 903: (a) m. 27 and
Felix Mendelssohn’s adaptation; (b) m. 47 and Mendelssohn’s
adaptation 154
 Tables

3.1 Potential canonic devices for W. A. Mozart, Quartet

No. 13 in D minor, K. 173, Finale page 71
3.2 Fugal devices in W. A. Mozart, Fugue in C minor, K. 426 79
4.1 Editions of J. S. Bach, he Well-Tempered Clavier, to 1850 92
4.2 First editions of the Bach works from 1750–1829 113
5.1 Hand copies of Bach’s music in England, 1750–1810 121
5.2 Bach excerpts in English publications, 1770–1810 124
5.3 English editions of Bach’s keyboard music to 1820 126

x
 Preface

What makes the music of Johann Sebastian Bach so endlessly fascinating?

Answers to that question typically begin by acknowledging its incred-
ible capacity to engage listeners on multiple levels, from the most eso-
teric of intellectual games to the deepest kind of emotional experience.
Ultimately, the value of any music depends on both what we hear and
how we choose to think about it. In his own day Bach’s most enthusi-
astic admirers were convinced that he had perfected the art of compos-
ition, while others found his works unduly complex and difficult. he
former notion remained a powerful rallying cry for his heirs and follow-
ers, who used it to raise interest in certain parts of his output (with vary-
ing degrees of success) during the hundred years or so between Bach’s
death in 1750 and the middle of the nineteenth century. As various indi-
viduals and communities came to know his keyboard works especially, a
multifaceted legacy took shape, one whose influence has been pervasive
and long-lasting. his book examines some of the most crucial episodes
in that larger story, with an eye towards discerning for each the particular
appeal of this music for those who engaged seriously with it.
Readers, especially those who know this repertoire well, may wonder
whether such things are of more than just historical or academic inter-
est. In the pages that follow, I have tried wherever possible to relate past
thinking about Bach and his keyboard works to ideas that are still widely
shared among professionals and laymen alike and are seldom pondered,
much less challenged. Without giving away too much here, I will affirm
that the study of an art work’s (or an entire repertoire’s) reception pro-
vides valuable perspective – on the many potential ways of understand-
ing, interpreting, and taking inspiration from it – by identifying what
has made and what continues to endow it with unique appeal. his kind
of inquiry reminds us, in other words, why a particular cultural artifact
retains its allure; we learn simultaneously about history and about our-
selves, a process that can be both interesting and humbling.
hough it is difficult to imagine the western musical tradition without
Bach’s four-part chorales or he Well-Tempered Clavier, there was a time
when these iconic works were known only to a select few. In one of the
earliest studies of Bach’s historical legacy, Friedrich Blume characterized

xi
xii Preface

posthumous reception of his music with the help of a familiar double

entendre: knowing that German readers could read “Bach” and think
“brook” or “stream” (its other meanings in that language), Blume observed
that “the rivulets through which a limited and modest Bach tradition
flowed after his death were very narrow.”1 his bucolic image, with its
suggestion that the composer’s essence continued to percolate quietly
through music history until the great public watershed of the nineteenth-
century Bach “Revival,” has been transformed by a wealth of detail about
the dissemination of sources, production of editions, performance tradi-
tions, widespread influence, and ever-expanding reach of Bach’s music
during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Adding mod-
estly to that documentary history, this book highlights the diversity of
engagement with his keyboard works during that time. Individual chap-
ters explore related questions: Why were these works crucial to Bach’s
historical legacy? What impact did they have on their respective genres?
What lessons did they convey to composers and to other students of the
art? Who played this music and why? How did successive generations
and different national communities interpret and perform it? As even a
casual glance at the table of contents will show, I have not tried to be
comprehensive, even for the period in question; instead, I have focused
on those aspects of reception that I have found to be most instructive or
illuminating.
For encouraging my interest in music from an early age and my curios-
ity about Bach in particular, I dedicate this book to my parents, Loretta
and Charles Dirst. Crucial support for this project came from a Research
Initiative Grant and a Faculty Development Leave from the University
of Houston. I am indebted to Cambridge University Press series editors
Laurence Dreyfus and John Butt for their insightful assessments of mul-
tiple drafts, and to Penny Souster, Rebecca Taylor, and Victoria Cooper
for their editorial assistance and extraordinary patience. Individual chap-
ters have benefited from the advice and criticism of numerous individuals,
including Karol Berger, David Ferris, homas Grey, Joshua Rifkin, Susan
Scarrow, David Schulenberg, Yo Tomita, Sixto Wagan, and the collective
wisdom of the Cambridge (MA) Bach Colloquium. My thanks go also to
Jeffrey Ragsdale for realizing the musical examples and to Katie Buehner
for assistance with bibliographic and technical matters. All translations,
unless otherwise credited in the notes, are my own.

1
Friedrich Blume, Johann Sebastian Bach im Wandel der Geschichte (Kassel: Bä renreiter, 1947),
trans. Stanley Godman as Two Centuries of Bach: An Account of Changing Taste (London: Oxford
University Press, 1950), 35.
 Abbreviations

AMZ Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung (Leipzig, 1798–1848)

BD W. Neumann, H.-J. Schulze, A. Glöckner, A. Hartinger,
and K. Lehmann, ed., Bach-Dokumente, 6 vols. (Leipzig and
Kassel: VEB Deutscher Verlag für Musik, 1963–2007)
BJ Bach Jahrbuch (Leipzig, 1904–)
BL British Library
BR Hans T. David and Arthur Mendel, eds., he Bach Reader: A
Life of Johann Sebastian Bach in Letters and Documents, rev.
edn. (New York and London, 1972)
BWV Wolfgang Schmieder, hematisch-systematisches Verzeichnis der
musikalischen Werke von Johann Sebastian Bach (Bach-Werke-
Verzeichnis), rev. edn. (Weisbaden, 1990)
KB Johann-Sebastian-Bach-Institut Göttingen and the Bach-
Archiv Leipzig, eds., Kritischer Bericht to the Neue Bach
Ausgabe (Kassel and Basle, 1954–)
NBA Johann-Sebastian-Bach-Institut Göttingen and the Bach-
Archiv Leipzig, Neue Bach Ausgabe (Kassel and Basle, 1954–)
NBR Hans T. David and Arthur Mendel, eds., he New Bach
Reader: A Life of Johann Sebastian Bach in Letters and
Documents, rev. and enlarged Christoph Wolff (New York
and London: W. W. Norton, 1998)
RCM Royal College of Music, London
WTC he Well-Tempered Clavier

xiii
   

he posthumous reassessment of selected works

 ch apter 

Why the keyboard works?

Among his contemporaries, Johann Sebastian Bach was known primarily

as a great organist and as a composer of intricate and difficult keyboard and
organ works. his fairly limited reception reflects not only the occasional
nature of much of his concerted music but also Bach’s own life choices:
though widely admired as a virtuoso, he traveled little, preferring the sta-
bility of home and family. His publications provided similarly limited
access to a famously idiosyncratic musical style and made few concessions
to the casual consumer: Bach’s four-part Clavier-Übung series, for example,
circulated mostly among professionals and well-to-do dilettantes in expen-
sive engraved volumes that enjoyed only modest print runs. Such works
enhanced Bach’s status as a learned master but did little to create the kind
of international renown enjoyed by Georg Philipp Telemann or George
Frederic Handel, both of whom were more attuned to popular tastes and
the needs of musical amateurs. During the second half of the eighteenth
century, copies of didactic works like WTC reinforced Bach’s formidable
reputation among the (mostly German) musical elite, while the cantatas,
concertos, and so much else slipped quietly into oblivion, dispersed among
his heirs to an uncertain future. Unsurprisingly, Bach’s posthumous fame
rested almost entirely on the contents of just a few key collections of highly
learned music for expert players. But the appeal of his keyboard music,
for admirers in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, lay not
only in its exemplary counterpoint. Over time the expressive and forma-
tive potential of this music became increasingly clear as well to those who
thought and wrote about such things, who pointed to specific works that
somehow filled contemporary needs while retaining just enough archaic
flavor to mark this music as somehow timeless or universal.
hese critical and sometimes very personal readings were part of the first
great flowering of western music criticism, a development that made avail-
able for the first time a wide range of information about a fast-evolving art
form. Unlike composition tutors or theoretical works written for a limited
audience of specialists, eighteenth-century music journals provided readers
with a variety of practical news, including discussions of various aspects of
compositional craft, reviews of books about music, biographical sketches of
leading musicians, translations of important foreign essays, even fictional

3
4 Engaging Bach

exchanges of letters on the model of Addison and Steele’s Spectator. heir

editors, following the lead of the literary community, worked to estab-
lish a geographically diverse readership, one that would prove remarkably
durable despite economic challenges and a rapidly changing environment
for musical employment. By century’s end, most of these periodicals fea-
tured reviews of the latest repertory as well, with some serving effectively
as house publicity organs for music publishers. hough only a small per-
centage of their contents may be considered criticism in the modern sense
(much that appeared in them was still of a theoretical or learned nature),
their popularity among the German bourgeoisie especially was such that
even practitioners with little interest in academic debates – Sebastian Bach,
for instance – could hardly afford to ignore them. Most carried a moral-
izing tone as well, which served to remind readers that the acquisition of
good taste was no trivial matter.1
Within these wide-ranging journals, discussion of the music of J. S.
Bach appears only occasionally, especially during the second half of the
century, when the name Bach usually refers to one of his sons. And
yet, eighteenth-century criticism of the elder Bach’s art can serve as a
kind of prism through which are refracted the most important general
trends in writing on music, towards a more expansive critical language
and more personal impressions of particular works. Most striking in
the Bach criticism of this lengthy historical period is the gradual shift
from lively debate during the first half of the century over his music’s
fulsome textures and his fondness for complexity to general agreement
by 1800 that these were in fact among the most meritorious aspects of
his art. hough derided during his lifetime as “unnatural,” Bach’s music
became, by century’s end, a paradigm of “natural” expression – albeit
one that needed to be unpacked through metaphors and personal experi-
ence and no longer solely through appeals to compositional standards
or philosophical worldviews. Bach had ceased to be just a master of
old-fashioned counterpoint; he had become a master of expression in
keyboard music that demonstrated, in a nutshell, how the best music
works. his chapter traces the general arc of that evolving critical view,
partly as a prelude to the more specific concerns of later chapters but
also to establish why certain works acquired such exalted status during
an otherwise arid era in Bach reception.

1
On the early development of German music journalism, see Imogen Fellinger, “Mattheson als
Begründer der ersten Musikzeitschrift,” in New Mattheson Studies, ed. George J. Buelow and Hans
Joachim Marx (Cambridge University Press, 1983), 179–197; Mary Sue Morrow, German Music
Criticism in the Late Eighteenth Century: Aesthetic Issues in Instrumental Music (Cambridge University
Press, 1997); and Celia Applegate, Bach in Berlin: Nation and Culture in Mendelssohn’s Revival of the
St. Matthew Passion (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 2005), 45–79 (Chapter 3:
“Toward a Music Aesthetics of the Nation”).
 Why the keyboard works? 5

early judg ments

he earliest critical notices affirm what many still say about individual
works of Bach: that this music is admirable, even “perfect,” but also uncom-
monly complex.2 hese seemingly distinct but in fact inseparable points
were the nub of a famous argument about the general nature of Bach’s
compositional style. In May of 1737 an anonymous letter appeared in
Johann Adolph Scheibe’s Critischer Musikus, in which the writer (Scheibe
himself ) charged that in the works of the “most eminent of the music
makers” there was little “natural melody.” his same composer’s music was
said to demand too much of performers and listeners; its thick counter-
point and written-out ornaments obscured the beauty and perfection of a
more natural art. he critic’s identity was plain to many, Bach included;
that this criticism was directed primarily at Bach’s church music was clear
as well to those who took part in the ensuing debate.3 Scheibe’s indictment
of Leipzig’s most prominent musician ruffled more than a few feathers,
not the least of which were those of the homas-Cantor himself. Although
Scheibe later attempted to mend fences, praising Bach to the skies in sub-
sequent reports on everything from “florid expression” to German key-
board music,4 the damage had been done, and the controversy lingered for
years in the collective memory of Bach’s followers.
he problem, Scheibe maintained, was Bach’s complete disregard for
clear declamation in vocal music. Scheibe had nothing against polyph-
ony in general, nor was he opposed to its use in church music; he railed
instead against the confusion wrought by the prodigious amounts of it in
Bach’s concerted church works.5 Recalling his mentor Johann Christoph
Gottsched’s complaint about the “bombastic” verse of a contemporary
Silesian poet, Scheibe ventured that Bach “is in music what Herr von
Lohenstein was in poetry. Turgidity has led them both from the natural to
the artificial, and from the lofty to the obscure; and in both one admires
the onerous labor and uncommon effort – which, however, are vainly
employed, since they conflict with Nature.”6 How did Scheibe’s generation
conceive of the relationship between nature and art? For enlightened writ-
ers the natural signified the simple yet appealing products of good taste
and rational thought processes; thus music, like its sister arts painting and
2
See, for example, the notices from Mattheson and Scheibe reproduced in NBR, 326–327.
3
Extensive excerpts are given in ibid., 337–353.
4
Ibid., 325, 331, 332.
5
his point, which usually gets lost in summary accounts of the Scheibe episode, has been made
previously. See George J. Buelow, “In defense of J. A. Scheibe against J. S. Bach,” Proceedings of the
Royal Musical Association 101 (1974/1975), 85–100; Günther Wagner, “J. A. Scheibe–J. S. Bach:
Versuch einer Bewertung,” BJ 68 (1982), 33–49; and Günther Wagner, “Die Bach-Rezeption im 18.
Jahrhundert im Spannungsfeld zwischen strengem und freiem Stil,” Jahrbuch des Staatlichen Instituts
für Musikforschung 1985–86 (1989), 221–238.
6
NBR, 338. Lohenstein had long been a target of such criticism: see Georgia Cowart, he Origins of
Modern Music Criticism: French and Italian Music 1600–1750 (Ann Arbor: UMI Press, 1981), 126.
6 Engaging Bach

poetry, needed to be both beautiful and intelligible. Scheibe found Bach’s

church compositions to be neither: their complex contrapuntal textures
caused various bits of text to be juxtaposed and words and phrases to be
repeated ad infinitum. Such was an ever-present danger in this genre, as
Scheibe himself admitted elsewhere in the Critischer Musikus; the problem,
fundamentally, was the nature of the beast itself. In his description of the
various national styles, Scheibe observes that
German music … is distinguished only by its assiduous work, the orderly pro-
gression of its movements, and by the profundity of its musical material. hus
it appears to be very accomplished but can easily lapse into the bombastic. But
what is most peculiar to German music are the sacred pieces that are customary
in Protestant worship. It is true that their invention and elaboration are, in part,
borrowed from the Italians and the French; but the ideas, their realization, and the
industry employed in the process distinguish them very clearly. hus they make an
extraordinary impression.7
hough he clearly admired the genre of the concerted church work, Scheibe
found objectionable some of the more ambitious manifestations of it then
heard in Leipzig’s principal churches. Bach had crossed a fine line between
compositional mastery and pretentious bombast, and to Scheibe’s way of
thinking, he neither fully understood natural expression nor did his music
always accord well with the sensibilities of modern listeners.8
To be fair, Scheibe was not the only critic to fault Bach for his unusually
complicated church works. In a 1725 issue of his Critica musica, Johann
Mattheson chided Bach for much the same thing, by mocking (in this
case) the first chorus of Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis, BWV 21/2 (Ex. 1.1):
In order that good old Zachau may have company, and not be quite so alone, let
us set beside him an otherwise excellent practicing musician of today, who for a
long time does nothing but repeat: “I, I, I, I had much grief, I had much grief, in
my heart, in my heart. I had much grief, etc., in my heart, etc., etc.”9
Bach’s compositional skill was not at issue here; it was his questionable
taste and lack of generic propriety to which Mattheson objected in this oft-
cited description of a piece that the critic probably heard at St Catherine’s

7
J. A. Scheibe, Critischer Musikus, 2nd edn. (Leipzig, 1745; Hildesheim: G. Olms, 1970), 147–148:
Die deutsche Musik … unterscheidet sich nur durch eine fleißige Arbeit, regelmäßige Ausführung der
Sätze und durch die Tiefsinnigkeit, die sie in der Harmonie anwenden. Sie scheint also sehr gründlich
zu seyn; allein, sie fällt auch dadurch sehr leicht ins Schwülstige. Dasjenige aber, was am meisten
der deutschen Musik eigen ist, sind die Kirchenstücke, die bey dem Gottesdienste der Protestanten
gebräuchlich sind. Es ist wahr, die Erfindung und Auszierung derselben ist gewisser maßen so wohl
von den Italienern als Franzosen genommen; allein die Gedanken, die Ausarbeitung, und der dazu
angewandte Fleiß unterscheiden sie sehr stark. Sie sind also von ausnehmendem Nachdrucke.
8
Although Scheibe’s enthusiasm for both classical aesthetic theory and rationalism is often conflated in
discussions of his Bach criticism, at least one scholar notes a subtle progression in Scheibe’s thinking
about these issues: see Jürgen Mainka, “Zum Naturbegriff bei Bach: Aspekte des Scheibe–Birnbaum-
Disputs,” in Bericht über die wissenschaftlich Konferenz zum I I I . Internationalen Bach-Fest der DDR
(Leipzig: Deutscher Verlag für Musik, 1977), 155–163.
9
NBR, 325.
 Example 1.1 J. S. Bach, “Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis,” BWV 21/2, mm. 1–6

Oboe

Violin I

Violin II

Viola

Soprano

Ich, ich, ich, ich hat - te viel Be - küm - mer - nis, ich hat - te viel Be -
Alto
Ich, ich, ich,
Tenor
8 Ich, ich, ich, ich hat - te viel Be - küm - mer - nis, ich
Bass
Ich, ich, ich,
Bassoon

Continuo
 Example 1.1 (cont.)
4

küm - mer - nis in mei - nem Her - - - zen, in mei - - - nem Her - zen,

ich hat - te vie Be - küm - mer - nis, ich hat - te viel Be -

8 hat - te viel Be -küm - mer - nis in mei - nem Her - - - - - zen,

ich hat - te viel Be -küm - mer - nis, ich

 Why the keyboard works? 9

Church during Bach’s visit to Hamburg in November of 1720. Far from a

reactionary diatribe, Mattheson’s critique identifies the very real tension in
this piece between a personal, almost pietistic libretto and a proudly old-
fashioned musical setting whose self-interrogating texture effectively turns
the poet’s grief-stricken soul into a stutterer. While the portentous rhetoric
of the opening chords might have been forgiven, the close fugal entries
that follow make clear text declamation almost impossible. Mattheson may
have admired such things in instrumental music (surely he was also present
for Bach’s half-hour contrapuntal improvisation at the organ on the chor-
ale An Wasserflüssen Babylon during the same trip, a performance famously
praised by the nonagenarian organist Johann Adam Reincken),10 but Bach’s
concerted setting of Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis was another matter entirely.
he contrasting impressions are striking: Bach’s virtuosically learned organ
playing won him high praise virtually everywhere, while an equally learned
cantata chorus caused this critic to laugh up his sleeve.
As the leading voice of progressive musical thought in Germany, Mattheson
led the charge to demote learned counterpoint from the lofty perch it had
occupied since the sixteenth century, not so much because it was aesthetically
problematic but rather because of the potential for chaotic declamation in
vocal music and the esoteric excesses to which partisans were prone.11 In Der
vollkommene Capellmeister (1739) he warned of the dangers of learned coun-
terpoint in church music, noting that “the meaning of the words … suffers
much too much with this motet style.” A jumbled text setting, the inevitable
result of multiple overlapping contrapuntal lines in concerted church pieces,
was no longer acceptable in this genre. Strict imitation was especially prob-
lematic, as Mattheson observes: “whoever wants to bring the canonic style
… into the church should do such cautiously and seldom; [he] should use it
more with instruments in sonatas and the like than with voices.”12 Although
Mattheson’s views on many musical matters changed over the course of a
lengthy and brilliant career, on this subject at least he was consistent: in vocal
music especially, melody could no longer play second fiddle to counterpoint.
Like Scheibe, Mattheson could not understand why a highly skilled composer
like Bach – who was, after all, quite capable of producing more up-to-date
instrumental music – continued to write church works in such an antiquated
and irrational vein.
Eventually showing himself to be at least as broadminded as Scheibe,
Mattheson also brought to his readers’ attention Bach’s Fugue in A minor
for unaccompanied violin, BWV 1003/2, a work he praised in the Kern

10
Ibid., 302.
11
See David Yearsley, Bach and the Meanings of Counterpoint (Cambridge University Press, 2002),
52–58, esp. 56, for a summary of Mattheson’s efforts to do away with the “culture of obscurantism
and secrecy” surrounding learned counterpoint.
12
Translation adapted from Johann Mattheson’s Der vollkommene Capellmeister: A Revised Translation
with Critical Commentary, ed. Ernest C. Harriss (Ann Arbor: UMI Press, 1981), 199, 209.
10 Engaging Bach

melodischer Wissenschaft (1737) as brilliantly worked out on “a whole

sheet of music paper, without unusual extension, and quite naturally.”13
Similar observations about other instrumental works by Bach make clear
that Mattheson’s lampoon of the opening chorus of Cantata 21, far from
a comprehensive rejection of Bach’s art, reflects instead critical expecta-
tions that varied from genre to genre. Skillful instrumental fugues gave
Mattheson considerable pleasure; indeed, more than once he pointed to
examples from Bach (the G minor Organ Fugue, BWV 542/2; he Art of
Fugue; the “Hudemann” Canon, among others) as models of their kind.14
Such glowing press, alongside the thoroughgoing discussion of counter-
point and fugue in Der volkommene Capellmeister, may have encouraged
the ambitious experimentation in Bach’s late instrumental works, as some
have proposed,15 but it seems not to have affected how Bach wrote texted
fugues. In any case, the most progressive critics of this time were of one
mind on this matter: Bach wrote exceptional instrumental works (even
Scheibe praised Bach’s Concerto “in the Italian Style,” BWV 971, as a “per-
fect example of its kind”)16 but failed to acknowledge the key differences
between church and chamber styles and the essential propriety of each.
German writers on music had long emphasized the distinctions between
styles by maintaining that certain devices and procedures were better
suited to one genre or venue than to another. Opinion varied on specifics,
but most agreed that function determined content. Scheibe, perhaps the
most outspoken advocate of this view, had no use for any mixed styles in
music: he insists that “the clarity of style must be as carefully observed as
the expression of the thing itself.”17 In 1739 the philosopher and encyclo-
pedist Johann Heinrich Zedler likewise warned his readers of the dangers
of mixed styles, complaining that “composers … perform at the public
[i.e., church] services pieces of a kind that are better suited to the theatre
or dance-place than to so holy a place and such holy matters.”18 Of course,
the better composers had always regarded stylistic boundaries as fluid, and
theorists, for their part, had always complained about it. What was new in
the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, though hardly unique

13
Ibid., 328.
14
George B. Stauffer, “Johann Mattheson and J. S. Bach: he Hamburg Connection,” in Buelow and
Marx, New Mattheson Studies, 353–370 (357), proposes various scenarios to explain how Mattheson
came to know these works.
15
See Gregory G. Butler, “Der vollkommene Capellmeister as a Stimulus to J. S. Bach’s Late Fugal
Writing,” in Buelow and Marx, New Mattheson Studies, 293–305; and John Butt, “Bach’s
Metaphysics of Music,” in he Cambridge Companion to Bach, ed. John Butt (Cambridge University
Press, 1999), 46–59 (50).
16
See NBR, 343, 331.
17
J. A. Scheibe, Compendium musices (1736), as cited in Cowart, he Origins of Modern Music
Criticism, 134.
18
J. H. Zedler, Grosses vollständiges Universal Lexicon aller Wissenschaften und Kunste (1739), as cited
in John Butt, Music Education and the Art of Performance in the German Baroque (Cambridge
University Press, 1994), 30.
 Why the keyboard works? 11

to the Germans, was a desire for a strict taxonomy of genres and styles.
his posed a quandary for Bach’s defenders, who had little to gain by con-
cocting for his problematic church pieces a detailed stylistic explanation
on the model of François Couperin’s for Les goûts réunis: such an argu-
ment would have left open the twin charges of irrationality in musical
design and backwardness in musical sensibility. Perhaps this is why Johann
Abraham Birnbaum, in response to Scheibe’s criticism, justified Bach’s all-
encompassing compositional aesthetic by relying instead on something
that effectively deflected rationalist critique: Lutheran theology.
For Lutherans of Bach’s day, art was no longer the poor handmaid of
nature; instead, it was nature’s equal, an effective parity that had taken cen-
turies to achieve. Christian writers of the late Middle Ages first turned the
tables on Plato’s low estimation of the mechanical arts by characterizing the
artistic products of human hands as worthy imitations of nature, though still
subservient to it. As generations of philosophers, theologians, and human-
ists wrestled further with the problem of art, a common goal emerged:
artists of all stripes were enjoined to perfect their works in emulation of
God’s perfect creation. By the seventeenth century this worldview obliged
north German composers especially to research their musical material in
the manner of a skillful orator or an accomplished mathematician, to make
manifest its various harmonic and contrapuntal implications. A theological
dimension was implicit as well: the various perfections (Vollkommenheiten)
possible in music, from the mastery of figurae to fugal devices, were seen
as musical analogues for the abundant gifts of both God and nature. (Such
thinking had long since Christianized the concept of the harmony of the
spheres, and esoteric groups like Lorenz Mizler’s Society for the Musical
Sciences went even further by speculating on how mathematical perfection
could be achieved in musica instrumentalis.) By virtue of its divine inspir-
ation, music presented, for orthodox Lutherans anyway, a special kind of
sacred opportunity: because it aspires towards greater things than just mere
ear-tickling, music could, when perfected by a superior composer, actually
surpass what obtains in nature. Figural music, which to this way of thinking
made God immanent, was highly valued and diligently cultivated within
orthodox circles; thus the church cantata (as we now call it), the most mod-
ern of sacred genres in Bach’s day, became obligatory in congregations large
enough to support a good music program. Birnbaum could therefore claim
that in Bach’s church pieces, nature stood to gain from association with art
more than the other way around: “If art aids Nature,” as he writes in his
defense of Bach, “then its aim is only to preserve it, and to improve its con-
dition; certainly not to destroy it.”19
Rejecting Scheibe’s idealistic vision of a belle nature and the fashionable
melody-driven music of their day, Birnbaum further observes that

19
NBR, 345.
12 Engaging Bach

many things are delivered to us by Nature in the most misshapen states, which,
however, acquire the most beautiful appearance when they have been formed by
art. hus art lends Nature a beauty it lacks, and increases the beauty it possesses.
Now, the greater the art is – that is, the more industriously and painstakingly it
works at the improvement of Nature – the more brilliantly shines the beauty thus
brought into being … Can it be possible, then, that the Hon. Court Composer,
even by the use of the greatest art he applies in the working out of his musical
compositions, could take away from them the natural element and darken [their]
beauty?20
his argument was at once utterly modern in its insistence that art is a
higher pursuit, and profoundly traditional in its respect for a highly
researched style. Collapsing Christoph Bernhard’s earlier distinction
between “natural counterpoint” (stile antico note-against-note writing
with all the traditional artifices) and modern figural writing, Birnbaum
asserts that nature has nothing to fear from art, quite the contrary in fact.
he strength of his argument, as Christoph Wolff has observed, lies in
Birnbaum’s invocation of the “concept of ‘musical perfection,’ a notion as
abstract as it is irrefutable.”21 Who indeed could deny Bach’s meticulous
craftsmanship or his oftentimes astonishingly complete realization of the
contrapuntal potential of his musical material? But Birnbaum was preach-
ing to the choir: few readers who shared Scheibe’s view would have been
swayed by such rhetoric. Instead of offering tangible examples of works
that did not sacrifice nature to art, Birnbaum states flatly that “there is
nothing either turgid or confused to be found in the works of the Hon.
Court Composer.” For a debate that was surely of great interest to those
residents of Leipzig who heard Bach’s music on a regular basis, Birnbaum’s
reluctance to cite even a single piece leaves one wondering how far his
opinions resonated beyond his immediate circle. At any rate, it is clear that
Birnbaum was more interested in Bach’s “remarkable perfections” than in
the potential appropriateness of such things or their effect(s) on the lis-
tener. His focus on Bach’s originality was, as we shall see, ahead of its
time, even if his efforts to explicate Bach’s compositional style didn’t really
answer Scheibe’s more pointed criticism.
Other, more forthcoming critics explained how specific works of Bach
could flatter modern ears. Returning briefly to Mattheson’s views on the
A minor violin Fugue (Ex. 1.2), one finds that he esteemed this work
mostly for its ingenious subject and the multiple ways Bach made use
of it.
Who would believe that these eight short notes would be so fruitful as to bring
forth a counterpoint of more than a whole sheet of music paper, without unusual
extension, and quite naturally? And yet the skilled and in this species particu-

20
Ibid.
21
Christoph Wolff, Johann Sebastian Bach, the Learned Musician (New York: Norton, 2000), 465.
 Why the keyboard works? 13

Example 1.2 J. S. Bach, Fugue from Sonata in A minor, BWV 1003/2, mm. 1–18

11

15

larly fortunate Bach has set just this before the world; indeed, he has in addition
introduced the subject here and there in inversion.22
Emphasizing the economy and skill with which Bach creates an impres-
sive fugue from a relatively unassuming subject, Mattheson admires this
piece not because it either successfully imitates nature or manages some-
how to transform it, but rather for its impressive display of invention and
elaboration, which does nothing to spoil its evident charm. To a fugue that
wears its learning lightly, Mattheson gave the imprimatur of naturalness
by an appeal to art qua art, in contrast to Birnbaum’s efforts to change
the terms of the debate. In the correct context, it seems, Mattheson had
no qualms about Bach’s sometimes overly fecund imagination; indeed, he
heartily recommended this fugue as an excellent example of its kind.
Similar views of Bach’s instrumental fugues were expressed two decades
later in the theoretical debates of Wilhelm Friedrich Marpurg and Johann
Philipp Kirnberger, as preserved in the pages of the former’s Kritische Briefe
über die Tonkunst (1759–1764). In their various disagreements over the har-
monic implications of fugue subjects, the application of Rameau’s principle
of the fundamental bass to double counterpoint, and the proper harmonic
flow of fugues, both theorists sought support for their respective positions
in WTC. In a characteristic broadside Marpurg contests a putative read-
ing of the Fugue in B flat major from Book II by taunting his rival: “How
pleasant is the main subject, how natural, how well distinguished from the
countersubject!”23 What prompted Marpurg to characterize this particular
fugue subject as natural? Taking a look at the measures Marpurg reproduced

22 23
NBR, 328. BD III, 137.
14 Engaging Bach

Example 1.3 J. S. Bach, Fugue in B flat major from WTC, Book II,
BWV 890/2, mm. 32–36

(Ex. 1.3), we can easily identify a few potential markers of this essential qual-
ity: the fugue subject’s smooth harmonic and rhythmic contour, its predict-
able phrase units, and its easy fit with the countersubject. Like Mattheson and
Scheibe, Marpurg assigned great importance to such things in music; unlike
most mid-century critics, however, Marpurg found these features of style in a
variety of places within Bach’s oeuvre, not just in his instrumental works.
Considerably more revealing is a report from five months later, in which
Marpurg describes a performance of the opening movement of Bach’s
Cantata 144, Nimm, was dein ist, und gehe hin, as follows:
his fugue evoked a most unusual attentiveness and particular delight even among
most of the musically inexperienced listeners, which certainly did not come from
the contrapuntal artifices but from the superb declamation that … the composer
applied to the subject and, by way of a little special play, to the phrase gehe hin.
he truthfulness, natural character, and exactly commensurate correctness of the
declamation was immediately picked up by everyone’s ears.24
Marpurg’s listeners clearly were not expecting this motet-style setting of
biblical Spruch (Matthew 20:14) to conform to contemporary norms of
text declamation, but in one important respect this fugue (Ex. 1.4) might
have flattered mid-century ears: its text is remarkably clear. Bach took
great care to align his parts so that there are few vertical clashes of differ-
ent words; there are, moreover, no obbligato instrumental parts (except
the continuo line) complicating the texture. Despite his enthusiasm for
this piece, however, Marpurg seems almost apologetic about the genre of
fugue, especially when used within a concerted church work. He concedes
that “it is often difficult and also not always and continuously possible to
pay close attention to the declamation in the subjects of a fugue, especially
if the subject is to be used for certain contrapuntal artifices.”25 But that is
no problem here: this movement has virtually no contrapuntal devices;
its subject appears on just a few scale degrees and not at all in close imi-
tation. In this work Bach seems more interested in the endless rhythmic
energy of his thematic material and its accompanying motive than in poly-
phonic display, and it was surely the former features of style that brought
Marpurg’s listeners some degree of pleasure.

24 25
NBR, 363–364. Ibid.
 Example 1.4 J. S. Bach, “Nimm, was dein ist, und gehe hin,” BWV 144/1, mm. 1–15

Alla breve
Violin I

Violin II

Viola

Soprano

Alto

Tenor

8 Nimm, was dein ist, und ge - he hin, ge-he hin, ge-he hin, ge - - - - he hin, ge-he

Bass

Nimm, was dein ist, und ge - he hin, ge-he hin, ge-he

Continuo
 Example 1.4 (cont.)
8

Nimm, was dein ist, und ge - he hin, ge-he hin, ge-he hin, ge - - - - - he hin,

Nimm, was dein ist, und ge - he hin,

8 hin, und ge-he hin, ge-he hin, ge-he hin, ge-he hin, und ge - he hin, ge-he hin, und ge - - - he hin,

hin, und ge-he hin, ge-he hin, ge-he hin, ge-he hin, und ge-he hin, ge-he hin, und ge - - - - - - he hin,
 Why the keyboard works? 17

As Philipp Spitta once observed, this setting of the landowner’s speech

from the parable of the laborers in the vineyard gains an “almost dramatic
force” from the insistent repetitions of the motive “gehe hin.”26 Indeed,
the four voices and coll’parte instruments hammer home the libretto’s cen-
tral message with a snappy rhythm that adds both urgency and emphasis:
“Take what is yours, and go away, go away, go away!” How to square such
forceful diction with Marpurg’s description of the movement’s declam-
ation as natural? he text is certainly clear, but its enunciation in Bach’s
setting seems almost like a caricature, as several later commentators have
complained.27 By repeating one short motive over and over – the very
thing Mattheson had complained about in the opening chorus of BWV
21 – Bach ensured that no one would miss the point; yet on this aspect of
the piece, Marpurg remains silent. Was it because the repetition of “gehe
hin” mimics what might actually happen in either conversation or oratory,
whereas the incessant repetition of “Ich” in the opening chorus of Cantata
21 does not? In any case, Bach had shown that it was possible, even in a
genre as hide-bound as the church cantata, to achieve a modern kind of
declamation and expression in the avoidance of too many contrapuntal
devices and in the careful alignment of the words – and that was appar-
ently enough. When there was good reason for it, repetition per se was no
longer a problem.
In fact, repetition could be a very good thing. In the same report but a
bit further up the page, Marpurg ventures that “to look for strict and accur-
ate adherence to the rules of noble declamation in a multi-voiced fugue
… would come close to an injustice.” A good fugue, he maintains, needs
above all a good beginning, “a correct and exact declamation observed in
a fugal subject or subjects … [which] will give the fugue in its entirety
infinitely more transparency and clarity rather than the opposite.”28 Listen
carefully, he seems to be saying, to the initial exposition of the contra-
puntal ideas and trust that the rest – regardless of its level of sophistica-
tion – will make sense, too. If, on the other hand, one’s first impression is
negative, one could either repeat the opening section or simply stop and
go no farther. A “wait-and-see” attitude towards potentially challenging
music makes good sense for the reading of an unfamiliar work, especially

26
Philipp Spitta, Johann Sebastian Bach [Leipzig, 1873–1880], trans. Clara Bell and J. A. Fuller-
Maitland as he Life of Bach, 3 vols. (London: Novello, 1884–1889), Vol. II, 416.
27
Ironically, the secondary literature tends to use this cantata as an example of Bach’s sometimes poor
feeling for text declamation: see, for example, W. Gillies Whittaker, he Cantatas of Johann Sebastian
Bach, Sacred and Secular, 2 vols., Vol. I (Oxford University Press, 1959), 354. Spitta, on the other
hand, faults the librettist, who “so inadequately grasped the deeper meaning of the Gospel parable
… that he could find nothing better to say about it than the praises of contentment.” Bach’s setting
“is of course full of ingenuity and purpose, but it does not stir us deeply.” Spitta, Johann Sebastian
Bach, Vol. II, 416.
28
NBR, 363.
18 Engaging Bach

in a semi-public context where those who participate in the music-making

also engage in discussion about it.29 In any case, Marpurg’s experience with
this Bach cantata movement produced a more sympathetic reading than
had Mattheson’s hearing of another, and one suspects that his thoughts
on Nimm, was dein ist, und gehe hin, as published in the form of a letter
ostensibly addressed to Mattheson (a fairly common literary device for this
time), were in fact a tardy comeback to the earlier writer’s critique of Ich
hatte viel Bekümmernis. Remarkably, the opening chorus of Cantata 144
had found a sympathetic audience in mid-century Berlin, despite earlier
criticism of Bach’s concerted church style and the dwindling need for such
works in the German church.30
As a way of experiencing Bach’s vocal music, the eighteenth-century
musical salon offered as many (if not more) opportunities to the enthusiast
than did public performance. For a time in Berlin, it was the only place to
hear large works, since there was neither opera nor much musical activity
at court during the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763). Even before wartime,
encountering a large-scale work for the first time in a group setting was the
best way to make a fair assessment of its worth, since that judgment now
needed to take into account the opinion of amateurs and no longer relied
exclusively on the word of professionals. As Marpurg’s colleague Christian
Gottfried Krause put it in a 1752 treatise on musical poetics: “it is not so
much musicians, but rather only musical amateurs who must be taken as
judges … amateurs who, to be sure, can have heard a lot of music and can
also have good taste, but who neither know much of the rules of harmony
nor are biased in any other way.”31 Concerted vocal works were said to
have an especially salutary effect on such listeners. But simple aural gratifi-
cation was just the hook; mid-century Bach enthusiasts found in the inner
workings of such pieces the kind of contrapuntal and harmonic mastery
they revered while the pieces themselves worked, as Krause notes, “towards
the clarification of the ideas and towards the persuasion and activation of
the listeners.”32 his artfully rational mode of music appreciation found
more than a few enthusiastic adherents among eighteenth-century Bach
29
Such a performance is certainly conceivable from the extant sources for the work, which include
copies from at least two contemporaneous Berlin collections. In the NBA I/7; KB, 7–9, Walter
Neumann lists one score (“B”) that once belonged to the Amalienbibliothek (which Kirnberger
helped to collect), plus two sources that were in C. P. E. Bach’s library: the autograph (“A”) and
a copy of the first movement (“C”). hat Bach’s Berlin devotees met regularly to play and sing
through his music is further suggested by Kirnberger’s report of a Hausmusik performance of Bach’s
double-chorus motet Fürchte dich nicht, in an inscription on Anna Amalia’s copy of the same: see
BD III, 879.
30
Elsewhere in the Kritische Briefe Marpurg evinces the same kind of disinterested attitude towards
that which lay beyond the initial exposition of a vocal fugue by Kirnberger. Marpurg’s comments
and Kirnberger’s fugue are both reproduced in Howard Serwer, “Marpurg versus Kirnberger:
heories of Fugal Composition,” Journal of Music heory 14/2 (Winter, 1970), 209–236.
31
As cited in Edward A. Lippman, Musical Aesthetics: A Historical Reader, 3 vols., Vol. I (Stuyvesant,
NY: Pendragon, 1986), 166.
32
Ibid.
 Why the keyboard works? 19

devotees, many of whom were either important theorists or pedagogues

and thus in a position to influence amateur tastes, and it was embraced
in the early nineteenth century by choral societies in Germany and in
England, which subsequently (and by no coincidence) became prime mov-
ers in the revival of interest in Bach’s large sacred works.
With the growth of amateur music-making, repeated hearings of excep-
tional works became common, as Krause observes: “musical pieces that
are so very worked out must also usually be played several times before
they are fittingly understood, and even the ear of the listener cannot grasp
the beauties that appear in them the first time.”33 One wonders whether
Marpurg and his friends began Nimm, was dein ist several times before
carrying it through to its final cadence; or, for that matter, whether they
ever got beyond the initial fugal exposition. Even if Marpurg reported
only selectively on the impressions of other auditors, and even if the whole
episode is fictitious,34 this mode of learning such works remains standard
practice. hough one can only trust that the opening chorus of Cantata
144 had the desired effect on Marpurg’s listeners, the urge towards mul-
tiple readings of specific works of Bach became even stronger later in the
century.

a sharper f ocus on the k eyboa rd wo rk s

Marpurg’s desire to generate enthusiasm for fugue obliged him to sample
widely from the genre in his three music periodicals and in his magnum
opus on the subject, the Abhandlung von der Fuge (1753–1754), but his
many writings contain no comparable discussions of any other Bach can-
tata choruses; nor do the writings of his contemporaries. Vocal music still
represented, for this generation of German music theorists, the highest
realm of achievement and meaning in music, but with the gradual decline
in both the prestige of Lutheran cantorates and the standards of their
musical establishments, Bach’s concerted church works ceased to be a com-
pelling topic, except for the most conservative critics and theorists.35 Over
the next few decades there were only occasional allusions to these pieces
in the German musical press: in 1770, for example, Christoph Daniel
Ebeling admonished readers of the Hamburg Unterhaltungen “not [to] for-
get one of the greatest harmonists of all time, J. Seb. Bach, who set many

33
Ibid., 167.
34
Marpurg concocted for the Kritische Briefe an extended dream about an ideal musical society whose
primary activity was to get together and read through new works, so that budding composers
could hear their music performed. his passage is discussed at length in Howard Serwer, “Friedrich
Wilhelm Marpurg (1718–1795): Music Critic in a Galant Age,” Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University,
1969, 91f.
35
In Die Kunst des reinen Satzes (1774), for example, Kirnberger gives brief excerpts from Bach’s St.
Matthew Passion, the B minor Mass, and the A major Mass, among other works.
20 Engaging Bach

German church pieces whose choruses, by means of much art, are filled
with robust expression and are sublime and fiery.”36 hese passing words of
praise for Bach’s choral writing greatly cheered his onetime student Johann
Friedrich Agricola, who rejoiced that “someone has finally come forward
who has found both passion and splendor” in these works,37 but few other
voices were raised in support of Bach’s church music during the second
half of the century. he Berlin critic Johann Friedrich Reichardt may have
admired the invention and learnedness of the Bach cantatas, yet he too
thought they “betray too great a lack of genuine good taste, of knowledge
of language and poetry” and thus “hardly maintain their currency.”38 he
occasional performance by Bach’s closest followers (C. P. E. Bach’s 1786
presentation of the “Credo” from the B minor Mass in Hamburg, or the
continuous cultivation of the motets by the Leipzig homanerchor, for
example) did little to change this situation.39
Aside from Marpurg’s description of the opening movement of Cantata
144, most serious writing about Bach’s music from 1750 to well past 1800,
whether theoretical or critical in nature, concerns his keyboard works.
Critics made every effort to connect these pieces to the most fashion-
able aesthetic ideals, though it took some time to forge a consensus about
what constituted “naturalness” or “unity in variety” in Bach, to name but
the two most essential terms of musical flattery for this time. One such
notice appeared in a 1755 treatise on melody, in which the Berlin theorist
Christoph Nichelmann observed that the Sarabande from Bach’s “French”
Suite in E major managed to satisfy “the most natural desires of the soul”
by means of “a sufficient diversity of harmony.”40 he view that natural-
ness was somehow dependent on the right amount of variety (neither too
much nor too little) was widespread, but the idea that a humble Bach
sarabande should achieve this state was novel. Given the movement in
question, Nichelmann’s laconic praise seems doubly strange: this particu-
lar sarabande (Ex. 1.5), one of the least ambitious in the Bach repertory,
has an almost too-predictable phrase structure, its rhythms and harmonies
the stuff of convention, not deep inspiration. Nichelmann’s fondness for it
leaves one wondering what he thought about Bach’s more adventuresome
works.
In a slightly more telling discussion of the Fugue in E minor from
WTC, Book I, Marpurg expressed a similar kind of admiration for this

36
BD III, 210. 37 Ibid., 211.
38
NBR, 373.
39
On late-eighteenth-century performance of Bach’s church pieces by his sons and successors, see
Peter Wollny, “Wilhelm Friedemann Bach’s Halle Performances of Cantatas by his Father,” Bach
Studies 2, ed. Daniel R. Melamed (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 202–228; and
“Abschriften und Autographe, Sammler und Kopisten: Aspekte der Bach-Pflege im 18. Jahrhundert,”
in Bach und die Nachwelt, 4 vols., Vol. I, ed. Michael Heinemann and Hans-Joachim Hinrichsen
(Laaber: Laaber Verlag, 1997), 43–51.
40
C. Nichelmann, Die Melodie nach ihrem Wesen sowohl (1755); excerpted in BD III, 668.
 Why the keyboard works? 21

Example 1.5 J. S. Bach, Sarabande from Suite in E major, BWV 817/3, mm. 1–8

work’s bold harmonic plan and its surprisingly varied subject statements.
Marpurg cites one especially memorable moment in this fugue: the appear-
ance of the subject in D minor (at m. 30), “a key very distant from E minor
but we were led there in the cleverest and most unforced manner.”41 What
exactly constitutes the latter “ungezwungenste Weise,” as Marpurg puts
it? Surely not the kind of complex harmonic inflections Johann Abraham
Peter Schulz laboriously identified in his famously detailed analysis of the
B minor Fugue from the same collection.42 Instead, Marpurg admires the
broad sweep of the E minor Fugue’s harmonic progress, its reiterations
of the subject on different scale degrees, and the consistently high level
of invention. Praising Bach as a master of both tonal and motivic variety
in fugue, Marpurg marvels at the “many ingenious transpositions of the
principal subject” in his fugues, the “many splendidly assorted subsidiary
ideas,” and the natural way Bach makes use of them.43 In this context, the
latter ideal nicely summarizes Bach’s sense of completeness, order, even
play in this particular fugue; though once again, the description is frustrat-
ingly short on details.
A better sense of where Marpurg and his Berlin colleagues were taking
Bach comes from two other pieces of writing from this time: Marpurg’s
preface to the 1752 edition of he Art of Fugue and Bach’s 1754 obituary,
jointly authored by C. P. E. Bach and Agricola. he former extols he Art
of Fugue’s “deep and … unusual ideas, far removed from the ordinary run,
and yet spontaneous and natural,”44 while the latter confirms that Bach’s
“melodies … resembl[e] those of no other composer.”45 heir contentious
41
BD III, 144.
42
Schulz’s analysis appeared in his teacher Kirnberger’s Die wahren Grundsätze zum Gebrauch der
Harmonie (Berlin, 1773), and is reproduced in BD III, 781 and in BR, 448. On Marpurg and
Kirnberger’s disagreements about the application of Rameau’s harmonic theories to Bach’s fugues,
see homas Christensen, “Bach among the heorists,” in Bach Perspectives 3: Creative Responses
to Bach from Mozart to Hindemith, ed. Michael Marissen (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press,
1998), 23–46 (36–44).
43 44 45
NBR, 363. Ibid., 375. Ibid., 305.
22 Engaging Bach

discourse about other matters notwithstanding, members of the Berlin

circle agreed that Bach’s art was simultaneously natural and unprece-
dented; untroubled by the apparent paradox, they acclaimed Bach an ori-
ginal genius. his was a bold move, given that even the most imaginative
reinterpretations of the mimetic ideal still viewed the artwork as essentially
the product of human (and therefore imperfect) hands: art, it was thought,
could only aspire to perfection, it couldn’t actually achieve it. For Bach,
however, the Berlin circle staked out a seemingly unassailable position, one
that placed the “greatest harmonist of all times and places” outside the rest
of music history and yet deserving of universal approbation. On this point
Marpurg especially was unyielding: Bach’s “ideas,” as he put it, “must, by
their profundity, their connection, and their organization, meet with the
acclaim of any taste, no matter of what country.”46 his claim, as others
have noted, was at once rash and oddly prescient: the cult of the original
genius was still in the making, and although Bach was eventually widely
recognized as such, German writers on music embraced originality whole-
heartedly only in the 1770s.47 In emphasizing Bach’s “extraordinary perfec-
tions” in the late 1730s and 1740s, Birnbaum had signaled the direction
of future commentary; new at mid-century was the idea that Bach showed
how the old rules of composition could simultaneously be validated and
superseded – that music itself, in other words, was complete only in his
hands. As Agricola’s 1766 review of the first published volume of Bach’s
four-part chorales succinctly puts it: “the Harmonie of the blessed Bach is
like nature’s own.”48 he preface to the same edition (written by Emanuel
Bach) likewise places great emphasis on the “quite special arrangement of
the harmony and the natural flow of the inner voices and the bass.”49 In
this manner the Berlin circle attempted to popularize select works that
were at once unique and worthy of emulation (Chapter 2 rehearses their
arguments for the four-part chorales). As individual creativity accrued ser-
ious value in critical writing on music during the second half of the cen-
tury, the old disagreement about the value of complexity in Bach began to
dissolve into a new, more urgent concern: finding new ways to appreciate
and make sense of that same complexity.
One way of doing this was to ratchet up the value of variety in music, a
subject on which Marpurg had a lot to say, and much of it in direct refer-
ence to the music of J. S. Bach:
Just consider how many times the principal subject must be heard in a fugue. If,
in addition, it must be heard constantly in the same keys, whether in a higher
or lower octave, with nothing else in between, always in the same way, is it then

46
Ibid., 375.
47
Morrow, German Music Criticism, 99–133, discusses at length the popular concepts of creative
genius and compositional originality during the “impetuous and stormy 1770s and 1780s,” the
most lively decades of her review collective’s history.
48 49
BD III, 188. NBR, 379.
 Why the keyboard works? 23

possible to stifle one’s disgust? Truly that is not the way the greatest fugue maker of
our time, old Bach, thought. How many ingenious transpositions of the principal
subject, how many splendidly assorted subsidiary ideas you will find there!50
Bach himself, according to Marpurg, dismissed as “dry and wooden” the
works of an “old and hardworking contrapuntist … [who] stuck continu-
ously to his principal subject, without any change” (something Marpurg,
in turn, accused Kirnberger of doing). For Marpurg, Bach’s keen harmonic
sense, his multiple transpositions of the subject, and the many modula-
tory passages in his fugues made them models of their kind, “any one of
which would make many a man sweat for days, and most likely in vain.”51
Such an extraordinary level of diversity depends, of course, not only on the
clever disposition of subject material and skillful harmonic progressions;
equally necessary is a suitable fugue subject, one that allows for a range of
contrapuntal devices and melodic permutations. One aimed, as Bach him-
self put it on the title page of his two-part Inventions, at “not only getting
good inventiones, but at developing the same satisfactorily.”
he philosophers called this “unity in diversity” or “unity in variety,” an
ancient concept resurrected in the eighteenth century as a central expect-
ation and mark of quality in all the arts. In support of this venerable ideal,
British and continental writers of Bach’s day amplified Augustine’s famous
dictum that “every form of beauty is a unity” with various ideas about
how the fine arts manifested it; music theorists and critics, in turn, deter-
mined how such a state could be attained in their own field.52 he classic
eighteenth-century formulation, that “the composer discovers in the very
unity of his subject the means to achieve variety,”53 nicely summarizes the
idea but leaves open the particular way(s) it might be realized in actual
composition. Moreover, and as Mary Sue Morrow has shown, this prin-
ciple evolved greatly during the second half of the century, during which
time writers on music proposed a number of different strategies by which
it could be put into practice, from the creative use of melodic material to
the unity of affect or style.54

50 51
Ibid., 363. Ibid.
52
A few examples will suffice: echoing the thinking of Frances Hutcheson (among others), Moses
Mendelssohn wrote that “beauty presumes unity in variety,” while Yves Marie André claimed that in
music “this great principle is more certain than in any other form.” Moses Mendelssohn, Briefe über
die Empfindungen (1755), as cited in Morrow, German Music Criticism, 72; and Yves Marie André,
Essai sur le beau (Paris, 1741), as cited in Peter le Huray and James Day, eds., Music and Aesthetics in
the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries (Cambridge University Press, 1988), 34.
53
Charles Batteux, Les beaux-arts réduits à un même principe (1746), as cited in le Huray and Day,
Music and Aesthetics, 51.
54
Morrow, German Music Criticism, 72, identifies other strategies as well and notes further (88 and
139–140) that eighteenth-century German critics did not fully embrace the aesthetic category of
unity (or order) until the late 1780s and 1790s, when it served to temper the earlier obsession
(during the 1770s especially) with genius. “Unity,” as she puts it, “was well suited to curb creative
excess.”
24 Engaging Bach

Discussions of Bach’s music from this time typically ground its unity in
diversity in the composer’s superior command of Harmonie, a concept that
encompasses not only harmonic movement but also voice leading in mul-
tiple parts. Crucially, instead of exploring the various manifestations of this
aesthetic ideal in Bach’s potentially more tractable suites or sonatas, his heirs
continued to look to his most learned works, the keyboard fugues in particu-
lar, for evidence of his adherence to this lofty goal. As C. P. E. Bach (prob-
ably) wrote, in an officially anonymous 1788 defense of Bach against Charles
Burney’s charge that there was nothing natural about a Bach fugue:55
When it comes to the art of harmony, or the genius of the master who created
many parts for a large work, worked them out completely, and dovetailed them
into a large and beautiful whole that combined diversity and the greatness of
simplicity, and this in such manner that even the amateur, if he but have some
understanding of the language of the fugue … was delighted – I doubt whether
Handel’s fugues will ever bear comparison with Bach’s.56
Even in the less abstract genre of the chorale, proponents emphasized first
and foremost Bach’s uncanny ability to impose unity on independent voice
parts. As Kirnberger observed, a few years after the first edition of the four-
part chorales:
here is perhaps in the whole science of writing [music] nothing more difficult
than this: not only to give each of the four voices its own flowing melody, but also
to keep a uniform character in all, so that out of their union a single and perfect
whole may arise. In this the late Capellmeister Bach in Leipzig perhaps excelled
all the composers in the world; that is why his chorales as well as his larger works
are to be most highly recommended to all composers as the best models for con-
scientious study.57
His immediate followers aimed, in other words, to rehabilitate Bach’s idio-
syncratic art by stressing the utility of certain keyboard works for compos-
ers and other diligent students; the rest of his compositional legacy would
simply have to wait for a more propitious time.
Towards the end of the century, a new generation of critics began
to promote the unity in diversity of Bach’s keyboard music as a way of
unlocking the otherwise forbidding universe of Baroque counterpoint
and of finding intense expression in it. Such claims may have been hard
to swallow (Bach’s music was still considered to be unreasonably difficult
and was hardly “expressive” in the modern sense), but their increasing
frequency had an undeniably positive effect on the reception of particu-
lar works. Reichardt, whose reviews routinely included frank descriptions
of his own emotional responses to particular pieces, is a case in point.58

55 56 57
See NBR, 369. Ibid., 404. Ibid., 367.
58
Morrow, German Music Criticism, 23–24, cites a review of Reichardt’s journal that ran in the
Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek, in which Reichardt is asked to “pay more attention to his readers
than to himself.”
 Why the keyboard works? 25

In his most detailed discussion of a piece by Bach, from a 1782 issue of

his short-lived Musikalisches Kunstmagazin, this ostentatiously self-con-
scious critic gropes for a way to describe the musical style of Bach and
Handel and very nearly abandons his task. Addressing two of the most
familiar musical polemics of his day, Rousseau contra Rameau (melody
vs. harmony) and Sulzer’s “well-sounding, superficial, sanctified chatter
about beautiful forms and fashions,” Reichardt suddenly volunteers that
the experience of “a piece by Bach or Handel … has made me forget all
about such reasoning and speculation – then I have often sighed aloud:
‘More pieces like this, whole works of this kind, and the good fortune and
elevated soul to do them justice, and I will neither read nor write another
word!’”59 Promptly forgetting his promise, Reichardt forges ahead, liken-
ing his experience of Handel and Bach to Goethe’s famous epiphany at the
Strasbourg Cathedral: both writers’ antipathy for the manifold intricacies
of Gothic art faded away as “one great impression filled my soul, which,
since it consisted of a thousand harmonious details, I could readily taste
and enjoy, but by no means understand or explain.”60 For Reichardt this
inexplicable sense of wonder, the result of an artwork’s simultaneous clar-
ity and profundity, was only rarely to be found in Bach. He nevertheless
identifies one particularly arresting example, the Fugue in F minor from
Book II of WTC (Ex. 1.6), in a passage that merits quoting at length:
his fugue … has a great and rare merit: there reigns throughout a melody of such
expressiveness, the restatements of the theme are so clear and penetrating, and the
progression of the voices is so natural and distinct, as usually can be found only
in fugues by Handel. Bach himself, although infinitely more erudite and industri-
ous, wrote few fugues that are as beautiful and truly moving. he first time I saw
it I could not stop playing it, and it plunged me into the deepest and yet sweetest
melancholy. One might well sing words of deep mourning to it: and it must not
be played fast. To say anything about the purity of the harmony and the clavier-
writing would be to forget the dutiful reverence we owe the great master.61
here is much to say about this extraordinary piece of writing. As both
Marpurg and Nichelmann had done, Reichardt was careful to cite a work
of Bach to which there could be few objections: this is a simple fugue
with no contrapuntal pretensions; the eminently logical progress of its ini-
tial exposition sets the tone for what follows. he exemplary clarity of its
counterpoint was surely a point in its favor, and as Martin Zenck suggests,
Reichardt may have selected this piece to take issue directly with Scheibe’s
criticism of Bach (in which case, the historical misreading of Scheibe
began early, for as we have seen, his complaint concerned Bach’s vocal, not

59
BD III, 864; translation adapted from BR, 456.
60
BD III, 864; BR, 456. Applegate, Bach in Berlin, 222, describes how Goethe-inspired descriptions
of Bach’s music – with the obligatory reference to the Strasbourg Cathedral – became a familiar
trope of Bach reception in the early nineteenth century.
61
BD III, 864; translation adapted from BR, 456.
26 Engaging Bach

Example 1.6 J. S. Bach, Fugue in F minor from WTC, Book II, BWV 881/2, mm. 1–14

10

instrumental, music).62 Reichardt may also have been attempting to rebut

those who still viewed Bach as the archetypal example of a composer who
made extraordinary “demands on nature.”63 Ultimately more important,
however, is the deep impression made by the F minor Fugue: its rigorous
structure was no impediment to the kind of intense emotional experience
Reichardt craved. On the contrary, its crystalline architecture built a per-
fect kind of enclosure for the pensive, solitary world that lay at the heart
of north German keyboard culture in the late eighteenth century. hough
he did not explicitly reject the prevailing wisdom that counterpoint was by
definition unnatural, Reichardt wanted his readers to know that occasion-
ally even fugues could fit within the popular bourgeois world of private
emotional reverie. Ushering J. S. Bach into this quiet but intense realm of
Empfindsamkeit, an aesthetic more closely associated with the sonatas and
fantasias of C. P. E. Bach, Reichardt demonstrates how even an archaic
fugue can be truly moving.
One wonders how many of his readers, seated at their clavichords and
imbibing in this fashionable form of self-indulgent musical solace, man-
aged to transport themselves in quite the same manner with this or any
other piece by Sebastian Bach.64 At any rate, such an appeal was vintage

62
Martin Zenck, “Stadien der Bach-Deutung in der Musikkritik, Musikaesthetik und
Musikgeschichtsschreibung zwischen 1750 und 1800,” BJ 68 (1982), 7–32 (12).
63
his particular complaint comes from an anonymous review of Christian Kalkbrenner’s Trois sonates
pour le clavecin ou le piano forte avec l’accompagnement d’un violon et d’une basse, Op. 2, published in
the Erfurtische gelehrte Zeitung 37 (August 5, 1784), 290–294. With thanks to Mary Sue Morrow
for this citation.
64
On the solitary world of the clavichord, see Annette Richards, he Free Fantasia and the Musical
Picturesque (Cambridge University Press, 2001), 145–182.
 Why the keyboard works? 27

Reichardt: his writings on both Handel and Bach often try to bridge the
gap between older, rule-based systems and newer, aesthetically motivated
ways of judging artistic worth. With his comments on the F minor Fugue,
Reichardt shed his former anxiety about Gothic bombast and effected a
kind of Jaussian “shifting of horizons” in Bach reception, through which
the complexity of Bach’s music could be understood as the elaboration of
simple (natural) material.65 Crucially, this sense of wonder was reinforced
through repetition, just as Marpurg and Co. had done with the open-
ing movement of Cantata 144, and it likewise put certain aspects of the
work (“the purity of the harmony and the clavier-writing”) beyond the
critic’s reach, onto a pedestal where unthinking admiration was the only
correct response. Such descriptions, as Hans-Joachim Hinrichsen points
out, effectively historicized all of Bach’s music for this generation.66 But
perhaps the most striking thing to notice about Reichardt’s celebration of
this work’s deep expression is the fact that an instrumental fugue managed
to elicit such extravagant musings on music’s ability to move the soul: this
fugue did not merely exemplify one of the affects; it brought on an over-
whelming sense of melancholy, one of the most seductive emotions of the
empfindsamer Stil.
hough this sentiment was a commonplace of German clavichord cul-
ture, more typical of this age are descriptions that connect melancholia to
improvisation, not the realization of a notated piece of music (let alone a
learned work like a fugue), and that make even clearer the all-encompassing
nature of such experiences. Wordless, solitary, and nearly inaudible, these
improvisations “verged on both the indecorous and the pathological” while
doing much to stoke the reputations of the better players.67 Enthusiasm for
this kind of activity extended into all kinds of writing, musical and other-
wise. In an oft-quoted passage from his autobiographical novel Hesperus,
Jean Paul summons the fabled white swan of innumerable madrigals, end-
lessly pining for the sexual release of “a thousand deaths,” as he loses him-
self in an ecstatic extemporization:
When I want to express a particular feeling that seizes me, it strives to find not
words but sounds, and I crave to express it on my clavichord. As soon as I shed
tears at the clavichord over my invention, the creative process is over and feeling
takes command. Nothing exhausts me as much, nothing soothes me more than
improvising at the clavichord. I could improvise myself to death.68
Equally well known are reports from this time about musicians whose
improvisations possessed their bodies in a similar manner: Burney’s and

65
As Wagner, “Die Bach-Rezeption im 18. Jahrhundert,” 231, puts it: “Komplizierte Struktur und
gefühlshaftes Erleben müssen vereinbar, kompatibel sein.”
66
Hans-Joachim Hinrichsen, “Johann Nikolaus Forkel und die Anfänge der Bachforschung,” in
Heinemann and Hinrichsen, Bach und die Nachwelt, Vol. I, 208.
67
Richards, he Free Fantasia, 175. 68 As cited in ibid.
28 Engaging Bach

Reichardt’s accounts of C. P. E. Bach’s improvisations, for example, in

which Emanuel “grew so animated and possessed, that he not only played
but looked like one inspired”;69 “he puts his entire soul into [the music].”70
By contrast, Reichardt’s thoughts about the F minor Fugue are neither
the literary confessions of an improviser nor the empathetic observations
of one, but instead the recounting of his own physical and emotional
embodiment of a notated piece. Reichardt’s tactile dawdling in the hope of
latent discovery – to emphasize the distinction between his realization of
this fugue and the more creative activity of an improviser – points down
the path eventually taken by revolutionary turn-of-the-century writers on
music and aesthetics: Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder’s frankly roman-
tic conception of music (expressed in his 1799 Phantasien über die Kunst
für Freunde der Kunst) as a language of feeling, for example. he contrast
with other critical writing from Reichardt’s time about Sebastian Bach’s
music could not be more stark. A few years earlier Johann Nikolaus Forkel
had compared the music of Bach Senior to that of Philipp Emanuel and
concluded that Sebastian “possessed more poetic inspiration,”71 but he
was never so indiscreet as to describe his own impressions of particular
pieces. Forkel would eventually bite hard on the metaphorical bullet, but
his memorable characterization of fugue as “the most perfect expression of
the multiply modified feelings of all the members of a people,” the result of
a “multifarious and artful weaving, an accurate representation of nature,”72
seems coolly corporate next to Reichardt’s sudden intuitive leap, though
both make the necessary bow to nature.
Reichardt’s attempt to open up new critical space for Bach’s music, in a
culture that had only limited interest in it, distinguishes his Bach criticism
from that of his north German contemporaries. His deeply personal obser-
vations likewise have little in common with more mainstream European
writing about music in the late eighteenth century, represented on one
side by the rationalist disciples of Gottsched and Charles Batteux, and on
the other by the more sense-oriented students of David Hume and Jean-
Baptiste Dubos. For most of these writers, the inner emotional life of the
player was not of great interest; they wanted instead to show either how
mimesis could still obtain in modern music (with ever more tortuous argu-
ments) or how music appealed to the sensory mechanisms of the listener,
respectively. Even those who continued to value sense over intellect after

69
Charles Burney, Dr. Burney’s Musical Tours in Europe, ed. Percy A. Scholes, 2 vols., Vol. II (London:
Oxford University Press, 1959), 219.
70
Johann Friedrich Reichardt, Briefe eines aufmerksamen Reisenden die Musik betreffend, 2 vols., Vol. II
(Frankfurt, 1774/1776) 15.
71
BD III, 283.
72
Johann Nikolaus Forkel, Allgemeine Geschichte der Musik (1788), as cited in Bellamy Hosler,
Changing Aesthetic Views of Instrumental Music in 18th-Century Germany (Ann Arbor: UMI Press,
1978/1981), 186.
 Why the keyboard works? 29

the initial fascination with sentiment had worn off remained incapable of

appreciating music that was at once learned and expressive, preferring a
musical language that consisted of arbitrarily fixed sentiments and their
sonic analogues.73 But north German writers had at least begun to acknow-
ledge the expressive potential of instrumental music; Reichardt simply
took this one step further, subjecting the physical act of playing notated
music to the emotional scrutiny of the “more sensitive” style. Making of
Bach’s F minor Fugue a kind of metaphysical touchstone, through which
one might plumb the depths of feeling over and over, Reichardt explained
for his readers how Bach achieved naturalness, clarity of expression, and
the organization of great diversity around a single unifying idea, a simple
fugue subject. As Ernst Ludwig Gerber stressed several decades later, “this
unity from the first to the last note [of the F minor Fugue] can scarcely
be underestimated, since throughout it is the musical expression of one
and the same feeling.”74 Reichardt retained, in other words, the essential
goals of earlier Bach criticism (naturalness, clarity, unity in diversity) while
insisting that a work’s sounding quality and its effect on the player were
equally, if not more, important: it was the act of playing, not just hearing
or contemplating, this fugue that put Reichardt into a melancholy state,
where he finally felt at ease with an otherwise problematic composer.
Whether Reichardt ever found other works of Bach that combine pro-
found expression with useful lessons in high art is not known. In any case,
contemporaries took up where Reichardt left off, praising the unity in
diversity of Bach’s keyboard works while telling their readers how such
music could contribute to their intellectual and emotional development.
he philosopher and critic Christian Friedrich Michaelis, for example,
reminded his readers that “simplicity is not always harmed by a diversity
of voices.” In the best fugues (he points to Handel and Bach) multiple
voices “cross each other and are yet united and thereby seem to bring much
diversity to the whole.”75 Differently said: obsessing about a fugue’s busy
contrapuntal texture is not the best way to appreciate it; equally important

73
K. L. Junker, for example, claimed in Über den Werth der Tonkunst (1786) that “each passion
announces itself through its own music; and this sound awakens in our heart a sentiment, which
itself is analogous to that which brought it forth.” As cited in Georgia Cowart, “Sense and Sensibility
in Eighteenth-Century Musical hought,” Acta musicologica 45 (1984), 251–266 (264).
74
Ernst Ludwig Gerber, Tonkünstler-Lexikon (1812), as cited in Hinrichsen, “Forkel und die Anfänge
der Bachforschung,” Vol. I, 224.
75
Christian Friedrich Michaelis, “Ueber das Erhabene in der Musik,” Monatsschrift für Deutsche
1801, Part I (January, 1801), 49–50; reprinted as “Einige Bemerkungen über das Erhabene in der
Musik,” Berlinische musikalische Zeitung 1/46 (1805), 179–181: “Diese Einfachheit leidet nicht
durch die Mehrheit und Verschiedenheit der Stimmen, welche sich z.B. in Händelschen oder
Sebast. Bachischen Fugen vereinigen, gleichsam durchkreuzen und dadurch in das Ganze viel
Mannichfaltigkeit zu bringen scheinen.” In a later article Michaelis expands this idea, proposing
it as an ideal for all genres, not just Bach fugues: “Everything,” he maintains, “should possess
unity in diversity”; AMZ 8/43 (July 23, 1806), 676, as cited in le Huray and Day, Music and
Aesthetics, 288.
30 Engaging Bach

to the diligent student are the multiple benefits it offers, which become
clear only once anxieties about such music are overcome.

new mode s o f un d e r s ta nd in g
he most influential spokesman for this newly proactive engagement with
Bach’s keyboard legacy was Friedrich Rochlitz, founding editor of the AMZ,
the leading music journal of its day. Rochlitz used an 1803 essay, “On the
Taste for Sebastian Bach’s Compositions, Especially hose for Keyboard,”
to address lingering fears about Bach’s music and to encourage amateur
pianists especially to regard the recently published WTC as an essential part
of the repertory. Recommending its contents heartily to a reluctant and
unnamed “friend,” Rochlitz maintains that Bach’s primary goal in compos-
ition was to “combine the greatest unity with the utmost possible variety.”
[Bach] chooses for each piece only one primary idea, against which he puts one
or several secondary ideas, each of which however corresponds in some respect
and combines so naturally with the others that each is fully audible and expresses
itself completely. With inexhaustible depth he brings to these ideas ever new and
incredibly diverse interrelations: he separates, unites, turns, and twists them in
all conceivable ways. hus everything in Bach’s most perfect works appears to be
necessary (it could not be done otherwise, without harming the whole), and at the
same time all seems free (each part is self-sufficient).76
Like the great Gothic masters, Rochlitz’s Bach requires repeated and
prolonged study for an appreciation of the utter rightness of his most com-
plex creations. And unlike most modern artists (who, in Rochlitz’s view,
often overindulged the senses) Bach “is very seldom flattering … [and]
does little for the senses … [Yet] he does more for the imagination …
Above all, however, he stimulates and engages the intellect.”77
Bach’s music epitomized, in other words, precisely those things the
German chattering classes were trying to foster around 1800: respect for
tradition and its rules alongside cultivation of the mind. hanks to con-
temporaneous efforts to produce a complete edition of his keyboard and
organ works, a private reckoning with this famous but fearsome composer
had become not only possible but desirable. Borrowing from Birnbaum,
76
Friedrich Rochlitz, “Über den Geschmack an Sebastian Bachs Kompositionen, besonders für das
Klavier,” AMZ 5/31 (April 27, 1803), 509–522 (514–515):
Er wählt zu jedem seiner Stücke nur Einen Hauptgedanken, dem er dann eine oder einige
Nebenideen zugesellet, die aber jenem in irgend einem Betracht zu korrespondiren und sich an
ihn so natürlich anschmiegen, dass jener nun erst vollkommen hevortritt und vollständig ausge-
sprochen scheint. Diese Ideen bringt er nun aber mit unerschöpflicher Tiefe in immer neue und
äusserst mannichfaltige Beziehungen gegen einander; trennet, verbindet, wendet sie auf alle mögli-
che Weise u.s.w. Dadurch erscheint in Bachs vollendetstenWerken alles nothwendig (es kann nicht
anders gemacht werden, ohne Nachtheil des Ganzen), und doch zugleich alles frey (jeder heil ist
nur durch sich selbst bedingt).
77
Ibid., 515: “Er ist sehr selten schmeichelnd … Bach giebt also der Sinnlichkeit wenig. Der Phantasie
giebt er zwar mehr … Am meisten hingegen regt er an und beschäftigt den Verstand.”
 Why the keyboard works? 31

Emanuel Bach and others, Rochlitz promoted the elder Bach’s art by
praising Sebastian’s disregard for the vagaries of fashion. Rochlitz also
gave advice on how to work through the many challenges Bach’s music
posed to the listener and performer: careful, disinterested reflection, he
explains, is essential. “[Bach’s] works mean little to one who doesn’t like to
reflect; never will such a person be able to understand and appreciate their
essence.”78 he latter could not be accessed through a catalogue of affects
or sentiments, nor merely through the senses; instead, it had to be pon-
dered and perceived on its own. his idea had been in the air since at least
1785, when the novelist and philosopher Karl Philipp Moritz proposed
that art’s fundamental purpose is to expand one’s horizons, not just to imi-
tate nature. Works of art, as Moritz famously observed, “can hardly exist
independently of our contemplation.”79 Tacitly acknowledging this funda-
mental tenet of modern work-based aesthetics while warning those who
might not take him at his word, Rochlitz remembers that Bach’s music
“came completely to pieces” before he discovered a way to comprehend it.
Bach’s long-celebrated originality, he insists, is best understood through
disinterested contemplation of the work itself; only in such a manner could
the strict style truly serve those who aspired towards self-cultivation.
Two decades later, in Für Freunde der Tonkunst (1824), his most com-
prehensive collection of music criticism, Rochlitz argued the many benefits
of the Bach fugues by appealing to the self-esteem of educated Germans.
He who drops the fugue from his studies and pleasures gives up not only one of
the most excellent means of improving his intellect and his facility in music; he
loses something that can hardly be replaced … He also gives up a genre that, when
closely and correctly considered, could continue to provide a worthy and truly
noble pleasure – it is indeed the genre that gives him … the capacity to recognize,
appreciate, and fully savor the inner essence, the proper progression, the true con-
tent of important works, even those in the free style.80
More important for Rochlitz than the ability to reproduce or somehow
improve upon this admirable if antiquated genre were the increase in
musical understanding and the real pleasure that derive from the regular
study of Bach fugues. He therefore advanced the cause of these works not
merely because they conformed somehow to preconceived notions about

78
Ibid.: “[Wer] daher nicht nachdenken mag, für den sind seine Werke wenig, und nie wird er ihr
Wesentlichstes fassen und geniessen können.”
79
Karl Philipp Moritz, Versuch einer Vereinigung aller schönen Künste und Wissenschaften unter dem
Begriff des in sich selbst Vollendeten (1785), as cited in le Huray and Day, Music and Aesthetics, 187.
80
Friedrich Rochlitz, Für Freunde der Tonkunst (Leipzig, 1824/1868), 90:
Wer die Fuge bei seinen Uebungen und Genüssen ganz fallen läßt und aufgiebt, der giebt eben damit
nicht nur überhaupt eines der trefflichsten Bildungsmittel seines Geistes und seiner Geschicklichkeit
für Musik auf: sondern ein Bildungsmittel, das in eben dem, wozu es führt, schlechterdings durch
kein anderes ersetzt werden kann … Er giebt aber auch eine Gattung auf, die ihm, näher und recht
betrachtet, einen würdigen, wahrhaft edlen Genuß gewähren könnte; ja, die ihn erst fähig macht …
das innere Wesen, den eigentlichen Gang, den wahren Gehalt bedeutender Werke auch des freien
Styls zu erkennen, zu würdigen und recht vollgültig zu genießen.
32 Engaging Bach

what music ought to be or even do, but rather because they affirmed with
special clarity the new work-centered, particularist discourse about art
and, on a more practical level, because they improved the intellect. While
Rochlitz was not the only admirer of WTC who tried to explain its mys-
teries by embracing the nascent epistemology of classical music, his pos-
ition as editor of the most influential music journal of its day made him a
powerful spokesman for it. More than Reichardt, Rochlitz was concerned
to elevate amateur tastes and to cement the newly dominant position of
instrumental music, and it was with these ends in mind that he and his
generation enshrined Bach’s keyboard works as the fons et origo of the high
style in music. From this moment on, WTC became the best source for a
comprehensive engagement with Bach’s art (the particulars of which will
concern us in Part II especially).
By this time the ability to create a unified utterance with highly vari-
egated means had become a central expectation in virtually all the arts.
In a sense, this ideal had always informed Bach criticism, but it was not
yet fully articulated in Birnbaum’s admiration of Bach’s “astonishing mass
of unusual and well-developed ideas,”81 mostly because the former had
no need to reduce that observation to an organic recipe. For later crit-
ics, the thoroughgoing learnedness of Bach’s music was precisely what
proved its basis in nature; its many perfections no longer needed to be
explained away as the means of improving nature but instead served to
confirm Bach’s mastery over the most natural process of them all: growth
from a single generating cell into a complex organism. he WTC preludes
and fugues, wordless explorations of tonality and figural composition, thus
became self-contained worlds in which this process was made manifest. As
one turn-of-the-century writer put it, “One can see … how [Bach] … pro-
duced exact and free imitations through multiple repetitions, variations,
transpositions, and inversions of [a] single figure; how he knew in numer-
ous ways to make melody out of the harmony, and harmony out of the
melody, and how he achieved all this through the principles of contrast,
continuity, and intensification.”82
he author of these words, music publisher and critic Hans-Georg
Nägeli, was mightily impressed by the near-total reliance of the Prelude
in G sharp minor from Book I of WTC on its opening figure (Ex. 1.7).
His seemingly obvious bit of analysis, which stands at some distance from
early-eighteenth-century conceptions of musical invention and disposition

81
BD II, 300; BR, 242.
82
Hans-Georg Nägeli, Johann Sebastian Bach [1802–1804], ed. Günter Birkner (Zürich: Hug, 1974),
13: “Man betrachte … was er … mit dieser einzigen Notenfigur durch mannigfaltige Widerholung,
Veränderung, Versetzung, Umkehrung, strenge und freye Nachahmung leistete; wie er in vielfachen
Beziehungen die Harmonie zu melodisiren und die Melodie zu harmonisiren wußte, und wie er
dabey mit dem Gesetz des Contrastes zugleich auch das Gesetz der Stetigkeit und der Steigerung in
Ausübung brachte.”
 Why the keyboard works? 33

Example 1.7 J. S. Bach, Prelude in G sharp minor from WTC,

Book I, BWV 863, mm. 1–11

(to say nothing of earlier thoughts on the proper relationship between art
and nature), reflects the longstanding fascination among music theorists
and critics with the most fundamental aspects of the learned style and
the turn among leading Viennese composers especially towards dynamic
melodic material in their larger works. Nägeli’s description of Bach’s stand-
ard operating procedure also testifies to the power of arguments advanced
by generations of writers who increasingly viewed the abundant diversity
and tight organization of Bach’s keyboard music as evidence of its natural-
ness and deep expression.
 cha p te r 

Inventing the Bach chorale

he first posthumous editions of Bach’s music, like those produced dur-

ing his lifetime, reinforced his reputation as a composer of highly learned
keyboard music for experts. Few in number, these volumes added to the
list of previously published works just two collections; the rest had to wait
until the nineteenth century, when the vogue for “complete works” edi-
tions of major composers grew to encompass Bach’s output. he paucity
and slow pace of Bach editions during the second half of the eighteenth
century reflects, more than anything else, the economics of printed music
during this time: engraved or typeset prints required significant amounts of
time and money, and the potential market for Bach’s music was small. By
mid-century publishing houses and music sellers were catering increasingly
to the burgeoning amateur market with tuneful sonatas and variations on
popular songs, while more introspective or complex works that appealed to
the better players and writers continued to circulate mostly in hand copies
passed from teacher to student, colleague to colleague. hus despite keen
interest in WTC among professionals and connoisseurs, this indispensable
work appeared in print only in 1801. During the half-century between
Bach’s death and the turn of the century, only he Art of Fugue and the four-
part chorales found the necessary support to make publication feasible.
Bach himself supervised engraving of the former work, though he died
before the job could be finished, leaving its completion to former students
and at least one family member. he Art of Fugue, as F. W. Marpurg notes
in his foreword to the 1752 edition, had the capacity “to restore in some
measure … the dignity of Harmony” by instructing both the “musical
mechanic … who … knows the fugue only by name” and “the contem-
porary composer, who considers the fugue the child of ancient aberration,
[in] the manly element which should prevail in music,” as opposed to “the
spreading rubbish of womanish song.”1 Resurrecting fugue and cultivating
highbrow musical mores proved difficult, however, despite strong support
for he Art of Fugue from leading figures in the German musical press.2 he
1
NBR, 377.
2
Johann Mattheson predicted that he Art of Fugue “will one day throw all French and Italian fugue
makers into astonishment – at least to the extent that they can really penetrate and understand it,
not to speak of playing it” (ibid.).

34
 Inventing the Bach chorale 35

work’s uniqueness was no guarantee of an audience during an age when

most musicians regarded fugues as more artifice than art. (Hence Bach’s
carefully worded and perhaps deliberately provocative title?) Undaunted,
C. P. E. Bach and J. F. Agricola, who jointly took over its publication at
Sebastian’s death, offered he Art of Fugue in 1751 for subscription, con-
fident that this last great example of the elder Bach’s contrapuntal genius
would appeal to connoisseurs of learned counterpoint. To their dismay,
the edition had few takers. A second printing in 1752 was marketed more
aggressively, but it too failed to arouse much interest, forcing a dejected
Emanuel Bach to offer (in 1756) the engraved plates for sale. Barely thirty
copies had been sold.
he first editions of Sebastian Bach’s four-part chorales, by contrast,
had no direct involvement from the composer himself; instead, his Berlin-
based followers had to collect and transcribe (mostly from Bach’s concerted
church works) then prepare for publication these miniature masterpieces
of harmony and voice leading. Chorale books were perhaps the easiest
way to make a profit in eighteenth-century music publishing, even if this
most quotidian genre of the German Baroque seldom inspired much cre-
ativity among organist-composers, most of whom taught their pupils to
harmonize chorale tunes in as straightforward a manner as possible, as they
themselves did when accompanying congregational song or in written-
out settings. Organists who bucked convention in this regard were criti-
cized, much as Bach was famously reproved by the Arnstadt Consistory
for his “many curious variationes [and] many strange tones” in his chorale
playing.3 Perhaps this is why Bach himself never published his four-part
chorales, whose searching harmonies and busy inner parts were a striking
departure from the norm. heir usefulness as textless keyboard works may
not have occurred to him either, though for the Berlin circle this was the
most sensible niche for the Bach chorales. In any case, like the first edition
of he Art of Fugue, and for many of the same reasons, the first editions of
the chorales sold poorly and were controversial even among admirers, who
questioned their style and utility while praising their creator’s mastery of
Harmonie, that peculiarly German combination of vertical discursiveness
and horizontal liveliness in music.
A helpful context for these editions might begin with the publications
Bach himself supervised, since his first posthumous editors followed his
lead in several important respects. It was only in the late 1720s, after the
composition of the bulk of his concerted church works plus such mon-
uments as WTC, Book I and the “Brandenburg” Concertos, that Bach
finally began to publish his own music in earnest. Engraved editions were
entirely in keeping with his station in life; the only real surprise is that he
waited so long to publish anything beyond a couple of early cantatas, both

3
Ibid., 46.
36 Engaging Bach

of which had a very limited circulation.4 he tipping point came with

the family’s 1723 move to Leipzig, where Bach found a flourishing book
and music trade and a renowned university. He arrived with a number of
potential publications in his pocket: the dance suite was by far the most
popular genre of published music, and Bach had already composed quite a
few. But instead of engraving any of his existing suites for solo keyboard or
those for violin or cello,5 Bach published six new keyboard “Partitas,” the
longest and most complicated such works from his pen, in single install-
ments between 1726 and 1730. In 1731 he republished all six in a single
volume as his Clavier-Übung (Keyboard Exercise), Op. 1.
Despite the earnestly didactic title, borrowed from publications by
his Leipzig predecessor Johann Kuhnau,6 the contents of Bach’s Clavier-
Übung, Part I are a far cry from rudimentary keyboard drills. In compari-
son to suites by Handel, Rameau, Georg Böhm, Johann Mattheson, and
others – all part of a thriving culture of keyboard music in the early eight-
eenth century – the Bach Partitas offer few if any movements that can be
read with ease straight off the page; as a result, they appealed primarily to
professional musicians and advanced students.7 Subsequent installments in
the series, comprising a “Concerto in the Italian Style” and an “Ouverture
in the French Manner” (Part II), a wide-ranging series of learned organ
works (Part III), and the “Goldberg” Variations (Part IV), respectively,
cemented Bach’s reputation as a composer of formidable works for virtu-
oso harpsichordists and organists.8 he published collections from his last
decade – the Musical Offering, the Canonic Variations on “Vom Himmel
hoch” and the so-called “Schübler” chorale transcriptions for organ – did
little to alter this kind of reception. (Towards the end of his life Bach also
prepared for publication the so-called “Leipzig” chorale preludes and may
have planned editions of other major collections: Book II of WTC and the
harpsichord concertos, for example.)
he above works, along with others that circulated only in hand copies,
leave little doubt that Bach was more interested in disseminating superb
examples of his art among friends and colleagues than in commercial

4
he city of Mühlhausen published Gott ist mein König, BWV 71 and another lost cantata, composed
for successive council election celebrations, in 1708 and 1709, respectively. Both had rather small
print runs: there are but three surviving exemplars of the first edition of BWV 71.
5
Bach may have intended some of these works for publication: his autograph fair copy of the Sei solo
for violin (consisting of three sonatas and three suites) is titled Libro primo, and Johann Christian
Bach’s copy of the “English Suites” says that these works were “fait pour les Anglois,” which might
suggest a London publication (NBA V/7; KB, 29).
6
Johann Kuhnau, Neue Clavier-Übung (Leipzig, 1689/1692).
7
On eighteenth-century reception of Clavier-Übung, Part I, see Andrew Talle, “J. S. Bach’s Keyboard
Partitas and heir Early Audience,” Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 2003; and “Nürnberg,
Darmstadt, Köthen: Neuerkenntnisse zur Bach-Überlieferung in der ersten Hälfte des 18.
Jahrhunderts,” BJ 89 (2003), 143–172.
8
See the opinions of Mattheson, Scheibe, Mizler, Sorge, and Forkel in NBR, 326, 331–332, 333,
336–337, 463–464, respectively; and that of at least one well-placed amateur in BD II, 223.
 Inventing the Bach chorale 37

success in the wider musical marketplace, a strategy that remained largely

unchanged for the first posthumous editions of his music. Publication of
he Art of Fugue must have seemed a kind of sacred duty, as a way of honor-
ing the greatest master of counterpoint and fugue the world had ever seen.
he chorale editions likewise honored Bach’s much-admired mastery of
Harmonie while preserving some of the most practical examples of his art.
Both projects, in other words, were of a piece with the editions the com-
poser himself supervised, which took the best-known genres of his day to
new heights and made few concessions to the casual consumer. Of the two,
the chorale editions had the greater impact, owing to this genre’s central
place in German culture, but commercial success was hardly assured. Like
the first editions of he Art of Fugue, the first edition of Bach’s four-part
chorales failed to arouse much interest. he second had better luck but its
print run still paled in comparison to those of contemporaneous volumes
of chorales by other composers, including C. P. E. Bach and Georg Philipp
Telemann. hat the Bach chorales have for so long dominated the genre
perhaps explains why attention to their initial reception has been scant,
yet within this story lies an important and little-noticed development: the
revitalization of a genre, not by a composer actively trying to create some-
thing new, but instead by the posthumous elevation of his work to the
status of an “unquestionable concept.”9 Posterity, in short, invented the
Bach chorale.

e d it ions, subscri pti ons, and f o r mats

his process took some time, despite strong support from key devotees,
several editors, and at least two publishers. he first edition of the Bach
chorales, comprising some 200 four-part settings in two installments of
100 each, appeared between 1765 and 1769 from the Berlin publisher
Friedrich Wilhelm Birnstiel, thanks mostly to Marpurg, who had begun
editing the chorales around 1760.10 By 1763 Marpurg’s new position as
Director of the Prussian State Lottery left him little time to finish editing
the first volume, leaving Birnstiel to appeal to C. P. E. Bach for assistance.
Demanding three times as much in compensation as Marpurg had asked
for Part I of this edition, Emanuel Bach did the work but made no friend
of the Berlin publisher; unsurprisingly, Bach fils was not consulted when
it came time to issue Part II. For this second set of 100 Bach chorales,
Birnstiel relied instead on the editorial assistance of Agricola, who took
no public credit for the work. Emanuel Bach responded in kind, warning

9
Christoph Wolff, “On the Recognition of Bach and ‘the Bach Chorale’: Eighteenth-Century
Perspectives,” in Bach: Essays on His Life and Music (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1991), 383–390 (386).
10
A 1777 letter from Kirnberger to J. G. I. Breitkopf (NBR, 381) recounts the genesis of Birnstiel’s
edition.
38 Engaging Bach

potential consumers about this edition’s editorial inconsistency in a sharply

worded 1769 “Note to the Public,” in which he accused Birnstiel of intro-
ducing into the chorales “mistakes such as even a beginner in composition
would not easily make.”11 Such strong criticism, whether deserved or not,
had the predictable effect on sales: Kirnberger regretted that the volumes
“became so much waste paper.”12
he subsequent Breitkopf edition, comprising four installments pub-
lished between 1784 and 1787, was the result of protracted negotiations
between the publisher and C. P. E. Bach, conducted mostly through the
intermediary of Kirnberger, who died in 1783 before the first volume
was finished. Kirnberger had been agitating for either a completion of
the Birnstiel edition or a new, better edition for some time. Acting as
agent for his patron, Princess Anna Amalia, who in 1771 had purchased
C. P. E. Bach’s now lost manuscript collection of the chorales, Kirnberger
waited until 1777 to approach Breitkopf about the matter. It may well
be, as C. S. Terry first proposed, that Kirnberger asked Birnstiel to pub-
lish those chorales not included in the latter’s edition and that Birnstiel
delayed out of financial concerns, since his own volumes had not sold
well.13 Kirnberger may also have toyed with the idea of publishing the
chorales himself, but he evidently lacked the necessary funds. At length
he managed to convince Breitkopf to do the job, but not without fur-
ther delay: Birnstiel apparently reconsidered, sometime in mid 1778, and
announced his intention to publish two additional volumes of Bach cho-
rales. In response, a suddenly reluctant Breitkopf (whose firm sold manu-
script copies and prints of various Bach works but who had never released
a Bach edition of his own) refused to go forward with the planned chor-
ale volumes. Unfortunately, Birnstiel too failed to deliver. In 1779 an
exasperated and seemingly defeated Kirnberger asked for the manuscript
to be returned. Two more years passed before he made a final appeal to
Breitkopf, noting that:
the beautiful collection of J. Seb Bach’s Four-Part Chorales that you had before
you I still have lying here untouched; it is a crying shame that they are not being
published for posterity. I will present them to you for art’s sake, and to the eternal
memory of Bach, if you will have them printed, and just give me one copy on
good paper.14
Breitkopf finally complied but stipulated that, unless his printing costs
were covered by subscriptions within six months, he was going to drop the
projected volumes.

11 12
Ibid., 380. Ibid., 382.
13
See the discussion in Charles Sanford Terry, he Four-Part Chorals of J. S. Bach with German Text of
the Hymns and English Translations (London: Oxford University Press, 1929), vi–viii.
14
NBR, 383.
 Inventing the Bach chorale 39

In the end Breitkopf proved more generous than his correspondence

allows. Owing perhaps to his longstanding affiliation with the Bach family,15
he went to press with only a handful of advance orders: Part I of his edi-
tion, issued in 1784, contains but forty-two subscribers’ names, a number
that must have embarrassed those responsible for the publication. Other
chorale books from this era had much higher subscription rates; many
in fact capitalized on local traditions as a way of maximizing circulation.
Johann Christoph Kühnau’s Vierstimmige alte und neue Choralgesänge, mit
Provinzial-Abweichungen of 1786, for example, was created for the Berlin
market, where it managed to attract some 649 subscribers.16 he Bach
chorale volumes, lacking a comparable geographic constituency, were at
something of a disadvantage, prompting devotees to call instead on future
generations to judge the worth and usefulness of these settings, many of
whose melodies were no longer current. Comparisons with other kinds
of late-eighteenth-century prints illustrate the poor commercial prospects
of the Breitkopf volumes in particular. C. P. E. Bach’s Sonaten für Kenner
und Liebhaber (published by Breitkopf from 1779 onwards) had some 519
confirmed customers for the first volume and print runs of 1,050 copies
for each of six volumes, which were reasonable though unexceptional sales
figures for published music during this time. (Even Volume VI of this ser-
ies, the least successful commercially, managed to attract nearly 300 sub-
scribers – seven times as many orders as were received for the first volume
of Sebastian Bach’s chorales.)17 Editions of large occasional works likewise
required a minimum number of advance orders: negotiating publication
of his choral work Heilig in 1778, Emanuel Bach informed Breitkopf that
100 subscriptions were necessary for an edition of it to be worthwhile.
Anything less than that could be downright insulting: a mere fifty sub-
scriptions for his oratorio Aufstehung und Himmelfahrt Jesu made this Bach
worry that he would become a laughingstock.18
When at last complete, the Breitkopf edition included not quite the
400 chorales claimed by Kirnberger; the now-standard total of 371 reflects
the elimination of duplicate and spurious chorales in subsequent edi-
tions.19 hough initial sales figures for both the Birnstiel and the Breitkopf
15
Wolff, Bach: Essays, 375, makes a number of pertinent connections between the Breitkopf firm and
J. S. Bach. One other possibility is that Doles and Hiller changed Breitkopf ’s mind: see Arnold
Schering, “Joh. Phil. Kirnberger als Herausgeber Bachscher Choräle,” BJ 15 (1918), 141–150
(149).
16
No relation to Bach’s Leipzig predecessor Johann Kuhnau, J. C. Kühnau was probably a student of
Kirnberger.
17
Peggy Daub, “he Publication Process and Audience for C. P. E. Bach’s Sonaten für Kenner und
Liebhaber,” in Bach Perspectives 2, ed. George B. Stauffer (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press,
1996), 65–84 (75–77).
18
Stephen L. Clark, ed. and trans., he Letters of C. P. E. Bach (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), nos.
137, 262.
19
On these later editions and their relationship to the Birnstiel and Breitkopf editions, see Gerd
Wachowski, “Die vierstimmigen Choräle Johann Sebastian Bachs: Untersuchungen zu den
Druckausgaben von 1765 bis 1932 und zur Frage der Authentizität,” BJ 69 (1983), 51–79. Source-
40 Engaging Bach

editions were disappointing, reprints of the former and at least one add-
itional edition appeared by the end of the century,20 and manuscript copies
proliferated as well: Breitkopf and the Berlin music dealer Westphal both
advertised printed and hand copies – as either organ or keyboard (not
church) music – in catalogues issued between 1761 and 1792.21
Finding the right category for the Bach chorales, it seems, was not just
a concern for those who drew up lists at publishing houses in the late
eighteenth century; it was a significant problem for the reception of these
pieces, owing to their atypical format and unusual character. he contrast
with virtually all previous chorale publications is worth exploring in some
detail. he earliest German hymnals, printed during the first flowering of
the Reformation in the sixteenth century, fall into two basic types: those
for lay use contain only chorale texts and melodies, while those for profes-
sional musicians feature polyphonic settings with the chorale tune typic-
ally in the tenor voice, in the German tradition of Tenorlied. he former
had no need of full harmonizations, since the regular accompaniment of
congregational song began in earnest only in the seventeenth century,
when organs became more common in churches in the wealthier towns
and cities. he latter constitute the earliest chorale motets, an import-
ant forerunner to the chorale cantatas of Bach and his contemporaries.
Published collections of harmonized chorales in the cantional style (with
the melody in the soprano) first appeared just before 1600 and attained
great popularity in the seventeenth century, for both church and domestic
use. he latter half of this century was a kind of golden age for collections
that included not only cantional-style chorales but litanies and other litur-
gical items; the 1682 Neu Leipziger Gesangbuch of Gottfried Vopelius, the
best known of these, was still in use in Bach’s Leipzig, where its traditional
contents remained essential for services at the major churches. Alongside
such venerable collections, which served mostly the orthodoxy, a more
modern kind of hymnal with just melody and figured bass became popular
during Bach’s lifetime among Pietists. Johann Anastasius Freylinghausen’s
Geistreiches Gesangbuch, the most important of the Pietist hymnals, kept
this format from its first edition in 1697 to its last in 1771. (Its phe-
nomenal success may also be measured by its sheer size: the 1741 edition
includes nearly 1,600 hymns and 600 tunes.) Bach himself worked out the
continuo lines to a number of melodies for a competing publication in the
same format, Georg Christian Schemelli’s 1736 Musikalische Gesangbuch.

critical questions about the Birnstiel and Breitkopf editions are explored in Friedrich Smend, “Zu
den altesten Sammlungen der vierstimmigen Choräle J. S. Bachs,” BJ 52 (1966), 5–40.
20
Birnstiel reprinted his 1765–1769 volumes between 1777 and 1782 and again in 1790. In 1792
an additional edition of the chorales appeared from the Leipzig firm Musikhandlung auf der
Jägerbrücke.
21
BD III, 711, 789.
 Inventing the Bach chorale 41

Eighteenth-century collections, whether intended for congregational or

domestic use (or both), fall into two general categories: the more compact
Choralbuch typically lacks full texts but includes two-part (continuo) set-
tings identified by first-line incipits, while a Gesangbuch contains full texts
but not always music. In Bach’s day a published Choralbuch was de rigueur
for the better Lutheran composers especially, who encouraged subscrip-
tions from the local populace by putting their names on the covers or title
pages of hymnals that served organists and keyboard-playing amateurs.
he Gesangbuch, on the other hand, was more than just a collection of
song texts; it provided an eloquent catalogue of the tribulations and joys
of day-to-day Christian life while reflecting the tastes and practices of a
particular geographic and/or confessional community. As lay readership
and the custom of private or domestic devotions with music increased,
both kinds of publications proliferated, with the contents of individ-
ual volumes varying widely from place to place.22 (he various reform
movements had no means of standardizing the repertory, thus different
communities sang different tunes to the same text, and chorale melod-
ies had many variants.) Representative of these two broad streams of
German sacred songbooks in the eighteenth century are hymnals from the
Lutheran and Reform traditions, respectively: Christoph Graupner’s 1728
Neu vermehrtes Darmstädtliches Choral-Buch (Fig. 2.1) and the 1763 Chur
Pfälzisches allgemeines reformirtes Gesang-Buch (Fig. 2.2). he former was
clearly intended for organists and keyboard players: Graupner’s bass lines
and figures provide sensible solutions for passages where there are various
options, while the lack of texts renders the volume useless for either choral
singers or congregants. he 1763 Gesang-Buch, on the other hand, could
have served either the literate parishioner or the skillful organist; its old-
fashioned notation notwithstanding, the melodies and texts are perfectly
readable.
Harmonized chorales with four independent voice parts were generally
preserved in other kinds of sources: in older collections (such as Vopelius)
used by skilled church choirs, in concerted church works (which were sel-
dom published), and in publications intended principally for domestic
use. he latter, typified by Daniel Vetter’s Musicalische Kirch- und Hauss-
Ergötzlichkeit (Leipzig, 1709/1713), comprise settings that are usually no
more advanced harmonically than the two-part chorales shown in the pre-
vious illustrations. Vetter’s oft-cited collection actually conflates the closely
related genres of the harmonized chorale for accompanying singing and

22
On the use of hymnbooks in the German Lutheran Church, see Tanya Kevorkian, Baroque Piety:
Religion, Society, and Music in Leipzig, 1650–1750 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), 35–38. he custom
of bringing a hymnal to church, common by 1730 or so in the larger cities, did not always meet
with universal approval, especially in small towns, as Joseph Herl relates in Worship Wars in Early
Lutheranism: Choir, Congregation and hree Centuries of Conflict (Oxford University Press, 2004),
104–106.
42 Engaging Bach

Figure 2.1 Christoph Graupner, Neu vermehrtes Darmstädtliches

Choral-Buch (1728), no. 29

Figure 2.2 Chur Pfälzisches allgemeines reformirtes Gesang-Buch (1763), no. 392
 Inventing the Bach chorale 43

Figure 2.3 Daniel Vetter, Musicalische Kirch- und

Hauss-Ergötzlichkeit (Leipzig, 1709/1713), no. 15

Figure 2.4 Daniel Vetter, Musicalische Kirch- und

Hauss-Ergötzlichkeit (Leipzig, 1709/1713), no. 16

the cantional-style chorale prelude for organ or keyboard: each four-part

setting is followed by a Variatio in the broken-chord style made popular by
the French clavecinistes and their imitators (Figures 2.3 and 2.4).23
he infrequent open-score editions of four-part chorales and spiritual
songs typically include full texts, indicating choral or at least small ensem-
ble use. Johann Friedrich Doles’s Melodien zu Herrn Prof. C. F. Gellerts
Geistlichen Oden und Liedern (1758) follows this format but with an add-
itional twist that anticipates the appearance of the Bach chorales in their
first editions: in his preface Doles directs singers to the carefully underlaid
score and keyboard players to the (easier-to-play) two-stave arrangement
at the bottom of each page (Figure 2.5). His inclusion of the latter effect-
ively conflates several distinct ways of notating simple devotional music

23
Cf. Stephen Rose, “Daniel Vetter and the Domestic Keyboard Chorale in Bach’s Leipzig,” Early
Music 33/1 (February, 2005), 39–53.
44 Engaging Bach

Figure 2.5 Johann Friedrich Doles, Melodien zu Herrn Prof.

C. F. Gellerts Geistlichen Oden und Liedern (1758), no. 38

in the eighteenth century, thus maximizing the potential market for this
volume.24
Bach had an extensive knowledge of hymnody, and as a number of scholars
have pointed out, his chorale-based organ works in particular demonstrate
his careful research into not only traditional Reformation chorales but also
more recent hymns.25 hough he never published a collection of his own
chorale harmonizations, Bach’s notational preferences for such activity can
be deduced from a number of different sources. hose either in his own
hand or prepared under his direct supervision include the Clavierbüchlein
for Anna Magdalena Bach (1725); the Schemelli Gesangbuch (for which
Bach served effectively as music editor); the so-called “Trauungschoräle,”
BWV 250–252 (copied sometime between 1734 and 1738); and a manu-
script of 149 Bach chorales copied c. 1735 by Johann Ludwig Dietel, a
student at the Leipzig homasschule. Among its other contents, the
Clavierbüchlein includes a few chorales and spiritual songs, all of which
save one were copied by Anna Magdalena and notated in two parts (treble
and bass) without figures but with full texts. (he one exception is in Bach’s
own hand: a four-part setting of “Dir, dir, Jehova, will ich singen,” BWV
299, which is followed by Anna Magdalena’s reduction of the original to

24
Frieder Rempp (NBA III/2.2; KB, 82) speculates that at least one lost hand copy of some 240 Bach
chorales (source [x3], a collection offered by Breitkopf in 1764, on which, see BD III, 711) may
have had a similar format: in this case, full score with an additional figured continuo line.
25
See, for example, Robin Leaver, “Bach, Hymns and Hymnbooks,” he Hymn 36/4 (1985), 7–13;
and “Bach and Hymnody: he Evidence of the Orgelbüchlein,” Early Music 13/2 (May, 1985),
227–236.
 Inventing the Bach chorale 45

its outer parts only.)26 he sixty-nine chorales in the Schemelli Gesangbuch,

a few of which are on melodies actually composed by Bach, are notated
in two parts with occasional figures,27 while the “Trauungschoräle” consist
of a set of five individual parts (SATB + continuo) that Bach himself cop-
ied out, evidently for use at wedding ceremonies in Leipzig. (Surprisingly,
the latter include text incipits only, perhaps because the chorales were too
well known to require full texts.)28 he Dietel source, finally, is notated in
open score and includes text incipits only.29 Given its format and likely
purpose as instruction in chorale harmonization,30 this last source suggests
that Bach taught in the same manner as he wrote out the four-part chorale
harmonizations in his cantatas and passions: namely, one line at a time,
starting with the melody, then the bass, then the inner parts.31 Beyond
the obvious advantage of minimizing copying errors when working from
either an original score or a set of parts, the open-score format of the Dietel
manuscript further encourages study of the various polyphonic species of
Harmonie in the Bach chorales.32
Whether Bach intended to publish this or any other collection of his own
chorales remains conjectural, though there were certainly good reasons for
him to do so. Stylistically, the 371 Bach chorales are so similar to certain
cantional-style settings in the Orgelbüchlein and elsewhere in his instru-
mental output that some scholars have theorized a lost Bach primer on
chorale harmonization, presumably in two-stave “keyboard score.”33 heir
hypothesis relies on other kinds of evidence as well, including Emanuel
Bach’s 1775 explanation of how his father taught chorale harmonization

26
See the facsimiles in NBA V/4, ix–xi, and III/2.1, ix, respectively.
27
Discussing the change in engraving style within this source, from full text underlay to the use of
only text incipits, Butler wonders whether “Bach’s insistence on figuring basses [was] a major factor
in precipitating the change in format to text incipit with fully figured bass.” See Gregory G. Butler,
“J. S. Bach and the Schemelli Gesangbuch Revisited,” Studi musicali 13 (1984), 241–257 (249).
28
See the facsimiles in NBA III/2.1, vii; and Rempp’s discussion in NBA III/2.1; KB, vi.
29
See the facsimile in NBA III/2.1, viii.
30
Dietel was enrolled at the homasschule from 1727 to 1735 and continued his studies at Leipzig
University in 1736. His manuscript was offered for sale by the Breitkopf firm in 1764 (one year
before the first volume of the Birnstiel edition appeared) and was the source for several other cop-
ies. In his Critical Report to the NBA, III/2.1, Rempp conjectures (on p. 31) that Dietel made
his copy of the chorales from J. S. Bach’s personal collection, which therefore must have been
in open score as well. On the attribution and transmission of the Dietel collection, see Andreas
Glöckner, “Neuerkenntnisse zu Johann Sebastian Bachs Aufführungskalender zwischen 1729 und
1735,” BJ 67 (1981), 60–69; and Hans-Joachim Schulze, “‘150 Stücke von den Bachischen Erben’:
Zur Überlieferung der vierstimmigen Choräle Johann Sebastian Bachs,” BJ 69 (1983), 81–100,
respectively.
31
Robert L. Marshall, “How J. S. Bach Composed Four-Part Chorales,” Musical Quarterly 56/2
(April, 1970), 198–221.
32
Werner Breig has proposed that Bach’s idiosyncratic style in the chorales was in fact achieved
through the manipulation of contrapuntal species: see Breig, “Grundzüge einer Geschichte von
Bachs vierstimmigem Choralsatz,” Archiv für Musikwissenschaft 45/3 (1988), 165–185.
33
Wolff, Bach: Essays, 388–389; see also Rempp’s speculation in NBA III/2.2; KB, 84–85; and the
commentary in Bach-Compendium: Analytisch-bibliographisches Repertorium der Werke Johann
Sebastian Bach, ed. Hans-Joachim Schulze and Christoph Wolff, 7 vols. (Frankfurt: Peters, 1985–
1998), Vol. I, Part IV, 1271.
46 Engaging Bach

to his pupils: “first he added the basses to [the chorale melodies] himself,
and they had to invent the alto and tenor.” But can we be sure that this
happened on two staves and not on four? he previous and final sentences
of this same passage, in which Emanuel states that his father’s “pupils had
to begin their studies by learning pure four-part thorough bass” and that
“he particularly insisted on the writing out of the thorough bass in [four
real] parts,”34 seem to confirm what the Dietel manuscript suggests: that
Sebastian Bach’s teaching of chorale harmonization relied, at least during
the formative stage of musical training, on open score format,35 as did his
teaching method for fugue.36 Bach apparently reserved keyboard score as
a more efficient means of communicating the essentials of particular har-
monizations to more advanced students (e.g., his two-part settings with
figured bass in the Schemelli Gesangbuch).
hat C. P. E. Bach preserved the chorales’ original notation in his own
collection of his father’s chorales is confirmed by a recently recovered 1762
copy (in the hand of Carl Friedrich Fasch) of this lost source in open
score.37 Breitkopf ’s offer, in early 1764, of two manuscript copies of Bach
chorales, one “mit 4 Stimmen” (Birnstiel’s source for Part II of his edi-
tion?) and the other “mit in Noten aufgesetzten Generalbaße”38 provides
further evidence that fully voiced keyboard score was not typical for cir-
culating manuscripts of Bach chorales before 1770. Why then did Bach’s
posthumous editors compress his chorale settings, the vast majority of
which were preserved in four independent parts, into the two-stave format
shown in Figure 2.6? he decision to adopt this format for the first edition
was likely made jointly by Marpurg and Birnstiel: the former’s Handbuch
bey dem Generalbasse und der Composition (1758) includes a Bach chorale
(BWV 377) on two staves, and one assumes that the chorales he supplied
to Birnstiel for Part I of this edition were notated in the same manner,
since the latter published them in this way. Perhaps Marpurg wanted to
avoid, in this first edition of the Bach chorales, the archaic open-score for-
mat of he Art of Fugue; at any rate, and as Emanuel Bach explains in a
foreword to this edition, the chorales “have been presented on two staves

34
NBR, 399.
35
An additional hand copy of some 238 Bach chorales, comprising just melody and figured bass and
likely copied by Carl August heime (a student at the Leipzig homasschule between 1735 and
1745), further supports this hypothesis. On this source, see Hans-Joachim Schulze, “Sebastian
Bachs Choral-Buch in Rochester, NY?” BJ 67 (1981), 123–130.
36
See Pamela L. Poulin, ed. and trans., J. S. Bach’s Precepts and Principles for Playing the horough-Bass
or Accompanying in Four Parts: Leipzig, 1738 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), esp. p. xxv.
37
In the Critical Report to NBA III/2.2, Rempp links (on p. 84) the Fasch chorale collection to that of
C. P. E. Bach, owing to their joint service as harpsichordists to Frederick the Great in the late 1750s
and early 1760s. My thanks to Christoph Wolff for providing details about the format of the Fasch
collection, part of the Berlin Sing-Akademie archive.
38
BD III, 165–166. Both Terry and Leaver speculate that the latter (now lost) source incorporated
the figured-bass settings Bach prepared for the Schemelli Gesangbuch: see Terry, he Four-Part
Chorals, xi n. 20; and Leaver, “Bach, Hymns and Hymnbooks,” 10.
 Inventing the Bach chorale 47

Figure 2.6 J. S. Bach’s vierstimmige Choralgesänge, Vol. I, ed.

C. P. E. Bach (1765), nos. 1–2

to accommodate lovers of the organ and the clavier, since they are easier to
read in that form.”39

early recepti on
While keyboard score for the chorales makes perfect sense to us, its use in
the 1760s for harmonizations with such busy inner and lower parts was
highly unusual, except in cantional-style chorale preludes. Such a layout
certainly encourages keyboard reading, but it also obscures the clarity of
the chorales’ “strange, but always varied” inner parts; there are as well fre-
quent uncomfortable stretches if playing with just two hands (m. 5 of
“Aus meines Herzens Grunde,” for example). Organ performance solves
such problems if the bass is realized in the pedal, but the early reception
of the chorales suggests that few organists had the requisite facility to play
these settings in this manner, and of those that did, fewer still were encour-
aged to accompany congregational singing with such unusually rich har-
monies. In truth, neither the Birnstiel nor the later Breitkopf editions of
the Bach chorales were intended to accompany singing, either in or out of
church; instead, these editions provided material for abstract study. Yet the
Berlin group felt obliged to emphasize, in the editions themselves and in
the musical press, a broad range of potential applications for Bach’s four-
part settings. In addition to serving as keyboard exercise or distraction,
the Bach chorales could be sung “in four voices, and [if ] some of them
should go beyond the range of certain throats, they can be transposed,”40

39 40
NBR, 379. Ibid., 380.
48 Engaging Bach

as C. P. E. Bach notes. Adducing yet another function, Emanuel Bach

also asks rhetorically whether anyone would “den[y] the advantage of
that instruction in writing by which the beginning is made with chorales
instead of stiff and pedantic counterpoint,” despite the fact that chorale-
based compositional training (to say nothing of species counterpoint) was
outdated by the 1760s.41 hus commending his father’s chorales to organ-
ists and keyboard players, choral singers, students of composition, and
finally to all “lovers of sacred songs,” C. P. E. Bach set the net as widely as
possible for this edition.
Reviewing the same volume for the Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek,
Agricola sounded many of the same themes. Of particular interest for him
was the potential of the Bach chorales for improving the sorry state of
organ playing in Germany. To that end, Agricola recommends that these
pieces be played not only in the normal manner (with both hands on the
same keyboard) but also in a way that would force organists to recover the
technique of obbligato pedal playing, which even C. P. E. Bach admitted
having lost, by realizing “the upper voice on one keyboard, the two middle
[voices] on another, and the bass with the pedal.”42 A growing concern that
standards had slipped precipitously since the elder Bach’s day encouraged
others to view his chorales as a timely tonic for a situation gone bad: these
settings could, in Kirnberger’s estimation, “repair the mangled songs of
the church.”43 In the end, the Bach chorales had little effect on the steady
decline in German sacred music in the late eighteenth century; instead,
they simply made all too clear to some just how far standards had eroded.
Music theorists, for example, were most taken with the extraordinary har-
monic depth and the complex yet always cantabile voice leading of these
settings. In Die Kunst des reinen Satzes in der Musik (1774) Kirnberger
commends the Bach chorales “to all composers as the best models for con-
scientious study” of four-part writing. But these works are so singular, he
adds, that “even experienced composers” will find it difficult “to make …
voices just as singable and as good in expression.”44 he younger theorists
held the Bach chorales in similarly high esteem while harboring equivocal
views about their practicality: in their respective treatises Daniel Gottlob
Türk and Justin Heinrich Knecht both stress the pedagogical value of the
Bach chorales, although Türk seems to have preferred other chorale books
in his own teaching.45

41
Ibid. hat few were still learning the art of composition via chorale harmonization is clear from
C. P. E. Bach’s subsequent observation that modern textbooks lacked precisely such “correct prin-
ciples and models.” Interestingly, this critique of contemporary composition primers ignores an
important publication by a Berlin colleague: Marpurg’s 1758 Handbuch bey dem Generalbasse und
der Composition, which includes at least one Bach chorale (see BD III, 697).
42 43
BD III, 188. Ibid., 361. 44 NBR, 367.
45
See homas Christensen, “Bach among the heorists,” in Bach Perspectives 3: Creative Responses
to Bach from Mozart to Hindemith, ed. Michael Marissen (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press,
1998), 23–46 (35).
 Inventing the Bach chorale 49

Readers of learned periodicals were likewise encouraged to regard the

Bach chorales as models of their kind. In a 1785 review of the Breitkopf
edition, Johann Abraham Peter Schulz notes that “for those eager to learn
the true and fundamental art of composition … [Bach’s] chorale book
is and will remain an essential handbook of practical harmony.”46 Schulz
was certainly correct on the latter point: one could hardly hope to find
better demonstrations of the harmonic principles expounded by Rameau,
Marpurg, and others. And yet skepticism about the Bach chorales persisted
because the newly published volumes fulfilled neither of the usual func-
tions of such collections: to accompany singing in church or to provide
pleasant distraction at home. Kühnau for one cautioned, in the preface to
his 1786 chorale book, that Bach’s settings (a few of which are included
in Kühnau’s generous compilation) were too demanding for the uniniti-
ated. Students of composition, he observes, will find much of value in
these “true masterpieces,” but he openly wonders how often these works
are actually “put to their proper use,” either in church or as training pieces
for beginning keyboard players.47 Türk was of the same mind: he admired
the great artistry of the Bach chorales while apparently favoring Kühnau’s
settings for their simplicity and greater fidelity to the character of each
chorale text.48
Others were openly hostile. he Abbé Georg Joseph Vogler, whose
notorious “Improvements” to the Bach chorales were perceived even in
their own day as the work of an iconoclast,49 first assailed them in 1780
in the context of a lengthy critique of Kirnberger’s Die Kunst des reinen
Satzes.50 Allowing the “admirable old Sebastian Bach’s worth as a great
organist,” Vogler nonetheless challenged Kirnberger’s “estimation of him
as a master of chorale-setting, for we do not believe that he made good
choices.”51 Several years later Vogler condemned several Bach settings of
the same chorale tune as “aberrations of nature and truth,” proof that their
creator paid no attention to the meaning of the chorale text in his single-
minded pursuit of complex harmonies and intricate inner parts.52
hough routinely dismissed out of hand by later writers, Vogler’s com-
plaints were not unique; even Schulz, who had favorably reviewed Part
I of the Breitkopf edition, admitted that Bach’s chorale settings, though
impressive, set a dangerous example for those who “in arranging a simple

46
BD III, 416–417. 47 Ibid., 898. 48
See ibid., 933a.
49
he relevant excerpts from Vogler’s Choral-System (Copenhagen, 1800) are given in BD III,
1039. Early criticism of Vogler’s views on the Bach chorales includes Justin Hermann Knecht’s
review in AMZ 3 (1800/1801), Spezialanmerkungen 264f.; and Ernst Ludwig Gerber’s Historisch-
biographisches Lexicon der Tonkünstler (Leipzig, 1790), 1/217.
50
Vogler debated the virtues of the Bach chorales with Forkel as well. For the substance of the
latter debate, see Hans-Joachim Hinrichsen, “Johann Nikolaus Forkel und die Anfänge der
Bachforschung,” in Bach und die Nachwelt, 4 vols., Vol. I, ed. Michael Heinemann and Hans-
Joachim Hinrichsen (Laaber Verlag, 1997), 193–253 (205).
51 52
BD III, 338. Ibid., 563.
50 Engaging Bach

chorale … would rather display their learnedness in unexpected and multi-

ply dissonant progressions – which often render the melody quite unrecog-
nizable – than to respect that simplicity which in this genre is so necessary
for the understanding of the common people.”53 he tension between
Bach’s artful chorales and the basic expectations of the genre produced
criticism from non-musical quarters as well. In a 1791 review of Part IV
of the Breitkopf edition, the Berlin theologian F. G. Lüdke admitted to
being “astounded by the industry and the prodigious art” of the Bach cho-
rales. Yet he could in no way condone either their use in church or their
practical application as models of composition: Bach, Lüdke observes, “is
forever exhibiting [his] art” and thus neglects the “content and character
of the song.”54 Regretting Bach’s failure to reflect the particular theological
message of individual chorale texts, Lüdke warns that such an approach
to chorale playing could “lead many organists astray.”55 Despite the good
pastor’s concerns, it would be some time before Bach chorales became a
standard feature of German hymnals, and the few organists of Lüdke’s day
who had the skill to realize these works properly surely knew better than to
use them to accompany congregational singing.
he challenge of the initial Bach chorale volumes was, finally, two-fold:
their first editors needed simultaneously to mitigate traditional generic
expectations while promoting new ways of appreciating Bach’s unusually
rich musical vocabulary. As abstract examples of tonal harmony, the Bach
chorales gradually established a high ground in a genre that had been mov-
ing in a decidedly populist direction for many years. By the mid 1780s,
the growing enthusiasm for originality in music and the latent realization
among German writers that Bach’s work represented the highest achieve-
ment of their national musical culture created a more conducive environ-
ment for the second and much improved edition, even if that reception
was still rather limited. Critics nevertheless took advantage of the new
yardstick: in a 1780 review of the Berlin composer Jacob Schuback’s newly
published chorale collection, Johann Friedrich Reichardt (himself a recent
convert to the Bach cause) sniffs that Schuback “should in the future avail
himself more of Bach’s superb chorale books than the mediocre examples
of Telemann.” “Proper declamation,” Reichardt maintains, does not suffice
for four-part chorale settings: one must master “the beauty and charm of
both melody and harmony,” as Bach had done.56
Reichardt’s discovery of “beauty and charm” in the Bach chorales is
striking, considering his later criticism of Bach’s typically “erudite and
industrious … though seldom truly beautiful fugues.”57 With his finger
firmly on the emerging Zeitgeist, Reichardt appealed simultaneously to

53
Ibid., 482. 54 Ibid., 511.
55
Ibid., 526. 56 Ibid., 338.
57
Ibid., 359; translation adapted from BR, 456.
 Inventing the Bach chorale 51

his readers’ patriotism and their aesthetic sensibilities. In support of the

forthcoming Breitkopf edition, he declared (in 1781) that “if any work
has ever deserved serious support by German friends of art, it is this one.”
Reichardt left no room for argument:
he contents: chorales – greatest work of German art;
he creator of harmony: Johann Sebastian Bach – greatest harmonist of
all times and nations;
he editor: Johann Philipp Kirnberger – most discerning artistic adju-
dicator of our time.58
On the first two points there could be little disagreement: although
German church music was in a sorry state, the chorale had long been part
of German national identity; Bach’s mastery of Harmonie was similarly
unquestioned, even among those who had issues with his general style or
with particular pieces. All that remained was to connect the dots, so to
speak: chorales had great value to the German people; Bach was a mas-
ter at chorale harmonization; therefore anyone who cared about German
art needed to know his four-part chorales. Citing as expert witness the
leading (German) music theorist of his day, Reichardt promoted the Bach
chorales by flattering not only the settings themselves but the consumer,
his worldview, even his ethnic and confessional background. he difficulty
and impracticality of the chorales became something to be explained away
as one focused instead on their unique character, their Germanness, and
the sheer aesthetic pleasure they provide.
By the end of the century, the Bach chorale volumes had so altered
the landscape that turn-of-the-century writers tend to refer to all the
latest chorale books in the same breath, without bothering anymore to
distinguish those aspects of Bach’s settings that had made them prob-
lematic for earlier critics. hus Knecht (who was evidently less discrim-
inating than Reichardt) confirms in the preface to the third part of his
Vollständige Orgelschule (1798) that the Bach chorales, along with those
of Telemann, Christmann, and his own, were the best study material for
Protestant organists-in-training.59 here were by this time a number of
publications in the new format of the Bach chorales, including those by
Knecht and Kühnau.60 he title page of Johann Adam Hiller’s Allgemeines
Choral-Melodienbuch (1794) even uses the very same language as had

58
NBR, 384. Reichardt’s appeal to German pride was hardly unique in the early reception of the Bach
chorales: in 1785 J. A. P. Schulz reaffirmed that “only Germany can call such a work its own” (BD
III, 416).
59
BD III, 990.
60
he earliest extant hand copies of the Bach chorales in keyboard score are also from the last quarter
of the eighteenth century. See the facsimiles of manuscripts from Kirnberger’s circle and one cop-
ied by Christian Friedrich Penzel, one of Bach’s last students in Leipzig, in NBA III/2.2, x and xii,
respectively; and Rempp’s discussion in NBA III/2.2; KB, 26–41.
52 Engaging Bach

Example 2.1 (a) J. S. Bach, “Christ lag in Todesbanden,” BWV 277;

(b) G. P. Telemann, “Christ lag in Todesbanden,” Fast allgemeines
Evangelisch-musicalisches Lieder-Buch (1730)

(a)

(b)
6 6 5
6 5 6
5 4 6

6 5 6 5
6 6 4 6 6 6 6 4

Emanuel Bach (in the foreword to the 1765 Birnstiel edition) to explain its
compression of four independent voices into keyboard score.61

bac h vs . te l e ma nn
Knecht’s comparison is worth exploring briefly, to clarify why most eight-
eenth-century musical consumers preferred Telemann’s chorales to Bach’s
four-part settings. Looking at their respective harmonizations of a single
chorale melody (Ex. 2.1), perhaps the first thing to notice about these two
settings is that both rely, ultimately, on the same basic harmonic plan. he
riches of the Bach chorale are of course in the details: in contrast to Telemann’s
serviceable harmonization, Bach’s setting of “Christ lag in Todesbanden”
endows its eponymous melody with an extraordinary level of expression.
On the third note of this familiar chorale’s second phrase, for example,
Bach’s daring use of a diminished-seventh chord with conjunct eighth-note
motion in two of the parts has the effect of drawing the listener’s attention
away from the tune towards the considerably enlivened harmony. At the
analogous moment in Telemann’s setting, a simple root-position chord is a

61
Johann Adam Hiller, Allgemeines Choral-Melodienbuch für Kirchen und Schulen, auch zum
Privatgebrauche, in 4 Stimmen gesetzt; zur Bequemlichkeit der Orgel- und Clavierspieler auf 2 Linien
zusammengezogen; mit Bezifferung des Generalbasses; nebst einem Anhange von X deutschen Hymnen
und XIV neuen Choralmelodien, facsimile of the 1794 Leipzig edn. (Hildesheim: Georg Olms
Verlag, 1978).
 Inventing the Bach chorale 53

more straightforward way of getting from one note to the next. In a simi-
larly differentiated passage, Bach’s harmonization of the second phrase of
the Abgesang (the chorale melody’s second half ) seems designed to push the
boundaries of the tonal system as he knew it. Moving through chromat-
ically altered chords on every beat of a single measure (m. 7), the phrase
threatens to modulate outside the prevailing mode of the chorale.
From our vantage point the effect is powerful, but whether such extra-
ordinary maneuvers flattered congregational singing in the eighteenth
century is an open question. By raising the harmonic stakes of this and
countless other chorales, Bach impressed connoisseurs and colleagues while
achieving a peculiar kind of notoriety among those who felt that such
things needed to be tightly controlled (hence Kühnau’s caution and the
criticisms of Vogler and Lüdke). In contrast, Telemann’s manner of chor-
ale harmonization was more user-friendly; his Fast allgemeines Evangelisch-
musicalisches Lieder-Buch, first published in 1730 and reissued several times
over the course of the century, attracted a much larger audience than the
first editions of the Bach chorales because it catered to keyboard players of
all skill levels, with settings eminently suitable to both church and home.
Telemann’s settings, like those of Graupner and even Emanuel Bach, make
no extraordinary demands on the player; these are simple, uncomplicated
harmonizations that serve either to accompany singing or to provide pri-
vate musical devotions.
As uniqueness became a virtue in music and in art in general in the
last twenty years or so of the eighteenth century, the Bach chorales effect-
ively transformed the genre, making it at once less viable as day-to-day
music and more important pedagogically and even ideologically, as “an
intimation of harmonic perfection, the unity of all being that Christians
imagine through the image of heavenly bliss,” as August Wilhelm Schlegel
lovingly described it.62 he implications for western music were profound:
around the turn of the nineteenth century, Bach upstaged his more popu-
lar contemporaries, thanks to disciples who engineered this reversal of
fortunes by publishing and promoting perhaps the most workaday part
of a monumental output. In so doing, they set Bach on a new historical
trajectory and turned a routine genre into a universal concept: as Leipzig
organist and Bach maven Carl Ferdinand Becker observed in 1831, the
Bach chorales were “not really intended for the church.”63 Instead, they
became the perfect material for musical study, first by private individuals
and eventually by singing societies whose proliferation in the nineteenth
century led to a very different kind of reception. he ubiquity of the Bach

62
August Wilhelm Schlegel, Vorlesungen über schöne Literatur und Kunst. Erster Teil: Die Kunstlehre
(1801–1802), as cited in Mark Evan Bonds, “Idealism and the Aesthetics of Instrumental Music,”
Journal of the American Musicological Society 50/2–3 (Summer–Fall, 1997), 387–420 (405).
63
Carl Ferdinand Becker, foreword to the 1832 Breitkopf & Härtel edition of the 371 Chorales, as
quoted in NBA III/2.2; KB, 56.
54 Engaging Bach

chorales in modern hymnals notwithstanding, reports from the early nine-

teenth century suggest that few organists considered them appropriate
ways to lead congregational song.64 Judged “unprofitable with respect to
most organists and the general public,”65 the Bach chorales nevertheless
gave the genre itself a powerful new lease on life. Among the first of Bach’s
works to be considered classic examples of their kind, they rewrote the
rules of cultivated part writing and tonal harmony and continue to convey
these essentials of western musical practice to students everywhere.

64
A review of an early-nineteenth-century reprint of the Breitkopf & Härtel edition of the 371
Vierstimmige Choralgesänge in AMZ 34/43 (October 24, 1832), 714, observes that “it is hardly
necessary to note how useful these chorale arrangements are for studying, for domestic and public
singing societies (less for the leading of congregational song).”
65
A. F. hibaut, Über Reinheit der Tonkunst (Heidelberg, 1825), trans. John Broadhouse as Purity in
Music (London: W. Reeves, 1882), 11.
 ch apter 

What Mozart learned from Bach

he private study of Bach’s music by leading composers has been a popular

thread in music historiography since the late eighteenth century, mostly
because we assume that one learns something valuable from such an experi-
ence. And indeed, knowledge of one composer’s study of another’s work –
the most tantalizing kind of musicological trivia – may explain all manner
of things, from similar textures to the adoption of particular procedures or
styles. More often than not, however, the search for influence raises more
questions than it answers, since composers (like creators of any sort) are
generally more concerned with their work than with documenting every
facet of their stylistic development. I tread carefully into this area, partly to
avoid the potentially endless scope of such inquiry even for a fairly short
span of music history, but, more importantly, because what composers
learned from Bach during the century following his death is just one aspect
of the steadily broadening engagement with his keyboard works during that
time. Firm conclusions about influence are notoriously hard to come by,
and in Bach’s case this is particularly so because of the highly conventional-
ized musical language of his day. Sorting out what came from Bach (and no
one else) in a Brahms symphony or a Shostakovich fugue is a tricky busi-
ness, absent direct quotation or some kind of explicit acknowledgment by
the later composer. his chapter therefore looks for more than just similar
melodic figures, contrapuntal procedures, or textures in the music of two
individuals whose connection – the result of one composer’s sudden interest
in the work of a venerable predecessor – is crucial to the history of western
music. In what follows, I seek first to establish why Mozart made time for
certain keyboard works by Bach, and second to explore the effect(s) of what
seems to have been a fairly limited course of study.

connecti ng bach a nd moz a rt

In 1789 Mozart visited Leipzig, where he witnessed a performance of the
Bach motet Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied. As the piece began, Mozart
apparently “sat up, startled,” then exclaimed joyfully at its conclusion: “his
is indeed something one can learn from!” Asking to inspect a score of the
motets, he was told that the homas School had none; and so instead he “sat

55
56 Engaging Bach

himself down with all the parts around him – in both hands, on his knees,
and on the chairs next to him – and, forgetting everything else, did not get
up again until he had looked through everything of Sebastian Bach’s that was
there.”1 Mozart’s extraordinary reaction (even allowing for a bit of exagger-
ation in this breathless account from Friedrich Rochlitz, who included it in
the first volume of the AMZ in 1798) must have gratified local guardians of
the Bach legacy, who no doubt took great pride that a famous contemporary
admired to such a degree the work of a former cantor. hough not always
a reliable historian,2 Rochlitz captured the essential import of this occasion:
knowledge of Bach had become crucial for those who aspired towards mas-
tery of the high style in music. Bach-induced epiphanies became more wide-
spread after 1800, as leading musicians of various cultures sought a more
complete understanding of counterpoint and fugue and as music historians
found such things useful to their largely Germanic narratives.
he ability to play works of the old masters or to improvise in the archaic
style forged a similarly useful link for newly discipline-conscious writers on
music in the late eighteenth century, especially when the player in question
was a child prodigy or a young firebrand. One of Mozart’s first biographers,
for example, reported that during the family’s 1764–1765 tours to Paris
and London, “pieces by Handel and Bach were placed before [the young
Wolfgang], which to the astonishment of all experts he was immediately
able to perform with accuracy and with proper expression.”3 Similar stories
about Mozart’s fugal prowess especially were legion during his lifetime: at
a performance in Vienna in early 1771, he was given a fugue subject that,
according to one witness, “he worked out for more than an hour with
such science, dexterity, harmony, and proper attention to rhythm, that
even the greatest connoisseurs were astounded.”4 Mozart himself informed
his father that he was “bombarded, even besieged with nothing but fugue
themes” in both Mannheim and Augsburg during the 1777–1778 season.5

1
NBR, 488.
2
His later retelling of Mozart’s visit to Leipzig, in an autobiography Rochlitz submitted to E. L.
Gerber for inclusion in the latter’s Neues historisch-biographisches Lexikon der Tonkünstler (Leipzig,
1812/1814), differs considerably from the original account. On the broader issue of Rochlitz’s trust-
worthiness, see Maynard Solomon, “he Rochlitz Anecdotes: Issues of Authenticity in Early Mozart
Biography,” Mozart Studies, ed. Cliff Eisen (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 1–59.
3
Franz Niemetschek, Life of Mozart [1798], trans. Helen Mautner, ed. A. Hyatt King (London:
Leonard Hyman, 1956), 21.
4
Hamburg Staats- und gelehrte Zeitung (March 21, 1771), as cited in Iwo and Pamela Zaluski, Mozart in
Italy (London: Peter Owen, 1999), 151. Johann Adam Reinken said much the same thing about Bach’s
extended improvisation on the chorale An Wasserflüssen Babylon in Hamburg in 1720, as did Frederick
the Great in 1747 after Bach’s multiple improvised fugues on the hema regium (developed at greater
length in the subsequent Musical Offering). See the reports of both episodes in NBR, 302–303.
5
Letter of October 24, 1777, from Wolfgang to Leopold Mozart, in Wilhelm A. Bauer and Otto
Erich Deutsch, eds., Mozart Briefe und Aufzeichnungen: Gesamtausgabe, 6 vols. (Kassel: Bärenreiter,
1962–1975), Vol. II, 82. See also the letters of November 8 and 13, 1777 (Vol II, 110–111 and
118–121, respectively).
 What Mozart learned from Bach 57

he resulting improvisations overwhelmed his listeners and “won [him]

everywhere the greatest reputation.”6
he hype falls a bit flat, however, when one examines Mozart’s sur-
viving fugal works from the 1760s and 1770s, which lack the technical
finesse and musical sophistication of his late contrapuntal works. Only
after 1782, thanks to a brief spurt of interest in the music of Bach, Handel,
and other old masters, did Mozart’s ability to write counterpoint improve
noticeably. Biographers routinely cite this episode as the spark that ignited
the extraordinary combinatorial display of his late works: it was a “verit-
able revelation,” the cause of a “revolution … one of the most curious and
unexpected developments in Mozart’s entire artistic career.”7 he finale to
the “Jupiter” Symphony, the “Song of the Armed Men” from he Magic
Flute, and other late learned works make the standard conclusion hard to
resist: Mozart took much from his study of Bach in particular and put that
knowledge to use in multiple ways.
So what exactly did he learn? Rochlitz was the first to point to a specific
work, asserting (in the same anecdote) that the “Kyrie eleison” fugue of
Mozart’s Requiem reflects his “full comprehension of the spirit of the old
contrapuntist.”8 hough Rochlitz had nothing more to say on this sub-
ject, plenty of other writers have addressed it, typically with side-by-side
comparisons of similar passages from both composers.9 his kind of meth-
odology works best when the borrowing is pervasive and unarguable, but
more often it leaves something to be desired, since smoke quickly turns to
fire in such scenarios. With its international vocabulary of stereotyped ges-
tures and conventional fugue subjects, eighteenth-century counterpoint is
especially problematic: Mozart’s “Kyrie” fugue subject resembles, after all,
several Bach fugue subjects, “And with His Stripes” from Handel’s Messiah,
Haydn’s F minor Quartet Fugue (Op. 20, No. 5), and dozens of others (see
Ex. 3.1). Moreover, its exposition alongside the quicker “Christe eleison”
countersubject more closely resembles the standard practice of Handel or
Haydn than Bach.

6
Letter of July 18, 1778, from Wolfgang to Leopold Mozart, trans. Warren Kirkendale, in Fugue and
Fugato in Rococo and Classical Chamber Music (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1979), 158.
7
Georges de Saint-Foix, W.-A. Mozart: Sa vie musicale et son oeuvre, 5 vols. (Paris: Desclée, 1937–
1946), Vol. III, 313. Equally paradigmatic is Alec Hyatt King’s description of this episode as a “crisis
to which [Mozart] found a solution which, so far from checking the consistency of his own develop-
ment, ultimately identified itself with the highest endeavour of his art.” Alec Hyatt King, “Mozart’s
Counterpoint: Its Growth and Significance,” Music and Letters 26 (1945), 12–20 (20).
8
NBR, 488.
9
he most influential discussions are Hermann Abert, W. A. Mozart (1923–1924), trans. Stewart
Spencer, ed. Cliff Eisen (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 830–844; and Alfred Einstein,
Mozart: His Character, His Work, trans. A. Mendel and N. Broder (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1945), 149–154. For a more nuanced view, see Robert L. Marshall, “Bach and Mozart’s
Artistic Maturity,” Bach Perspectives 3: Creative Responses to Bach from Mozart to Hindemith, ed.
Michael Marissen (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998), 47–79.
58 Engaging Bach

Example 3.1 (a) W. A. Mozart, “Kyrie eleison,” from Requiem, K. 626; (b) J. S. Bach,
Fugue in A minor from WTC, Book ii, BWV 889/2; (c) G. F. Handel, “And with His
Stripes,” from Messiah; (d) Joseph Haydn, Finale to String Quartet in F minor, Op. 20/5
(a)
Chri - ste - e - 1e – – –

Ky - ri - e e - lei - - - - i - son e–

(b)

(c)

And with His stripes we are healed

(d)

Figuring out what Mozart learned from Bach and no one else obliges us
to consider the probable source of his putative lesson in learned counter-
point: was there a text in this class? hanks to his father’s multiple connec-
tions with former students, colleagues, and admirers of Sebastian Bach,10
Mozart’s knowledge of Bach’s music may have begun quite early, but we
lack specifics before his move to Vienna in 1781. We know much more
about Mozart’s Bach activities between early 1782 and late 1783, when
he was in the habit of frequenting a weekly Viennese salon where leading
musicians and aristocratic connoisseurs gathered to play through and talk
about all sorts of music, including works by Bach and Handel.11 his col-
lective interest in old music went beyond mere antiquarianism: Austrian
and south German composers had long used fugue in church sonatas, and
the trend in the second half of the century was towards more (not less)
counterpoint in chamber works, as the most creative musicians began to
tire of the superficial niceties of galant-style composition. Haydn’s fugal
finales to his Op. 20 string quartets (composed in 1771) are some early

10
Leopold Mozart may have heard some of Bach’s music as a student in Augsburg, and he may
have learned more about it from both Marpurg and Mizler. On these potential connections, see
Marshall, “Bach and Mozart’s Artistic Maturity,” 52–53; and Reinhold Hammerstein, “Der Gesang
der geharnischten Männer: Eine Studie zu Mozarts Bachbild,” Archiv für Musikwissenschaft 13
(1956), 1–24 (13).
11
his episode in Mozart’s life is described in virtually all biographies. See as well Mozart’s oft-quoted
letters of April 10 and 20, 1782, in Mozart Briefe, Vol. III, 200–203; or in Emily Anderson, ed.,
Letters of Mozart and His Family, 3 vols. (London: Macmillan, 1938/1985), Vol. III, 1191–1195.
 What Mozart learned from Bach 59

examples of this fascination with counterpoint among composers of the

first Viennese “school.” heir newfound enthusiasm for a procedure that
was nearly moribund elsewhere (though traditional for certain sections of
large church works) was crucial to the emergence of the so-called “classical
style,” which injected a contrapuntal depth and new level of seriousness
into their music.
Bach’s role in this development is due mostly to the dissemination of
his keyboard music in and around Vienna during the waning years of the
eighteenth century and to the assiduous collecting of Baron Gottfried van
Swieten in particular. During his service as ambassador to the Prussian
court (1770–1777), this Habsburg diplomat enjoyed the regular com-
pany of Johann Philipp Kirnberger and his student Princess Anna Amalia,
whose collection of Bach manuscripts was unrivaled. When he returned
to Vienna, van Swieten brought with him copies of Bach’s Inventions
and Sinfonias; the French and English Suites; the organ trio sonatas in an
arrangement for two keyboards; the Clavier-Übung, Parts I and III; the
Musical Offering; and at least part of WTC.12 Whether Mozart ever owned
copies of these works is not known; the records of his estate list several
other Bach scores: the Kleine harmonische Labyrinth; the Clavier-Übung,
Part II; and the motet Singet dem Herrn.13 To this can be added the tes-
timony of a few close friends and associates: Anton Stadler notes (in his
Musik Plan of July 10, 1800) that the road to keyboard virtuosity lies in
“breaking one’s head and fingers on the works of Bach,” something that
“even the unforgettable Mozart” had done, although Stadler fails to iden-
tify any specific works.14 And while both Georg Nikolaus von Nissen and
homas Attwood remember, in their respective biographies, that Mozart
once possessed a copy of WTC,15 all that survives from his now-legendary
association with this collection are his string quartet transcriptions of six
fugues from Book II; the authorship of the other Bach fugue transcriptions
in the Köchel catalogue remains questionable.16
In sum, then, Mozart knew well at least six WTC fugues and a handful of
other pieces by Bach. he transcriptions raise an important question: why
12
Andreas Holschneider, “Die musikalische Bibliothek Gottfried van Swietens,” Bericht über den
Internationalen musikwissenschaftlichen Kongress Kassel 1962 (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1963), 174–178.
13
Otto Erich Deutsch, Mozart: A Documentary Biography, trans. Eric Blom, Peter Branscombe, and
Jeremy Noble (Stanford University Press, 1965), 590, 603; NBA III/1; KB, 32–34.
14
Cited in Pamela L. Poulin, “Noch eine Mozart–Bach-Verbindung,” BJ 76 (1990), 79–80 (79).
15
In his Biographie W. A. Mozarts (Leipzig, 1828), 655, Nissen (Constanze Mozart’s second husband)
claimed that Bach’s preludes and fugues “were always on [Mozart’s] piano.” Mozart’s English student
Attwood likewise remembered that “[Mozart] was … fond of Sebastian Bach’s Preludes & Fugues,”
and that “this volume of fugues was always lying open on his pianoforte.” See Cliff Eisen, New
Mozart Documents (Stanford University Press, 1991), 39; and Edward Holmes, he Life of Mozart
(London, 1845; New York: Da Capo Press, 1979), 194.
16
On the authenticity of the K. 404a transcriptions, see Warren Kirkendale, “More Slow Introductions
by Mozart to Fugues of J. S. Bach?” Journal of the American Musicological Society 17 (1964), 43–65;
Andreas Holschneider, “Zu Mozarts Bearbeitungen Bachscher Fugen,” Die Musikforschung 17
(1964), 51–56; and Warren Kirkendale, “Mehr Licht,” Die Musikforschung 18 (1965), 195–199.
60 Engaging Bach

did Mozart bother to transcribe fugues that he could play himself at the
keyboard? his kind of activity, part of the turn towards more performa-
tive and no longer purely curatorial Bach reception in the late eighteenth
century, had become popular among like-minded groups in London and
Berlin as well, mostly because it opened up the formerly solitary world of
learned counterpoint to players who could embody independent voices in
the more fashionable and conversational idioms of the string quartet and
quintet.17 Transcriptions of the Bach fugues appealed, in short, because
they simultaneously updated and demystified these celebrated though for-
midable pieces of counterpoint.
he enthusiasm generated by such forums prompted new fugal com-
position as well: of the numerous fugues and fugatos Mozart began during
the 1782–1783 period, a handful are successful works, others seem ill-
conceived, and quite a few were left unfinished. Not that Mozart was an
uninspired fugue writer; these whole and partial works reflect instead the
nature of the musical salon, which encourages experimentation more than
finished products. he fugues and fugatos from these years also serve as a
convenient dividing line in most surveys of Mozart’s music, separating the
juvenilia from the late masterworks. hough few are considered worthy of
the composer’s name, they serve to remind us of the volatile nature of the
muse: as Alfred Einstein put it, comparing the van Swieten episode and
the music it produced to the paintings of Albrecht Dürer’s Italian period,
Mozart created while under the influence of Bach “works against his own
nature, in which he was no longer entirely himself.”18 Animating criticism
of this recondite repertory is the assumption that Mozart used as models
fugues from WTC, which he first encountered at van Swieten’s salon and
from which he selected a half-dozen fugues to transcribe for string quar-
tet.19 Since Einstein’s time, scholars have cited a veritable cornucopia of
melodic figures, contrapuntal devices, stylistic traits, and formal schemes
ostensibly inspired by or borrowed directly from Bach, with studies of the
1782–1783 fugal works proposing that Bach lurks behind various fugue
subjects, rhythmic figures, even habits of instrumentation and formal
17
Prefacing an 1807 publication of Bach fugues in England, Carl Friedrich Horn notes that “some
time ago, I arranged them for a private party, as quartettos; and as many of my friends were grati-
fied with the effect they produced, I was prevailed upon to publish them by subscription.” Cited in
Yo Tomita, “he Dawn of the English Bach Awakening Manifested in Sources of the ‘48,’” in he
English Bach Awakening: Knowledge of J. S. Bach and His Music in England 1750–1830, ed. Michael
Kassler (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), 35–167 (97). Carl Friedrich Zelter, longtime director of the
Berlin Singakademie, likewise assigned his students string transcriptions instead of the keyboard
originals of Bach fugues.
18
Einstein, Mozart, 151. he trope of a composer writing “under the influence” is a familiar one
in Bach reception history: Robert Schumann’s comparable “Bach crisis” of 1845 produced some
equally uncharacteristic music, the six fugues on B–A–C–H for organ or pedal piano, Op. 60.
19
One modern edition of WTC (New York: Dover, 1983) goes so far as to boast on its back cover
that “Mozart, when rapidly advancing to the height of his mastery, had but to read a manuscript
copy of he Well-Tempered Clavier, and his style developed a new polyphonic richness and depth of
harmony.”
 What Mozart learned from Bach 61

design (see below on K. 394 and K. 426 especially), while the later works
are said to be “saturat[ed] with elements of the Bach tradition.”20 But is it
really possible that Mozart, nearing the height of his powers as a composer
in the early 1780s, found so much in Bach that he did not already know
how to do?
Worth noting in this regard is Mozart’s choice of fugues for transcrip-
tion from Book II of WTC: the K. 405 autograph contains five four-
part fugues, including those in C minor, E flat major, E major, D sharp
minor (transposed to D minor), and D major.21 A fragment of a sixth
survives as well: a separate autograph, which may once have been part of
the K. 405 fascicle, gives the torso of the B flat minor Fugue (transposed
to C minor).22 In addition to identical voicing, these six fugues have one
other common feature: unlike the three remaining four-part fugues from
Book II (those in G minor, A flat major, and B major), these fugues all
feature close imitation or stretto of their respective fugue subjects. During
this time Mozart also composed several new stretto fugues, the strongest
of which are the “Cum sancto spiritu” fugue from the Mass in C minor,
K. 427, and the Fugue in C minor for two keyboards, K. 426. On the face
of things, Mozart’s study and transcription of six stretto fugues by Bach
seems to have inspired a brief period of experimentation in the same fugal
subgenre. But to play devil’s advocate for a moment, my argument thus far
offers little that is new, except for the observation that stretto links the six
Bach fugues Mozart transcribed to some new fugues he wrote around the
same time, and it risks the same kind of musical myopia: analogous mater-
ial may tell us nothing more than the fact that both composers knew how
to concoct sophisticated canonic devices in fugue. he significance of this
coincidence emerges only when one considers how an eighteenth-century
composer might have learned how to master stretto and how Mozart him-
self had used this device earlier.
Mozart was weaned on the most familiar counterpoint textbook of
them all, Johann Joseph Fux’s Gradus ad Parnassum (1725), which sum-
marizes the problem of stretto as follows: having complained about the
“great difficulty in placing the entrances of the subject more and more
closely together,” the student Josephus concludes that “[fugue] subjects

20
Ludwig Finscher, “Bach and the Viennese Classics,” Miscellanea musicologica: Adelaide Studies in
Musicology 10 (1979), 47–59 (53). here are only two brief objections in the literature to this stand-
ard view of Mozart’s 1782–1783 Bach experience: Stanley Sadie, “Mozart, Bach and Counterpoint,”
Musical Times 105/1 (January, 1964), 23–24; and Ulrich Konrad, Mozarts Schaffensweise (Göttingen:
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1992), 470.
21
Long assumed to have been made from van Swieten’s copy of Book II of WTC, the more likely
source for these transcriptions is an extract of all twenty-four fugues from the manuscript copy van
Swieten acquired in Berlin in the 1770s. See Yo Tomita, J. S. Bach’s Das Wohltemperierte Clavier II:
A Critical Commentary, 2 vols. (Leeds: Household World, 1995), Vol. II, x–xi.
22
See the description in Gerhard Croll, “Eine neuentdeckte Bach-Fuge für Streichquartett von
Mozart,” Österreichische Musikzeitschrift 21 (1966), 508–514.
62 Engaging Bach

Example 3.2 Extract from F. W. Marpurg, Abhandlung von der Fuge, Vol.
II (1754), Tab. LII (example provided by C. P. E. Bach)
1 2 3 4

will have to be specially chosen with this in mind.”23 But a good com-
poser does not simply choose a fugue subject; he invents one. he best
fugue writers learn how to craft a subject (whether from conventional
figures or completely afresh) that permits a certain number of contra-
puntal “tricks” – devices like invertible counterpoint, close imitation,
diminution or augmentation – to take place over the course of the fugue.
To that end Marpurg advises, in the Abhandlung von der Fuge (1753–
1754), that the composer of a stretto fugue consider the potential of
each subject “before the composition of the fugue is begun, so that all
possibilities of interchange are explored … hus it can be determined
whether they are adaptable to various forms of imitation … or to peri-
odic or canonic stretto passages, and also whether they can be combined
with each other.”24
To illustrate this kind of research, Marpurg provides an example from
C. P. E. Bach of an artfully constructed subject of just four notes and
abundant contrapuntal potential (Ex. 3.2). Only by working in such a
manner – by considering the contrapuntal potential of a subject while
working out its precise contours – could Sebastian Bach have achieved
the dazzling display of stretto in the D major or the E major Fugues from
Book II, the most impressive of the six fugues Mozart transcribed. J. S.
Bach was of course unusually gifted in this regard. As the authors of his
obituary noted, he apparently “needed only to have heard any theme to be
aware – it seemed in the same instant – of almost every intricacy that artis-
try could produce in the treatment of it.”25 Bach’s astounding contrapuntal
intuition was hardly the norm, however; his contemporaries plotted com-
plex devices like invertible counterpoint or close stretto before committing
such passages to a composing score. As Marpurg notes, the only foolproof
way to make stretto work in fugue is to experiment with such things in
advance. his, I submit, is the most crucial and perhaps the only thing
Mozart learned directly from Bach, though he seems not to have noticed
or perhaps attached little value to Bach’s unpredictable manner of deploy-
ing stretto in fugue.

23
Cited in Alfred Mann, he Study of Fugue (New York: Dover, 1987), 89.
24
Ibid., 191.
25
NBR, 305. Years later C. P. E. Bach reaffirmed that when his father “listened to a rich and many-
voiced fugue, he could soon say, after the first entries of the subjects, what contrapuntal devices
it would be possible to apply, and which of them the composer by rights ought to apply” (NBR,
397).
 What Mozart learned from Bach 63

Figure 3.1 G. F. Handel, sketch of the “Amen” fugue from Messiah (no. 1)

Bach may have left no written records of his research into a fugue sub-
ject’s potential for stretto,26 but an exact contemporary worked out several
four-voice complexes for one of the most famous choral fugues of all time,
perhaps before even deciding on a key signature for the movement. For the
“Amen” chorus at the end of Messiah, Handel first essayed multiple stretti
of his nascent subjects at the octave and at the fifth. In the first of several
extant sketches (Fig. 3.1), the attempted devices are as follows: against the
initial entry of the subject in the soprano, the alto subject entry is at the
lowered fourth at the time distance of a full bar (which may be abbreviated
S – 4 at �), the tenor at the octave and at a half-bar’s distance (S – 8 at �),
and the bass also at the lowered fourth (plus an octave) at the distance of a
measure and a half (S – 4 at � �); all imitation between the parts replicates
the same two-part devices and their invertible partners. All goes smoothly
until m. 6, where Handel abandons the imitation in favor of a few bars of
free counterpoint before the cadence: note the filled-in note-heads on the
downbeat of m. 6, a clear sign of compositional second thoughts. Why did
Handel not continue this promising bit of four-part canonic writing? If he
had, his complex would have produced three simultaneous leading tones,
an impermissible sonority, on the downbeat of m. 7 (Ex. 3.3).
he second sketch (Fig. 3.2) shows Handel researching yet more imi-
tative possibilities, this time with a slightly altered subject, one that now
proceeds from the fifth scale degree to the tonic (a comes to the dux of the
initial stretto). In the first few bars of this second sketch, Handel tried a
different interval of imitation than in the first complex, S – 5 at �, but this
device proved unusable. he crossed-out note in the tenor part of m. 1 and
the crossed-out stem in m. 2 (after the new half note) suggest that Handel
quickly realized this device’s unsuitability and altered it to the larger time
interval of a whole note, at which distance it becomes a fully grammatical
combination, that is, one that needs no adjustment in its voice leading.

26
In he Compositional Process of J. S. Bach, 2 vols. (Princeton University Press, 1972), Vol. I, 134,
Robert L. Marshall explicitly rejects Werner Neumann’s hypothesis that in writing choral fugues
Bach began by concocting a Stimmtausch, a four-voice “block” of invertible counterpoint.
64 Engaging Bach

Example 3.3 Hypothetical continuation of G. F. Handel, “Amen” from Messiah

Figure 3.2 G. F. Handel, sketch of the “Amen” fugue from Messiah (no. 2)

he bass–soprano restatement of this same device, now at the raised fourth

(S – 5 is fully invertible, in this case, to S + 4), proceeds without incident:
Handel had learned his lesson a few bars before.
As Laurence Dreyfus has shown, Bach regularly subjected his musical
inventions to the same kind of thoroughgoing research during the proc-
esses of composition and revision.27 Whether he did so on paper like
Handel or in his head hardly matters; the important thing is that he went
through the process of thinking through every potential manipulation of
the leading idea(s) of a piece before deciding how to dispose those devices
throughout the work. In virtually every genre Bach hewed stubbornly to
this basic working method, and not just because his was a thoroughly
contrapuntal world. he frequent comparison with theology is apt: like
a learned theologian who mines scripture for its potential meanings, an
industrious composer of Baroque counterpoint put conventional figures
through multivalent “operations” (as Dreyfus calls them), which might
include simple voice exchange (as happens in invertible counterpoint),
change of mode, and melodic inversion, plus a host of more complex
devices including stretto as a way of perfecting his musical argument. By
contrast, the young Mozart was a less thorough composer. Musical tastes

27
Laurence Dreyfus, Bach and the Patterns of Invention (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1996), esp. 147–155. I have borrowed, with minor adaptations, Dreyfus’s succinct method of ref-
erence for fugal devices.
 What Mozart learned from Bach 65

and teaching methods had changed; great displays of learnedness were no

longer common, and in those genres where counterpoint remained man-
datory (masses and motets), standard formulas generally sufficed. Learned
counterpoint was still part of a complete musical education, to be sure,
and its employ in certain genres had long been sanctioned by theorists
and composers, but it was no longer a primary concern; Mozart’s gener-
ation preferred more dynamic musical processes. he finest musical minds
continued to dabble occasionally with canon and fugue, especially in their
most sophisticated chamber creations, but in most cases such works owe
little if anything to Bach.
Enter the WTC fugues, which, for Mozart at least, helped to fill a peda-
gogical void. heorists of his day may have commended stretto to their
readers, but they offered no tips on how to make it work; one had to look
elsewhere for the secrets to such arcane procedures. he venerable Padre
Martini, with whom the teenage Mozart studied counterpoint, is a case in
point. Martini taught mostly through examples of great music from the
distant past; like Fux, he considered stretto principally as a summation
device to be used at the end of a piece.28 Martini’s capacious two-volume
study has but one example of a successful stretto: commenting on a five-
part fugue by G. A. Ricieri in which both the subject and countersubject
are put into stretto, Martini congratulates its composer, noting that he
may “justly take pride for having united together the delightful and the
artificial, which is relatively rare and very difficult.”29 Martini’s approval
of a contrapuntally proficient but not overly learned fugue shows to what
degree the musical sensibilities of leading German theorists were shared
south of the Alps, in the cradle of the stile antico and, indeed, by its prin-
cipal guardian in the late eighteenth century. But Martini’s treatise, which
contains no advice on how to invent stretto-friendly fugue subjects, offered
little help to a composer wishing to emulate Bach. To judge from Mozart’s
early fugal efforts, Martini’s teaching likewise ignored this particular com-
positional challenge.
here was at least general agreement among theorists about the proper
place for complex devices in fugue: treatises typically endorse summation
stretti with shortened subjects, standard practice since Fux, without offer-
ing any advice on how to construct the kind of stretti Mozart encountered
in a half-dozen WTC fugues. Here it is important to realize that the fugues
Mozart transcribed all feature canonic imitation of the complete subject,
as do most of the fugues he finished between early 1782 and the end of
1783. Mozart’s earlier fugues, in contrast, rarely feature close imitation
of the complete subject, and as such are entirely typical for their time.

28
Giovanni Battista Martini, Esemplare o sia saggio fondamentale pratico di contrappunto fugato, 2 vols.
(Bologna, 1775), Vol. II, xxxxv.
29
Ibid., 158. See also Mann’s less literal translation in he Study of Fugue, 285–286.
66 Engaging Bach

Rigorous imitation of complete subjects in fugue was largely a thing of the

past, the occasional result of a skill that few possessed and fewer still were
willing to share. A “culture of obscurantism and secrecy,” as David Yearsley
describes it, had long been endemic among German practitioners of the
learned arts;30 and although Mattheson, Johann David Heinichen, and
others railed against it, counterpoint retained its mystical aura well into
the nineteenth century. he silence of many theorists on the more intricate
aspects of the learned style actually motivated Mattheson and Marpurg
to unpack it in their respective writings. hat this project was only par-
tially successful, however, is clear from the comments of theorist Joseph
Riepel, who admonished students of counterpoint to keep quiet about
stretto, cautioning (in 1768): “You mustn’t reveal this and all other fluent
advantages of this science, lest someone reproach you that composition is
perhaps not an art.”31
Worry among practitioners that the finest music could be dismissed
as mere artifice (or “science”) animated arguments over learned counter-
point for many years, especially among music theorists, who neglected the
most arcane aspects of their craft in favor of more current trends in com-
position. Heinrich Christoph Koch, for example, barely mentions dou-
ble counterpoint and fugue in his Versuch einer Anleitung zur Composition
(1782–1793); ignoring stretto completely, he simply refers the odd stu-
dent of learned counterpoint to the Marpurg Abhandlung.32 One looks in
vain in the literature on fugue through Cherubini (1835) for any useful
advice on how to concoct stretto. he kind of advance planning advocated
by Marpurg simply is not there; theorists look instead to the latent real-
ization of contrapuntal possibilities. Addressing the topic of the chorale
fugue in his 1790 Gründliche Anweisung zur Komposition, Johann Georg
Albrechtsberger notes that “occasionally it may also be possible to intro-
duce a stretto passage or some other contrapuntal artifice in such a fugue,”
but nowhere does he explain how to construct fugue subjects (whether
chorale-based or freely composed) that admit a range of contrapuntal
devices.33 In his Traité du contrepoint et de la fugue (1824), François-Joseph
Fétis likewise considers the composition of a fugue subject separately from
the contemplation of its combinatorial potential. If one wants stretto, Fétis
notes, one looks first to see whether the subject (which has already been
composed) will allow it; if not, one simply starts over with a new theme.
he contrast with Bach’s pre-compositional research of contrapuntal

30
David Yearsley, Bach and the Meanings of Counterpoint (Cambridge University Press, 2002), 55–56,
90–92.
31
Joseph Riepel, Unentbehrliche Anmerkungen zum Contrapunct (Regensburg, 1768), 35.
32
Heinrich Christoph Koch, Versuch einer Anleitung zur Composition, 3 vols. (Rudolstadt and Leipzig,
1782–1793), Vol. I, 366–368; Vol. III, 281.
33
Johann Georg Albrechtsberger, Gründliche Anweisung zur Composition (Leipzig, 1790), as cited in
Mann, he Study of Fugue, 221.
 What Mozart learned from Bach 67

potential is striking: Fétis laments that “few subjects permit strettos of the
entire subject; one is almost always forced to make a change after the entry
of the answer.”34

moz a rt’s early f ug ue s

Unsurprisingly, not many of Mozart’s childhood fugues feature canonic
imitation of the subject. Instead, in his first multi-movement works for the
Salzburg church, the budding Wunderkind simply followed local tradition
and produced fugues for the “Cum sancto spiritu” and “Et vitam venturi”
portions of several masses and for the last section of a Te Deum, most
of which contain little beyond the initial exposition of all the parts. Two
exceptions to this general rule can be found in the Te Deum, K. 141, and
in the Missa in C, K. 66, both composed in late 1769. In the first of these,
the “In te Domine speravi” fugue from the Te Deum, the thirteen-year-old
composer managed one instance of four-part close imitation but only by
radically shortening his fugue subject: as Example 3.4 shows, this angular
theme could not accommodate real four-part stretto. In comparison the
“Cum sancto spiritu” fugue from the Missa is more impressive; its diatonic
fugue subject, which may have been adapted from a theme of Leopold
Mozart’s,35 survives almost intact in a bit of close imitation between two
parts beginning at m. 386 (Ex. 3.5), where the subject enters against itself
at the fifth above at the time distance of a whole note (S + 5 at �). But this
is the only instance of close imitation in the movement, and given the
uncertainty about this theme’s origins, it may simply reflect a bit of com-
positional good fortune or perhaps fatherly collaboration.
Four years later Mozart wrote a set of six string quartets, K. 168–173,
the first and last of which close with fugues. Whether inspired by Joseph
Haydn’s fugal finales or by similar works of the Viennese court compos-
ers, these two movements – the finales of the String Quartets in F major,
K. 168, and D minor, K. 173, respectively – are more than just clever
imitations, a charge commonly leveled against them.36 he first of the two
begins, in a manner quite unlike its putative models, with an idiomatic
subject that invites euphonious parallel sixths and thirds with the answer

34
François-Joseph Fétis, Traité du contrepoint et de la fugue (Paris, 1824, 1846), Part II, 51. Fétis’s
comment echoes Albrechtsberger’s remark that in order to create a good stretto (Engführung) “the
themes must be studied thoroughly, for not every theme can be closely followed [with itself ].”
Johann Georg Albrechtsberger, Sämmtliche Schriften über Generalbaß … 3 vols. (Vienna, n.d.),
Vol. II, 224–225. Cf. Antoine Reicha, Traité de haute composition musicale (Paris, 1824–1826); and
Luigi Cherubini and Jacques-François Halévy, Cours de contrepoint et de fugue (Paris, 1835).
35
Monique Vachon, La fugue dans la musique religieuse de W. A. Mozart (Québec: Les Presses de
l’Université Laval; Tours: Editions Van de Velde, 1970), 99–100.
36
he conventional wisdom, which holds that Mozart modeled the K. 168–173 quartets on Haydn’s
Opp. 9, 17, and 20 quartets, is slowly changing. Works of Monn, Gassmann, and Ordoñez (among
others) may be more likely models: see A. Peter Brown, “Haydn and Mozart’s 1773 Stay in Vienna:
Weeding a Musicological Garden,” Journal of Musicology 10/2 (Spring, 1992), 192–230.
68 Engaging Bach

Example 3.4 W. A. Mozart, “In te Domine speravi” from Te Deum, K. 141 (1769)
figure subject, mm.143-147

8 In te Do - mi - ne spe - ra - vi
mm. 190-195

In te Do - mi - ne__ spe - ra - vi, in te Do - mi - ne

In te Do - mi-ne spe - ra - vi, in te

8 In te Do - mi-ne spe - ra - vi,

In te Do - mi - ne

Example 3.5 W. A. Mozart, “Cum sancto spiritu” from Mass in C major,

K. 66 (1769), mm. 386–393

8 Cum san-cto spi - ri - tu, in glo - - - - - ri-a De - i Pa-tris

Cum san-cto spi - ri - tu, in glo - - - - - ri-a De-i Pa - - - -

Pa-tris. A - men.
(original subject tail)

Example 3.6 W. A. Mozart, Finale to String Quartet in F major, K. 168, mm. 1–7
Allegro

and countersubject (Ex. 3.6).37 But the giddy mood of the outset doesn’t
last long: abrupt subject statements in vi, ii, and IV (in mm. 20, 24, and
29, respectively) push the countersubject from the texture and hijack the
regular harmonic rhythm of the movement until m. 72. he rapid-fire
modulation and ungainly tonal movement, a reminder of Mozart’s initial
unease in fugue,38 are the unavoidable result of repeated statements of the
entire fugue subject, in contrast to the prevailing custom of shortened sub-
ject entries after the initial exposition.
37
Kirkendale, Fugue and Fugato, 76, notes that the part-writing of most mid- to late-eighteenth-
century Viennese quartet fugues “is much less idiomatic for strings than in the other movements,”
a complaint that cannot be leveled against the K. 168 finale. Kirkendale also offers (89–134) a
survey of mid-century thematic types, few of which have much in common with the K. 168 fugue
subject.
38
Mozart began another fugue in 1773 that is little more than an exercise in modulation and chro-
maticism: the Fugue in G minor, K. 401.
 What Mozart learned from Bach 69

Example 3.7 W. A. Mozart, Finale to String Quartet in F major, K. 168, mm. 72–77
72 S+4 at
75

S+4 at

A lack of compositional foresight is also suggested by the intermittent

success of this movement’s imitative devices. he first attempt at stretto, in
a series of three fairly widely spaced subject entries in the lower two parts
between mm. 56 and 63, decreases the time interval of the original sub-
ject entries by just one bar, and in order to accommodate the cello entry,
the viola entries are both adjusted. A gradual reduction in the parts and a
prolongation on the dominant announces a four-part summation stretto
(Ex. 3.7), comprising two identical close imitations (with tonal answers) at
the raised fourth at a whole note’s distance, first between the cello and viola
and then between the two violins. But like the four-part false stretto in
the 1769 Te Deum fugue, this complex is not entirely successful: the close
overlap of the parts forces the viola to make a second change to the subject
in m. 76 to avoid octaves with the second violin. (A similar problem occurs
at mm. 92–96: the original complex, when inverted in the cello and violin
II imitation at mm. 92–95, falls apart with the third inverted subject entry
in violin I.) he fugue as a whole seems untroubled by such infelicities,
however, its learned potential trumped by its giocoso tone. If the seventeen-
year-old Mozart had paused to consider all the contrapuntal possibilities
of his subject, he surely would have discovered an obvious canonic device
that requires no adjustment of the comes at all: S – 0/+ 8 at � (Ex. 3.8).
he two surviving versions of the D minor Quartet finale, written in July
and August, 1773, respectively, are the best early evidence of Mozart’s efforts
to improve his command of close imitation in fugue. A number of revised
passages shorten the time distance of imitation, and additions to the original
also include the only appearances of the inverted fugue subject in either ver-
sion of the work. he first revision comes just before m. 30 in both versions
of the work (Ex. 3.9), where an awkward point of imitation on the subject
head is telescoped into at least the illusion of stretto. (he real answer in the
upper part of the final version notwithstanding, the closer entry of violin
I only makes violin II abandon the subject quicker.) Another revised pas-
sage (Ex. 3.10) expands what had been a two-part close imitation involving
just the violins to create an orderly progression of the subject head upwards
through all four parts. Although neither revision results in real stretto, both
70 Engaging Bach

Example 3.8 W. A. Mozart, Finale to String Quartet in F major,

K. 168: fugue subject. Unused device S – 0/+ 8 at

Example 3.9 W. A. Mozart, Finale to String Quartet in

D minor, K. 173
early version, mm. 26-29

final version, mm. 27-29

Example 3.10 W. A. Mozart, Finale to String Quartet in D minor, K. 173

(final version), mm. 35–42
35 New in final version

39 From early version

enrich the contrapuntal fabric of the fugue: close imitation in several parts is
more impressive than distant imitation in a few.
Following standard Fuxian procedure in both versions of the work,
Mozart reserved his most impressive displays of close imitation for the
end. His subject left little room in which to maneuver, however: Table 3.1
lists the attempted fugal devices at either a half or a whole note’s distance,
none of which is fully grammatical: the circle in each comes option in the
table indicates where each becomes problematic against the original sub-
ject tail. Although there are no strictly canonic combinations that permit
 What Mozart learned from Bach 71

Table 3.1 Potential canonic devices for W. A. Mozart, Quartet No. 13 in

D minor, K. 173, Finale
Subject (dux)

Mozart’s devices (incomplete comes options) Bar numbers of first appearance in

early version final version Parts
S+5 / -4 at
49 -50 53 - 54 V1, Va

S+2 / -7 at
64 78 V1, V2

S+8 / -0 at
51 - 52 55 -56 Vc, V1

S+4/-5 at
37 41 V1, V2

Example 3.11 W. A. Mozart, Finale to String Quartet in D minor,

K. 173 (final version), mm. 62–72
62 New in final version

67

from early version

use of the entire fugue subject, Mozart discovered while revising the work
some additional options for closer imitation with abbreviated subjects.
Example 3.11 shows one such “improvement” from the final version of
the work, in which three pre-existing four-part stretti (from m. 70 of the
passage in Ex. 3.11) are prefaced by a new point of imitation that includes
inverted subject entries. But note that the mixture of rectus and inversus
subjects once again fails to produce real stretto; the complex is less success-
ful, in fact, than the one it introduces (mm. 70ff.), thanks to a subject that
is just as unwieldy coming up as going down.
72 Engaging Bach

Example 3.12 G. F. Handel, “Amen” fugue from Messiah, mm. 132–135

132

A - - - - -

A - - - - - - -

8 A - - - - - - men, A - - - - - -

A - - - - - - - - - - men, A

Figure 3.3 G. F. Handel, sketch of the “Amen” fugue from Messiah (no. 4)

he final version of the K. 173 finale suggests that Mozart went about
the task of fugal revision (if not initial composition) in discrete stages,
first re-examining his original fugue subject and then plugging his new
discoveries back into the existing fabric of the fugue. his was essentially
Handel’s process from the outset of the “Amen” fugue, as his surviving
sketches for its various four-part stretti demonstrate. Another of these
shows how Handel preserved in the actual fugue (from m. 134 of Ex. 3.12)
a four-part imitative matrix exactly as he had sketched it (Fig. 3.3), despite
the obvious opportunity for an earlier entry in the bass (given in brackets
in Ex. 3.12). hough the hypothetical entry de-emphasizes somewhat the
bass entry on the dominant, it makes sense both as a part of an otherwise
tightly imitative four-part complex in the previous bar and as a continu-
ation of the preceding tenor–bass sequence. In any case, while revising the
K. 173 finale Mozart seems to have worked in the same manner, realizing
only belatedly that he needed to think through all stretto possibilities in
advance. Several years later, with Bach’s help, Mozart finally mastered this
particular aspect of fugal composition.

the     –  f ugue s a nd f ugato s

he preceding exposé of missed contrapuntal opportunities is less con-
cerned with Mozart’s ability to create a unique compositional style in his
early fugues than with his ability to craft productive musical inventions.
 What Mozart learned from Bach 73

Example 3.13 W. A. Mozart, Finale to String Quartet in G major, K. 487, mm. 1–8
1 Molto Allegro 5

Stylistic evaluation of his subsequent fugal works cannot be avoided, how-

ever, since the 1782–1783 Bach experience weighs heavily on history’s judg-
ment of them. Mozart’s participation in the van Swieten salon encouraged
some experimentation of his own in counterpoint and fugue, the results
of which – various canons, fugal movements, free-standing fugues, and
fugal fragments – have long been criticized as labored and uncharacteristic.
Only a few of these works suggest a completely self-assured composer, thus
Bach’s shadow looms large in the literature. For years musicologists and
more general writers on music have cast Mozart as a ventriloquist in many
of these pieces, channeling a voice not quite his own and composing with
“all of Bach’s technique and none of his style!”39
Perhaps the most successful of these works is a quartet finale that uses
fugue not as an end in itself but rather as one of several textural options.
An idiosyncratic approach to both genre and style is evident from the
outset of the finale to the String Quartet in G major, K. 387, as a pro-
vocatively open-ended whole-note fugue subject is joined by syncopated
rhythms in the other parts (Ex. 3.13). he function of the new parts as
proper countersubjects barely registers before the fugato gives way in m. 17
to a homophonic closing pattern that yields, in turn, to yet another fugato.
hough the stark contrast of discrete fugatos within an otherwise buffa-
esque finale has little in common with the kind of generic integration
Bach often achieved in his fugal concertos and sonatas, Mozart’s learned
yet quirky finale cannot escape the inevitable attribution: it is, according
to its Neue Mozart Ausgabe editor, a “synthesis of Haydn’s quartet style
with the knowledge gained from the encounter with Bach.”40 But Mozart
surely had little need of Bach here: for some time Austrian composers had
been experimenting with counterpoint as a viable “topic” in instrumental
music, as a way of injecting greater seriousness and deeper expression into
the quartet, symphony, and concerto. he most artful device in the K. 387
finale, the four-part stretto that begins in m. 282, actually has more in com-
mon with those that close the finales of Haydn’s Symphony No. 13 (1763)
or Mozart’s own Piano Concerto in D major, K. 175 (the original, 1773
finale) than it does with Bach’s stretti in WTC or elsewhere. Moreover, the
triple invertible counterpoint of the G major Quartet finale’s fugatos is not

39
Edward Lowinsky, “On Mozart’s Rhythm,” he Musical Quarterly 42 (1956), 162.
40
Ludwig Finscher, “Bach und die Wiener Klassik,” in Bachtage Berlin, ed. Günther Wagner
(Neuhausen-Stuttgart: Hänssler Verlag, 1985), 139–151 (148).
74 Engaging Bach

Example 3.14 (a) W. A. Mozart, Fugue in C major, K. 394/2, mm. 1–3; (b) J. S. Bach,
Fugue in C major from WTC, Book I, BWV 871/2, mm. 1–3
(a)

(b)

much different from that of the “Cum sancto spiritu” fugue of the Mass in
C, K. 262 (1775), or that of even earlier Mozart canons.
During 1782 and 1783 Mozart also worked on a number of more rigorous
keyboard fugues, one of which he sent to his sister Nannerl along with a letter
describing how Constanze had badgered him until he “wrote down a fugue for
her.”41 his work, the Prelude and Fugue in C major, K. 394, has long served
to illustrate the “anxiety of influence” that many see in this phase of Mozart’s
creative development, as he wrestled with the Bach fugues.42 he literature on
the K. 394 Fugue points to a number of things – its subject, concise motives,
frequent dissonance, perpetual sixteenth-note motion, and various contra-
puntal devices – all as evidence of Bach’s strong influence.43 Such a long list,
suggestive of a strangely detached mode of composition, invites skepticism:
the K. 173 finale has comparable motivic concision and dissonance, and the
K. 168 finale consists largely of sixteenth notes – and Mozart wrote both in
1773, well before his exposure to Bach’s keyboard music. Assuming there is
no Frühfassung of the K. 394 Fugue hiding in Weimar or Köthen, a less Bach-
obsessed reading of it would seem to be in order.
he passages given in Examples 3.14 and 3.15 illustrate one of the cen-
tral weaknesses of Mozart’s 1782–1783 fugal works: the counterpoint is
sometimes quite clumsy, especially in comparison to Bach’s. he pairing
of subject and countersubject in Mozart’s fugue makes for a lumbering
41
Letter of April 20, 1782, from Wolfgang to Nannerl Mozart, in Bauer and Deutsch, Mozart Briefe,
Vol. III, 202–203; Anderson, he Letters of Mozart and His Family, 801.
42
In he Anxiety of Influence: A heory of Poetry (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973), Harold
Bloom argues that poets struggle to escape their own literary lineage in the same way that compos-
ers struggled after Beethoven to find something new to say in the genre of the symphony. Bach’s
influence casts an even longer shadow, from the late eighteenth century to the present day, and in a
wider variety of musical contexts.
43
See Marshall, “Bach and Mozart’s Artistic Maturity,” 65; Friedhelm Krummacher, “Bach- und
Händel-Traditionen,” in Die Musik des 18. Jahrhunderts, ed. Carl Dahlhaus (Laaber Verlag, 1985),
391; Isabelle Putnam Emerson, “he Role of Counterpoint in the Formation of Mozart’s Late
Style,” Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1977, 180; Edward Olleson, “Gottfried, Baron
van Swieten and His Influence on Mozart and Haydn,” D.Phil. dissertation, Oxford University,
1967, 116; and Maria Taling-Hajnali, Der fugierte Stil bei Mozart (Bern: Schweizerischen
Musikforschenden Gesellschaft, 1959), 83.
 What Mozart learned from Bach 75

Example 3.15 (a) W. A. Mozart, Fugue in C major, K. 394/2, mm. 28–31; (b) J. S. Bach,
Fugue in C minor from WTC, Book II, BWV 871/2, mm. 14–16
(a)

(b)

Example 3.16 W. A. Mozart, Fugue in C major, K. 394/2, mm. 6–7

homage to its supposed model, the Fugue in C major from Book I of WTC,
whose initial two-part counterpoint is more elegant and its implied har-
monic rhythm clearer (Ex. 3.14). he stretto in Mozart’s fugue (Ex. 3.15a)
likewise magnifies the awkward changes in direction and abundant skips
in his melodic material, as does the occasional bit of gratuitously chro-
matic passagework (m. 7 of Ex. 3.16). hat said, the canonic imitation in
this fugue shows significant improvement over earlier efforts. Compared
to the subjects of Mozart’s earlier quartet finales, the K. 394 fugue subject
has a narrower range and a tighter melodic shape, making it a better can-
didate for stretto since it requires neither voice-crossings nor wide intervals
of transposition. he first bit of subject overlap, S + 3 at � � in mm. 15–17,
is but a teaser to an imposing three-part complex with one part in augmen-
tation at mm. 28–31, which recalls a similar passage from one of the Bach
fugues Mozart transcribed during the same year (Ex. 3.15). Stretto at the
lowered fifth, an ungainly though workable device, recurs at mm. 43–44
and again in its inverted form (at the raised fourth) at mm. 47–48 (the
first of these is actually a two-part canonic sequence on a slightly altered
subject). A more thorough contrapuntist could have done better, however:
though fully grammatical, S + 2/– 7 at � (Ex. 3.17) appears nowhere in this
piece. One suspects, to borrow a famous phrase from Luther, that Mozart
was still composing “as the notes will,” and not the other way around.
Several months later, Mozart put canonic devices to better use in a choral
fugue. Compared to the K. 394 Fugue, the “Cum sancto spiritu” section
76 Engaging Bach

Example 3.17 W. A. Mozart, Fugue in C major, K. 394/2: fugue subject.

Unused device of S + 2/– 7 at �

Example 3.18 W. A. Mozart, “Cum sancto spiritu” from Mass in C minor, K. 427
1
(a)

Cum San - - - - - - - cto Spi - ri - tu,

35
(b)

S+8 at Cum San - - - - - cto Spi - ri - tu,

Cum San - - - - - cto Spi - ri - tu, in glo - -

60
(c)

Cum San - - - - - - - - cto Spi - ri

S+4 at

Cum San - - - - - - - - cto

81
(d)

Cum San - - - - - - - - cto

8 S+5 at

Cum San - - - - - - - - cto Spi - ri

of the Mass in C minor, K. 427, is more searching contrapuntally and

decidedly more demonstrative in its use of stretto. Like the C major key-
board Fugue, this movement exploits the imitative possibilities of its sub-
ject (Ex. 3.18a) at the earliest possible opportunity: barely four measures
after completion of the initial exposition (Ex. 3.18b). his device, stretto
at the octave at the distance of two full bars, does not return until the other
potential canonic combination, at the lowered fourth or raised fifth at a
single bar’s distance, has appeared in both its potential vertical arrange-
ments at mm. 60 and 81, respectively (Ex. 3.18c–d). he first device, the
most felicitous of the two, returns at m. 105 for a leisurely series of over-
lapping two-part combinations whose last iterations (as inverted octave
imitations) announce a grandiose dominant prolongation that cadences
finally in the tonic in m. 166.
he obligatory summation stretto follows, utilizing rectus versions of
both devices but with significant alterations in all the parts (Ex. 3.19).
Why all the changed notes? After such a lengthy pedal, the urge towards
closure trumps the virtues of yet more canonic imitation, hence the hasty
return to the dominant and quicker figuration from m. 175 to the end of
 What Mozart learned from Bach 77

Example 3.19 W. A. Mozart, “Cum sancto spiritu” from Mass in C minor, K. 427, mm.
165–177 (choral parts only)
165

a - men, a - men. Cum San - - - - - - - cto Spi -

a - men, a - men. Cum San - - - - - - - -

8 a - - - men. Cum San - - - - - cto __

men, a - men. Cum San - - - -

173

- - - - - - ri - tu, in glo - - - - - - -

- - - cto Spi - ri - tu, in glo

8 ___ cum San - cto Spi - ri - tu, in glo - - - ri - a,

cto Spi - ri - tu,

the fugue. he final bow to species counterpoint – scored piously, for a

suddenly hushed choir – effectively stops time in her tracks, as we hear one
last time what we’ve heard before (the endless canonic devices) in a kind of
musical genuflection. But close imitation, finally, is just part of this fugue’s
larger mission of turning liturgy into drama; we’re not encouraged to lin-
ger, perhaps because the fugue has already made considerable demands on
our attention. Its lone four-part complex, recalling past musical events,
quickly reverts to a more familiar musical present, as the movement comes
to a swift and powerful conclusion.
Mozart seems less willing or perhaps was less able to reconcile the old
world of learned counterpoint with more modern musical sensibilities in the
Fugue in C minor for two keyboards, K. 426. his work, dated December
29, 1783, is the most ambitious of his independent fugues and, as such,
has elicited a range of strong responses over the years, virtually all of which
note its stylistic debt to Bach. he detailed accounts of its Bach-like features
include many of the techniques and style characteristics mentioned above
in connection with the K. 394 Fugue plus a few more. Warren Kirkendale’s
list, to take the longest of the lot, includes the “strict maintenance of lin-
ear part-writing throughout and the pungent dissonances which result …
the retention of the subject in its original length, the full exploitation of
78 Engaging Bach

contrapuntal devices, and finally the combination of the subject with its
own inversion (m. 73) which may possibly have been prompted by the
Art of Fugue.”44 But upon close examination, only one of these features of
style can be traced with confidence to Bach alone. Some of Mozart’s earlier
fugues have arguably just as much dissonance (K. 401) and linear coherence
(the K. 168 finale, which features the complete subject in most entries). he
hypothesis that Mozart learned (presumably in 1782) from his study of he
Art of Fugue how to combine a fugue subject with its own inversion ignores
the composer’s earlier experimentation with rectus and inversus combin-
ations in the revision of the K. 173 finale and in the K. 401 keyboard fugue;
there is, moreover, no firm evidence linking Mozart to he Art of Fugue.45
he only item left on this list, the “full exploitation of contrapuntal devices”
in K. 426, is the one aspect of this work that is so atypical – for Mozart, his
contemporaries, and most of his predecessors – as to suggest the influence
of J. S. Bach and no one else.
Chalking up this fugue’s multiple stretti to Mozart’s study of at least
six comparable fugues from WTC doesn’t begin to explain what happens
in this remarkable piece, however. Its oddly bifurcated subject (Ex. 3.20),
for Einstein “a deeply serious, ‘dualistic’ theme … half imperious and half
complaining,”46 has often been compared to the hema regium from Bach’s
Musical Offering (a copy of which was once in van Swieten’s library),47
despite the significant departure from late Baroque versions of this stock
theme, which tend towards the staid and even ponderous (compare with
those in Ex. 3.1). he angular shape and heightened accentuation of
Mozart’s subject make instead for an urgent and dramatic opening to a
classic double-fugue, whose subject and countersubject appear through-
out in invertible counterpoint. Even more impressive is the extraordinary
fecundity of the fugue subject, whose sharp octave hammerstrokes and
chromatic trochees generate eight fully and four partially grammatical
canonic devices (summarized in Table 3.2), all of which appear over the
course of the fugue, several of them multiple times in various two- and
four-part imitative complexes. Stretto, in short, is everywhere.
Even the progression of events in K. 426 has a kind of relentless logic
to it, as if Mozart was going down an elaborate checklist (something
akin to my Table 3.2) as he composed this fugue, with the intention of

44
Kirkendale, Fugue and Fugato, 167.
45
he frequent claim that Mozart knew he Art of Fugue rests mostly on the tenuous authenticity of
the K. 404a transcriptions, on which, see n. 16 above. Marshall also offers (in “Bach and Mozart’s
Artistic Maturity,” 56–57) the suggestion that Padre Martini may have acquired a copy of he Art
of Fugue before the Mozarts’ arrival in Bologna in 1770, as a way of explaining the impressive com-
bination of rectus and inversus subjects in the Fugue in G minor, K. 401.
46
Einstein, Mozart, 273.
47
Holschneider, “Die musikalische Bibliothek,” 177. he K. 426 fugue subject also resembles a theme
from Gli Orazi ed i Curiazi, a ballet of Joseph Starzer, court musician and composer, who often led
performances at van Swieten’s Sunday gatherings (a role Mozart assumed upon Starzer’s death in
 What Mozart learned from Bach 79

Example 3.20 W. A. Mozart, Fugue in C minor, K. 426, mm. 1–5

I.

II.

Table 3.2. Fugal devices in W. A. Mozart, Fugue in C minor, K. 426

Complete devices mm. parts

1(a) S – 8 @ � both parts inverted 35–38 I rh, I lh
96–98 II rh, II lh (abbr.)
97–99 I rh, I lh (abbr.)
110–112 I rh, II rh (abbr.)
S + 8 @ � both parts inverted 39–41 II lh, II rh
1(b) S + 8 @ � (rectus) 44–47 II lh, I rh (abbr.)
82–85 I lh, II rh
91–93 II lh, II rh (abbr.)
106–108 II lh, I lh (abbr.)
2 S + 5 @ � � inverted comes 51–54 II lh, I rh
S+5@�� 91–93 II lh, I rh
S–4@�� 91–94 II rh, I lh
3 S – 8 @ � inverted comes 57–59 II rh, I lh
S + 8 @ � inverted comes 84–86 II lh, I rh
115–118 II lh, I and II rh
(abbr.)
4 S + 8 simultaneous, one part 73–75 I rh, II rh
inverted
79–81 I rh, I rh
5 S–8@�� 83–85 II rh, II lh
6 S – 8 at � � 82–85 I lh, II lh
7 S+5@� 91–93 II rh, I rh
8 S+5@�� 91–94 II lh, I lh
Incomplete devices mm. parts

9 S–5@� 47–50 II rh, I lh

103–104
10 S – 5 @ � � both parts inverted 85–87 I rh, II lh
S + 4 @ � � both parts inverted 96–98 II lh, I lh
11 S + 4 @ � both parts inverted 96–98 II lh, I rh
12 S+7@� 103–104 II rh, I rh
80 Engaging Bach

Example 3.21 W. A. Mozart, Fugue in C minor, K. 426: (a) mm. 35–38 (keyboard I);
(b) mm. 39–41 (keyboard II); (c) mm. 44–46 (I, r.h.; II, l.h.)

(a)

S(inv)-8 at

(b)

S (inv)+8 at

(c)
S+8 at

utilizing his subject in every conceivable combination with itself. On the

heels of the initial exposition, a deft series of new subject entries (begin-
ning in m. 19) proceeds upwards by diatonic step from the third through
the seventh scale degrees (the second scale degree is skipped because it
would produce an opening tritone). Only the last two of these – the
entries on scale degrees 6 and 7 in mm. 30 and 32, respectively – require
abandonment of the chromatic subject tail, lest the fugue modulate sud-
denly into distant enharmonic keys. We then return to C minor for the
first course in a veritable feast of canonic imitation. Given the interval-
lic shape of the subject head, with its open fifth across four beats and
the surrounding seventh across four more, stretto at the octave at a half
note’s distance (Device 1) is the most obvious combination. As Example
3.21 shows, this device appears first (a) with the entire three-bar subject
inverted at the lowered octave, then (b) in invertible counterpoint at the
raised octave, then (c) in canonic sequence on the rectus subject head.
Imitation at the same time distance but at the lowered fifth (Device 9)
comes next, but this device proves unworkable without some kind of
alteration on the fifth beat of the comes. Mozart’s clever solution is to
continue the ongoing exchange on the subject head, giving all four hands
a chance at canon (Ex. 3.22).
Over the next thirty bars or so, up to and including the first four-part com-
plex at m. 82, every potential device at the octave occurs at least once, and
several at the fourth or fifth are heard from as well. he three subsequent four-
1788). In the end, the search for a specific model hardly matters: fugue subjects that emphasize the
tonic fifth and its surrounding diminished seventh were common in the eighteenth century.
 What Mozart learned from Bach 81

Example 3.22 W. A. Mozart, Fugue in C minor, K. 426, mm. 47–50 (II, r.h.; I, l.h.)

S-5 at

Example 3.23 W. A. Mozart, Fugue in C minor, K. 426, mm. 82–87

82

II

86

II

part complexes (beginning in mm. 91, 96, and 103, respectively) offer a more
complete exploration of the latter levels of imitation while revisiting several
of the earlier devices. For ease of reference, Table 3.2 lists the canonic devices
in K. 426 by order of increasing difficulty, with fully grammatical combin-
ations above and partially grammatical ones below, and multiple versions of
the same device by order of their appearance within the work. Note how thor-
oughly Mozart worked his way through not only the various possibilities for
canonic imitation but different inflections of the same basic device. Fitting in
the many potential devices takes time, hence this fugue’s great length. Devices
that are given short shrift the first time around are repeated so that we can see
how well the complete version works: Device 1b, for example, appears first as
a subject head sequence in m. 44 and re-emerges as an imitation of the com-
plete fugue subject only in mm. 82–83, in the first four-part complex (Ex.
3.23). Others, like Device 3, are stated completely before being abbreviated
in the four-part complexes that dominate the work from m. 82 onwards.
hough impressive on paper, the aural effect of so much stretto is over-
whelming; one gets little relief from the increasingly bellicose fugue sub-
ject or its nervously trilling countersubject. Only at the very end (Ex. 3.24)
82 Engaging Bach

Example 3.24 W. A. Mozart, Fugue in C minor, K. 426, mm. 103–108

103

D12
I

D9

II

105

II

107

II

is there a bit of stylistic leavening, as Alberti figures suddenly intrude on

the obsessive counterpoint and enforce closure at precisely the spot where
the well runs dry: in its one appearance in the work, the dux of Device 12
abandons the four-part stretto in m. 104 because of a threatened direct
octave. he rigorous four-part imitation ceases just two bars later in favor
of a series of two-part devices, all of which are recycled from earlier in the
work, as the other two hands clatter onwards towards the final cadential
gesture, which consists of yet another stretto. Mozart got to the end of
his list, in other words, and stopped, just after finding room for the most
unlikely of canonic imitations, at the raised seventh at the distance of a full
bar. hough it works for only a few notes, this awkward device occurs at
least once, thus completing what must have been extensive initial research
into the canonic potential of this fugue subject.
But is this how a fugue ought to end? Although the K. 426 coda bears
little resemblance to the coda of the Fugue in C minor from Book II of
 What Mozart learned from Bach 83

Example 3.25 J. S. Bach, Fugue in C minor from WTC, Book II, BWV 871/2, mm. 23–25
S+4 at S-4 at

WTC (Ex. 3.25), Mozart knew the Bach fugue well from having tran-
scribed it, and it makes for an instructive comparison. By going a few
measures beyond a strong tonic cadence in search of yet more music, both
composers present one last time the subject matter of their respective
fugues. Bach’s coda, characteristically, features two new canonic devices:
S + 4/–5 at � and S + 5/–4 at � in mm. 23–24 and 24–25, respectively.
Mozart’s reprise of some relatively easy devices – a less apparent surprise,
to be sure, than the driving Alberti figures – is not a weakness per se, but
it is clearly at odds with his fugue’s systematic exploration of canonic
imitation.
Ironically, Mozart’s relentless pursuit of stretto in K. 426 could not be
further from Bach’s usual practice or the expectations of eighteenth-century
critics. As Dreyfus demonstrates convincingly, Bach too strove to incorpor-
ate as many devices as possible in fugue (even those with flawed voice lead-
ing), but he did not necessarily “dispose” of these inventions as a discrete
stage in composition. Instead, his WTC fugues especially suggest a flexible
compositional shuttling between imitative devices, which tend to produce
rather wooden harmonies, and free counterpoint, which enables cadences
and other kinds of purposeful movement and which can help make sense of
otherwise problematic devices.48 Such a working method produced fugues
whose most sophisticated devices are sometimes audible and, at other times,
cleverly disguised. In contrast, once the exploration of stretto is underway
in K. 426, there is scarcely a bar not dominated by subject material. he
four-part complexes are not only dense but static (see Ex. 3.23), suggesting
that Mozart worked them out before deciding how to plug them into the
eventual work, much as Handel did for his “Amen” fugue. Bach’s use of
stretto in WTC is less predictable and, as Dreyfus notes, more in keeping
with Mattheson’s oft-quoted congratulations to the successful fugue theme:
“Look! You are here again; I did not consider that; I would not have sought
you in this place.”49 By late 1783 Mozart had clearly mastered stretto, but he
had yet to understand its charms; his imposing fugue for two keyboards, for

48
See Dreyfus, Bach and the Patterns of Invention, esp. 153–154.
49
Johann Mattheson, Johann Mattheson’s Der volkommene Capellmeister: A Revised Translation with
Critical Commentary, ed. and trans. Ernest C. Harriss (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1981), 729.
84 Engaging Bach

all its contrapuntal merits, is a serious misreading of its artistic antecedents,

the stretto fugues in Book II of WTC.

lea rni ng wh at not to d o

Only one other work of Mozart’s comes close to the C minor Fugue’s
obstinate pursuit of close canonic imitation: the equally ambitious Fantasie
in F minor, K. 608 (1791), which includes two fugues that incorporate
every conceivable canonic device that can be generated from its severely
learned theme. his underestimated tripartite piece for musical clock, with
its highly recherché outer sections and an inner cantabile variation set, is
also something of a problem for modern critics, who tend to dismiss its
“childish” medium without giving the music due consideration.50 Original
opinion, by contrast, was quite favorable: in 1799 the AMZ hailed K. 608
as “one of the most perfect works of [Mozart’s] inexhaustible genius.”51
What was it about this work (and perhaps, by extension, K. 426, which
received no early critical notices) that Mozart’s contemporaries regarded
as perfect? he answer may well lie in what Annette Richards, borrowing
C. F. Michaelis’s description of the feelings aroused by complex polyphony
and the web of associations conjured by the organ-clock mechanism, calls
its evocation of the “mechanical sublime.”52 It was precisely this Fantasie’s
overwhelming learnedness that transfixed its first critics and apparently
held its listeners in thrall to a machine (part of a funerary exhibit in a
Viennese wax museum) that produced otherworldly counterpoint within
a highly dramatic, even theatrical, context. While K. 426 had no such
exalted function to fulfill, its ambition and sense of heightened drama are
certainly comparable, as is its mechanistic obsession with learned coun-
terpoint at all costs. But the latter was, finally, not innate with Mozart. In
contrast to Bach’s apparent ability to discern contrapuntal possibilities off
the top of his head, Mozart had to learn, in mid-career, how to concoct
miracles of counterpoint through study of a few examples of such learned
magic.
hose who find fault with K. 426 typically regard the lack of any more
independent fugues as a sign that, after 1783, Mozart had no more interest
in the genre and was himself somewhat dissatisfied with his own fugal efforts.

50
Mozart’s four organ-clock pieces (K. 594, 608, 616, and 617a) are usually dismissed out of
hand, because “[he] hated the squeaky little thing”; H. C. Robbins Landon, 1791: Mozart’s
Last Year (London: hames and Hudson, 1988), 40. For more sympathetic readings of K. 594
and K. 608, see Laurence Dreyfus, “he Hermeneutics of Lament: A Neglected Paradigm
in a Mozartian Trauermusik,” Music Analysis 10/3 (1991), 329–343; and Annette Richards,
“Automatic Genius: Mozart and the Mechanical Sublime,” Music and Letters 80 (1999), 366–
389, respectively.
51
Anonymous review of Traeg’s first edition (1799) of the Fantasie in F minor, arr. for piano, four
hands, AMZ 1/52 (September 25, 1799), 876–880.
52
Richards, “Automatic Genius.”
 What Mozart learned from Bach 85

But to discount the C minor Fugue as a mere “technical experiment”53 is to

ignore Mozart’s own reception of the work: he transcribed it for strings (K.
546) and offered both versions for sale through Hoffmeister’s publishing
house.54 he reason why Mozart never again attempted fugue on the same
scale may have more to do with what happened during the composition
of this extraordinary piece. Instead of a crisis begetting fugues, things may
well have been the other way around: having learned by careful study of
a few models how Bach managed to infuse his fugue subjects with max-
imum contrapuntal potential, Mozart tried to do one better, in a fugue
with more stretti than even Bach ever contemplated. he effort seems to
have taxed not only Mozart’s compositional ingenuity but his patience for
independent fugues; in any case, from this point onwards he integrated
what he had learned from Bach into other genres instead.
Mozart took, then, two useful things from his brief engagement with
a few Bach fugues: how to craft musical inventions that allow for a range
of contrapuntal devices and how (not) to use the latter. here are surely
other composers about whom something similar could be said: that their
study of Bach’s music taught them more about their own art than about
his. his is worth remembering, since comparable surface features (fugue
subjects, contrapuntal devices, textures, etc.) may simply suggest creative
minds thinking along the same paths, using a shared language of ideas
and procedures, more than the profound influence of one composer on
another. Fortunately, there are occasionally composers whose strategic pur-
suit of very particular skills can be glimpsed after the fact – that is, if we
know what to look for and are lucky enough to find it.

53
Sadie, “Mozart, Bach and Counterpoint,” 23–24.
54
Eisen, New Mozart Documents, 36. Early-nineteenth-century reception of K. 426/546 suggests that
Mozart’s contemporaries valued the work highly as well: around 1800 Beethoven transcribed part
of K. 426, and both Mozart’s original for two pianos and an arrangement for one piano, four hands,
were reprinted by Simrock in the mid 1820s, according to Köchel, 6th edn. he K. 546 transcrip-
tion, on the other hand, was published in 1825 (Berlin: Trautwein), and was paraphrased by Anton
Heinrich (Prince) Radziwill in the overture to his Composition zu Goethes Faust (1835).
   

Divergent streams of reception in the early

nineteenth century
 ch apter 

A bürgerlicher Bach: turn-of-the-century

German advocacy

As Mozart’s engagement with a few WTC fugues illustrates, until 1800 or

so Bach’s keyboard works remained the property of circles of connoisseurs
and professionals, who valued this music both for its compositional virtues
and its technical challenges. Bach himself set the parameters for this kind
of reception when he dedicated Book I of WTC to “the use and profit
of musical youth desirous of learning as well as for the pastime of those
already skilled in this study.”1 He surely had the same audience in mind
for the second installment of preludes and fugues, compiled decades later
(for which no comparable title page survives), and his published volumes
of keyboard music served largely the same crowd. Initial reception of WTC
was more or less as the composer had imagined: though neither book was
published during his lifetime, Bach’s pupils and extended family knew
and studied both and transmitted hand copies to ever-widening circles
of their own students and colleagues. During Mozart’s day, complete and
partial copies circulated among networks of professional musicians and
connoisseurs from Vienna to London, making WTC a touchstone of the
high style in music, an esteemed repository of fugue especially. heorists
borrowed excerpts as demonstrations of strong Harmonie (harmonic coun-
terpoint) in their treatises,2 and less learned journals occasionally featured
critical notices on individual preludes and fugues as well. Early biograph-
ical accounts also stress the importance of this essential collection; most
memorable perhaps is the report of Bach’s playing through all the preludes
and fugues during one lucky pupil’s lessons.3 Over time WTC became a
kind of proving ground for budding virtuosos: W. F. Bach’s pupil Friedrich
Wilhelm Rust boasted in his c. 1775 autobiography that he could play all
of Book I from memory at age thirteen, while the eleven-year-old Ludwig

1
NBR, 97.
2
For a good overview in English, see homas Christensen, “Bach among the heorists,” in Bach
Perspectives 3: Creative Responses to Bach from Mozart to Hindemith, ed. Michael Marissen (Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press, 1998), 23–46. A list of excerpts from WTC in printed sources to 1800
can be found in Alfred Dürr’s Critical Report to NBA V/6/1, 122.
3
Entry for “Gerber, Heinrich Nicolaus,” in Ernst Ludwig Gerber, Historisch-biographisches Lexicon der
Tonkünstler (Leipzig, 1790). (BD III, 476; NBR, 322).

89
90 Engaging Bach

van Beethoven was said to be similarly gifted.4 Similar feats were reported
outside Germany: at an unnamed London venue in 1754, the child prod-
igy Johann Gottfried Wilhelm Palschau (b. 1742) apparently performed
“some lessons and double fugues by Sebastian Bach.”5 By the 1790s, lead-
ing pianists in England were at least aware of WTC, the first book of which
Charles Burney had acquired from C. P. E. Bach around 1772. he Italian
expatriate Muzio Clementi knew and probably taught Bach’s preludes and
fugues; he also published excerpts from both books in his widely used
tutors. Music historians further cite the Bach activities of Johann Baptist
Cramer, who apparently performed selections from WTC in semi-public
settings in the 1790s,6 and Cipriani Potter, who is said to have memorized
the contents of both books while studying with Joseph Woelfl in England
sometime around the turn of the century.7
In 1790 the Berlin music dealer J. C. F. Rellstab announced an edition
of WTC, as did A. F. C. Kollmann, a German émigré organist living in
London, in 1799. hough neither edition ever appeared in print,8 the lat-
ter caught the attention of the Göttingen music historian Johann Nikolaus
Forkel, whose enthusiasm for the project was tempered by embarrass-
ment that no German publisher had yet produced an edition of the work.
Nonetheless commending Kollmann’s phantom edition to readers of the
AMZ, Forkel was one of several prominent figures who thought that an
edition of WTC was long overdue.9 Nicolaus Simrock of Bonn likewise
considered it “superfluous to say anything further about this German
masterwork, whose eternal worth had long been unanimously confirmed

4
See BD III, 811 and 874. he latter also includes a report on a young blind virtuoso by the name of
Dulon, who at Potsdam in early 1783 played “very difficult pieces from Bach’s Fugues [WTC?] with
precision and without hesitation.”
5
Charles Burney, “Account of an Infant Musician,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of
London 69 (1779), 202. See also Rainer Kaiser, “Palschaus Bach-Spiel in London: Zur Bach-Pflege
in England um 1750,” BJ 79 (1993), 225–229.
6
he “Memoir of John Baptist Cramer,” he Harmonicon 12 (December, 1823), 179–181, relates
that Cramer acquired several Bach scores in Paris in 1790 from a young Russian student of Emanuel
Bach. he account of his affairs at his death confirms this information: A Catalogue of Mr. J. B.
Cramer’s … Collection of MS and Printed Vocal and Instrumental Music (May 21, 1816) lists the Bach
organ trios, Vol. I of the Hoffmeister & Kühnel Oeuvres complettes, the Nägeli edition of WTC, and
a manuscript copy of the same.
7
Walter Macfarren, “he Past Principals of the Royal Academy of Music,” RAM Club Magazine
(October, 1900), 5; as cited in Michael Kassler, ed., he English Bach Awakening: Knowledge of J. S.
Bach and His Music in England 1750–1830 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), 15.
8
On Kollmann’s failure to publish his edition, see Stephen L. Clark, ed. and trans., he Letters of
C. P. E. Bach (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), nos. 274 and 277. Kollmann may have intended to
publish only Book II of WTC: his Essay on Musical Harmony (London, 1796) and Essay on Practical
Musical Composition (London, 1799) include excerpts from this book only, and in the latter he refers
to the “twenty-four Fugues by Sebastian Bach” (BD III, 1021).
9
AMZ 2/1 (October 2, 1799), 6–7 (BD III, 1022). Atoning for his own failure to produce an edi-
tion of WTC, Kollmann took credit in 1812 for both the Simrock and Nägeli editions, claiming
that his 1799 announcement “created so great an emulation, that the said work which had never
been printed before, appeared in print about a year after, at three different places”; Quarterly Musical
Register 1 (January, 1812), 30.
 A bürgerlicher Bach: early German advocacy 91

by all nations”; it remained only to publish the work in its entirety, a pro-
ject he completed within the year and with surprising scrupulousness, des-
pite less than ideal sources.10 In 1801 Zürich publisher Hans Georg Nägeli
released a competing edition, as did Jean-Jérôme Imbault of Paris, whose
edition included only the fugues. he last of this initial cluster of editions
appeared over the course of two years in the bi-monthly fascicles of Franz
Anton Hoffmeister and Ambrosius Kühnel’s ambitious Oeuvres complettes
de Jean Sebastien Bach (Vienna and Leipzig), the first attempt at a complete
works edition of Bach’s music. In 1803 the AMZ heralded the multiple
editions of WTC as a “remarkable sign of the times” and noted approvingly
that the volumes had found “considerable support.”11 English reprints of
the Simrock and Nägeli editions followed (by Broderip & Wilkinson,
and Lavenu, respectively), and between 1810 and 1813 English organist
Samuel Wesley, with the help of Carl Friedrich Horn, put out the first edi-
tion anywhere to include rudimentary analyses of the fugues. As Table 4.1
shows, by 1850 WTC had been published more than thirty times – more
by far than any other work of Bach – and in numerous places, including
Leipzig, Berlin, London, and Paris.
he large number of editions underscores the longstanding high regard
for this collection among connoisseurs of learned counterpoint and the
better keyboard players. he intense competition to publish it around the
turn of the century also reflects an increasingly urgent sense of obliga-
tion towards Bach among a new generation of devotees, none of whom
was old enough to have known the composer personally. Publication of
WTC made good sense: unlike the four-part chorales, for which a new
raison d’être had to be devised, the forty-eight preludes and fugues already
had plenty of admirers who played, studied, transcribed, and occasionally
used these pieces as compositional models. As both Forkel’s and Simrock’s
comments make clear, there was a devoted (if selective) audience for this
collection, hence the repeated calls for an edition. he continental edi-
tions found strong support among German writers on music, who pro-
moted these volumes to their readers and advocated a wider reception for
Bach’s music in general. heir unprecedented campaign, undertaken for
a composer who had been dead for half a century and whose music had
circulated principally among the musically well-connected, posed a novel
problem: convincing amateurs and dilettantes, who knew only that Bach’s

10
AMZ 3, Intelligenz-Blatt V (February 4, 1801), 17–18 (BD III, 1045). Simrock also notes that
copies of the work had already been consigned to various music and book dealers, though subscrip-
tions for Book I were to be accepted until March 1 and for Book II until May 10, suggesting a
publication date of either late 1800 or early 1801. (Simrock had announced the edition one month
earlier in the Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung and in the Leipziger Zeitung.) An uncommonly scrupu-
lous publisher for his time, Simrock issued another print of the work when it became apparent that
his original source was unreliable. Both prints swap the contents of Bach’s volumes: Book I of the
Simrock edition contains the preludes and fugues in Bach’s Book II and vice versa.
11
AMZ 5/24 (March 9, 1803), 395.
92 Engaging Bach

Table 4.1. Editions of J. S. Bach, he Well-Tempered Clavier, to 185012

Date Publisher (location), editor Comment

c1801 Simrock (Bonn and Paris) volumes switched

c1801 Nägeli (Zurich)
c1801 Imbault (Paris) fugues only, volumes
switched
1802 Simrock (Bonn), ed. Schwencke volumes switched
c1802 Hoffmeister & Kühnel (Leipzig and
Vienna), Forkel
1802 Broderip & Wilkinson (London) reprint of Simrock
c1809 Lavenu (London) reprint of Nägeli
1810–13 Birchall (London), ed. Wesley and Horn
c1815 Preston (London)
c1815 Janet & Cotelle (Paris) reprint of Imbault with
preludes
c1815 Peters (Leipzig), Forkel
1817 Sieber (Paris)
1818–19 Boosey (London) reprint of Peters
1819 Breitkopf & Härtel (Leipzig)
c1825 Richault (Paris)
1828 Nadermann (Paris)
1828 Aulagnier (Paris)
1831 Marco Berra (Prague)
1831 Bote and Bock (Berlin), ed. Haupt and Marx
c1832 Schlesinger (Paris)
c1832 Brandus (Paris)
1835 Simrock (Bonn) new edition
1836 Breitkopf & Härtel (Leipzig) new edition
1837 Peters (Leipzig), ed. Czerny
1838 Cocks (London), ed. Czerny reprint of 1837 Peters
1838 Riefenstahl (Berlin), ed. Haupt
1838 Esslinger (Berlin) reprint of Riefenstahl
1839 Addison & Hodson (London), ed. Potter
1839 Breitkopf & Härtel (Leipzig) reprint of Riefenstahl
1841 Richault (Paris), ed. Czerny reprint of 1837 Peters
c1839–45 Launer (Paris), ed. Czerny et al.
1842–3 Schott (Mainz), ed. Bertini in open score
1844 André (Offenbach and Frankfurt)

NB though reprints are not noted, reuse of the same plates by another publisher is.

keyboard music was complex and difficult, that the new volumes were actu-
ally worth acquiring and that there was something to be gained thereby. A
wider engagement with this music required a new kind of strategy, one that
could appeal beyond the musically proficient to entice upwardly striving
middle-class musical consumers especially. For Bach’s turn-of-the-century
12
More detailed accounts of the early editions of WTC can be found in NBA V/6; KB;
Peter Krause, Originalausgaben und ältere Drucke der Werke Johann Sebastian Bachs in der
Musikbibliothek der Stadt Leipzig (Leipzig, 1970); Albert Riemenschneider, “A List of
the Editions of Bach’s Well Tempered Clavier,” Music Library Association Notes 14 (1942),
38–45; and Dürr, “On the Earliest Manuscripts and Prints.”
 A bürgerlicher Bach: early German advocacy 93

German champions, this meant a new emphasis on practical advice – on

how to approach such pieces productively, without fear – alongside an art-
fully recast image of the composer and his work.

the humble g erma n g e nius

his effort to update Bach and give his music a wider hearing had to contend
with a redoubtable historical figure, one whose reputation in the late eight-
eenth century relied largely on absolutes: Sebastian Bach was “the greatest
organist and keyboard player that we have ever had,” the “Orpheus of the
Germans,” a musical genius who created “nothing but masterpieces.”13 A
more fully human picture of the composer emerges in two pivotal works
of music history published just after the turn of the century: Stettin pastor
Johann Karl Friedrich Triest’s “Remarks on the Development of the Art of
Music in Germany in the Eighteenth Century,” serialized in the AMZ in
1801,14 and Forkel’s seminal biography of Bach, originally intended as the
final section of a multi-volume music history but published finally in 1802
as a supplement to the Hoffmeister & Kühnel Oeuvres complettes.15 hough
their historical perspectives differ greatly, with Triest’s era of German
music beginning with Bach and Forkel’s culminating in him, both authors
emphasize how Bach elevated the musical style of his day and brought the
art to a higher plane. Triest had little interest in the music of Bach’s con-
temporaries or predecessors, which he regarded as mostly “mechanical”
harmony and counterpoint with little poetry. Bach transcended this “scaf-
folding,” as Triest calls it, and provided the “solid foundation of the later
greatness of German music.”16 In contrast, Forkel had little faith that fur-
ther progress was possible in this art; he considered Bach the ultimate per-
fector of serious music. Both histories dutifully rehearse the idea of Bach’s
original genius, which the composer himself seems to have originated,17
though with a new twist: Bach’s remarkable achievement owes as much,
they argue, to his humility and sheer determination – virtues sure to res-
onate with readers eager to improve their own station in life – as it does to
his innate musical gifts. Virtuosity, in other words, could never trump such

13
C. P. E. Bach and J. F. Agricola, C. F. D. Schubart, and C. P. E. Bach, respectively, as quoted and
translated in the NBR, 306, 369, and 379.
14
Johann Karl Friedrich Triest, “Bemerkung über die Ausbildung der Tonkunst in Deutschland im
achtzehnten Jahrhundert,” AMZ 3/14–26 (January 1–March 25, 1801); trans. Susan Gillespie as
“Remarks on the Development of the Art of Music in Germany in the Eighteenth Century,” in
Haydn and His World, ed. Elaine Sisman (Princeton University Press, 1997), 321–394. Translations
below are Gillespie’s unless otherwise noted.
15
Johann Nikolaus Forkel, Über Johann Sebastian Bachs Leben, Kunst und Kunstwerke (Leipzig:
Hoffmeister & Kühnel, 1802). Subsequent references use the English translation in the NBR,
415–482.
16
Triest, “Remarks,” 333.
17
Christoph Wolff, “Defining Genius: Early Reflections of J. S. Bach’s Self-Image,” Proceedings of the
American Philosophical Society 145/4 (December, 2001), 474–481.
94 Engaging Bach

noble artistry as Bach possessed. His originality, by this reckoning, was a

divine gift that simply had to be accommodated: Triest compares Bach,
who “made his hand … become accustomed to his [own] compositions,”
to the “more recent virtuosos who compose to suit their technique,”18 while
Forkel insists that Bach, a man of “serious disposition” who was “uncom-
monly modest,” “never worked for the crowd, but always had in mind his
idea of perfection.”19 Bach emerges as a hardworking and humble if spec-
tacularly endowed musician, one utterly lacking in self-serving display, for
which writers like Triest and Forkel had no patience.
Similar descriptions were part of a broad effort among turn-of-the-cen-
tury writers to reassert the dignity and ensure the viability of the musical
profession, which had fallen on hard times all over Europe as court and
church positions dwindled in both number and quality. In this challen-
ging environment the best musicians needed to be true to both themselves
and the society that produced them while remaining somehow above the
fray, somewhere between the mere hack and the flamboyant virtuoso: in
all, a challenging balancing act, as the up-and-down careers of so many
musicians from this time (Mozart, for instance) amply illustrate. A mod-
ern musician’s “correct manner,” as one writer put it, “is manly: definite,
without haughtiness, modest, without submission!”20 Such an ideal speaks
volumes about the changing nature of patronage around 1800; the brave
new world of an enlightened and partially revolutionized Europe imposed
its bourgeois mentality on more than just political systems. One needed
talent, patience, and fortitude (qualities not often found in equal sup-
ply in the same individual) but at the same time, musicians were at least
put in charge of their own destiny, partly out of obligation to nurture
the growing musical public, who needed both education and entertain-
ment in more or less equal measure. But instead of stooping to mere fash-
ion, the ideal Musikus, as described by Leipzig essayist Christian Friedrich
Michaelis, would “much rather always cultivate the taste of the public for
his art, elevating it to that art’s heights.”21 Bach, too, “thought that the art-
ist could form the public, but that the public could not form the artist,”
or so Forkel told his readers. Claiming the moral high ground for his hero,
Forkel argued the virtues of such “cultivated genius” by borrowing what
the revered German playwright Friedrich Schiller had once said about his
own work: Bach aimed to “satisfy the few: to please many is bad.”22

18
Triest, “Remarks,” 334–335.
19
NBR, 442, 459, and 445, respectively.
20
From an unsigned essay in the AMZ (1806), as cited in David Gramit, Cultivating Music: he
Aspirations, Interests, and Limits of German Musical Culture, 1770–1848 (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2002), 12.
21
Christian Friedrich Michaelis, “Ueber einen Aufsatz mit der Ueberschrift: Wollen alle Deutsche
Musikanten werden?” AMZ 7 (1805), 229–237 (230–231); as cited in Gramit, Cultivating Music,
14–15.
22
NBR, 477–478.
 A bürgerlicher Bach: early German advocacy 95

Bach was fortunate indeed to have found latter-day admirers who prac-
ticed such sophisticated public relations. In addition to singing the praises
of the humble German genius, these same writers needed to figure out
a way to present Bach’s plainly antiquated style in a more positive light.
hanks to the longstanding interest of collectors and the better players,
WTC had never really disappeared, but this kind of reception had its lim-
its. Broader interest among professionals and amateurs alike could not be
generated merely by endowing Bach’s keyboard works with a dose of social
respectability, as the English had done for the choral music of Purcell and
Handel some years before,23 partly because these repertories inhabited dif-
ferent social spaces: the English made grand public spectacles of big choral
works while German devotees played their Bach fugues in private, or at
best in semi-public venues. German advocates needed an argument that
would encourage those with little or no previous experience with Bach to
engage with his music on their own. Despite historicism’s allure, the point
was not to create a taste for old music in general; Bach needed to be heard
on his own terms, irrespective not only of current fashion but of trends to
which he himself had paid careful attention. his was because “Bach con-
cerned himself,” as Triest put it, “almost exclusively with something that
German industriousness and the national spirit had already treated; he
only perfected and solidified the harmonic edifice as such.” Bach’s mastery
of Harmonie, in other words, established his Germanness. It was, as Triest
continues, “not so much a lively and delicate sensibility as a finely devel-
oped ear and a profound, persistent spirit of inquiry; not so much the view
outside of himself as that within; not so much foreign nourishment as his
own original power”24 that distinguished Bach from his contemporaries.

t he id e a and obli g ati on of g er ma n mus ic

his and other descriptions like it incorporate the critical view first articu-
lated in the 1754 obituary, that Bach’s melodies “were strange … resem-
bling those of no other composer,”25 while arguing with greater precision
why this music still mattered in the new century. For Triest, Forkel, and
other turn-of-the-century admirers, Bach’s utterly original musical lan-
guage stood head and shoulders above the finely turned gestures of the
French or the fiery virtuosity of the Italians (despite the fact that these
stylistic traits had been freely adapted by virtually all German composers);
moreover, his “ardent industry” and uncompromising devotion to learned
counterpoint confirmed his solid Protestant upbringing. German readers

23
William Weber, he Rise of Musical Classics in Eighteenth-Century England: A Study in Canon, Ritual,
and Ideology (Oxford University Press, 1992) shows how the English venerated first Purcell then
Handel less for musical or stylistic than for political and ideological reasons.
24
Triest, “Remarks,” 338, with original emphasis.
25
NBR, 305.
96 Engaging Bach

were thus enjoined to take pride in Bach’s achievement and to respond to

it with equal vigor: “What joy it is for patriotic citizens of our fatherland
to know that the greatest, most profound musical harmonist of all times,
who surpassed everything that Italy, France, and England had done for
pure music, was a German!”26 “Let his country be proud of him; let it be
proud, but, at the same time, worthy of him!”27 Such overt patriotism was
not new to German writing on music, nor was it new to Bach criticism in
particular. Once Italian ritornello procedure, for example, had been widely
adopted by German composers in the early eighteenth century, German
critics began to assert the superiority of home-grown concertos: in 1739
J. A. Scheibe praised Bach as someone “with whom we can certainly defy
foreign nations,” whose newly published Italian Concerto for solo keyboard
“will be imitated in vain by foreigners.”28 Bach himself may have encour-
aged anti-French sentiment while relating a favorite personal story to his
family: as reported in the 1754 obituary, with detail suggestive of a family
legend recounted repeatedly (in this case, by the patriarch himself ), the
“arrogant” Frenchman Louis Marchand scurried by night out of Dresden to
avoid a planned competition with Sebastian Bach in 1717.29 “Our Bach,”
meanwhile, had only praise for Marchand’s “beautiful and very refined
playing,” as any modest and deferential victor should. By 1790 this tale
had acquired broader meaning: Bach’s triumph over the absent Frenchman
“saved the honor of his nation,” as Ernst Ludwig Gerber put it in his sem-
inal dictionary of musicians.30 Returning this rhetorical mode to its south-
ern nemesis, J. F. Reichardt confirmed in 1796 what had long been central
to German reception: “not even the best and deepest of the Italians,” he
writes, could challenge Bach’s supremacy in the art of Harmonie, a concept
that encompassed not only searching harmonic progressions but also artful
voice leading, both crucial components of serious music.31 Not to be out-
done, Friedrich Rochlitz canonized Bach in the first yearly binding of the
AMZ (in 1798) as the “patriarch of German music,” the equal of Albrecht
Dürer in perfecting an authentically German art form and causing it to
flourish in his wake.
What exactly constituted German music, as distinguished from Italian
opera, French dance music, and the new international genres of the quartet
and symphony? he notion of a German national style remained hollow
during the first half of the eighteenth century, thanks to the dominance
of Italian opera and the tunefulness it fostered in a range of genres, at the
expense of more traditional figural or stile antico textures. As the above

26
Triest, “Remarks,” 334.
27 28
NBR, 479. Ibid., 332.
29
Peter Williams, J. S. Bach: A Life in Music (Cambridge University Press, 2007), 117–121, argues
convincingly that Bach himself retold this story to his family.
30
Gerber, Historisch-Biographisches Lexikon der Tonkünstler, 87.
31
NBR, 373.
 A bürgerlicher Bach: early German advocacy 97

quotes illustrate, promoting “Germanness” was primarily a way to deni-

grate foreign (especially Catholic) imports, whose ubiquity was publicly
lamented as early as Johann Mattheson’s Der musicalische Patriot (1728)
because they tended to overshadow German efforts at an indigenous the-
atrical music especially. he idea of a specifically German music needed to
be fleshed out and defined somehow, and not just in reference to the work
of J. S. Bach, which was largely peripheral to the concerns of German crit-
ics. It coalesced slowly, first around the perceived seriousness of the best
German repertory, as opposed to the more comic Italian style, and grew
to incorporate not only general descriptors but also more specific, tech-
nical observations (mostly about counterpoint and Harmonie) and, even-
tually, the rapturous metaphors of the early romantics about the effects
of instrumental music in particular. he growing market for published
instrumental works – sonatas, variations, organ pieces, string quartets, and
symphonies – nurtured the idea of a specifically German kind of music,
distinct from vocally inspired Italian models; and as Mary Sue Morrow
has shown, a “review collective” of German critics (who wrote for music
periodicals and for more general scholarly publications) forged a consensus
about it as they judged the strengths and weaknesses of each new publi-
cation, the best of which were praised for their “originality, novelty and
individual style.”32
Alongside such practically motivated criticism in Germany came ever
more frequent assertions of instrumental music’s ability to convey complex
emotions with greater subtlety and nuance than music wedded to words,
whose relationship to the notes had long been debated among the parti-
sans of one kind of opera or another. Once freed from the convention-
alized and constricted meanings of particular words and phrases, music
was able to signify all manner of things: as described by popular novelists
Jean Paul and Karl Philipp Moritz, textless music elicited both sentiment
and yearning and could be heard either rationally (as the exemplification
of a particular affect) or irrationally (as indefinite emotion). Ironically,
Immanuel Kant’s low opinion of music, which he famously dismissed in
the Critique of Judgment as “mere sensations without concepts,” provoked
the prophets of German romanticism to articulate a musical aesthetics
premised on Kant’s own conception of music as sheer sound unmediated
by words. Dispensing with the long rationalist tradition of reading fixed
meanings into musical figures, they regarded words as wholly inadequate
to describe the feelings conjured by tones. he experience of great music
was too profound to be articulated easily in language, just as emotions
were too complex to be easily quantified or categorized. Inverting Kant’s

32
See Mary Sue Morrow, German Music Criticism in the Late Eighteenth Century: Aesthetic Issues in
Instrumental Music (Cambridge University Press, 1997). he quote (p. 137) is from Morrow’s sum-
mary argument.
98 Engaging Bach

hierarchy of the fine arts, which put poetry at the top and music at the bot-
tom, the philosopher Ludwig Tieck maintained that instrumental works
“can represent a colorful, manifold, intricate, and beautifully developed
drama such as the poet can never give us; for they envelop the greatest
enigma in enigmatic language, they depend on no laws of probability, they
remain in their purely poetic world.”33
Its capacity for multivalent expression was not instrumental music’s only
virtue. Newly published volumes of keyboard and chamber music served
a more general civilizing purpose as well: to provide amateurs with models
of an art form that had serious aspirations. Triest notes approvingly how
the dissemination of published music among the middle classes over the
previous half-century encouraged newcomers to express opinions about it
without bowing to the more informed opinions of experts. With the full
flowering of the Enlightenment and improved standards of living among
the German bourgeoisie, Triest remembers, “came the point in time where
music would no longer be cultivated as a hothouse plant, but would be set
out among the other fruits for life’s enjoyment and distributed along with
them.”34 Triest’s essay seeks to further a process whose theoretical legitim-
acy was by then well established: Johann Georg Sulzer’s Allgemeine heorie
der schönen Künste (1773) observes that music, “the first and most force-
ful” of the fine arts, “penetrates because it touches the nerves and speaks,
because it can awaken definite sentiments,” while poetry and painting
must rely on both “reason and reflection.”35
Influential figures in the musical community happily took up this
theme, arguing that a broader base of musical practice could serve both
the profession and society. By century’s end, awareness of music’s poten-
tial benefits – the first step towards a serious engagement with the art –
had spread beyond the fairly narrow confines of the philosophers and the
musically proficient towards a growing segment of the literate popula-
tion; music was finally becoming an integral part of bourgeois life. But
music, like the fine arts in general, was still some distance from being truly
democratic. German musical discourse of the late eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries, as David Gramit has observed, exhibits a complex
dialectic “between a conviction that music expresses – or should express –
something of vital importance to everyone, and … a form of advocacy
[that] makes clear that only a select few are capable of appreciating and
benefiting from its significance.”36 In this respect, German music followed

33
As cited in Edward Lippman, A History of Western Musical Aesthetics (Lincoln: University of
Nebraska Press, 1992), 206.
34
Triest, “Remarks,” 351.
35
As cited in Matthew Riley, Musical Listening in the German Enlightenment: Attention, Wonder, and
Astonishment (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), 76–77.
36
Gramit, Cultivating Music, 163.
 A bürgerlicher Bach: early German advocacy 99

the lead of German literature. By immortalizing their own writers along

similar lines in the eighteenth century, the German literary elite anticipated
the general thrust of arguments made for the Bach keyboard works around
the turn of the century; their creation of a “literary fatherland”37 depended
on the veneration of leading German poets and dramatists and the invo-
cation of the ancient notion of a “classical” text, one whose resonance is
at once particular and universal. An interest in the Volk, as popularized by
Johann Gottfried Herder, among others, made for a heady combination: a
national literature with both original genius and distinctive character.38 As
various authors have pointed out, Forkel made essentially the same claims
for Bach, lionizing him as “the first classic that ever was, or perhaps ever
will be,” while “playing the patriotic card … more artfully and explicitly
than any music writer so far.”39
hanks in part to its role as a supplement to the first edition of the com-
plete keyboard works, Forkel’s 1802 monograph was truly a watershed in
Bach reception, the moment when information on the composer’s life and
works began to reach beyond the traditional confines of learned practi-
tioners towards the modern reading public. After years of collecting infor-
mation and manuscripts from a formidable array of contacts, including
members of Bach’s own family,40 Forkel jumped at the chance to put this
knowledge to good use. hough we commonly credit him as the father of
musicology for his efforts, his was not the first book to treat a single com-
poser and his work. Some years after John Mainwaring’s Memoirs of the Life
of the Late George Frederic Handel (1760), the genre hit its stride during
the decades surrounding the turn of the century, with brief biographies
of Mozart, Haydn, and others that mix the basic facts of their lives and
works with more personal observations. Forkel so admired one of these –
Carl Friedrich Zelter’s 1801 biography of C. F C. Fasch,41 founder of the
group that became, under Zelter’s direction, the Berlin Sing-Akademie –
that he urged Hoffmeister & Kühnel to copy its format and typeface for
his monograph on Bach.42 In general historiographic outlook, however,
Forkel’s monograph reads more like the English historian John Hawkins,

37
An expression coined by poet Justus Möser, as quoted in Celia Applegate, Bach in Berlin: Nation
and Culture in Mendelssohn’s Revival of the St. Matthew Passion (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell
University Press, 2005), 52.
38
On the popularization of the Volk in the late eighteenth century, see especially Gramit, Cultivating
Music, Chapter 3: “he Dilemma of the Popular: he Volk, the Composer, and the Culture of Art
Music” (63–92).
39
Applegate, Bach in Berlin, 78.
40
Detailed comparisons between passages from Forkel’s Bach biography and from C. P. E. Bach’s
earlier biographical sketch of his father are given in Hans-Joachim Hinrichsen, “Johann Nikolaus
Forkel und die Anfänge der Bachforschung,” in Bach und die Nachwelt, 4 vols., Vol. I, ed. Michael
Heinemann and Hans-Joachim Hinrichsen (Laaber Verlag, 1997), 193–253 (209–220).
41
Carl Friedrich Zelter, Karl Friedrich Christian Fasch (Berlin, 1801).
42
George B. Stauffer, ed., he Forkel–Hoffmeister & Kühnel Correspondence: A Document of the Early
19th-Century Bach Revival (New York: Peters, 1990), 29 (Letter 9).
100 Engaging Bach

whose General History of the Science and Practice of Music43 had impressed
his contemporaries with its erudition but whose stodgy prose and parochial
views made Charles Burney’s rival History more popular with the general
reading public. Über Johann Sebastian Bachs Leben, Kunst und Kunstwerke
(translated in the NBR as On Johann Sebastian Bach’s Life, Genius, and
Works) found enthusiastic readers in both Germany and in England,44 and
it remained the standard source of information on the composer until at
least 1850.45
hough from our vantage point overshadowed by Forkel’s seminal
monograph, Hoffmeister & Kühnel’s plan for a comprehensive Bach edi-
tion was, for its time, arguably an even more significant contribution to
the cause of German music. Even Forkel recognized this: “everyone to
whom the honor of the German name is dear,” as his preface famously
intones, “is bound to support such a patriotic undertaking and to promote
it to the utmost of his power.”46 Wishful thinking, perhaps (Hoffmeister
& Kühnel’s edition ceased publication far short of its goal), but Forkel was
neither the first nor the last to emphasize Bach’s Germanness, nor was his
impassioned tone unusual for its time.47 More interesting are the potential
effects such blandishments had on Forkel’s readers, for whom the German
nation was an ideal constructed out of common language and culture, not
political congress. he lack of a unified German nation-state around 1800
hardly diminishes Forkel’s point; indeed, this may have lent his argument
a certain edge: what better way to encourage national pride than to point
out the collective debt owed an illustrious and little understood forebear?
here were surely plenty of Germans who wondered along with Forkel
why they had consistently lost ground, both geographically and culturally,
to the French and the Italians over the course of the eighteenth century.
Bach’s music was, to this way of thinking, a timely tonic for an anxious age,
a guarantee that the art would not become “mere idle amusement.”
Fundamentally, however, the patriotic fervor of Forkel, Triest, and their
contemporaries served a limited cultural, not an expansive political, goal:
to raise the profile of German music. Interest needed to be fostered, first
43
John Hawkins, A General History of the Science and Practice of Music (London, 1776).
44
he 1820 translation (Life of John Sebastian Bach: With a Critical View of His Compositions), long
thought to be prepared by A. F. C. Kollmann, may have been the work of another translator: see
Michael Kassler, “he English Translations of Forkel’s Life of Bach,” in he English Bach Awakening,
169–209. Forkel himself made efforts to have the volume translated into both English and French:
see Stauffer, he Forkel–Hoffmeister & Kühnel Correspondence, 40–41 (Letter 14).
45
Later, more extensive studies include those by C. L. Hilgenfeldt (1850), C. H. Bitter (1865, rev.
1881), and especially Philipp Spitta’s monumental biography (1873/1880).
46
NBR, 419.
47
An increasingly nationalist tone in the German historiography of this time is documented in James
J. Sheehan, German History 1770–1866 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), 371–388. Hinrichsen’s
idea (in “Forkel und die Anfänge der Bachforschung,” 240) that for this generation of German Bach
advocates, “patriotism … took the place, as a surrogate, for the lack of aesthetic understanding,”
ignores the intended effects of their writing on their readers or on the larger project of cultural
formation.
 A bürgerlicher Bach: early German advocacy 101

and foremost, among those whose participation in the burgeoning musical

marketplace would prove crucial to the success of new publishing ventures,
the first singing societies, and public concerts. But musical dilettantes had
a problem with Bach. Many had grown up with the impression that all his
works were extremely challenging, making judgments like this one from a
Berlin newspaper common:
His compositions are rich in ideas, in energy, in bold modulations, in profound
harmony, in new melodic procedures, and they contain an inexhaustible store of
musical art; but they are so difficult and demand such great powers of execution
that, notwithstanding the great composers who have come out of Bach’s school,
only a few now have a taste for his difficult, artful style and yet fewer are in a pos-
ition to play his works perfectly.48
he frequent citations of WTC as a benchmark for virtuoso performers
surely reinforced this view. Even in the potentially friendlier world of
learned criticism, the idea that laypeople could understand (much less
play) such complex music was greeted with a healthy dose of skepticism,
as we have seen with Reichardt and others in the late eighteenth cen-
tury. Triest for one had little faith in the ability of amateurs to appreciate
“pure” (reine) music, which has neither text nor a particular program; only
“applied” (angewandte) music with either words or obvious extra-musical
content, he thought, could appeal to both the connoisseur and layman.49
Forkel proposed instead that all one needed was a good example to fol-
low. Waxing eloquent about performances of Bach’s music by his sons and
pupils, Forkel allowed that “though none of them executed … in the same
perfection as their master, the astonishment and admiration of the audi-
tors never failed to be excited by such extraordinary effusions of an art so
great and yet so easily to be comprehended.” All one needs, in other words,
is to hear how such pieces “ought to sound,” and their manifold challenges
dissipate as one surrenders to their many pleasures.50
In 1803 the AMZ published an essay that made a similar case for Bach’s
keyboard works, WTC in particular, albeit with a very different tone.51 In
48
From the Vossische Zeitung (June 8, 1805), as cited in Klaus Kropfinger, “Klassik-Rezeption in
Berlin (1800–1830),” in Studien zur Musikgeschichte Berlins im frühen 19. Jahrhundert, ed. Carl
Dahlhaus (Regensburg: Gustav Bosse, 1980), 301–379 (320):
[Bachs] Kompositionen sind reich an Ideen, an Kraft, an kühnen Modulationen, an großer
Harmonie, an neuen melodischen Gängen, und enthalten einen unerschöpflichen Schatz musika-
lischer Kunst, aber sie sind so schwer gesetzt und erfordern eine so große Kunst des Vortrags,
daß, ungeachtet aus Bachs Schule große Tonkünstler hervorgegangen sind, jetzt nur noch wenige
seinem schweren kunstvollen Style Geschmack abgewinnen, noch wenigere seine Stücke fehlerfrei
vorzutragen im Stande sind.
49
Triest, “Remarks,” 338. Triest borrowed his terms, as Dahlhaus once noted, from Kant, and used
them to bolster the case for the primacy of instrumental music in general. See Carl Dahlhaus, “Zur
Entstehung der romantischer Bach-Deutung,” BJ 64 (1978), 192–210, esp. 199.
50
NBR, 420.
51
Friedrich Rochlitz, “Über den Geschmack an Sebastian Bachs Kompositionen, besonders für das
Klavier,” AMZ 5/31 (April 27, 1803), 509–522. Rochlitz reprinted this essay as “Geschmack an
102 Engaging Bach

contrast to Forkel’s penchant for bombast and hyperbole, Rochlitz’s writing

is pleasantly ingratiating, and his journal addressed a wider range of literate
Germans than either Forkel’s monograph or the edition it accompanied.
A thoroughly modern critic, Rochlitz had little sympathy for the “great
men” approach to music history;52 instead, he wrote about music as a lively
cultural practice and was especially keen to draw connections between the
arts for his diverse readership. Styling his essay “On the taste for Sebastian
Bach’s compositions, especially those for keyboard” as a chatty “letter to a
friend,” a strategy he would use often to disarm readers, Rochlitz declares
at the outset that this music needs only a bit of “good will” plus “earnest,
persistent, and regular effort.” Work is required because Bach does not
merely flatter the ear; his music aims at “the highest kind of pleasure,”
namely, intellectual gratification.53 At the same time, Rochlitz admits else-
where that Bach “neither wanted to nor could deny his deep learnedness,”
and that his music was apt “to leave non-musicians cold.”54 Such cool-eyed
realism was borne out by subsequent reception: for the next few decades,
Bach remained primarily the domain of those who possessed both intel-
lectual curiosity and a healthy musical aptitude. But his music was now
at least available to that segment of middle-class society, thus beginning a
gradual process of reintroduction culminating in the great public events of
the nineteenth-century Bach “Revival.”
he idea that Bach’s music was vital to cultural formation, or Bildung, as
the Germans still call it, gained considerable ground in the early decades
of the century, as western music underwent perhaps its most far-reaching
transformation. Fundamental shifts in patronage, listening, and distribu-
tion made regular participation in music-making possible for more and
more educated Europeans. With these epochal changes came the convic-
tion, among German writers especially, that certain kinds of music could
benefit society as a whole. heir efforts to convince contemporaries of
the salutary effects of Bach’s music fit comfortably within a larger soci-
etal movement towards greater historical awareness, and their yearning to
rediscover a glorious past says as much about their aesthetics as it does
about their politics: like ancient Greece, their country was “poor in deeds
but rich in thought.”55 heir “ideal of self-cultivation,” as historian Celia
Applegate puts it, “held that the study of history taught one also about
oneself, because how the works of man changed over time revealed what it

Sebastian Bachs Kompositionen, besonders für das Klavier,” in Für Freunde der Tonkunst, 4 vols.,
Vol. II (Leipzig, 1825), 205–207, 210–229 (BD VI, B64).
52
See, for example, his review of Forkel’s magnum opus: Friedrich Rochlitz, “Vorschläge zu
Betrachtungen über die neueste Geschichte der Musik,” AMZ 1/40 (July 3, 1799), 625–629.
53
Rochlitz, “Über den Geschmack,” 509–510.
54
Friedrich Rochlitz, “Feyer des Andenkens der heiligen Caecilia,” AMZ 6/8 (November 23, 1803),
125, as translated in Applegate, Bach in Berlin, 216.
55
he comparison is borrowed from Friedrich Hölderlin, as quoted in Sheehan, German History,
374.
 A bürgerlicher Bach: early German advocacy 103

meant to be human.”56 he contrapuntal ingenuity and lack of overt sen-

suality in Bach’s keyboard music especially lent it both intellectual cachet
and ethical content, and distinguished it from more ephemeral modern
fare. And its benefits were, finally, available to anyone who took the time
to get to know it. “Even he who is no connoisseur, who knows no more
than the musical alphabet,” Forkel contends, need only “open [the] ear and
heart … without prejudice” to this repertory to appreciate its riches.57
his final bit of encouragement puts the various messages of Forkel’s
biography (and the contributions of Triest and others, for that matter) into
perspective: amateur engagement with Bach depended, ultimately, less on
patriotism per se than on the ability and willingness of literate Germans
to embrace the work of an exceptional, if historically distant, artist and to
consider him one of their own, a bürgerlicher Bach.58 In part, the “patriotic
card” served to counter the many complaints about the difficulty of Bach’s
music, as Gramit has pointed out: “to assert the Germanness of complex
music was less a patriotic claim than a promotional one.”59 Patriotic senti-
ment was in fact an excellent motivator, for it encouraged readers to learn
something about an art whose centrality to the national animus had become
apparent, and to appreciate fully the glories of some exemplary German
music. he “religion” of art, though still inchoate around the turn of the
century, made the most of works whose very domesticity (as keyboard
music) and lack of acquired functional or performative baggage encour-
aged their elevation: Bach became the creator of little “miracles … which
no one could approach without a secret shudder.”60 he peculiar combin-
ation of metaphysics and patriotism in Triest especially signals a fusion of
horizons with this generation of devotees; Bach had become an essential
figure in German culture, and was no longer merely part of its musical
past. His forty-eight preludes and fugues, as one writer remarked, were
“the first and most lasting musical works of art the German nation can
display.”61 Making a place for Bach at the intellectual table meant articu-
lating his music’s ability to project serious thought and its place within
the grand teleology of western (i.e., German) art music. By flattering the

56
Applegate, Bach in Berlin, 221.
57
NBR, 478. Such claims were hardly unique to turn-of-the-century Bach reception: Friedrich
Schiller’s famous dictum that “it is only through Beauty that man makes his way to freedom” (from
his 1795 On the Aesthetic Education of Man, ed. F. M. Wilkinson and L. A. Willoughby [Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1967], 9) was itself a reaction to the literary renewal of the Sturm und Drang and
reflects thinking that was common across artistic disciplines.
58
Describing this episode in Bach reception as the moment when “the patriotic converged with the
romantic” metaphysic of instrumental music, Carl Dahlhaus overestimates (in my view) the cap-
acity of this particular ideology to effect change in bourgeois practice; Dahlhaus, “Zur Entstehung,”
196.
59
Gramit, Cultivating Music, 24.
60
Triest, “Remarks,” 334.
61
J. C. F. Rellstab, from his foreword to C. P. E. Bach’s 1790 Preludio e sei sonate pel [sic] Organo,
Op. V (BD III, 955; as translated in BR, 454).
104 Engaging Bach

sensibilities of those who wanted to believe that German civilization had

ancient roots (and was therefore better) while bolstering the new aesthetic
claims of instrumental music, Forkel, Triest, Rochlitz, and others engaged
in a kind of “homemade classicism,” as Applegate usefully calls it.62 he fact
that Bach never traveled widely, choosing instead to cultivate his Heimat,
made their argument even more compelling: this modest yet hugely gifted
German artist was content to stay home and create work of unparalleled
craft and beauty.
he “spin,” if we can call it that, was brilliantly calculated to take max-
imum advantage of the modern musical marketplace, in support of works
that compensated intellectually and culturally for their undeniably archaic
nature. Not that this led to a sudden outpouring of public interest; it pro-
duced nothing comparable to that which greeted the St. Matthew Passion
in 1829 at the Berlin Sing-Akademie, where spectators had to be turned
away at the door. Instead, devotees and dilettantes continued to explore
Bach’s music, some gingerly and some with enthusiasm, just as they had
been doing for decades but in steadily larger numbers, thanks to the new
editions and their advocates. Amateurs finally had access to Bach, and their
interest in his music has been on the rise ever since.

g erma n pr int culture a nd

early-ni netee nth - ce n tury a dvo cacy
he rapid growth of musical amateurism in the eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries was fueled principally by new forms of middle-class
association, which replaced older customs of court and church, and a pub-
lishing industry that cranked out literally thousands of keyboard works
plus significant numbers of tutors and journals that addressed the interests
and needs of professionals and amateurs alike. Print media had the greater
impact on Bach reception during this time, since the keyboard works were
not yet part of the new world of the public concert and Bach’s concerted
works remained mostly unknown. Print’s rise to prominence during the
German Enlightenment encouraged higher literacy rates and built a broad
base of support for a national literary heritage in drama and poetry espe-
cially. Music played second fiddle to this development until fairly late in
the eighteenth century, when German critics fleshed out a new agenda for
instrumental music, one that incorporated the literary community’s search
for a more indigenous “voice” with a concern for compositional quality.
Critical evaluation of new works served not only as judgments of particu-
lar pieces but as demonstrations for readers who were encouraged to form
their own opinions, and to regard music as essential to their intellectual

62
Celia Applegate, “How German Is It? Nationalism and the Idea of Serious Music in the Early
Nineteenth Century,” 19th-Century Music 21/3 (Spring, 1998), 274–296 (286).
 A bürgerlicher Bach: early German advocacy 105

and emotional well-being. Journals either wholly or partially devoted to

this art came and went, sometimes after a single issue, but their fundamen-
tal aims – inculcating good taste and promoting good work – remained
constant.
he most influential of these journals, the Allgemeine musikalische
Zeitung, implied in its very name (General Musical Newspaper) that music
played a central role in German culture and that educated people stayed
informed about it (the “potential magic” of its title, as Applegate points
out, led to several similarly named publications).63 he joint 1798 creation
of Gottfried Christoph Härtel, new partner to Johann Breitkopf ’s Leipzig
publishing firm, and fellow Leipziger Friedrich Rochlitz, who served as its
editor for some twenty years, the AMZ attempted to satisfy profession-
als and amateurs equally, with reports on musical events far and wide,
engaging essays on historical and contemporary musical issues, and reviews
of the latest publications. Its circulation, though small by modern stand-
ards, created a geographically far-flung community of music lovers whose
faithfulness helped its publisher to turn a profit, an almost unheard-of
feat for this time.64 Rochlitz wrote a great deal of material himself and put
together a large stable of correspondents and contributors, who enlarged
the field of vision for serious music and gave this “newspaper” a unique
national scope. Its most important long-term contributions were to enrich
the lives of non-specialist readers especially, through constant exposure to
well-reasoned criticism and argument, and to foster the growth of organ-
ized music education in Germany. It was, in essence, the first ongoing
public laboratory for the advancement of music in Europe – a conserva-
tory in print.
Concern over the fate of music in German schools actually began
much earlier, with the decline of formalized music instruction in the so-
called “Latin schools” in the 1730s, as rationalist reformers eliminated
those subjects too redolent of the scholastic world of their predecessors.
(Bach’s famous tangling with Johann August Ernesti, Rector of the Leipzig
homasschule from 1734, is just the best-known instance of a music
teacher losing ground to the forces of progressivism in the eighteenth cen-
tury.) By the end of the century, with few German schools offering musical
instruction anymore, writers on music sensed that the time had come for a
vigorous defense of their art, for the benefit of young and old alike. Johann
Abraham Peter Schultz, for example, observed in his Gedanken über den
Einfluß der Musik auf die Bildung eines Volks (1790) that when a people
make time to study music seriously, “feelings for beauty will also be awak-
ened in it, feelings whose influence on the morals, on all domestic and

63
Applegate, Bach in Berlin, 88–89.
64
Martha Bruckner-Bigenwald, Die Anfänge der Leipziger Allgemeinen Musikalischen Zeitung
(Hilversum: Frits Enuf, 1965), 29–33.
106 Engaging Bach

social pleasures, on its spirit and on its way of thinking, on the sweetening
of labor and the easing of every burden and sorrow, on the enjoyment
and happiness of its life, is undeniable.”65 An equally eloquent advocate
for music and for art education in general, Rochlitz argued the virtues of
particular works and repertories in an unusually personal and forthright
manner. His “On the taste for Sebastian Bach’s compositions,” which com-
bines the critical stance of a learned writer with the enthusiasm of a music
educator, signaled a profitable new direction for German writing on music
in the early nineteenth century.
Disavowing any hidden theoretical or historical agenda, Rochlitz
begins this “Letter to a Friend” with a striking confession from his
student days in Leipzig, where the cantatas and motets he had to sing
seemed like “an interminable chaos” (“ein gährendes Chaos”). Once he
became a practicing music journalist, a sense of duty obliged Rochlitz
to return to Bach. Steering clear of past missteps with this composer,
he devised a two-part strategy: first, an engagement with the musical
language on its own terms, and second, a selection of only those pieces
for studying and playing that he could somehow comprehend. About
the former Rochlitz offers little that was new, emphasizing instead the
extraordinary “unity in variety” in Bach’s music, its economy of means,
the rigorous independence of individual parts, and the fact that it offers
more to the imagination than the senses. On the question of repertoire
choices, however, he tailors his comments to the historical moment, tak-
ing full advantage of the multiple recent editions to make a strong case
for WTC in particular:
Because I had no intention of merely exercising my intellect and hands with Bach’s
music, I marked only those works I meant to play, without any special reference
to their particular artistry. hey have since brought me great delight whenever I
return to them, not just to while away the hours but with my whole heart and
mind. To be frank, I selected but few of a large number of pieces … Returning
to the work sometime later, I added a considerable number to this distinguished
list.66
Encouraging his readers to do likewise once sufficient progress had been
made, Rochlitz makes the following recommendations from WTC:

65
Johann Abraham Peter Schultz, Gedanken über den Einfluß der Musik auf die Bildung eines Volks, und
über deren Einführung in den Schulen der königl. dänischen Staaten (Copenhagen: Christian Gottlob
Prost, 1790), as translated in Gramit, Cultivating Music, 71.
66
Rochlitz, “Über den Geschmack,” 520: “Da ich durchaus an Bachs Werken nicht blos den Verstand
und die Hände üben wollte, strich ich mir die Stücke an, die mir, ohne besondere Rücksichten (auf
ihre Künstlichkeit u. dgl.) zusagten, mit dem Vorsatz, mich nur an sie zu halten. Sie gewährten mir
nun sehr viel Freude, wenn ich, aber immer mit gesammleten Gemüth, nicht um in einer Stunde
der Ermattung die Langweile zu vertreiben – zu ihnen zurückkehrte. Aufrichtig gestanden: es waren
unter der beträchtlichen Menge nicht viele Stücke, die ich mir aushob … Bei einer Wiederholung
des ganzen Werks nach einiger Zeit musste ich aber die Zahl der ausgezeichneten ansehnlich
vermehren.”
 A bürgerlicher Bach: early German advocacy 107

Book I Book II

Prelude in C major Fugue in C major

Fugue in C sharp minor Fugue in C minor
Fugue in D major Fugue in C sharp minor
Prelude in D minor Fugue in D major
Prelude in E flat minor Fugue in D minor
Prelude and Fugue in F sharp minor Fugue in E flat major
Fugue in A major Prelude and Fugue in F sharp minor
Prelude and Fugue in B flat minor Fugue in G minor
Fugue in B major Fugue in A flat major
Prelude in B minor Fugue in B flat minor
Fugue in B major
Prelude and Fugue in B minor

hough Rochlitz doesn’t explain his choices, the above list suggests a
program that dovetails nicely with less detailed advice from this time about
first encounters with Bach’s music. Rochlitz’s liberal sampling from both
books is effectively a primer, one that touches briefly on the various types of
preludes, fugal genres and subgenres, compositional styles, and techniques
found in WTC. For Book I he favors both five-part stile antico fugues (C
sharp minor and B flat minor), both “arioso” preludes (E flat minor and
B flat minor), and two arpeggiated preludes (C major and D minor), plus
a few similarly representative works. he Book II list, on the other hand,
is weighted heavily towards the fugues, as is the essay itself. Passing over
the simple fugues in this book (F major, F minor, F sharp major, G major,
A major, A minor, and B flat major), Rochlitz challenges his readers with
several more complicated works: three of the four stile antico fugues (E flat
major, B flat minor, and B major, but not E major); two faster-moving,
chromatic fugues (C sharp minor and D minor); and three with more
characteristically Baroque fugue subjects (C minor, G minor, and A flat
major). In other words, and despite his stated lack of interest in artifice for
its own sake, Rochlitz recommends only those fugues from Book II that
explore one or more contrapuntal devices such as double counterpoint,
stretto, or inversion. hose who followed his advice thus got a method-
ical exploration of Bach’s compositional style in Book I, and in Book II a
closer look at the more complicated fugal subgenres. Interest in the WTC
fugues (at the expense of the preludes) was nothing new: Bach’s preludes,
as Johann Christian Kittel famously complained in 1808, typically have
too much of the fugal style about them and thus seem like “a learned
chaos” to amateurs.67
Notwithstanding the broader scope of their advocacy, Triest and Forkel
shared Rochlitz’s preference for the keyboard works, to the neglect of

67
J. C. Kittel, Der angehende praktische Organist (Erfurt, 1808), 3/16 (BD VI, B27).
108 Engaging Bach

virtually all other parts of Bach’s output. Both considered the WTC fugues
definitive examples of their kind (works from which “people abstracted
the rules … of modern harmony”) while regarding the WTC preludes as
useful introductory pieces for newcomers.68 A thorough study of fugue,
they concurred, begins and ends with this collection, since “he who is
not acquainted with Bach’s fugues cannot even form an idea of what a
true fugue is and ought to be.”69 Like Rochlitz, Forkel also made spe-
cific recommendations about which pieces to start with, how best to get
to know this music, and why it was important to do so. he first issue
comes up repeatedly in letters to Hoffmeister and Kühnel, which (among
other things) chronicle Forkel’s fears that the publishers had given too little
thought to the order of works, their relative difficulty, and the reliability of
sources. One letter charges that the first cahier of their Oeuvres complettes
includes an “antiquated toccata and an astonishingly defective reprint of the
Inventions,” when it should have featured those preludes “expressly made
for beginners … and only little by little moved to the more difficult.”70
In other missives Forkel advises against issuing any of Bach’s organ works
with obbligato pedal, since the eight “little” (and probably spurious) prel-
udes and fugues “give our old organists enough to do,” while arguing for
inclusion of “the six small preludes for beginners and a few single suites
and fugues.”71 (He preferred the “French” over the “English” Suites because
the former were far simpler.)72 In broader terms the 1802 monograph dis-
tinguishes between Bach’s most complex contrapuntal works, which are
“not suited to the public in general, but only to the connoisseur well versed
in the art,” and “free compositions” like the WTC preludes, which are “so
open, clear, and intelligible that they … are comprehended by the most
unpracticed hearers.”73
From these scattered comments one can deduce the probable contents
of the graded anthology Forkel mentions at the outset of his collabor-
ation with Hoffmeister & Kühnel: a letter from early 1802 warns that
an unnamed competitor wanted Forkel to “make a selection [from Bach’s
works] as would form a useful method for clavier-players, and lead them
from the beginning to the highest peaks of the player’s art,” as well as
write “an appropriately instructive text” to accompany this project.74
Forkel’s threat convinced the publishers to support his proposed scholarly

68
Triest, “Remarks,” 335.
69
NBR, 449.
70
Stauffer, he Forkel–Hoffmeister & Kühnel Correspondence, 19.
71
Ibid., 33. he need to start with easier keyboard pieces of Bach before progressing to his more com-
plex works was reiterated numerous times, most prominently in the foreword to the 1820 Peters
edition of the Chromatic Fantasie, as edited by Forkel’s student Friedrich Konrad Griepenkerl (BD
VI, E9).
72
Stauffer, he Forkel–Hoffmeister & Kühnel Correspondence, 57.
73
NBR, 447.
74
Stauffer, he Forkel–Hoffmeister & Kühnel Correspondence, 23.
 A bürgerlicher Bach: early German advocacy 109

monograph, though the regular release of the Bureau de musique’s cahiers

seems to have rendered moot the proposed anthology. In any case, Forkel
took pains to ensure not only that Hoffmeister & Kühnel published the
right pieces, but that their musical texts conformed to his reading of Bach’s
intentions. Forkel’s low opinion of Bach’s more elaborate keyboard and
organ works, for example, dissuaded the publishers from including any
of the keyboard toccatas beyond the D minor, which they released before
Forkel began his advisory role with the edition. One of Forkel’s earliest
letters to Hoffmeister and Kühnel maintains that most organists and can-
tors who possessed Bach scores hardly ever played the music to see if their
copies were correct or defective, and that even if they had, they were incap-
able of good judgment on the matter.75 Eventually Forkel gained com-
plete control over content, so that he could decide for himself which were
“imperfect works of [Bach’s] youth, and which … worth preserving for
posterity.”76
Unfortunately, Forkel’s limited command of the sources and innate
hubris produced some bad decisions. Most striking from our vantage point
are virtuosic misreadings of the sources: Forkel believed, for example, that
shortened versions of several WTC preludes represented Bach’s final inten-
tions when in fact these were either drafts or abandoned copies.77 Almost
without exception, Forkel found the earlier preludes preferable, even when
faced with superior alternatives. he 1802 biography addresses this issue
head-on, perhaps precisely because both versions of certain preludes were
then available from different publishers:
In Bach’s earlier works it very often happened to him, as to other beginners, that
he repeated the same idea several times, only in other words; that is to say, the
same modulation was repeated, perhaps in a lower, perhaps in the same octave,
or with another turn of melody. In his riper years he could not bear such poverty;
whatever he found of this description was therefore cut out without hesitation,
in however many hands copies of the piece might be, and however many persons
might have approved of it. Two of the most remarkable examples of this are the
two preludes in C major and C sharp major, in the First Part of the Well-Tempered
Clavier. Both are thereby rendered shorter by one half, but are at the same time
freed from all useless superfluities.78
Instead of hearing these “superfluities” (in the C major Prelude, from m. 12
to the end of the movement) as precisely calibrated long-term harmonic
progressions, Forkel favored versions that fit his view of Bach’s creative

75 76
Ibid., 13–15. Ibid., 79.
77
A full accounting of Forkel’s mistakes in this regard can be found in Karen Lehmann, Die Anfänge
einer Bach-Gesamtausgabe 1801–1865: Editionen der Klavierwerke durch Hoffmeister und Kühnel
(Bureau de musique) und C. F. Peters in Leipzig 1801–1865 (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 2004),
92–97.
78
NBR, 474.
110 Engaging Bach

Example 4.1 J. S. Bach: (a) Prelude in E minor, BWV 855a, mm. 1–2;
(b) Prelude in E minor, BWV 855, mm. 1–2
(a)

(b)

development, which valued the condensed and brief over the discursive
and long. What we now know to be early drafts communicated, to Forkel’s
way of thinking, the essence of Bach’s style without the extra modulations
and figuration that the composer (as we have since learned) later thought
to include.
Forkel’s impaired judgment was at least entirely consistent with his aes-
thetics. His choice from competing versions of another prelude is even
more revealing: the Oeuvres complettes’ text of the Prelude in E minor from
WTC, Book I lacks the familiar ornamented melody in the right hand;
in its place are unadorned chords that impose harmonic order on the left
hand’s circular figuration (Ex. 4.1). he plain chords of BWV 855a were
more to Forkel’s liking, not just because they were easier to negotiate but
because he looked with disdain on the “fashion to overload single princi-
pal notes upon instruments with so much running up and down as it has
lately become the fashion again to do with vocal music.” Forkel was con-
vinced that the simpler version represented Bach’s “[return] to nature and
to pure taste.”79 As we have seen with a number of writers from this time
(Reichardt and Michaelis come to mind), Bach’s fondness for elaborate
decoration was something to be explained away as a momentary dalliance
with an ephemeral, often foreign, style. Here Bach himself came to the
rescue with a version of this prelude that is probing without being fussy.
Such was, Forkel insisted, the primary reason for Bach’s constant tinkering
with his music during his later years, during which time “no thought could
occur to him which, in all its properties and relations, did not accord with
the whole as it should and must.”80
Such blatant hagiogaphy exasperated certain colleagues and probably
made thoughtful amateurs wince, too. As Zelter complained in a letter to
Goethe: “God forbid that [Bach] encompassed everything, that he united

79 80
Ibid., 475. Ibid.
 A bürgerlicher Bach: early German advocacy 111

everything that could serve the perfection of his inexhaustible art. Who dares
write such things? It’s as uncritical as it is unlikely” (original emphasis).81
And yet Forkel’s Bach biography had to be publicly supported; in his pub-
lished review, therefore, Zelter praised the book.82 Reichardt as well called
for a more nuanced view of Bach’s work, and in a lengthy review lauded
the concept of Forkel’s biography but took its author to task for a myopic
view of music history: Handel and Couperin, in Reichardt’s opinion,
deserved as much credit as Bach for having perfected the art of fugue com-
position and keyboard technique, respectively.83 Other writers expanded
on these complaints, noting that Forkel’s biography has almost nothing
to say about Bach’s vocal music and gives only passing mention to the
chamber works.84 his was fair criticism: of the eleven short chapters in the
1802 monograph, only two discuss Bach’s vocal music and the treatment is
quite cursory. Forkel’s decision to ignore most of the church and chamber
works was pragmatic, however, and in keeping with competing accounts
of Bach’s life and works.85
His focus on the keyboard music also reflects the limited scope of the
Oeuvres complettes: Hoffmeister & Kühnel never intended (as far as can be
determined) to publish any of Bach’s vocal music. Instead, this edition sim-
ply reinforced the prevailing conception of Bach the solitary artist, playing
for himself and for posterity, with published fascicles comprising keyboard
and organ works only. he inaugural release from the Bureau de musique
(in April 1801) comprised the D minor Toccata, BWV 913a; the two-part
Inventions; and the Prelude and Fugue in C major from WTC, Book I.
Subsequent installments delivered the remainder of WTC (in Bach’s order
but divided between some thirteen fascicles); the three-part Sinfonias; the
Chromatic Fantasie and Fugue; the six “little” Preludes, BWV 933–938; the
Fantasie in C minor, BWV 906/1; the “French” Suites; and the first, third,
and fourth volumes of the Clavier-Übung series (the keyboard partitas,
the so-called “Organ Mass” and the “Goldberg” Variations, respectively).86
81
As quoted in Hinrichsen, “Forkel und die Anfänge der Bachforschung,” 236, from an unpublished
typescript on the Zelter–Goethe correspondence by Erwin Jacobi: “Das verhüte Gott daß er alles
umfaßte, alles in sich vereinigte was zur Vollendung der unerschöpflichen Kunst erforderlich ist. Wer
darf so etwas schreiben? – das ist unkritisch wie es unmöglich ist.”
82
AMZ 5/22–23 (February, 1803), 361–369. hough no trace of it survives, Zelter seems to have
begun his own Bach biography, only to see Forkel publish one first, in which case Zelter’s caustic
comments to Goethe may be equal parts criticism and sour grapes.
83
Johann Friedrich Reichardt, “Einige Anmerkungen zu Forkels Schrift: Ueber Joh. Sebast. Bach,”
Berlinische Musikalische Zeitung 2/38 (1806): 149–150; 2/40: 157–159; 2/51: 201–202.
84
See, for example, Adolf Bernhard Marx’s criticism of Forkel’s 1802 monograph in the Berliner allge-
meine musikalische Zeitung 6 (1829), 66.
85
Neither Triest nor Christian Albrecht Siebigkes, in his Museum berühmter Tonkünstler (Breslau,
1801), has much to say about Bach’s vocal music, either.
86
Complete inventories of the Oeuvres complettes are given in the appendix to Stauffer, he Forkel–
Hoffmeister & Kühnel Correspondence, 123f.; and by Karen Lehmann, “Die Idee einer Gesamtausgabe:
Projekte und Probleme,” in Bach und die Nachwelt, 4 vols., Vol. I, ed. Michael Heinemann and
Hans-Joachim Hinrichsen (Laaber Verlag, 1997), 255–303 (268–273). Lehmann, Die Anfänge
einer Bach Gesamtausgabe, also provides a detailed history of this edition (55–146).
112 Engaging Bach

Sale by installment was a common strategy for this time, and although the
mixture of different genres of keyboard and organ music in single gather-
ings was atypical, dividing the forty-eight preludes and fugues between
cahiers was a good way to encourage ongoing subscriptions. After the six-
teenth installment the Oeuvres complettes ceased publication in 1804, for
reasons that remain unclear. In perhaps an unrelated development, in 1806
Hoffmeister returned to composing and relinquished his stake in the firm,
whose fortunes improved greatly when it was purchased from Kühnel’s
heirs in 1814 by the Leipzig book dealer C. F. Peters, under whose name
it still operates.
he Oeuvres complettes’ focus on just Bach’s keyboard and organ works
was entirely in keeping with the new vogue for so-called “collected works”
editions, most of which included only the most marketable parts of a com-
poser’s output: Mozart’s keyboard sonatas, Haydn’s string quartets, and
Handel’s oratorios, for example (in editions by Breitkopf & Härtel [Mozart
and Haydn] and Samuel Arnold [Handel]). A truly complete Bach edi-
tion had little hope in an environment where even committed Bachians
like Nägeli vowed to publish “only that … which has potential.”87 he rest
of Bach’s output had to wait until the Bach Gesellschaft announced plans
in 1850 for its monumental scholarly edition of all the works. But music
publishers hardly ignored Bach in the interim: as Table 4.2 shows, the first
three decades of the nineteenth century saw first editions of most of the
keyboard and organ works, some of the chamber music, all six motets, and
even a couple of the cantatas. Most of these were single-source editions
with texts of varying degrees of reliability, yet editors and publishers took
pains to assure musical consumers that each edition was more correct than
the last.88 Explanatory prefaces and editorial suggestions for performance
became common towards mid-century, as famous pedagogues and players
offered their own “interpretive” editions of the Bach works, to which we
shall return in Chapter 6. he first to include such advice, the Wesley–Horn
1810 edition of WTC, reflects the more modest aims of turn-of-the-century

87
Nägeli’s thoughts on this matter are perhaps worth quoting in full: “Alongside works that make
him immortal, J. S. Bach has others that are nothing but products of sophistry and unprofit-
able day-dreaming. herefore I will not publish all of Joh. Seb. Bach’s output, but rather release
gradually only that which has potential” (“So hat I. S. Bach neben Werken, die ihn unsterblich
machen, andere, die nichts sind, als Produkte scholastischer Spitzfundigkeit und unfruchtbarer
Grübeley … Deshalb werde ich von Ioh. Seb. Bachs Arbeiten … nicht Alles, sondern nur das,
in nach und nach erscheinenden Heften liefern, was … frommen kann.”) Hans-Georg Nägeli,
“Vorläufige Nachricht … der … Werke von Johann Sebastian Bach,” AMZ 3 (February, 1801),
Intelligenz-Blatt VI, 22.
88
On the relative correctness of selected early-nineteenth-century Bach editions, see Magali
Philippsborn, “Die Frühdrucke der Werke Johann Sebastian Bachs in der ersten Hälfte des 19.
Jahrhunderts: Eine kritisch vergleichende Untersuchung anhand des Wohltemperierten Klaviers
I,” Ph.D. dissertation, Frankfurt-am-Main, 1975), 19–66; and Alfred Dürr, “On the Earliest
Manuscripts and Prints of Bach’s Well Tempered Clavier in England,” in A Bach Tribute: Essays in
Honor of William H. Scheide, ed. Paul Brainard and Ray Robinson (Kassel: Bärenreiter; Chapel Hill:
Hinshaw, 1994), 121–134.
Table 4.2. First editions of the Bach works from 1750–1829

Date Work BWV Published in

1751/52 Art of Fugue 1080 Berlin

1765–69 Four-part chorales 253ff. Berlin
1801 Well-Tempered 846–893 Bonn, Zürich,
Clavier Vienna, and
Leipzig
Toccata in D minor 913 Vienna and Leipzig
Inventions 772–786 Vienna and Leipzig
Sinfonias 787–801 Vienna and Leipzig
Fantasie in G major 572 London
“French” Suite No. 5 816 London
Polonaise and Menuet 817/5, 7 London
(“French” Suite No. 6)
1801–02 Partitas (C-Ü I) 825–830 Vienna and Leipzig
1802 Chromatic Fantasie and 903 Vienna and Leipzig
Fugue
Six preludes 933–938 Vienna and Leipzig
1802–03 he “French” Suites 812–817 Vienna and Leipzig
Six Motets 225–229, Anh. 159 Leipzig
1803 Fantasie in C minor 906/1 Leipzig
“Goldberg” Variations 988 Leipzig
Violin Sonatas, Partitas 1001–1006 Bonn
Violin and kybd Sonatas 1014–1019 Zürich
1803–06 Chorale preludes 614, 633–634, Leipzig
645–650, 664b,
675–684, 691–
693, 697–701,
704–708a,
710–711, 748,
759, 769a
1804 Clavier-Übung III 522, 669–689 Vienna and Leipzig
Four-part chorales 2–438 (excerpts) Leipzig
1805 “English” Suite No. 3 808 Leipzig
1807 “Dorian” organ fugue 538/2 London
1809–10 Organ trio sonatas 525–530 London
1811 Magnificat (in E-flat) 243a Bonn
Fugue in A minor 944/2 London
Fugue in C major 953 London
1812–13 “English” Suite No. 6 811 Leipzig
1813 Organ preludes and fugues 543–548 Vienna
“English” Suite No. 2 807 Leipzig
1817 Violin duets (arr.) 961, 802–805 Vienna
Sinfonia in D 1068 or 1069 Paris
1818 Mass in A major 234 Bonn
1821 Ein feste Burg 80 Leipzig
Fugue in A minor 944/2 Vienna
Lobet den Herrn 230 Leipzig
1825 Fugue in E minor 914/4 Leipzig
Pastorale 590 Berlin
1826 Cello Suites 1007–1012 Leipzig
Organ Prelude in B minor 923 Berlin
1828 he “English” Suites 806–811 Berlin
Mass in G major 236 Bonn

Note: his table does not include first editions of spurious works.
114 Engaging Bach

devotees: “to recommend and explain the most eligible method of studying
and practicing these immortal exercises.”89
As Wesley’s preface explains, once choices were made, the more difficult
process of learning and trying to understand individual works could begin.
For Forkel and Rochlitz, this meant not only regular keyboard practice but
active listening. To these ends both recommend playing individual move-
ments or works repeatedly and hearing them anew on each occasion. Such
singleminded focus is challenging, hence Rochlitz’s occasional and Forkel’s
frequent moralistic admonitions to persevere with Bach. Repetition and
constant striving to refine one’s awareness of musical details could even-
tually lead, Forkel insists, to insight about even the most complex pieces:
when “we really know only one, and can perform but one [of Bach’s fugues]”
he avers, then we will be able to master “whole folios full of fugues by
other composers.”90 In a similar vein, Rochlitz admits that, when neces-
sary, he went back to the four-part chorales to study Bach’s idiosyncratic
part-writing before returning to more challenging works.91 A thoroughly
rational modus operandi was but the first step, serving mostly to keep
Liebhaber (those with only a modicum of expertise) on the right track.
Forkel and Rochlitz also encouraged Kenner (those already skilled in this
art) towards greater ambition with Bach’s music: to pay attention “not just
to the whole, but to all the parts at the same time.”92 his could hardly
have been second-nature for most turn-of-the-century keyboard players,
whose regular diet consisted of tuneful pieces with no serious contrapun-
tal aspirations. hough this generation of advocates surely never imagined
that amateurs would play Bach’s keyboard works perfectly, they neverthe-
less asked those who had never before looked at WTC to give it a try, and
to allow “the artist [to] form the public,” as Forkel put it, not the other
way around.
he idea that an artist – or in this case, a repertoire – could build its own
base of support was at once eccentric and prophetic, and utterly depend-
ent on the willingness of the right stratum of society to play along, as it
were. From the start, Forkel seems to have understood how to stimulate
interest among his target audience, the literary elite of Europe. Insisting
on the most expensive paper, an engraving of the composer for the fron-
tispiece, and translations into multiple languages, Forkel crafted his Bach
monograph to be “read by people of quality,” for whom anything less than

89
From Wesley’s preface to the New and Correct Edition of the Preludes and Fugues of John Sebastian
Bach, ed. Samuel Wesley and Carl Friedrich Horn (London: Robert Birchall, 1810–1813).
90
NBR, 450 and 478. Discussing Forkel’s observations on this topic in the Allgemeine Geschichte der
Musik, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1788, 1801), Vol. II (1801), Riley notes (in Musical Listening, 107–108)
how Forkel’s focus on the “pre-aesthetic” activities of “attention, practice and cultivation” represents
both a rejection of prevailing aesthetic theories of Baumgarten and Sulzer and an embrace of an
older, more rationalist view.
91
Rochlitz, “Über den Geschmack,” 517.
92
Ibid., 516. Forkel’s similar instructions can be found in NBR, 446.
 A bürgerlicher Bach: early German advocacy 115

a substantial study would have been “thrown aside as common stuff.”93 He

wished, in other words, to reach not only the curious but the influential,
whose support was crucial to the success of the new editions and to the
larger aim of engendering a wider reception for Bach.
Remarkably, and despite a backward-looking and often pessimistic out-
look, he succeeded with both groups. Like the august Hawkins, Forkel was
convinced that music was in decline and that a historian’s job was to assess
his subject matter (and not merely report on it) by arguing the merits of
the best music of the past. In this respect he was not alone in Germany:
Gerber, Triest, Rochlitz, and others also sought to remind their country-
men of illustrious past musicians, as a way of simultaneously promoting
German cultural history and refining musical tastes. But Forkel also made
a sustained effort to improve the listening habits of his contemporaries.
His public lectures at the University of Göttingen, which took place in
conjunction with a yearly series of weekly winter concerts, served as a kind
of long-term laboratory in which Forkel worked to build stronger connec-
tions between amateurs and serious music. He returned frequently to this
issue in the Allgemeine Geschichte der Musik (1788/1801), admonishing
readers towards an intellectually active (i.e., a reflective) kind of listen-
ing via close attention to musical figures. Reaching back to a theory that
had once offered a valuable way to think about either the task of com-
position or the expression of idealized emotions, Forkel argued that the
Figurenlehre could in fact affect the attention of the listener. Like most of
his contemporaries, Forkel was primarily interested in music’s effects on
the sentiments, and so he grounded traditional musico-rhetorical figures
like repetition and ellipsis in human nature. By further maintaining that
even highly sophisticated devices like canon or invertible counterpoint,
when properly attended to, can bring intellectual delight as well to the
careful listener, Forkel helped to construct a new epistemic framework for
amateur listening, one that encouraged a broader engagement with Bach’s
keyboard music.94 Even artifice-laden music like a well-composed fugue,
he reasons, could convey “the most perfect expression of the multiply
modified feelings” of an idealized society if one only knew how to listen
to it properly.95 Discerning such intricately layered expression, though not
an easy task, was possible “if the listener has enough practice to be able to
survey and comprehend the whole at once.”96 he trick was to engage fully

93
Stauffer, he Forkel–Hoffmeister & Kühnel Correspondence, 27, 29, 41, and 43.
94
See the detailed discussion in Riley, Musical Listening, 87–120 (“Forkel on Listening Practices”) and
132–146 (“Forkel on Music-Rhetorical Figures”).
95
Forkel, Allgemeine Geschichte der Musik, Vol. I (Leipzig, 1788), as cited in Bellamy Hosler, Changing
Aesthetic Views of Instrumental Music in 18th-Century Germany (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press,
1978/1981), 186.
96
As cited in Riley, Musical Listening, 109, who adapts his translation from that given in NBR, 446.
116 Engaging Bach

with such works, and not be scared off by something that looked either too
complicated or too foreign.
Whether all Germans needed such expertise or ambition was hardly
a settled issue, however. An 1804 essay by J. C. F. GutsMuths, entitled
“Should all Germans Become Musicians?,” must have raised a few tempers
among music teachers and the newly emboldened advocates of a more
comprehensive approach to culture in the Prussian educational system.97
GutsMuths’s basic point, pithily expressed in his title, was that not all
children had either the inclination or the talent for musical instruction;
he wondered aloud whether the proponents of music education were wast-
ing money and time on a fruitless enterprise. In reply Rochlitz published
at least two direct rejoinders in the AMZ. he first of these, from C. F.
Michaelis, allows that people of different social standing would always
have different tastes but affirms the right of even “the lower classes … to
be cheered,” hence the need for both the Musikant (what we might call the
“gig player”) and the Musikus (the musical artist). he Musikant mostly
entertains the masses, while the Musikus, Michaelis insists, “strives for the
applause of the knowledgeable, and is proud of it; he would rather select
a small number of genuine admirers than pursue the ovations of the great,
common crowd.”98 As I have tried to show above, the latter ideal applied
not only to contemporary musician-artists; Bach, too, became respectable
in order to commune with knowledgeable players and cultivated listeners,
not the unwashed masses (as Joseph Kerman once quipped, Bach “would
appear to have entered the canon … before entering the repertory”).99 As
to GutsMuths’s question, however, one wonders whether Michaelis would
have answered with a resounding “yes”: the latter’s dissection of musical
types seems almost beside the point, though he does at least carve out a
social space for the cultivation of serious music, one defined by the ide-
als and educational levels rather than the connections and means of its
participants.
A second respondent answered more directly: music, according to a cer-
tain Herr Engelmann, was not just a way of acquiring good taste; it was
“the most excellent means of education, in order to develop a pure and
noble spirit.”100 Bach’s turn-of-the-century German advocates, as we have
seen, made exactly the same argument for his music: that when well played
and properly comprehended, the keyboard works especially provided the
most profound kind of intellectual pleasure for all who happened to be
97
J. C. F. GutsMuths, “Wollen alle Deutschen Musikanten werden?” Bibliothek der pädagogischen
Literatur (November, 1804), 295–299.
98
Michaelis, “Ueber einen Aufsatz mit der Ueberschrift,” as cited in Gramit, Cultivating Music, 15.
99
Joseph Kerman, “A Few Canonic Variations,” Critical Inquiry 10 (September, 1983), 107–125
(121).
100
Engelmann, “Musik als Erziehungsmittel,” AMZ 7 (1805), 635. For a more complete discussion
of the exchange between GutsMuths, Michaelis, and Engelmann, see Gramit, Cultivating Music,
13–16.
 A bürgerlicher Bach: early German advocacy 117

within earshot. And, just as important, their readers were expected to give
Bach a chance; literate members of the German community were obliged
to a cultural communion of sorts with this music. As Gramit especially has
argued, this was something of a “double-edged claim”: German music’s
newfound status depended simultaneously on assertions of its universality
and ongoing efforts to restrict access along familiar lines of demarcation,
like education and class.101 (One could easily level the same accusation at
our own world, where democratic governments build posh concert halls
and support exclusive conservatories, but that is another story.) he dichot-
omy seems not to have troubled this generation of devotees, however, who
felt not only that Bach deserved a wider audience, but that the growing
musical public needed him. Eventually their view prevailed, though it took
some time for Bach to become a part of bourgeois musical life, despite the
sudden appearance of multiple editions of WTC and other keyboard works
just after the turn of the century.
he challenge of marketing Bach to a largely backward and still mostly
rural populace was not insurmountable but it was time-consuming, hence
the continuation of Rochlitz’s patiently pedagogical approach to Bach’s
music in the AMZ over the course of its fifty-year lifespan. An 1813 review
of the recently published “English” Suite No. 2, for example, praises this
suite as “rich in beauties and … easier than most other [works of Bach] to
play.” Its publication gives “proof that there are still enduring friends of the
greatest harmonist and hero of true German music to be found.” hose able
to approach this music “without affectation and prejudice,” the anonymous
reviewer continues, will find this suite an excellent introduction to Bach’s
“stranger, deeper, and more difficult works.” Interestingly, the review focuses
on the Sarabande and notes that its emotional content (Gefühl ) is not what
one expects from Bach. Finding words inadequate to explain the piece, the
writer (perhaps Rochlitz himself ) recommends “personal, hands-on experi-
ence” as the best guide to this movement’s expression.102
Reviews in other journals make clear that a bias against Bach remained
entrenched in certain quarters of the collective German consciousness well
into the nineteenth century. In responding to such prejudice, writers of the
time pointed to works that exhibited those qualities valued by the culture as

101
Gramit, Cultivating Music, 21.
102
Anonymous review of the D minor English Suite, AMZ 15 (January 27, 1813), 69:
Was liegt nicht … in der Sarabande … zugleich auch für das Gefühl? Die letzte Behauptung
befremdet wahrscheinlich die meisten Leser, denn wir wissen es wol, dass gar viele sich einbilden,
wenn die Rede von S. Bach sey, dürfe man an Gefühl gar nicht denken. Solch eine vorgefasste
Meynung wird nun vergeblich durch Worte, und nur durch die eigene, unmittelbare Anschauung
mit Erfolg bekämpft.
Wrongly attributed in 1894 by Georg Ellinger to E. T. A. Hoffmann, this review may be the work
of Rochlitz himself, who served as editor of the AMZ until 1818 and wrote frequently without
signing his name.
118 Engaging Bach

a whole. hus Reichardt identified a few church works by Bach that convey
deep expression with simple means: his 1805 review of a Leipzig perform-
ance of the cantata Ach, Herr, mich armen Sünder (BWV 135) reports that
this antique music was not dry and boring, as many would have it. Instead,
Reichardt found this cantata moving in its simplicity and perfection.103
Rochlitz’s 1819 review of the newly published A major Mass (BWV 234)
addresses this bias in a way that would have made Forkel proud, by empha-
sizing his generation’s obligation towards “Vater Sebastian.” Underlining
the enormous change in compositional style from Bach’s to his own time,
Rochlitz observes that “though formerly many things in his work were
simply traditional and commonplace, to us they seem quite singular and
original. It falls then to us to come to grips with what seems not only dif-
ferent but the opposite of traditional and commonplace.”104 he sense of
collective responsibility articulated by Triest and Forkel at the turn of the
century, now shorn of its patriotism, obliged all serious musicians to an
ongoing dialogue with Bach’s music – such, at least, was Rochlitz’s hope.
As this last review illustrates, Bach’s early-nineteenth-century German
champions wanted more than mere recognition for the composer who had
perfected Harmonie; they wanted their readers to engage with his music
and to regard music-making itself as a purposeful activity that improved
humanity. Although it took another couple of decades for Bach’s music
to appear regularly on concert programs on the Continent, these individ-
uals succeeded in making him the cultural property of an incipient nation
whose destiny was increasingly linked to its artistic heritage. As Rochlitz’s
younger colleague, the Berlin critic Adolf Bernhard Marx, exclaimed (in
1827) about the first edition of the complete “English” Suites: the increased
public affection for J. S. Bach’s music represents the “sun of a new day in
the fog of our times.”105 hat sun rose fully just two years later with the
revival of the St. Matthew Passion before an ecstatic and incredulous Berlin
public, whose relationship with this distant composer had been shaped
carefully by Marx and his predecessors in the German musical press.

103
Johann Friedrich Reichardt, “Fortgesetzte Nachricht über Kirchenmusik zu Leipzig,” Berlinische
musikalische Zeitung 1/31 (1805), 123–124.
104
Friedrich Rochlitz, review of Bach’s A major Mass (BWV 234), AMZ 21/9 (March 3, 1819), 133–
140: “Und wenn gar Manches in seinen Werken, wass damals nur herkömmlich und gebräuchlich
war, uns jetzt ganz eigenthümlich und ursprünglich vorkömmt: so liegt das an uns, die wir an ein,
nicht nur verschiedenes, sondern entgegengesetztes Herkömmliche und Gebräuchliche gewöhnt
sind.”
105
Berliner allgemeine musikalische Zeitung 4/52 (December 26, 1827), 424, as cited in Applegate,
Bach in Berlin, 118.
 ch apter 

he virtuous fugue: English reception to 1840

With the most vibrant public musical life in Europe in the eighteenth and
early nineteenth centuries, London was a natural destination for Bach’s
music. he English capital had long supported historic as well as contem-
porary music, and with the founding of the Academy of Ancient Music in
1726 and the Concerts of Ancient Music (or “King’s Concert”) in 1776,
the city boasted the first organizations anywhere devoted exclusively to the
performance of works by old masters.1 England was also home to a num-
ber of first-rate Italian and German musicians and composers, who came
as honored guests, toured the major cities, and attracted legions of students
and admirers. And yet, until well into the nineteenth century, the music of
J. S. Bach appealed only to a select few and posed something of a problem
in England: its sheer complexity, coupled with a stubborn cultural preju-
dice against the music of any rival to Handel, were serious impediments
to a wider reception, even among professionals. Devotees in England thus
had to devise a rationale distinct from their continental counterparts for
those works of Bach they admired and wished to share with others. heir
ardent advocacy, which brought Bach’s keyboard music into the public
sphere for the first time, combined musical salesmanship, cultural engin-
eering, and a distinctly English conception of his fugues especially.
Oddly, the one direct link in England to Sebastian Bach figures hardly
at all in this story. From 1762 until his death in 1786, Johann Christian
Bach enjoyed considerable fame in London and the major English cities
as a virtuoso keyboardist and composer, but he did little if anything to
advance the cause of his father’s music. Like his siblings, J. C. Bach had
learned music first at home, but unlike the rest he flew far from the fam-
ily nest: first to Italy, where he studied with Padre Martini and converted
to Catholicism, then to London, the most enticing destination in Europe
for a budding composer of operas and elegant chamber works. His success
there demonstrated the potential of business partnerships between mon-
eyed aristocrats and professional musicians, among the first of their kind
1
On the rise of public concerts in England, see William Weber, he Rise of Musical Classics in
Eighteenth-Century England: A Study in Canon, Ritual, and Ideology (Oxford University Press,
1992); and Susan Wollenberg and Simon McVeigh, eds., Concert Life in Eighteenth-Century Britain
(Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004).

119
120 Engaging Bach

anywhere. Programs that Johann Christian co-managed with gambist Carl

Friedrich Abel at popular Soho and Haymarket venues regularly featured
the latest cantatas, serenatas, symphonies, and concertos, but nothing so
old-fashioned as his father’s fugues.2 Even his closest friends in England
probably learned more about Sebastian Bach’s music from John Hawkins’s
and Charles Burney’s widely read music histories than they did from J. C.
Bach.3
hrough a network of other connections, English collectors nevertheless
managed to acquire hand copies of various keyboard and organ works of
J. S. Bach during the second half of the eighteenth century (see Table 5.1).
his stream of reception remained essentially private until just after 1800,
when a nucleus of musicians based in London began to play these works in
public and to advocate a wider reception for them. heirs was a campaign
with no previous models – no one in England had ever tried to foster inter-
est in the music of a foreign composer so far removed from the contempor-
ary scene – and it lacked any kind of official or organizational support such
as that provided by the Berlin Sing-Akademie to Carl Friedrich Zelter and
Felix Mendelssohn. Nor were Bach’s first champions in England highly
placed members of the political or intellectual elite (quite the contrary, as
we shall see). he inevitable comparisons with other long-dead composers
were, at best, problematic: Handel was an untouchable icon, partly for
reasons of national pride but also because of the conservative tastes of the
British aristocracy and royal family. By 1800 Handel’s oratorio choruses,
once at the cutting edge of national musical life, occupied a unique place
of honor in the repertory of organizations like the King’s Concert; Bach’s
music, by contrast, lacked a comparable support system in England until
well into the nineteenth century.
Appeals like those made by Forkel and Rochlitz, to a broad and culti-
vated readership’s sense of national pride or enlightened self-improvement,
would have been lost on the English, who had neither a solid frame of
reference for Bach nor much affinity for the culture his music represented;
they needed other, more traditionally English, reasons for paying attention
to it. hough it took some time for a coherent rationale to coalesce, by the
1850s historians were already chronicling the progress of the English Bach
movement and celebrating its achievements.4 Subsequent scholarship has
yielded a wealth of information about the copying and dissemination of
manuscripts, production of editions, and performances of the keyboard
and organ works in England in the decades surrounding the turn of the

2
See Charles Sanford Terry, John Christian Bach (London: Oxford University Press, 1929/1967),
Chapters 4 and 7; and Heinz Gärtner, Johann Christian Bach: Mozart’s Friend and Mentor, trans.
Reinhard G. Pauly (Portland, OR: Amadeus Press, 1994), 226–231, 247–274.
3
John Hawkins, A General History of the Science and Practice of Music (London, 1776); and Charles
Burney, A General History of Music, from the Earliest Ages to the Present Period (London, 1789).
4
Edward Holmes, “Progress of Bach’s Music in England,” he Musical Times 2 (June, 1851),
192–193.
 he virtuous fugue: English reception to 1840 121

Table 5.1. Hand Copies of Bach’s Music in England, 1750–1810

Source Contents Earliest Known Provenance

Durham Cathedral Toccata in C minor, BWV 911 Richard Fawcett, by 1754

MS E 24 Toccata in D minor, BWV 913
Toccata in E minor (inc.),
BWV 914
Fantasia in D minor, BWV 905
RCM ms 814 Prelude and Fugue in C Major, Benjamin Cooke, c1762
BWV 545 (transposed to (from an arrangement
B-flat), Sonata in G minor, made by John
BWV 1029/iii (abridged) Robinson?)
RCM ms 824 he Art of Fugue (Cp 1–11, 13 Benjamin Cooke, before
only) 1793
RCM ms 26 WTC 2 fugues (lacks nos. 3–4) copied c1760 by F. W.
Marpurg
Fitzwilliam Museum, WTC2, fugues: nos. 1, 4, 5, 7, 9, signed “R. Fitzwilliam
Music Ms 161A 10, 11, 13, 14, 16, 24 1772” copied from
RCM, ms 26
BL R.M.21.a.9 WTC (both books) Queen Charlotte, c1785,
Clavierübung III inscribed “he Queen,
1788”
Univ. of St. Andrews WTC2 A. F. C. Kollmann, c1790
Library, Ms M24.
B2
Library of Congress, Specimens of Fugue &c.40+ Joseph Diettenhofer, c1799
ML95.D43 Case examples by Bach
RCM, ms 743 WTC (both books) James W. Windsor, dated
Nov 30, 1801
BL Add Ms 35021 WTC 2 (in the hand of JS Bach) Muzio Clementi, c1804
(“London” lacks nos. 4, 5, and 12
autograph)
J-S-Bach-Institute WTC2 C. F. Horn, c1794–1806
Göttingen, ms
Varia 5
BL Add MS 14330 WTC (both books) Samuel Wesley, c1806
RCM, ms 4021 WTC1 fugues 2, 9, 5, 7, and 4 Samuel Wesley, c1806
WTC1 fugue 22 in open score
WTC2 fugue 22 in open score
Fitzwilliam Museum, Capriccio from Partita in C William Crotch, from
MS 699 minor, BWV 826/vii Samuel Wesley, 1809

century.5 Adding only a few details to that historical record, this chapter
focuses instead on the novel idea that Bach’s keyboard works could play
a vital role in the cultural life of a nation that had neither an obligation
towards this composer nor much previous acquaintance with his music.

5
he more important contributions for their time are Frederick George Edwards, “Bach’s Music
in England,” he Musical Times 37 (September–December, 1896), 585–587, 652–557, 722–
726, 797–800; Stanley Godman, “he Early Reception of Bach’s Music in England,” Monthly
122 Engaging Bach

i ni ti al i nte re s t in e n gl a n d
Until quite late in the eighteenth century, the conundrum of a gifted
composer whose works were at once impressive and impenetrable proved
just as durable in England as it had been elsewhere: the earliest published
notices in English about Bach borrow heavily, in fact, from German writ-
ers. Echoing (among others) Mattheson’s and Scheibe’s respective com-
plaints about the lack of natural expression in Bach,6 Burney noted in
1773 that Bach’s tendency “to crowd into both hands all the harmony
he could grasp … sacrificed melody and expression.”7 Several years later
Burney concluded, as had J. F. Reichardt, that “if [Bach] had been pos-
sessed of the simplicity, clearness, and feeling of Handel, he would have
been a greater man.”8 Notwithstanding C. P. E. Bach’s spirited response in
defense of his father’s art,9 the impression that the elder Bach’s music was
both emotionally opaque and technically daunting lingered in England for
many years. he frequent comparisons with Handel invariably left Bach
in his great contemporary’s shadow: Hawkins’s General History of Music,
for instance, devotes nearly forty pages to Handel and barely two to Bach.
he annual Handel Commemorations (begun in 1784) further institu-
tionalized a kind of hero-worship for this once controversial figure and his
oratorio arias and choruses especially; in contrast, Bach remained not only
remote but suspect, his music so complex as to be unintelligible to all but
experts.10
Organists and serious collectors owned virtually all the early sources
of Bach’s music in England, including hand copies of WTC; the Clavier-
Übung, Part III; and most of he Art of Fugue. heir high respect for Bach’s

Musical Record 82 (1952), 255–260; 83 (1953), 32–39, 69–71; Alfred Dürr, “On the Earliest
Manuscripts and Prints of Bach’s Well Tempered Clavier in England,” in A Bach Tribute: Essays in
Honor of William H. Scheide, ed. Paul Brainard and Ray Robinson (Kassel: Bärenreiter; Chapel
Hill: Hinshaw, 1994), 121–134; Michael Kassler, ed., he English Bach Awakening: Knowledge
of J. S. Bach and His Music in England 1750–1830 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004); and Yo Tomita,
“‘Most Ingenious, Most Learned, and Yet Practicable Work’: he English Reception of Bach’s
he Well Tempered Clavier in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century Seen through the Editions
Published in London,” in he Piano in Nineteenth-Century British Culture: Instruments, Performers
and Repertoire, ed. herese Ellsworth and Susan Wollenberg (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), 33–67.
6
See NBR, 325, 338, and the discussion in Chapter 1 of this study.
7
Charles Burney, he Present State of Music in Germany, the Netherlands, and United Provinces; or,
he Journal of a Tour through hose Countries, Undertaken to Collect Materials for a General History
of Music, 2 vols., Vol. II (London, 1773), 262 (BD III, 252). Burney’s General History of Music (pp.
952–953) adds that Bach “seems … to have been constantly in search of what was new and difficult,
without the least attention to nature and facility” (BD III, 457).
8
Burney, General History of Music, 954 (BD III, 458). Several years earlier J. F. Reichardt had observed
that Bach was “only much more erudite and industrious” than Handel (BD III, 864; BR, 455).
9
C. P. E. Bach’s unsigned response was published in the Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek 81/1 (1788),
295–303 (BD III, 927; NBR, 396).
10
Borrowing terms from a then-common comparison of Shakespeare and Milton, one early-
nineteenth-century English writer notes that Handel was “a luminary which drew after him a third
part of the heavens” while Bach’s “soul was like a star and dwelt apart.” Henry John Gauntlett, “John
Sebastian Bach & Geo. Frederic Handel,” he Musical World 62/v (May 19, 1837), 145.
 he virtuous fugue: English reception to 1840 123

keyboard fugues mimicked contemporaneous reception on the Continent:

just as Beethoven was said to have mastered WTC at the tender age of
eleven,11 Burney remembered having heard the ten-year-old Godfrey
William Palschau perform (in 1754) “with great accuracy many of the most
difficult compositions that have ever been written for keyed instruments,
particularly some lessons and double fugues by Sebastian Bach.”12 Around
the turn of the century, virtuosos like Muzio Clementi, John Field, and
Johann Baptist Cramer continued this tradition of playing the occasional
piece of Bach in aristocratic salons, where such historical curiosities could
be savored and discussed at will. Public performance of Bach on the piano
was unknown in England before the late 1830s, however, mostly because
the solo piano recital had yet to be invented.13
Early signs of a broader interest among professional musicians in
England can be found in this era’s theoretical treatises, trade journals, and
piano tutors: Table 5.2 gives a list of Bach excerpts in such publications
to 1810. On the academic end of the spectrum are densely argued trea-
tises by the German émigré A. F. C. Kollmann, while the more practical
sources include Clementi’s piano tutors, in which Bach fugues illustrate
the high style in composition and provide a foil for more recent works.
In the middle are periodicals and anthologies aimed towards the serious
student, for whom authors and editors generally provided a bit of context
and explanation for excerpts taken from a wide array of sources. Despite
the increasing frequency of published excerpts, even the most enthusiastic
devotees had no delusions about the potential audience for Bach’s music
in England. An annotation in one general musical tutor admits as much:
referring to the second page of the Prelude in D minor from Book I of
WTC, William Shield cautions that the “extraneous modulations in this
page [from m. 14 to the end] will perhaps be too harsh for the common
ear, yet enrapture the educated admirers of Mozart.”14 (Even Mozart’s key-
board works were a tough sell in Britain before the second quarter of the
nineteenth century, to say nothing of Bach’s.)
Shield’s comment also acknowledges a reality of amateur pianism at the
turn of the century: most players regarded the Bach fugues as overly intel-
lectual fare. But a few of the better organists in England thought differ-
ently. In 1799 Kollmann announced of an edition of both books of WTC
with accompanying analyses, a project that, had it been realized in that
year, would have been the first printing of the work anywhere. Articulating

11
BD III, 874.
12
Charles Burney, “Account of an Infant Musician,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of
London 5/69 (1779), 202. See also Rainer Kaiser, “Palschaus Bach-Spiel in London: Zur Bach-
Pflege in England um 1750,” BJ 79 (1993), 225–229.
13
On the advent of the solo piano recital in England, see Deborah Rohr, he Careers of British
Musicians, 1750–1850 (Cambridge University Press, 2001), 114–116.
14
William Shield, An Introduction to Harmony (London, 1800), 115 (BD III, 619).
Table 5.2 Bach excerpts in English publications, 1770–1810

Publication Title Author/Editor Date Contents

he Art of Playing the Harpsichord John Casper Heck c1770 Fugue in C major, BWV 953
General History of the Science and Practice of Music John Hawkins 1776 Aria, Canone alla Terza, and Fughetta from the
“Goldberg” Variations
he Musical Library and Universal Magazine of John Casper Heck c1780 Incipit to the Canonic Variations on “Vom Himmel
Harmony hoch” and Contrapunctus VII from he Art of Fugue
Essay on Musical Harmony A. F. C. Kollmann 1796 Analysis of WTC2, Prelude and Fugue in F minor and
canons (with solutions) from the Musical Offering
Essay on Practical Musical Composition A. F. C. Kollmann 1799 Analyses of excerpts from the WTC, scores of the
WTC2 Prelude and Fugue in C major, first
movement of Trio Sonata in E-flat (BWV 525),
excerpts from the Art of Fugue, Musical Offering
and the Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue
An Introduction to Harmony William Shield 1800 WTC1 Prelude in D minor
Introduction to the Art of Playing on the Piano Forte Muzio Clementi 1801 French Suite in E major, BWV 817, Polonaise and
Minuet only
Second Part (Appendix) to Clementi’s Introduction to Muzio Clementi c1810 WTC2 Fugues in C major and C sharp minor
the Art of Playing on the Piano Forte
Selection of Practical Harmony for the Organ Muzio Clementi 1801 (v.1) Fantasie in G major, BWV 572
or Piano Forte French Suite in G major, BWV 816
1802 (v. 2) Toccata in D minor, BWV 913
1811 (v. 3) Fugue in A minor, BWV 944/2
Fugue in C major, BWV 953
Fugue in C minor, BWV 575
Set of Ten Miscellaneous Fugues Joseph Diettenhofer 1802 WTC1 Fugues in C major and C sharp minor,
Prelude and Fugue in B minor; “Fuga a 3 sogetti”
from he Art of Fugue
New heory of Musical Harmony A. F. C. Kollmann 1806 analysis of the Chromatic Fantasy
Specimens of Various Styles of Music William Crotch 1809 (v. 3) WTC2 Fugue in E major
Twelve Analyzed Fugues A. F. C. Kollmann by 1810 Bach and Handel fugues
 he virtuous fugue: English reception to 1840 125

what became a refrain among fellow enthusiasts, he describes this col-

lection as a “most ingenious, most learned, and yet practicable work.”15
he idea that WTC could serve practical ends was a provocative selling
point and perhaps one of the reasons why Kollmann’s edition of the work
never materialized.16 At any rate, the first of several English reprints of the
Continental editions appeared just a few years later,17 followed by first edi-
tions of the Chromatic Fantasy (ed. Kollmann) and the organ trio sonatas,
under the joint editorship of Samuel Wesley and C. F. Horn (see Table 5.3).
Wesley and Horn’s gradual release of the latter trios, one at a time from
1809 to 1811, was an effective way to increase demand and build a sub-
scriber list for their edition of WTC, as Philip Olleson has pointed out.18
heir New and Correct Edition of the Preludes and Fugues of John Sebastian
Bach, printed in four installments by Robert Birchall between 1810 and
1813, includes rudimentary analyses of all the fugues and an explanatory
preface, the first in any edition of the work. hanks to its editors’ enthu-
siasm and Wesley’s missionary zeal in particular, the Wesley–Horn WTC
was also the first Bach edition in England to attract more than a handful
of subscribers.19
Given the considerable financial risk, this edition’s three-year gestation
is hardly surprising; that it was ever finished attests to the editors’ persever-
ance and the publisher’s goodwill. For this particular time and place, Bach’s
music was too exotic to be practical; ill-suited to either the concert plat-
form or the burgeoning amateur market, it was destined for “the musical
libraries of the curious,” as one reviewer predicted.20 But Wesley and his

15
August Friedrich Christoph Kollmann, Essay on Practical Musical Composition (London, 1799),
97–98 (BD III, 582).
16
hirteen years later Kollmann explained that his edition was made redundant by the “numerous
copies of the first three editions … imported in England”; August Friedrich Christoph Kollmann,
“Of John Sebastian Bach, and His Works,” Quarterly Musical Register 1 (January, 1812), 30.
17
On these reprints see Michael Kassler, “Broderip, Wilkinson and the First English Edition of the
‘48,’” Musical Times 147/1895 (Summer, 2006), 67–76.
18
Philip Olleson, “Samuel Wesley and the English Bach Awakening,” in Kassler, he English Bach
Awakening, 251–313 (270–271); and “Samuel Wesley and the Music Profession,” in Music and
British Culture, 1785–1914: Essays in Honour of Cyril Ehrlich, ed. Christina Bashford and Leanne
Langley (Oxford University Press, 2000), 23–38 (28).
19
his edition’s 152 subscriptions (for 183 copies) contrasts with a print run of perhaps just 25 for the
first English reprint of WTC in 1802: see Kassler, “he Bachists of 1810: Subscribers to the Wesley/
Horn Edition of the ‘48,’” in he English Bach Awakening, 315–40; Kassler, “Broderip, Wilkinson,”
68; and Tomita, “Most Ingenious, Most Learned,” 47–51. Even Wesley had difficulty acquiring
earlier editions of WTC: his April 12, 1808 letter to Burney complains that “the Preludes & Fugues
of Sebastian Bach are now become exceedingly scarce in England, & almost unattainable,” while
another letter by Wesley to Burney written two months later notes that “my Lady Somebody or
other … sent to [Mr. Griffin] for the loan of Seb. Bach’s fugues: she had already ransacked every
music shop in town, but in vain.” Philip Olleson, ed., he Letters of Samuel Wesley: Professional and
Social Correspondence, 1797–1837 (Oxford University Press, 2001), 60 and 65.
20
homas Busby(?), review of Bach’s Chromatic Fantasie, ed. August Friedrich Christoph Kollmann,
he Monthly Magazine 22/2 (August, 1806), 57. On the attribution of this review to Busby, see
Michael Kassler, “Chronology of the English Bach Awakening,” in he English Bach Awakening,
1–33 (16).
Table 5.3. English editions of Bach’s keyboard music to 1820

Publication title Publisher Editor (if known) Date Contents/Comment

Preludes et Fugues … Broderip & Wilkinson 1802 WTC2, nos. 1–12. Reprint of
Simrock (1801).
Bach’s Chromatic Fantasy T. Preston Kollmann 1806 BWV 903
A Sett of Twelve Fugues composed for the organ C. F. Horn C. F. Horn 1807 WTC1 fugues 1 and 4, WTC2
by Seb. Bach, arranged as Quartets for 2 fugues 5, 7–9, 16–17, and 22–23,
violins, Tenor and Bass with the addition of a arranged for string quartet
Pianoforte parts and horough Bass
Preludes et Fugues … Broderip & Wilkinson 1808 WTC2 (entire). Reprint of Simrock
(1801).
Trio[s] Composed Originally for Organ … Horn/Wesley Horn/Wesley 1809–11 BWV 525–530. Each trio issued
separately.
S. Wesley and C. F. Horn’s New and Correct R. Birchall Wesley/Horn 1810–13 WTC1 and WTC2
Edition of the Preludes and Fugues of John
Sebastian Bach
Forty Eight Preludes and Fugues … Lavenu 1810–11 WTC1 and WTC2. Based on Nägeli
(1802).
Preludes et Fugues … T. Preston c.1810 WTC2. Reprint of Broderip &
Wilkinson (1802).
Six Little Preludes … Wesley Wesley 1812–13 BWV 933–935
Le clavecin bien temperée Boosey Forkel 1818–19 WTC1 and WTC2. Reprint of
Hoffmeister & Kühnel/Peters
(1814).
S. Wesley and C. F. Horn’s New and Correct … Birchall Wesley/Horn c.1819 WTC1 and WTC2. Reprint of
1810–13 ed.
 he virtuous fugue: English reception to 1840 127

colleagues doggedly promoted it on a variety of platforms, partly on the

recommendation of Burney, whose thinking about Bach evolved over
time. In the spring of 1808, with public opinion still largely unformed,
Burney counseled Wesley against risking money on a completely new edi-
tion until he had “played and lectured the work into favour.”21 Taking
Burney’s advice, Wesley brought Bach’s keyboard music to public attention
in England and made a persuasive case for a peculiarly English interpret-
ation of the WTC preludes and fugues in particular.

a dvocacy a nd adul atio n

Samuel Wesley (1766–1837), the son of hymn writer Charles Wesley and
the nephew of John, the founder of Methodism, was the musical evangelist
of the family. Along with his brother, Charles Jr., Sam studied music from
an early age with steady if not always enthusiastic support from a father
who considered it a not entirely wholesome trade. Promoted as a child
prodigy at the keyboard, the young Sam Wesley was also something of a
rebel: while still a teenager, he abjured the family religion and converted to
Roman Catholicism. Adulthood brought renown as an organist and com-
poser but also serious challenges, from lost professional opportunities to
debilitating mental and physical problems. Modern biographers describe
a gifted but troubled man, one whose willfulness and tumultuous private
life effectively stymied a promising career.22 Widely recognized as the fin-
est organist of his generation, Wesley felt a special kinship with Bach, the
greatest organist the world had ever seen, and once established, this link
served to elevate Wesley’s reputation. Contemporaries routinely ignored
the less savory aspects of his life and made a connection that went beyond
musical similarities into the metaphysical realm: Wesley was said to have
possessed a “kindred spirit with the German giant.”23
Wesley’s reputation as the “English Bach disciple” owes much to writers
like Edward Holmes, who in the early 1850s glowingly chronicled Wesley’s
Bach activities,24 and to the famous “Bach Letters” Wesley exchanged with
organist Benjamin Jacob. he letters, first published by his daughter Eliza
Wesley in 1875, and long a source of droll sound bites in the literature,25

21
Letter of c. April 13, 1808 from Burney to Wesley, in Olleson, he Letters of Samuel Wesley, 61 n. 9
and 65 n. 5.
22
he most comprehensive biographies are Philip Olleson, Samuel Wesley: he Man and His Music
(Woodbridge and Rochester: Boydell Press, 2004); and James T. Lightwood, Samuel Wesley,
Musician: he Story of His Life (London: Epworth Press, 1937; New York: Benjamin Blom, 1972).
23
he Musical World 8 (January 5–April 26, 1838), 39.
24
Holmes, “Progress of Bach’s Music in England.” See also Wesley’s glowing obituary in he Times,
cited in Olleson, “Samuel Wesley and the Music Profession,” 38.
25
Eliza Wesley, ed., Letters of Samuel Wesley to Mr. Jacobs [sic] … Relating to the Introduction into
his Country of the Works of John Sebastian Bach (London: William Reeves, 1875). See also Peter
Williams, ed., he Wesley Bach Letters, in facsimile (London: Novello, 1988).
128 Engaging Bach

are also an important witness to some surprisingly modern marketing

strategies, as Olleson has observed.26 Along with Wesley’s manuscript
“Reminiscences” and letters he exchanged with Burney, Horn, Vincent
Novello, and William Crotch, they document Wesley’s brief but intense
involvement, beginning in 1808 and running through 1815 or so, in a
range of Bach-related activities, from editions of the works to concerts and
lectures either partially or wholly devoted to Bach. Such things attracted
considerable attention in the English capital, though nothing near the
capacity audiences that greeted a major figure like Haydn at his London
concerts. From the outset, the idea that Bach’s music could serve a useful
purpose was controversial, and because Wesley was the most prominent
advocate, he bore the brunt of criticism. As the editor of he Musical World
remembered in 1837, Wesley’s “enthusiasm at [the] beauty and profound
skill [of the WTC fugues] was in proportion to the disgust and horror
of his brother professors.”27 Fourteen years later, Holmes explained this
reaction as the result of both conservative musical tastes and professional
jealousy: admiration for Bach’s music was viewed as “affectation and cun-
ning – as a mere device to exhibit an uncommon taste, and to appear more
knowing than your neighbours.”28
Wesley’s volatile temperament and his contempt for the privileged classes
doubtless encouraged such impressions, yet he went out of his way to allay
the fears of those whose opinions mattered. Personal appeals were part of a
constantly evolving movement, for which strategies had to be invented on
the fly and modified more or less continually.29 Early detractors in England
included grand old men like Burney as well as John Gunn and William
Ayrton, two influential figures who made their views known in print and
in person.30 Reviewing their complaints, Michael Kassler notes the parallel
with early Schoenberg reception in the defensive posturing of those who
felt threatened by musical difference and in the similar metaphors used to
describe it: Bach’s music sounded like “hogs floundering in the mud,” while
Schoenberg’s resembled “the best sound effects of a hen yard.”31 But barnyard
language, long a quick and dirty way to derision, often says more about what
something represents than about the thing itself. he progress of the Bach

26
Olleson, “Samuel Wesley and the Music Profession,” 27–28.
27
“Sebastian Bach,” he Musical World 52/4 (March 10, 1837), 190.
28
Holmes, “Progress of Bach’s Music in England,” 192.
29
A point made by Olleson (“Samuel Wesley and the English Bach Awakening,” 260), but which
bears repeating.
30
Gunn, a pianist and pedagogue, complained in print that the newly published WTC was “very diffi-
cult,” while Ayrton, director of the King’s heatre in the Haymarket and editor of the Harmonicon,
disputed Wesley’s high opinion of Bach in person: see Kassler, “Kollmann’s Proof of the Regularity
of Bach’s Chromatic Fantasy,” in he English Bach Awakening, 212; and Olleson, he Letters of
Samuel Wesley, 278–279, respectively.
31
he former comes from a letter of Wesley to Jacobs (October 19, 1808), the latter from he Collected
Essays of William Babbitt, ed. Stephen Peles (Princeton University Press, 2003), as cited in Kassler,
“Kollmann’s Proof,” 212 n. 3.
 he virtuous fugue: English reception to 1840 129

movement in England was impeded by the very Germanness of Bach’s style,

along with the fact that its central figures were neither part of the Anglican
establishment (Wesley was born Methodist but converted to Catholicism)
nor native-born Englishmen (the foreigners Kollmann and Clementi, for
example);32 its musical nonconformism simply hardened the opposition of
those in positions of power. Early-nineteenth-century English society valued
connections and achievement over innovation and difference, and the com-
bination of old German counterpoint and eccentric devotees raised more
than a few red flags. Bach was an outsider promoted by outsiders – and his
music was difficult, to boot.
First and foremost, the “Bachists” set their sights on Burney, the emi-
nence grise of the London musical scene, who, as Wesley recalled, “had but
a slight knowledge of the inimitable merits of Sebastian Bach, until I had
the pleasure of making him become better acquainted with his music.”33
he good Doctor embraced Bach’s music only after multiple visits from
Wesley, who brought new works to play and discuss each time. As Wesley
reported to Jacob in the fall of 1808, Burney managed a “most cordial
veneration for our sacred musician” after having heard Wesley play several
of the WTC fugues on the piano in Burney’s home.34 Subsequent com-
mand performances of at least one of the violin sonatas (in 1809, by Jacob
and Wesley, as four-hand piano music) and the “Goldberg” Variations (in
1810, by Wesley and Novello on two pianos) cemented Burney’s new and
improved opinion of Bach.35 Wesley gave private performances of Bach’s
music at other locations as well during these years, including the Kirkman
harpsichord and piano warehouse and the shop of organ builder James
Davis, where conversation about the music was surely as important as the
music-making itself.36
Public lectures on musical topics enabled Wesley, Crotch, John Wall
Callcott, and others to make a case for Bach in front of larger audiences,
for whom this music must have seemed unusually academic, if not down-
right fusty. he surviving notes by Wesley and summaries by Crotch,37
though stingy with details, show that works of Bach were both discussed
and performed during lectures at the Royal Institution of Great Britain
(Callcott, 1808; Wesley, 1809), the Hanover Square Rooms (Crotch, 1809

32
A point made previously by Peter Williams: see his “Introduction” to he Wesley Bach Letters, esp.
xvii.
33
Wesley, “Reminiscences” (c. 1836), BL, MS Add. 27593, fo. 151.
34
Letter of September 17, 1808 from Wesley to Jacob, in Olleson, he Letters of Samuel Wesley, 77.
35
Letter of July 17, 1810 from Wesley to Burney, in ibid., 141–142.
36
A detailed tally of Wesley’s private performances of Bach between 1808 and 1829 is given in Kassler,
“Chronology,” 19–33.
37
Samuel Wesley, “Lectures on Musical Subjects” [1811–1830], BL, MS Add. 35014, 35015; and
William Crotch, Specimens of Various Styles of Music Referred to in a Course of Lectures Read at Oxford
& London, 3 vols., Vol. III (London, [c. 1809]).
130 Engaging Bach

and 1815), and the Surrey Institution (Wesley, 1809 and 1811; Crotch,
1818).38 What the public learned about Bach during these lectures, that
fully voiced counterpoint can be both expressive and awe-inspiring, was
surely surprising news to many.
Proponents played Bach’s music from 1808 onwards at some renowned
concert venues as well, including two London edifices of a decidedly non-
Anglican hue. During Vincent Novello’s tenure as organist at the Portuguese
Embassy Chapel, its Sunday services were all the rage, its street “thronged
with carriages … while their owners crowded to suffocation the small,
taper-lighted space within.”39 At the conclusion of these grand Catholic lit-
urgies, which regularly featured Haydn and Mozart masses, Novello often
played Bach fugues on the organ as four-hand duets, with Wesley’s help.
A private or perhaps semi-public March, 1808 event at the nonconformist
Surrey Chapel, a popular setting for musical events and society meetings,
proved seminal for Wesley’s reputation as a Bach authority. After listen-
ing to Wesley play Bach fugues on the Surrey Chapel organ for some two
hours, the violinist and impresario Johann Peter Salomon suggested that
he take this repertory to “some large room capable of containing a good
organ,” and charge admission for such a program.40 he Hanover Square
Rooms, scene of the Bach–Abel concerts in the late 1770s and Haydn’s
triumphs in the 1790s, provided just such a space in London’s fashion-
able West End, with seating for 900 and a fine Elliott organ from 1804.41
In programs that ranged freely across genres and composers, Wesley and
his “Sebastian Squad” offered excerpts from Bach’s violin sonatas, WTC,
the “Goldberg” Variations, even one of the motets. heir first Hanover
Square program, on June 11, 1808, “electrified the town just in the way we
wanted,” as Wesley boasted to Burney.42 Wesley’s first public concert at the
Surrey Chapel, on November 29, 1809, included “three to four hours” of
Bach and Handel fugues plus at least two of the Bach violin sonatas, with
Wesley on the violin and Jacob on the organ.43 Jacob’s later (1824) recol-
lection of this event estimated the crowd at “3,000 persons of the highest
respectability, also many in the first rank of professors and amateurs.”44
38
he few known details about these lectures are recorded in the relevant entries in Kassler,
“Chronology,” 17–28.
39
Mary Cowden Clarke, he Life and Labours of Vincent Novello, by His Daughter (London: Novello,
1862), 4.
40
Letter of spring, 1808 from Wesley to Burney, in Olleson, Letters of Samuel Wesley, 63.
41
his eleven-stop instrument had an eight-stop Great and a three-stop Swell, with an octave and a
half of pedal pipes, according to Charles W. Pearce, “he English Organ of a Hundred Years Ago,”
Journal of the Royal Musical Association 33 (1906), 107. It was “universally admired for its powers,
and the beauty of its tone,” according to David Hughson, London: Being an Accurate History and
Description of the British Metropolis and Its Neighbourhood, 5 vols., Vol. IV (London, 1807), 365.
42
Letter of June 23, 1808 from Wesley to Burney, in Olleson, he Letters of Samuel Wesley, 65.
43
Samuel Wesley, “Reminiscences” [c. 1836], BL, MS Add. 27593, fo. 51. Further details are given in
Olleson, “Samuel Wesley and the English Bach Awakening,” 281–282.
44
Olleson, he Letters of Samuel Wesley, 129 n. 5. he surprisingly large audience figure is in fact
plausible: this “spacious chapel” could accommodate “nearly five thousand persons,” according to
Hughson, London, 512.
 he virtuous fugue: English reception to 1840 131

Crotch, Jacob, and Salomon performed Bach in subsequent recitals at the

Surrey Chapel between 1811 and 1814, while so-called “anthology con-
cert” benefit programs (with an assortment of genres and performers) at
the Hanover Square Rooms between 1810 and 1812 included movements
from Bach’s organ trio sonatas (played by two pairs of hands), the violin
sonatas, WTC, and, on at least one occasion, Novello’s arrangement for
organ and orchestra of the Prelude in E flat major from Clavier-Übung,
Part III (BWV 552/1). Wesley and his colleagues also included the occa-
sional work of Bach on large concert programs elsewhere: at the Covent
Garden oratorio performances, for example. Wesley’s orchestral arrange-
ment of the Fugue in D major from Book I of WTC, created for one
such program, was a perennial favorite both in London and at provincial
festivals and concerts.45
About one such program, in Great Yarmouth in the summer of 1815,
Wesley reported to Novello that Bach’s “Triple Fugue in E-flat [BWV 552/2]
was received with the same kind of wonder that people express when they
see an air balloon ascend for the first time.”46 Regardless of its veracity, this
claim is remarkable for its time and place: the discovery of manned flight
in France a few decades earlier had ignited a mania for ballooning across
Europe, and it is not difficult to imagine in the sense of astonishment that
greeted each new demonstration of this bit of scientific “magic,” especially
in small cities and towns. A similarly overwhelming sensory reaction was
also, for this generation, one of the primary effects of the musical sublime,
the very category into which Wesley and his colleagues attempted to shoe-
horn Bach’s keyboard and organ music. he latter enterprise required some
ingenuity, since Bach’s learned instrumental counterpoint hardly exem-
plified an aesthetic category that was defined more or less exclusively (in
Britain at least) by Handel’s choral music. he idea that the sublime, long
construed in literary and visual contexts as an incomparable profundity or
vastness, could also be realized aurally meant that the ear had to be simi-
larly overwhelmed: as Edmund Burke put it in his Philosophical Enquiry
into the Origin of Our Ideas on the Sublime and the Beautiful (1757), “exces-
sive loudness is sufficient to overpower the soul, to suspend its action,
and to fill it with terror.”47 hough terror was seldom the point of music
from this era, the lure of bigness had a profound effect on Handel recep-
tion in the late eighteenth century. By pumping up Handel’s already bold
choral writing with huge performing forces at annual commemorations in
London and at festival programs elsewhere, the British establishment pro-
moted a powerful conception of his art while affirming a highly politicized
notion of musical greatness. Handel’s “perceived practice of the musical
45
his arrangement of the D major Fugue formed part of Wesley’s own organ concerto in the same
key. See Olleson, “Samuel Wesley and the English Bach Awakening,” 302–303.
46
Letter of July 18, 1815 from Wesley to Novello, in Olleson, he Letters of Samuel Wesley, 244.
47
As cited in Peter le Huray and James Day, Music and Aesthetics in the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth
Centuries (Cambridge University Press, 1988), 73.
132 Engaging Bach

sublime,” as Claudia Johnson writes, lay behind the “novel confidence in

the stature of music and musical genius” that one finds among English
writers from this time.48
For Bach the Germans did a similar favor, albeit on a smaller scale, by
establishing a link with a musical texture dear to his heart. As the philoso-
pher and music critic C. F. Michaelis put it, music most closely approaches
the sublime in contrapuntal works, because there the “imagination cannot
easily and calmly integrate the diverse ideas into a coherent whole without
strain.” hough this kind of music is not for the faint of heart (its “sublime
notes, figuration and harmonies stimulate the imagination [and] have no
immediately pleasant effect … but an almost violent one of frightful and
terrifying aspect”), Michaelis allows that the musical sublime “appeals …
to men of spirit and sensitivity, men of the noblest intellect.”49 Applying
this explicitly to Bach, Michaelis marvels how, in this composer’s fugues,
“simplicity [in the sublime style] is not always harmed by a diversity of
voices that … unite, cross and seem to bring much variety to the whole.”50
British writers had no need to explain Handel’s counterpoint in this way,
since it is seldom as dense and almost never as thoroughgoing as Bach’s.
For them, the sublime signified the imponderable and massive more than
the complex or the merely busy. Assimilating Bach to this most exalted of
aesthetic categories required a deft turn towards one of the most venerable
and plastic tropes in writing about the sublime: the access it provides to
the divine.
he idea that the sublime could transport the soul was not only intel-
lectually attractive but culturally useful in Restoration England; familiar
since Longinus’s first-century classic On the Sublime, it provided a strong
argument for the continued veneration of such “irregular writers” as
Shakespeare, Milton, and Spenser.51 Joseph Addison’s 1712 Essay on the
Pleasures of the Imagination did much to stimulate thinking on the subject,
as did multiple translations of Longinus, including one (by William Smith,
1739) that remained current in multiple editions into the nineteenth cen-
tury. Fairly quickly the idea moved beyond literature into the other arts,
where it supported the cultural agendas of English society and the British
state. Handel’s adaptation, in his first anthems for the English court and
his earliest English oratorios, of the ceremonial style of Purcell’s generation

48
Claudia L. Johnson, “‘Giant HANDEL’ and the Musical Sublime,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 19/4
(Summer, 1986), 515–533 (524).
49
As cited in le Huray and Day, Music and Aesthetics, 290.
50
C. F. Michaelis, “Ueber das Erhabene in der Musik,” Monatsschrift für Deutsche 1801, pt. 1 (Leipzig,
1801), 49–50: “Übrigens ist der erhabene Styl der Musik im Ganzen zugleich der einfachste. Diese
Einfachheit leidet nicht durch die Mehrheit und Verschiedenheit der Stimmen, welche sich z. B. in
Händelschen oder Sebast. Bachischen Fugen vereinigen, gleichsam durchkreuzen und dadurch in
das Ganze viel Mannichfaltigkeit zu bringen scheinen.”
51
Samuel Monk, he Sublime: A Study of Critical heories in XVIII-Century England (New York:
Modern Languages Association, 1935; Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1960), 26.
 he virtuous fugue: English reception to 1840 133

took advantage of what Alexander Shapiro describes as an indigenous “cult

of the religious sublime,” in which grandiose music in praise of God and
king served similarly intermingled religious and political aims.52 Even here,
before the outsized performing forces of the later eighteenth century, the
sublime was present in both the highflown rhetoric and sheer declamatory
power of works like Zadok the Priest or the final chorus of Esther. Such
muscular music-making would seem to have little in common with Bach
preludes and fugues, yet the latter were regarded by his first champions in
England as both divinely inspired and as evidence of the composer’s great
piety.
his strongly ideological component of the English Bach movement,
something the scholarly literature tends to gloss over as merely local
color, found its strongest voice in Wesley, whose letters and other writ-
ings emphasize Bach’s otherworldliness. Eschewing either a historically
accurate or a modernized Bach, Wesley instead mounted an evangelical
campaign to mythologize “our matchless man (if man he may be called),”
“the irresistible omnipotence of truth,” “our idol,” “our demi-god,” “the
Jupiter of harmonists,” even “Saint Sebastian.”53 Compared to contem-
poraneous German paeans to Bach, which likewise stressed the composer’s
peerless command of harmony and counterpoint but were generally more
grounded in the notes themselves, Wesley’s hyperbole took Bach criticism
to new levels: this composer “was certainly dropped down among us from
Heaven.”54 Fleshing out this messianic portrait, Wesley depicted Bach as
“an exemplary instance of unaffected piety, and of the mildest Christian
virtues,” the preludes and fugues of WTC as deliberately “calculated to
awaken the noblest and most solemn ideas.”55 he parallel with traditional
Christian theology must have been obvious to contemporaries: like Christ
himself, Bach was both human and divine, his preludes and fugues “pre-
cious Relicks,” his oeuvre a “musical Bible.”56 Indeed, Crotch’s description
of the WTC fugues as “profoundly learned … highly ingenious … [their]
prevailing style … the sublime”57 suggests little disagreement among
English devotees as to the proper aesthetic category for these works. Nor
did they quibble with the basic message about the composer himself: “Bach
was a man of grave and serious habits,” according to Wesley’s pupil Henry
Gauntlett, one whose “soul was like a star and dwelt apart,” who inspired
only “high and holy thoughts” in his listeners.58 Such fanciful ideas, which

52
Alexander H. Shapiro, “‘Drama of an Infinitely Superior Nature’: Handel’s Early English Oratorios
and the Religious Sublime,” Music & Letters 74/2 (May, 1993), 215–245.
53
hese epithets are culled from Williams, he Wesley Bach Letters; and Wesley’s “Lectures” and
“Reminiscences.”
54
Letter of December 8, 1808 from Wesley to Jacob, in Olleson, he Letters of Samuel Wesley, 93.
55
Letter of September 30, 1809(?) from Wesley to Horn(?), in ibid., 126.
56
Letter of September 17, 1808 from Wesley to Jacob, in ibid., 77 and 74.
57
Crotch, preface to Specimens.
58
Gauntlett, “John Sebastian Bach & Geo. Frederic Handel,” 145.
134 Engaging Bach

tried to put Bach beyond the reach of criticism, were powerful images
for an age when music itself became a kind of religion, an escape into a
“kingdom not of this world,” to use E. T. A. Hoffmann’s famous phrase.
By cultivating such an exalted conception of Bach and his music, Wesley
and his colleagues preached their gospel and tried to insulate this reper-
tory from either aesthetic objections or simple indifference. With character
and music cut from the same (holy) cloth, Bach became for true believers
a more remote icon than Handel, to be sure, but one whose music could
endlessly enlighten and edify the diligent (not to say pious) student.
Perhaps this is why English composers of this time took from Bach only
general inspiration and not a specific lesson, as had Mozart. Bach’s iconic
status, established at the outset, meant that his music had to be venerated
and savored, not necessarily emulated. (Even Wesley, who enjoyed no small
fame as an organist, had mixed success as a composer: a contemporary who
proclaimed Wesley as Bach’s equal at the organ also observed that Wesley’s
published works were merely “full of scientific combination and effect.”)59
Beyond a heightened interest in counterpoint and fugue, the only substan-
tive thing that composers of this generation seem to have absorbed from
Bach was the trick of combining multiple themes in the same fugue.60 his
was not entirely due to a lack of talent: English society did little to encour-
age high aspirations in the arts, with many a talented musician settling for
the “humble character of a teacher … consenting to be respectable and
happy, rather than great.”61 Of this group Clementi stands out as perhaps
the only composer in turn-of-the-century England whose compositional
style underwent fundamental change as a result of his experience with Bach
and WTC.62

eng li sh pe r f o r ma nce pr actice

he creation in England of essentially a new kind of religious sublime for
Bach strongly affected the choice of both tempo and instrument for the
performance of his keyboard works. By this time writers on music across
Europe had agreed that the musical sublime requires a certain grandeur;
moreover, the custom of playing fugues slowly had been widespread since

59
W. F. H., “To the Editor: Remarks on Instrumental Composers,” Quarterly Musical Magazine and
Review 5/19 (1823), 293.
60
Peter Williams, “J. S. Bach and English Organ Music,” Music & Letters 44 (1963), 140–151.
61
“An Observer,” “On the Present State of the English Musician,” Quarterly Musical Magazine and
Review 5 (1823), 439; as cited in A. V. Beedell, he Decline of the English Musician 1788–1888
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), 59.
62
See Leon B. Plantinga, “Clementi, Virtuosity, and the ‘German Manner,’” Journal of the American
Musicological Society 25 (1972), 303–330 (esp. 327); and Stephen Daw, “Muzio Clementi as an
Original Advocate, Collector and Performer, in Particular of J. S. Bach and D. Scarlatti,” in Bach,
Handel, Scarlatti: Tercentenary Essays, ed. Peter Williams (Cambridge University Press, 1985),
61–74.
 he virtuous fugue: English reception to 1840 135

at least the 1780s.63 Not to be outdone, Wesley insisted on deliberate tempi

in Bach as a pedagogical principal, arguing in the Introduction to Part I
of his edition of WTC that one should learn these pieces slowly, “with that
patient industry which shall secure the true position of every finger upon
its designed key.”64 he choice of instrument in England for Bach’s key-
board music depended more on indigenous practices and beliefs. Among
the Germans this repertory had migrated from the clavichord and harpsi-
chord to the piano, but in early-nineteenth-century England fugues were
by definition organ music. As a result, Bach’s first champions in England
played his keyboard works mostly on the organ.
A number of related causes for this well-known but barely examined
aspect of English performance can be identified:65 the professional circum-
stances and habits of key devotees like Wesley, the existence of an English
genre that closely resembles the prelude and fugue format, the shared con-
viction that the organ best conveys the musical sublime, and the implicit
gender codes of musical genres. Kassler’s work on the identities of the sub-
scribers of the Wesley–Horn edition of WTC suggests a fairly narrow demo-
graphic for its initial reception.66 With 152 subscriptions for 183 copies,
Part I of this edition (Nos. 1 to 12 from Book I of WTC) probably made a
decent profit, but subscription numbers remained flat for subsequent vol-
umes, leaving the editors frustrated and their publisher nervous.67 Despite
both editors’ occasional service at court, there were few subscriptions from
noble or aristocratic patrons; instead, among the 130 men and 22 women
listed on the inside cover of Part I are names of music sellers and publishers,
piano teachers and other musicians, friends of the editors, a few members of
the clergy, and a large number of organists. Wesley and Horn’s subscribers
were, in other words, mostly middle-class professionals, not the dreamy-
eyed maidens of Jane Austen novels, as was once thought.68
63
Mozart’s April 20, 1782 letter to his sister Nannerl notes that “if a fugue is not played slowly, one
cannot distinguish clearly the entries of the subject, and consequently it is of no effect.” As cited in
Warren Kirkendale, Fugue and Fugato in Rococo and Classical Chamber Music (Durham, NC: Duke
University Press, 1979), 158.
64
he entire Introduction to the Wesley–Horn edition of WTC is reproduced in the NBR, 496–498;
and in Kassler, he English Bach Awakening, Fig. 4.2.
65
he classic explanation is given in Percy Young, he Bachs: 1500–1850 (London: J. M. Dent, 1970),
291: “[Since] the English held fast to the idea that the organ was the king of instruments, it was gen-
erally assumed that all Bach’s fugues must have been composed for that instrument.” he ideology
of the organ to which Young alludes was a later phenomenon in England, postdating Wesley and
his contemporaries by several decades.
66
Kassler, “he Bachists of 1810.”
67
On May 10, 1813 Wesley fretted to Jacob that “subscribers in general have been exceedingly remiss”
in placing their orders for Part III (Olleson, he Letters of Samuel Wesley, 203). he edition’s final
installment also notes, on its title page, that “subscribers [sic] names continue to be received.”
68
Pondering the reactions of “sedate ladies and gentlemen” to the Wesley–Horn edition of WTC,
one early-twentieth-century writer could not “easily think of the Forty-eight on the pianofortes of
Miss Amelia Sedley or of Miss Emma Woodhouse”; Richard Capell, “Wesley, Mrs. Oom and the
Forty-Eight,” he Musical Times 61 (March 1, 1920), 170–171 (171). For a trenchant critique of
the actual musical activities of Austen’s heroines, see Arthur Loesser, Men, Women, and Pianos (New
York: Simon and Schuster, 1954), 267–279.
136 Engaging Bach

English organists were a logical audience for the forty-eight preludes

and fugues because their standard genre, the two-part voluntary, pro-
vided a convenient formal model with its slow introduction and livelier,
oftentimes imitative main movement. his rendered generic titles inter-
changeable in a number of early publications: Joseph Diettenhofer’s 1802
Set of Ten Miscellaneous Fugues with Two Introductions and One Voluntary
includes, from Book I of WTC, the C major and C sharp minor Fugues
plus the B minor Prelude, each of which is labeled “Voluntary;” while
Crotch’s 1812 Elements of Musical Composition prescribes that “organ vol-
untaries should consist of fugues, with introductions for the full organ,
upon the model of Sebastian Bach and Handel.”69 One played Bach’s “vol-
untaries” in the customary way, with the preludes on solemn diapasons and
the fugues on brighter registrations. Distribution of the parts between two
or even four hands, with the occasional pedal note realized on pedal pull-
downs (which transmit manual registers to the feet), was the norm until
English organ builders began including independent pedal divisions on
their instruments in the nineteenth century. (he few “pedale” indications
in Wesley’s hand copy of WTC appear beneath those long pedal points
that continue to puzzle keyboard players today: the end of the A minor
Fugue from Book I, for example.) he confluence of these two genres
in England further explains the popularity of certain WTC preludes and
fugues: among the surviving documents from the Surrey Chapel concerts
is a flyer announcing Wesley’s performance of the E flat major and B major
Fugues from Book I,70 both of which resemble a particular kind of English
voluntary (those with imitative second movements) in their straightfor-
ward, two-part allegro themes and avoidance of sophisticated contrapun-
tal devices. he larger, more complex fugues were realized as four-hand
music, as was customary for performance of the largest English voluntar-
ies.71 By mid-century, as Holmes notes, cathedral organists regarded WTC
as the best source of voluntaries for “festival occasions and other musical
solemnities.”72 he considerable number of organists among Wesley’s sub-
scribers suggests that parish organists as well used the forty-eight preludes
and fugues as service music, no doubt adapting these works to suit local

69
Joseph Diettenhofer, A Set of Ten Miscellaneous Fugues with Two Introductions and One Voluntary
for the Organ or the Piano Forte … hird Set (London, [c. 1802]); and William Crotch, Elements of
Musical Composition: Comprehending the Rules of horough Bass, and the heory of Tuning (London,
1812), 120. Additional sources of Bach “voluntaries” in English publications from this time are
listed in Tomita, “Most Ingenious, Most Learned,” Table 3.4.
70
he program for May 21, 1812 lists the key of both preludes and fugues, but no volume number.
Book I seems likely, since it was complete in Wesley’s edition by this date and Book II was not. With
thanks to Oliver Davis and James Dutton of the Department of Portraits and Performance History,
Royal College of Music, London, for their assistance in locating this document.
71
In a note appended to a hand copy Wesley made of various pieces of Bach (New York Public Library,
MS Drexel 5453), Vincent Novello describes how he and Wesley adapted WTC fugues “extempor-
aneously for four hands, as a last Voluntary” for services at the Portuguese Chapel.
72
Holmes, “Progress of Bach’s Music in England,” 192.
 he virtuous fugue: English reception to 1840 137

needs and requirements. he continued use of old tuning systems and

temperaments in English organs was no impediment; one either trans-
posed or simply ignored pieces in remote keys.73
In urban parish churches and chapels especially, where zealous reform-
ers of the Commonwealth had done the most damage, a revival in
English organ-building did much to help the Bach cause. New instru-
ments comprised anywhere from a handful to as many as twenty stops,
spread across one primary and occasionally a smaller secondary manual
division, with pedal pull-downs on the largest organs. London’s Surrey
Chapel, where Benjamin Jacob served as organist for nearly thirty years,
housed a two-manual organ from 1793 by homas Elliott with the follow-
ing disposition:

Great (58-note compass) Swell (37-note compass)

Open diapason I (8´) Open diapason (8´)
Open diapason II (8´) Stopped diapason (8´)
Stopped diapason (8´) Principal (4´)
Principal (4´) Cornet III
Flute (4´) Trumpet (8´)
Twelfth (2 2/3´)
Fifteenth (2´) Pedal pull-downs (1½ octaves)74
Sesquialtera II (bass)
Cornet III (treble)
Mixture II
Trumpet I (8´)
Trumpet II (Swell 8´)

One of the era’s largest instruments, it was praised for “its sweetness of
tone, as well as for its extensive powers, which are so great, that in one of
the hymns descriptive of thunder, many of the audience have fainted.”75 A
better description of the effects of the musical sublime would be hard to
find: the very sound of this organ transported listeners to another plane,
where they momentarily lost consciousness. hough Bach preludes and
fugues surely caused less panic in the pews, they produced similar impres-
sions of wonder and awe, at least from those who first promoted them in

73
In their respective publications Jacob, Horn, and Crotch all either transposed or recommended
transposition for various Bach fugues. his was mostly out of necessity, since some English organs
were still in meantone in the nineteenth century: see Andrew Freeman, Father Smith, Otherwise
Bernard Schmidt, Being an Account of a Seventeenth Century Organ Maker, ed. John Rowntree
(Oxford: Positif Press, 1977), 5.
74
Sometime before this instrument was replaced in 1858, another builder added a set of open pedal
pipes: see Frederick George Edwards, “A Celebrated Nonconformist Organist: Benjamin Jacob, of
Surrey Chapel,” he Nonconformist Musical Journal (April–May, 1890), 57–58, 71–74 (71); and the
preface to Samuel Wesley, Twelve Voluntaries for the Organ, Op. 6, 4 vols., Vol. II, ed. Francis Routh
(St. Louis: Concordia, 1982).
75
Hughson, London, 512. his description of the Surrey Chapel organ is unique in Hughson’s six-
volume study.
138 Engaging Bach

England. he combination was irresistible for Wesley especially: he consid-

ered the organ “of all other [instruments] best fitted for an excitation of the
most solemn and devotional ideas.”76 Acknowledging the fundamental dis-
tinction between WTC and Bach’s pedaliter organ works, Wesley neverthe-
less chose the organ for the forty-eight preludes and fugues because of this
instrument’s “admirable … effect” and “the many tied and holding notes
[that] seem to prove that the organ was the instrument first intended for
them.77 Not everyone agreed: Kollmann for one insisted that Bach had not
written these works for the organ, since they lacked “his principal requisite
for such pieces, being a part for obligato [sic] pedals” (original italics).78
In another thinly veiled criticism, Crotch maintained (following Forkel’s
lead) that the forty-eight preludes and fugues were clavichord works.79 But
Wesley was not alone; Burney and other prominent figures agreed that
Bach fugues belonged on the organ.80
Organ performance was certainly the most common but not the
only option: Wesley occasionally used Bach fugues as entr’actes in larger
orchestral works, in arrangements that used all available instruments. An
1810 review of a Covent Garden concert describes one such performance:
in the middle of his own Organ Concerto in D major, Wesley interpolated
the Fugue in D major from Book I of WTC, which was “first played on
the organ alone by Wesley, and then repeated by the strings; but the clos-
ing bars were played tutti, including trumpets and drums.”81 he progres-
sion from one timbre and dynamic to another mimics a contemporaneous
description of a famous moment in Handel’s “Hallelujah” Chorus, about
which Crotch observed that “the notes to the words, ‘the kingdoms of this
world,’ when performed soft, are beautiful; but when repeated loud, and
with the full band, are sublime.”82 Was this the kind of effect Wesley was
trying to achieve with his arrangement of Bach’s D major Fugue? At the
very least, Wesley’s interest in Bach’s more grandiose keyboard works is
suggestive: just two years later, at the Hanover Square Rooms, Wesley and
Novello played together the latter’s arrangement of the Prelude in E flat
major from the Clavier-Übung, Part III, which was listed for the occasion
76
Wesley, “Lectures,” BL, MS Add. 35015, fo. 97. his was a consistent line of thought in England
from Charles Avison’s Essay on Musical Expression (London, 1752) to William Crotch’s Substance of
Several Courses of Lectures on Music (London, 1831), which maintains that “the deep science of the
organ fugue produces sublimity … in full and florid counterpoint” (as cited in le Huray and Day,
Music and Aesthetics, 286).
77
Wesley, “Reminiscences,” fo. 45.
78
Kollmann, “Of John Sebastian Bach,” 35.
79
Crotch, Substance of Several Courses, 115.
80
See Burney, he Present State of Music, 83; John Casper Heck, he Musical Library and Universal
Magazine of Harmony (London, c. 1780), 18; and Kassler, “he Bachists of 1810,” 321 (the latter on
a music catalogue published in 1817). he belief that Bach’s most learned keyboard music belonged
on the organ was occasionally espoused by continental writers as well: see, for example, BD III,
986a; VI, E7–8; and Klauss’s review of Musical Offering, AMZ 34/1 (January 4, 1832), 6–7.
81
Edwards, “Bach’s Music in England,” 655.
82
Crotch, Substance of Several Courses, as cited in le Huray and Day, Music and Aesthetics, 437 n. 27.
 he virtuous fugue: English reception to 1840 139

as an “Overture” and given as an organ duet with full orchestral accom-

paniment.83 (Whether they played in the French style, with elongated dot-
ted notes, is anyone’s guess.) Gillies Whittaker likewise credits Wesley with
a four-part choral arrangement of the Fugue in F sharp major from WTC
Book I, which had but one word of text: “Hallelujah!”84 Fugues from WTC
ended up in some surprising places: William Russell’s Organ Concerto in
G major (1810) incorporates the Fugue in E major from Book II, while a
comic opera entitled Rich and Poor (1812) by Charles Edward Horn (the
son of Wesley’s sometime business partner) borrows the Fugue in E flat
major from the same book.85 By the late 1820s such things were routine
among highbrow concert promoters, one of whom promised a “Grand
Chorus ‘In Strains Sublime’ arranged by J. C. Clifton, from a fugue com-
posed by J. S. Bach.”86
Despite the many arrangements and the arrival in the 1830s of Bach’s
pedaliter organ works on recital programs of Felix Mendelssohn and
Elizabeth Stirling,87 the custom of performing preludes and fugues from
WTC on the organ remained popular until at least mid-century, partly out
of fealty to one particular subgenre: the stile antico fugue. he straight-
forward counterpoint, minimal figuration, and stately progression of the
Book II Fugues in D major, E flat major, D sharp minor, and E major (all
premised on stile antico-style subjects) make such pieces well suited to the
organ, a fact underlined by their inclusion on Wesley and Jacob’s concert
programs and in publications like Horn’s 1807 collection (see Table 5.3).88
Pianists, unsurprisingly, favored other subgenres: the five Bach fugues in
Clementi’s keyboard tutors (listed in Table 5.2) are all premised on more
modern figural subjects that are more successfully rendered on a non-sus-
taining instrument like the piano.
Distinctions of gender and class also had important consequences for the
reception of Bach’s keyboard music in early-nineteenth-century Britain.
Among people of means, instruments were effectively gendered, with
gentlewomen playing the sedentary harpsichord, pianoforte, or harp (the
domestic instruments) and gentlemen sounding the more mobile violin or
transverse flute. his left the organ to professionals, who came largely from

83
Edwards, “Bach’s Music in England,” 655.
84
W. Gillies Whittaker, he Cantatas of Johann Sebastian Bach, Sacred and Secular, 2 vols., Vol. I
(Oxford University Press, 1959), 354–355.
85
Kassler, “Chronology,” in he English Bach Awakening, 22 and 26.
86
From a flyer for an April 8, 1829 program at the heatre Royal, Drury Lane.
87
Detailed accounts of these programs are given in Russell Stinson, he Reception of Bach’s Organ
Works from Mendelssohn to Brahms (Oxford University Press, 2006), 29–49, 60–73; and Judith
Barger, Elizabeth Stirling and the Musical Life of Female Organists in Nineteenth-Century England
(Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), 72–87.
88
Crotch, Substance of Several Courses, 120, recommends both the E major and the C sharp minor
Fugues from Book I, and notes further about the latter that “if the temperament of the organ be
equal, or if it be transposed into C minor with three flats, [it] is suitable for the church.”
140 Engaging Bach

the lower social orders.89 An ambivalence towards music was common

among the English gentry especially, for whom respectability and finan-
cial success were far more important for young men than intellectual and
leisurely pursuits like music. Genteel young women, on the other hand,
often studied the piano only until marriage, after which child-rearing and
household duties generally took precedence. Notwithstanding exceptional
figures like Caroline Kerby, who played Bach fugues at age thirteen “with
ease and accuracy,”90 most contemporaries considered such music to be
“ugly old-fashioned stuff,” as one reviewer put it.91 Accomplished young
women preferred “brilliant but not difficult” piano pieces, which publish-
ers readily supplied and the better composers regarded as a necessary evil.92
Amateur pianists warmed to Bach only gradually, thanks to publications
from roughly 1820 onwards that featured simplified arrangements of not
only his music but that of Handel, Haydn, and other old masters.93 he
few dozen female subscribers to the Wesley–Horn edition of WTC may
have studied and played the preludes and fugues in private, but between
them and Bach stood two powerful deterrents: the longstanding taboo
against women in the organ loft and the widely held view that music of an
intellectual nature was unsuitable for amateurs of either sex.
For young men whose families had either money or aspirations, musical
studies carried the risk of not only parental but societal disapproval: as
Lord Chesterfield famously warned his son, music “brings [a gentleman]
into a great deal of bad company and takes up a great deal of time, which
might be better employed.”94 Wealthy dilettantes like Peter Beckford,
patron of the youthful Clementi, supported great virtuosos while regard-
ing other musicians with suspicion, particularly those who made their
living in theaters and taverns. Organists garnered more respect, owing
to their church positions and their many upper-class students, but even
cathedral musicians enjoyed few privileges; most traveled the country-
side weekly to teach piano to the daughters of the local gentry.95 Over the
course of the eighteenth century, living standards had eroded for musicians
across Europe as the modern marketplace, with its plethora of low-paying
89
his culture’s gender coding of musical instruments is explored at some length in Richard Leppert,
Music and Image: Domesticity, Ideology and Socio-Cultural Formation in Eighteenth-Century England
(Cambridge University Press, 1988), 107–175.
90
Review of Caroline Kerby, An Introduction, March and Rondo, in he Gentleman’s Magazine 83/1
(May, 1813), 461. On the few female professional pianists of this time, see Nicholas Salwey,
“Women Pianists in Late Eighteenth-Century London,” in Wollenberg and McVeigh, Concert Life
in Eighteenth-Century Britain, 273–290.
91
From a review of the Wesley–Horn edition of WTC in he Gentleman’s Magazine 83 (1813),
59–60.
92
Loesser, Men, Women, and Pianos, 291–292.
93
Several are listed in Tomita, “Most Ingenious, Most Learned,” Table 3.4.
94
From a letter of April 19, 1749 from Philip D. Stanhope, 4th earl of Chesterfield, to his son, in he
Letters of the Earl of Chesterfield to His Son, ed. Charles Strachey, 2 vols., Vol. I (London: Methuen,
1901), 324.
95
See the discussion in Beedell, he Decline of the English Musician, 53–64.
 he virtuous fugue: English reception to 1840 141

positions and infrequent opportunities for real career advancement, slowly

replaced royal and aristocratic patronage. Organists still had steady work,
but the decline in church music standards both on the Continent and in
England forced many to augment their income by teaching large numbers
of students; such was essentially Wesley’s career path, which he himself
denounced as “contemptible, frivolous work.”96 Advancement in the new
Industrial Age was, moreover, tightly restricted: a position as organist for
the established Church of England was, as Arthur Loesser once described
it, the “needle’s eye … through which promising polite young musicians
squirm[ed] into the heaven of British respectability.”97 Methodist or
Catholic musicians like Wesley faced even greater hurdles and often had to
accept less enviable posts. It was, appropriately, in precisely such contexts –
at the nonconformist Surrey Chapel, for example – that the outsider Bach
made his entrée into the public sphere in Britain. His notoriously difficult
keyboard works offered something that one could not get as readily from
either contemporary music or the music of other classical masters: musical
revelation.
hough it took some time for evangelists like Wesley to “play and lec-
ture [this music] into favour,” Burney for one was confident that “all studi-
ous professors and dilettanti male and female” would eventually embrace
Bach.98 One way to ensure this was to emphasize the salutary effects of
Bach’s music on listeners: an 1837 review of Elizabeth Stirling’s first all-
Bach organ recital predicts that once the English “taste … the ‘most sweet
dignity’ of the fugue, when they can relish that spice of eternity in Bach
… then we shall acquire for every species of music an audience the most
desirable.”99 In the same year excerpts from WTC reappeared on a pro-
gram at the Hanover Square Rooms, but this time not on the organ. In
the first of three “Classical Soirées” that signaled a shift towards more ser-
ious recital programs among pianists, Ignaz Moscheles included bits of
Purcell, Handel, Scarlatti, and Bach alongside more contemporary works,
including several of his own.100 For the historical works Moscheles availed
himself of a 1771 Broadwood harpsichord with a Swell mechanism inside
its case, by means of which he could apply dynamics to the “rather thin”

96
Olleson, he Letters of Samuel Wesley, xxxviii.
97
Loesser, Men, Women, and Pianos, 214. And it worked both ways: London churches especially
endeavored to hire organists who would affirm the parish’s respectability: see Christopher Dearnley,
English Church Music 1650–1750 (Oxford University Press, 1970), 173.
98
Olleson, he Letters of Samuel Wesley, 61 n. 9.
99
From an 1837 Atlas review, as cited in Sidney Grew, “Bach in England: A Century Ago,” he British
Musician and Musical News (August, 1935), 185.
100
See Janet Ritterman and William Weber, “Origins of the Piano Recital in England, 1830–1870,”
in Ellsworth and Wollenberg, he Piano in Nineteenth-Century British Culture, 176. In the preface
to this volume, Ellsworth and Wollenberg describe (p. 5) a “fundamental division … growing dur-
ing the nineteenth century between virtuosic playing and classical interpretation … A developing
canon of piano works formed a core against which ‘early music’ by J. S. Bach, Handel, Couperin,
Rameau and Scarlatti … were highlighted.”
142 Engaging Bach

sound of this instrument.101 he success of such ventures encouraged fur-

ther outings with more substantial repertoire: Moscheles’s performance of
Bach’s Concerto in D minor, with accompanying quartet, won praise from
reviewers who took the opportunity to ask for even earlier music on his
next programs,102 and his private performance of another Bach concerto
moved the Duke of Cambridge to listen “with the greatest of enthusiasm,”
according to a first-hand report from Moscheles’s daughter.103 he influ-
ential critic François-Joseph Fétis likewise praised Moscheles’s historical
piano recitals to the skies, regretting only the “very small number of pian-
ists” who dared play such music, “because the necessary technique … is
nearly incompatible with contemporary musical practice.”104
he steadily broadening engagement with Bach’s music in England also
depended on the ability of students to shuttle between new and old music
with ease. With the rise of institutionalized music instruction in the mid
nineteenth century, this kind of technical facility became more common,
and as a result, Bach’s music gradually became an essential part of the piano
repertory. For pianists like Cipriani Potter, who taught for many years at the
Royal Academy of Music (from its founding in 1822), WTC was a mark
of distinction: he had memorized the entire collection in his youth, and
doubtless had his students do the same.105 Along with Clementi’s Gradus
ad Parnassum, WTC fairly quickly became part of a rigorous curriculum for
piano students, one that emphasized music of a serious nature and eschewed
the empty virtuosity of operatic transcriptions and popular variations, as
new conservatories and schools of music opened their doors across Europe.
Lingering questions in England about the correct instrument for this col-
lection died out gradually, as organists and audiences came to appreciate
Bach’s large pedaliter organ works. he impression of Bach as “a gigantic
image before us, rather wondered at than understood” endured, however,
especially in commentary on WTC. By uniting here (and elsewhere) “all the
secrets of the most abstract and subtle harmonic combinations with true
beauty and sublimity,” as one editor put it, “[Bach] became thereby the
teacher and lawgiver to all future times.”106

101
Charlotte Moscheles, ed., Life of Moscheles, with Selections from His Diaries and Correspondence,
trans. A. D. Coleridge, 2 vols., Vol. II (London: Hurst and Blakett, 1873), 23.
102
Ibid.
103
Emil F. Smidak, Isaak-Ignaz Moscheles: he Life of the Composer and His Encounters with Beethoven,
Liszt, Chopin and Mendelssohn (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1989), 145.
104
François-Joseph Fétis, “Concerts historiques de la musique de piano,” Revue et Gazette Musicale
de Paris 5/6 (February 11, 1838), 65: “On sait, en effet, qu’il n’existe plus aujourd’hui qu’un
très-petit nombre de pianists en état d’exécuter l’ancienne musique de Scarlatti, et surtout celle de
Jean-Sébastien Bach, parce que les habitudes de doigté qu’il faut pour cette musique sont presque
incompatibles avec les habitudes contractées dans la musique.”
105
Walter Macfarren, “he Past Principals of the Royal Academy of Music,” RAM Club Magazine
(October, 1900), 5.
106
Robert Cocks, “Address” to the 1838 English edition of Le clavecin bien tempéré … Edition nouvelle
… par Charles Czerny (Leipzig: C. F. Peters, 1837), as cited in Tomita, “Most Ingenious, Most
Learned,” 54.
 ch apter 

Bach for whom? Modes of interpretation and

performance, 1820–1850

By the second quarter of the nineteenth century, Bach was no longer a

complete stranger to quotidian musical life in Europe, thanks to the inter-
est of prominent musicians and writers in his keyboard works especially
and their promotion of these pieces in various media and contexts, from
the German musical press to the London concert stage. hough not yet
truly popular, Bach’s music certainly commanded broader attention than
it had in the late eighteenth century. Amateur musicians now had access to
the keyboard and organ works in published editions, and as editions pro-
liferated, certain pieces began to enter the repertory: preludes and fugues
from WTC, for example, in England. A few of Bach’s concerted works
appeared on public programs during the early years of the century as well.
he first such performances, of the Concerto in D minor, BWV 1052, and
the Fifth “Brandenburg” Concerto in 1807 and 1808, respectively, fea-
tured as principal soloist none other than Sara Levy, Felix Mendelssohn’s
great aunt and a pupil of W. F. Bach, under the direction of Berlin Sing-
Akademie founder and Bach enthusiast C. F. Zelter.1 Over the next few
decades, thanks in part to the enthusiasm generated by the revivals of his
passion settings, leading pianists began to include works by Bach on their
recital programs while amateurs continued to come to grips with this fam-
ously impenetrable composer at home. Bridging the gap between public
and private reception were editions that incorporated, for the first time,
specific ideas about interpretation. With these new pedagogically oriented
editions, transmission of the finer points of performing style (what we now
call performance practice) began to shift away from one-on-one instruction
(from teacher to student) towards a modern mass-media model (from edi-
tor to consumer). Getting more people to play Bach’s music was the point,
and increasing amounts of interpretive assistance made that possible.
But popularizing his work was not the only aim of the incipient Bach
industry. he most significant long-term development in nineteenth-

1
See Andreas Glöckner, “‘Ich habe den alten Bachen wieder lebendig gemacht, aber er hat mich
weidlich schwitzen lassen’ – Carl Friedrich Zelter und die Bach-Aufführungen der Sing-Akademie
zu Berlin,” in “Zu groß, zu unerreichbar”: Bach-Rezeption im Zeitalter Mendelssohns und Schumanns,
ed. Anselm Hartinger, Christoph Wolff, and Peter Wollny (Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Härtel, 2007),
329–355.

143
144 Engaging Bach

century Bach reception was the founding, in 1850, of the Bach-Gesellschaft,

the scholarly society that set new standards for complete-works editions of
the music of major composers. he Bach-Gesellschaft set out to do what
had not yet been accomplished: to publish all of Bach’s compositions in
a critical edition, with texts representing the final, finished state of each
work as best could be determined from the known sources. he sheer scale
of this project must have given its founders pause; that it required some
fifty years to accomplish reflects the complexity and difficulty of such an
enterprise. Intended primarily for professionals and scholars, such an edi-
tion has obvious virtues: first and foremost, it establishes an authoritative
text. Interpretive questions are left mostly unaddressed, with editorial sug-
gestions kept to a minimum or even relegated to the critical apparatus.
his society’s rigorous methodology determined not only the contents but
the physical dimensions of its Gesamtausgabe, whose volumes fit comfort-
ably on the bookshelf but not on the music rack.
he consumer-driven side of Bach publishing, by contrast, continued to
reflect the more democratic goals first propounded by Forkel and Rochlitz
around 1800: to disseminate Bach’s music among the better amateurs;
eager students; and kleiner Geister, the upwardly bound young profession-
als of this age. For those who might otherwise sit helpless before the notes,
editions often included general guidance in the form of an introduction or
a foreword, and from the late 1830s onwards, an increasing number also
incorporated interpretive indications as part of the musical text. he latter
typically went beyond rudimentary fingerings or fugue analyses; instead,
the most progressive Bach editions of this time reflect a particular man-
ner of playing these works, with added tempo, dynamic, articulation, and
phrase markings. hough such things were of inestimable value to many,
these editions were by no means universally sanctioned; on the contrary,
they caused more than a few influential figures to question the nature and
purpose of the published musical text. Any attempt to fix an interpretation
on the page – especially for the music of a composer who left little beyond
the notes themselves – was bound to offend those who preferred to do
the interpretive heavy lifting on their own, just as it still does: musicolo-
gists and Bach scholars in particular have long condemned such editions
as inauthentic and misleading, proof of an “intrinsically hollow … con-
ception of Bach.”2 But the best-known editions of this type reflect more
than just a single individual’s ideas about Bach performance; some in fact
incorporate venerable practices whose central features are still with us, even
if the overall impression they convey is one of utter predictability.
Pedagogical editions of Bach’s keyboard works proliferated towards mid-
century, as editors and publishers responded to evolving tastes, the needs

2
Friedrich Blume, Two Centuries of Bach: An Account of Changing Taste, trans. Stanley Godman
(London: Oxford University Press, 1950), 71.
 Modes of interpretation and performance, 1820–1850 145

of students and amateurs, and changes in instrument design. Arguments

for particular approaches to this repertory can also be found in contem-
poraneous tutors and treatises, in the musical press, and in the surviving
correspondence of movers and shakers in the field. From this wealth of
information, this final chapter reconstructs the central values and features
of the primary modes of Bach interpretation between roughly 1820 and
1850, and, in so doing, revisits an awkward debate about more than just
the finer points of performance practice. hough the promotion of this or
that way of playing Bach is easiest to see in the new pedagogical editions,
the absence of such advice in other editions by no means implied a lack of
strong views about Bach or his music on the part of those responsible for
them, as we shall see.

the vi ennese tradi ti o n

hough shunned today by most serious musicians, when new the peda-
gogical editions of the nineteenth century were the most effective means
yet devised for raising public interest in Bach’s music, even if critical opin-
ion about the worth of individual readings was divided from the start. he
several volumes of Bach keyboard works edited by Carl Czerny for C. F.
Peters, Leipzig successor to the Hoffmeister & Kühnel firm, are a case
in point. Czerny’s edition of WTC, the first of its kind in Bach publish-
ing, remains the most problematic of these volumes, thanks in part to its
remarkable longevity and various editorial accretions.3 Its initial appear-
ance in 1837 began a lengthy debate about the merits of such editions:
esteemed figures like Robert Schumann had little use for Czerny’s ideas
while others found things to admire.4 Our general assumption about such
editions, that they convey only idiosyncratic or “romantic” ideas about
Bach performance, is, in this case at least, not entirely correct: Czerny
aimed to preserve a historical way of playing these pieces, one whose roots
can be seen in Mozart’s arrangements of several WTC fugues (among other
sources) and whose most essential aspects, I would argue, are still with
us. Players of historical and modern keyboards alike still rigorously fore-
ground each and every statement of the fugue subject, relegate episodic
material to the acoustic background, and assume that a fugue builds to
some kind of dynamic or contrapuntal climax just before its end – just as
a famous pianist and pedagogue from Vienna once did.

3
hough it doesn’t say so, the familiar Library of Musical Classics reprint from G. Schirmer silently
incorporates more than just Czerny’s original markings.
4
In a letter to Clara Schumann from March of 1878, Johannes Brahms writes: “Czerny’s fingering is
particularly worthy of attention. In fact I think that people today ought to have more respect for this
excellent man.” Berthold Litzmann, ed., Letters of Clara Schumann and Johannes Brahms, 2 vols., Vol.
II (New York: Vienna House, 1971), 29.
146 Engaging Bach

In the preface to his edition of Book I of WTC, Czerny named Beethoven,

with whom he had studied these pieces, as the ultimate source for his per-
formance suggestions for Bach’s forty-eight preludes and fugues. Whether
or not one trusts Czerny’s memory for detail (his studies with Beethoven
ended some twenty years earlier), one can hardly fault his strategy: in 1837
there was no more powerful musical authority.5 By way of explanation,
Czerny notes that the indicated fingering seeks “to keep the hands in a
quiet position [and] to keep each individual part separate and distinct.”
His recommended tempi and other interpretive indications reflect “the
unmistakable character of each movement” and what he learned about
these pieces not just from Beethoven’s example but from some thirty
years of playing and thinking about them. In a subsequent book on key-
board performance, published simultaneously in German and in English,6
Czerny was more explicit, giving a list of “rules for the performance of
fugues on the fortepiano.” Offering his method as an antidote to the “ele-
gant” style of virtuosic playing then popular among pianists, he insists that
“as often as the principal subject recurs, and especially when it forms an
inner part, it must be struck louder than the parts which accompany it.”
Countersubjects “must likewise be marked, though somewhat less than the
principal subject.” Consistency in delivery was the key: articulation and
expression of the fugue subject “must be exactly imitated … in whatever
part it may occur.”7 Continuous legato was of course the norm, but it was
only a general rule; absolute clarity in all the parts and the prominence of
the fugue subject in the texture were more important concerns. An orderly,
hierarchical display was, for Czerny, paramount: each part in a fugue, he
maintains, must “proceed from beginning to end in a strictly consistent
manner.”8
Another well-known Viennese pianist held similar views about the per-
formance of fugues: Johann Nepomuk Hummel’s 1828 recommendations
for keyboard works in the strict style include some of the same maxims,
including the rule that all “entrances of the [fugue] subjects must be some-
what forcibly marked, that they may not escape the observation of the
ear.”9 hough ideas about basic keyboard touch have certainly changed

5
Alice Mitchell, “Carl Czerny,” in New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 20 vols., Vol. V
(London: Macmillan, 1980), 140, cites an 1824 letter in which Czerny admits to an ambiguous
relationship with Beethoven and claims instead to have learned everything from his father. he letter
in question is published in Friedrich Schnapp, “Carl Czerny: Ein autobiographischer Brief aus dem
Jahre 1824,” Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 108 (1941), 89–96.
6
Carl Czerny, Die Kunst des Vortrags der älteren und neueren Klavier-Kompositionen: Vollständige theo-
retisch-practische Pianoforte-Schule, Op. 500, 4 vols., Vol. IV (Vienna: Diabelli, 1846). Subsequent
references make occasional use of John Bishop’s English translation, entitled he Art of Playing the
Ancient and Modern Piano Forte Works (London: Cocks, n.d.).
7
Czerny, he Art of Playing, 125.
8
Czerny, Die Kunst des Vortrags, 122.
9
Johann Nepomuk Hummel, A Complete heoretical and Practical Course of Instructions on the Art of
Playing the Piano Forte, 3 vols., Vol. II (London: Boosey, [c. 1828]), 297.
 Modes of interpretation and performance, 1820–1850 147

since Czerny and Hummel’s day, their respective instructions sound all
too familiar: what keyboard student hasn’t been taught to emphasize
subject entries and to respect the independence of each part in fugue?
Yet Czerny heard otherwise; there are many, he complains, who remain
ignorant of the “most perfect interpretation” of the works of the classic
masters. As a kind of corrective to the “confused” or deliberately “monot-
onous” manner in which old-style counterpoint was commonly played, he
argued the virtues of a more traditional mode of interpretation for fugues
especially, one whose basic features have had extraordinary staying power.
Emphasizing the contrast with contemporary pianism, Czerny notes that
“the performance of a short, simple and clear-looking fugue is often more
difficult than many a modern piece consisting of several thousand notes.”
he performer, Czerny continues, must simply rise to the challenge and
play fugues “with unconstrained lightness, clarity and frequently also in a
rapid degree of movement, without having recourse to the modern aids of
pianoforte playing.”10
Rejecting an over-reliance on both the sustain pedal and legato touch,
Czerny promoted instead a manner of playing Bach fugues whose general
outlines can be traced back to an earlier circle of Viennese connoisseurs:
those who attended Gottfried van Swieten’s Sunday salons. he quartet
transcriptions that Mozart prepared for these gatherings, to cite but the
best-known examples of Bach sources from this milieu, anticipate in a num-
ber of respects Czerny’s and Hummel’s ideas on the proper performance
of fugues. Most instructive in this regard is the collection now known as
K. 405, which contains string quartet transcriptions of fugues in C minor,
D major, E flat major, D sharp minor (transposed to D minor), and E
major from Book II of WTC. hese transcriptions, though frequently cited,
are not well known, perhaps because of the paucity of editions.11 Close
examination reveals them to be not as faithful to Bach’s texts of the fugues as
some writers have made them out to be: these are idiomatic transcriptions,
not merely cut-up parts of each fugal voice.12 While transcribing, Mozart
made a number of changes to the musical text, some of which were born of
necessity (problems of range, for example) while others serve less immedi-
ately apparent purposes. In this latter, more interesting category are added

10
Czerny, he Art of Playing, 120; Die Kunst des Vortrags, 122. he prolific critic and scholar François-
Joseph Fétis shared this view: in an 1838 review he observes that old music, though “simple in
appearance,” nevertheless poses “great difficulties precisely on account of its simplicity,” something
most musicians apparently could neither deliver nor appreciate properly. François-Joseph Fétis,
“Concerts historiques de la musique de piano,” Revue et Gazette Musicale de Paris 5/6 (February 11,
1838), 62–64 (62).
11
To date there is only one published edition (Wolfenbüttel: Möseler Verlag, 1980). A transcription
of Mozart’s manuscript is included in Warren Kirkendale, “KV 405: Ein unveröffentlichtes Mozart-
Autograph,” Mozart Jahrbuch 10 (1962/1963), 140–155.
12
Friedhelm Krummacher, in “Bach- und Händel-Traditionen,” Handbuch der Musikwissenschaft
V: Die Musik des 18. Jahrhunderts (Laaber Verlag, 1985), 383–395 (391), notes incorrectly that
“though Mozart introduced changes in Handel, he did not interfere in Bach’s music.”
148 Engaging Bach

Example 6.1 J. S. Bach/W. A. Mozart, Fugue in C minor,

K. 405/BWV 871/2, mm. 23–25

Example 6.2 J. S. Bach/W. A. Mozart, Fugue in C minor,

K. 405/BWV 871/2, mm. 16–18

articulation marks and voicing rearrangements whose net effect is to high-

light thematic entries, including those Bach had cleverly concealed either
by eliding an entering subject’s first note with the last note of the preceding
phrase or by burying the new entry in a thick contrapuntal texture.
A number of passages in the K. 405 transcriptions may be cited in this
regard. In Example 6.1 added articulation marks in the second violin and
viola parts of the C minor Fugue’s final stretto make more emphatic two
subject entries that might otherwise have been obscured by the close entry
of the first violin (which, because of its prominence in the texture, may
not have required special treatment). Elsewhere in the same transcription
(Ex. 6.2), similar markings foreground two other thematic entries (in m.
17, viola; and in m. 18, violin II, respectively). here are, of course, other
means to the same end: Example 6.3 shows Mozart dividing a single line
and assigning the subject entry to another player. In all cases a keen atten-
tion to subject entries is plain; Mozart himself confirms this penchant in
a well-known letter to his sister, in which he observes that “if a fugue is
not played slowly, one cannot distinguish clearly the entries of the subject,
and consequently it is of no effect.”13 Despite their obvious difference of
opinion about the proper tempi for fugues, Mozart’s transcriptions, like
Czerny’s rules, make some of the most intricate moments in the Bach
fugues more lucid, the counterpoint easier on both eye and ear.

13
Letter of April 20, 1782, as cited in Warren Kirkendale, Fugue and Fugato in Rococo and Classical
Chamber Music (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1979), 158.
 Modes of interpretation and performance, 1820–1850 149

Example 6.3 (a) W. A. Mozart/J. S. Bach, Fugue in C minor, K. 405/BWV 871/2, mm.
9–10; (b) J. S. Bach, Fugue in C minor, BWV 871/2, mm. 9–10
(a)

(b)

heir similar ideas about playing Bach fugues may have had something
to do with the similar circumstances under which Mozart and Czerny came
to know this repertory. Like Mozart, who went to van Swieten’s home to
study and play music of Bach, Handel, and other old masters, Czerny first
encountered Bach’s music in the home of a Viennese nobleman and con-
noisseur of old music, privy councilor Franz Joseph von Heß.14 he regular-
ity and high caliber of these (still essentially aristocratic) musical gatherings
ensured not only respectable performances but vigorous debate about the
repertory and how to play it. he imperative to highlight fugue subject
entries imposed a kind of acoustic logic on the genre. As Charles Rosen
has observed, apropos Mozart’s Bach playing, “it … became imperative to
allow the listeners to perceive what went on in the fugue, to give them an
idea how the individual voices moved, where the theme was.” And yet, this
was “not a consideration that would have occurred to Bach, and it shows
to what extent the change from private to public music entailed radical
changes in performance only thirty years after [Bach’s] death.”15 Although
the venues were hardly public in the modern sense, and although we don’t
really know Bach’s views on this subject, Rosen is right to note the change
in listener expectations in this genre. he old conception of fugue – as a
rigorously discursive musical procedure, a means of exploring the contra-
puntal implications of one or several subjects – had largely been replaced
by an understanding of fugue as a genre with an eminently rational tele-
ology, one whose individual “events” (subject entries) progress towards

14
Carl Czerny, Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben, ed. W. Kolneder (Strasbourg and Baden-Baden,
1968), 16.
15
Charles Rosen, “he Shock of the Old,” he New York Review of Books 37/12 (July 19, 1990), 46–52
(50).
150 Engaging Bach

some kind of musical denouement and, in so doing, largely constitute the

work’s import.
Mozart and his companions were, moreover, physically embodying the
music and putting it on display by playing each contrapuntal voice on
a different instrument. In Bach’s day the very nature of a collection like
WTC meant that its many lessons were typically absorbed gradually, and
mostly through private communion at the keyboard with the musical text.
A systematic emphasis on subject entries was unnecessary, since this music
was designed principally for the eyes, ears, and fingers of a single player.
Even with an audience present, such a practice might have frustrated
those who took delight in the unexpected, a central value in late Baroque
music. Johann Mattheson’s thoughts on stretto (from Der vollkommene
Capellmeister, 1739) put this issue in perspective:
he nearer the voices [in fugue] follow on each other’s heels … the more unex-
pectedly this surprise is perceived. hey sometimes appear above, sometimes in the
middle, sometimes below, without being too greatly restricted as regards sequence
… One might as well say … to the theme: “Look! You are here again; I did not
consider that; I would not have sought you in this place.”16
A similar mindset is suggested by C. P. E. Bach’s famous description of his
father’s extraordinary ability to predict the contrapuntal potential of fugue
subjects. In a letter to Forkel, Emanuel remembers that Sebastian, upon
hearing the beginning of a “rich and many-voiced fugue,” could determine
directly “what contrapuntal devices it would be possible to apply, and which
of them the composer by rights ought to apply.”17 Although the elder Bach
(who apparently had better ears than Mattheson) was delighted when his
expectations were fulfilled, his was clearly an exceptional talent and by no
means the norm for his day. By century’s end fugue elicited a substantially
different kind of response and prompted a new set of expectations: Mozart
and his companions needed to ferret out even hidden or elliptical subject
entries because all “events” in a fugue needed to be both audible and con-
sistent, just as Czerny, Hummel, and others would mandate decades later.
Since Bach did not always comply, his fugues were subtly altered.
In an interesting historical coincidence, Mozart made his transcriptions
during the same year that J. F. Reichardt articulated, in his short-lived
Musikalisches Kunstmagazin, a similar value system for fugue. In his discus-
sion of the Fugue in F minor from Book II of WTC (examined in detail
in Chapter 1), the Berlin critic observes that the “great and rare merit” of

16
Johann Mattheson, Der vollkommene Capellmeister (Hamburg, 1739), 388, as adapted from Johann
Mattheson’s Der vollkommene Capellmeister: A Revised Translation with Critical Commentary, ed.
and trans. Ernest C. Harriss (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1981) in Laurence Dreyfus, “Matters
of Kind: Genre and Subgenre in Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, Book I,” in A Bach Tribute: Essays in
Honor of William Scheide, ed. Paul Brainard and Ray Robinson (Kassel: Bärenreiter; Chapel Hill:
Hinshaw, 1994), 101–119 (117).
17
BR, 277.
 Modes of interpretation and performance, 1820–1850 151

this fugue stems from its preponderance of “expressive melody,” and the
fact that “the restatements of the theme are so clear and penetrating …
the progression of all the voices is so natural and unentangled.”18 By the
mid nineteenth century, pianists could no longer afford to be so choosy;
instead, they used the dynamic and accentual potential of their instru-
ment to lend clarity to all fugues, even those with complex voice lead-
ing. Hence Ignaz Moscheles, in his enormously influential Studies for the
Pianoforte (first published in 1828) notes that “the proper execution of a
fugue requires that the subject and its secondary should be distinctly and
prominently marked, whether they appear openly or involved [with other
voices].”19 Even Franz Liszt, the supposed bad boy of nineteenth-century
pianism, maintained that in fugue one should “play the theme at each
return in the same style and rhythm.”20 Whether such things ought to be
notated in an edition was another matter, however. Interestingly, few seem
to have wondered whether Bach himself played fugues this way, though
Carl Maria von Weber at least once ventured that the true “enjoyment” of
Bach’s music lies in “the richness of [its] harmonic structure,” on account
of which “the external melodic contour does not stand out with that prom-
inence which our vitiated ear requires.”21

t he f ork el tradi ti on an d th e
problemati c vi rtuos o
How Bach played and heard his own keyboard works may not have con-
cerned Mozart or Czerny, but it was of great importance to people like
Friedrich Konrad Griepenkerl. In 1820 this student of Forkel prepared for
the Peters firm an edition of the Chromatic Fantasy, in which he argued
that Bach’s music
must necessarily be treated objectively. Any romanticizing and decoration is,
therefore, as is anything fashionable, subjective and individual, banned from their
performance. Anyone who would like to draw them into a contemporary, or any
other particular time, without having the sensibility and training to allow his
mood to be dictated by the art work alone, would thereby unmistakably misplace
and destroy them.22
Getting at “the art work alone” meant tapping into the correct tradition,
which in this case began with Sebastian Bach himself, who bequeathed

18
Ibid., 456.
19
Ignaz Moscheles, Studies for the Pianoforte, Op. 70 (New York: G. Schirmer, 1916), 95.
20
Russell Stinson, he Reception of Bach’s Organ Music from Mendelssohn to Brahms (Oxford University
Press, 2006), 125.
21
As cited by John Sullivan Dwight in “he Study of Bach,” Dwight’s Journal of Music 20/10
(December 7, 1861), 284n.
22
As cited in J. S. Bach, Chromatische Fantasie und Fugue, ed. Ulrich Leisinger and Michael Behringer
(Vienna: Schott/Universal, 1999), xiii.
152 Engaging Bach

his secrets to his son Wilhelm Friedemann, who passed these things to
Forkel, who in turn taught Griepenkerl, who proudly spelled out this lin-
eage on the title page of his edition. In the same foreword Griepenkerl
promoted an old-fashioned hand position, “with the fingers and thumb
bending towards the inner hand” and consistent fingerings for repeated
musical figures, both essential for achieving the “clarity,” the “sobriety,
effortlessness, and freedom” of this venerable school of playing.23 Central
to the Forkel tradition was a subtlety of touch and a “penetrating sense
of declamation,” a way of making the keyboard “sound like a many-
voiced choir,” as Griepenkerl later described it in correspondence with
Carl Gotthelf Siegmund Böhme, proprietor of the Peters firm from 1828
onwards. Hardest to achieve was the soulful yet perfectly poised Baroque
adagio; Griepenkerl complains that the young virtuosos of his day were
incapable of making the instrument sing, “and Bach’s works must, with all
their art, be sung.” Modesty, he observes, is the one thing missing in most
pianists’ approach to Bach; Chopin was apparently the only exception to
the general rule of loud and fast.24
Griepenkerl objected strongly to extreme tempi, which he saw in abun-
dance in the volumes Czerny had edited for the Peters Oeuvres complets.
In the same letter to Böhme, on the topic of the C major Invention,
Griepenkerl remembers that “the old masters said that this piece must
sound as if two angels are playing on a cloud in bright sunlight. If played
allegro the piece becomes a senseless jangling.”25 Acknowledging that there
was no single tempo for such a work, Griepenkerl advocated moderation,
so that nothing would be missed or slighted somehow in performance.
Interestingly, his correspondence with Böhme suggests that even the most
admired Bach players were not immune to extremes: Felix Mendelssohn,
Böhme complains, often erred on the fast side towards playing that was
“unclear and lacking good singing quality.”26
Mendelssohn’s performance of the Chromatic Fantasy was a case in
point: his arpeggios were “brilliant,” though his addition of lower octaves
made these same figures a bit too ponderous for Böhme’s taste.27 Agreeing
that the arpeggios in this work should not sound labored, Griepenkerl con-
sidered it “impossible to ascertain the correct execution of arpeggios and
recitative without consulting tradition.”28 In the foreword to his edition of
the work, Griepenkerl thus summarized Forkel’s manner with this music,

23
BD VI, E9.
24
Letter of April 24, 1842 from Griepenkerl to Böhme, in Karen Lehmann, Die Anfänge einer Bach-
Gesamtausgabe 1801–1865: Editionen der Klavierwerke durch Hoffmeister und Kühnel (Bureau de
musique) und C. F. Peters in Leipzig 1801–1865 (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 2004), 438–440.
25
Ibid., 440: “Die alten sagten, dieses Stück müsse klingen, wie wenn zwei Engel auf einer Wolke
im hellen Sonnenschein sich mit einander unterhielten. Spielt man es Allegro, dann wird es ein
sinnloses Geklingel.”
26
Letter of May 9, 1842 from Böhme to Griepenkerl, in ibid., 463.
27
Ibid.
28
Letter of May 15, 1842 from Griepenkerl to Böhme, in ibid., 472.
 Modes of interpretation and performance, 1820–1850 153

advising pianists to render Bach’s arpeggios “as brilliantly and lightly as

possible.” Clarity must be achieved, he writes, “without the merging of
the notes, and with increasing and decreasing strength according to the
unmistakable sense of the harmonies.”29 So a little ebb and flow, according
to this tradition, follows the general sense of the harmonic progression,
and a judicious use of the sustain pedal seems not out of the question. But
Griepenkerl thought Mendelssohn went too far with such things, and in
fact, the latter’s own words confirm a more modern and thoroughly pian-
istic approach.
Comparing himself favorably to Sigismund halberg, who was also
fond of sustained and doubled arpeggios in the Chromatic Fantasy,
Mendelssohn describes as follows, in a letter to his sister Fanny, his adap-
tation of Bach’s score:
I permit myself the freedom to render the arpeggios with all sorts of crescendos
and pianos and fortes, with pedal of course, and with the bass notes doubled.
Furthermore, at the beginnings of the arpeggios I emphasize the little connecting
notes (the quarter notes in the middle voices, for example), just as I do occasion-
ally with melodic notes when the same thing happens, thereby adapting these
remarkable harmonic progressions to our stout new pianos.30
He even wrote out a few bars to demonstrate. In those places where the
various sources for this work give half-note chords plus an indication to
arpeggiate, Mendelssohn added a lower octave in the bass and repeated
each arpeggio; he also gave considerable weight to all passing tones, as a
kind of superimposed melody, and occasionally changed a bass note or har-
mony to suit his taste (Ex. 6.4). hough neither Griepenkerl nor Böhme
dared to confront Mendelssohn directly about such things, neither seems
to have cared much for the steady waves of highly rhythmic arpeggios that
result from such a practice.
In 1848 the Berlin critic Adolf Bernhard Marx likewise advocated
taking advantage of the dynamic capabilities of modern pianos in the
Chromatic Fantasy, and for playing its arpeggios so that they resound fully
from the instrument. he harpsichord’s impoverished sound, he argues in
an essay published in the AMZ, require a completely different manner of
playing than do modern pianos. Pouring cold water on the Forkel trad-
ition, as reinforced in an 1847 reprint of Volume IV of the Oeuvres complets
(re-edited by Griepenkerl), Marx warns that a “mute respect for tradition”
is the quickest way to betray a composer’s intentions and to lose sight of

29
As cited in Bach, Chromatische Fantasie, xiii.
30
Letter of November 14, 1840 from Felix Mendelssohn to Fanny Hensel (BD VI, E9):
Ich erlaube mir nämlich die Freiheit, [die Arpeggien] mir allen möglichen cresendos und pianos
und ff’s zu machen, Pedal versteht sich, und dazu die Baßnoten zu verdoppeln. Ferner die kleinen
durchgehenden Noten (die viertel in den Mittelstimmen u.s.w.) zu Anfang des Arpeggios zu
markiren, ebenso zuweilen die Melodie Note wie es gerade kommt, und dann thun die einzigen
Harmoniefolgen auf den dicken neueren Flügeln wohl.
154 Engaging Bach

Example 6.4 J. S. Bach, Chromatic Fantasy, BWV 903: (a) m. 27 and

Felix Mendelssohn’s adaptation; (b) m. 47 and Mendelssohn’s adaptation

(a)

cresc.

(b)

simili

an honest interpretation of the work.31 A month later, also in the pages of

the AMZ, Griepenkerl retorted that an “old artwork without its traditional
execution is a historical fiction; its new interpretation might be beautiful
but has little lasting worth, except as subjective caprice.”32 Marx’s fondness
for sustain in the arpeggiated passages of the Chromatic Fantasy, while
repeating the notes up and down as Mendelssohn and halberg (among
others) did, would cause the “ruptured chords to grate against each other,
producing an unmusical effect.”33 Such a practice, to Griepenkerl’s way
of thinking, imposed a new rhythmic stratum (“eine höhere Rhythmik”)

31
Adolf Bernhard Marx, “Seb. Bach’s chromatische Fantasie,” AMZ 50/3 (January 19, 1848), 33–41,
esp. 36–37 (BD VI, B95). Cf. Karen Lehmann, “‘Eines der vortrefflichsten Kunstwerke, die aus
deutschem Geist entsprossen sind’: Zur Rezeption von Bachs chromatischer Fantasie und Fugue
im Zeitalter Mendelssohns und Schumanns,” in Hartinger, Wolff, and Wollny, Bach-Rezeption im
Zeitalter Mendelssohns und Schumanns, 357–366 (365).
32
Friedrich Konrad Griepenkerl, “Noch einmal: J. S. Bach’s chromatische Phantasie,” AMZ 50/7
(February 16, 1848), 97–100 (97): “Das alte Kunstwerk ist ohne seinen traditionellen Vortrag
eine historische Unwahrheit, die zwar in der neuen Auffassung recht hübsch sein mag, aber keinen
höheren Werth hat, als eine subjective Laune.”
33
Ibid: “Durch rasche Brechung von unten nach oben beim Festhalten aller Töne, wie Herr Prof.
Marx diese Arpeggien will vorgetragen habe, werden die Akkorde abgerissen an einander gereibt,
wie sie fast keine Musik mehr sind.”
 Modes of interpretation and performance, 1820–1850 155

on Bach’s arpeggios and was simply too great an accommodation to the

modern piano. Even Liszt and Meyerbeer managed to play this work with
enough of the Forkel tradition to satisfy Griepenkerl, but Marx’s ideas he
could not abide. Regretting the passage of time (few of Forkel’s students,
he observes dryly, were still alive), Griepenkerl laments the disappearance
of an interpretation he had worked hard to preserve.
But Griepenkerl need not have worried so much. By this time the
Chromatic Fantasy was an obligatory piece for virtuosos, partly on account
of its singularity but also because it allowed pianists to showcase both
exceptional digital control and a capacity for deep expression. Everyone
seems to have played it, including the twelve-year-old Anton Rubenstein,
whose 1842 performance of the work prompted a reviewer to enthuse that
this “sweet, utterly natural lad … even though he lacks the titanic power
of a Liszt, played with commensurate strength, great clarity, accurately
and entirely in keeping with the spirit of the music, to lively applause.”34
Rubenstein’s (or perhaps his teacher’s) espousal of a more or less trad-
itional performance practice for this work shows that the tradition had not
died; rather, it had been absorbed by the better players. In other respects,
however, Griepenkerl was right to be on the defensive: from about 1840
onwards, the workaday pianist’s approach to Bach hewed closer to Czerny’s
rules than to the vaguer values of the Forkel tradition, which seem to have
appealed more to virtuosos than to amateurs.
How the greatest nineteenth-century pianists played Bach remains
something of a mystery, one neatly encapsulated by the oft-repeated tale of
Franz Liszt’s demonstration of his changeability as a performer. After a por-
trait sitting and lunch with the French artist J. B. Laurens of Montpellier
in 1844, Liszt played his arrangement of the Prelude and Fugue in A
minor, BWV 543, three times: first in “the very perfection of the classical
style,” second with “a slightly more picturesque movement, with the effects
demanded by an improved instrument,” and third, “as I would play it for
the public … to astonish, as a charlatan!”35 Liszt’s perceived lack of strong
musical convictions – a strikingly postmodern attitude avant la lettre –
confounded some colleagues (not to mention music historians), and yet
the dour Griepenkerl openly admired Liszt’s conscientious playing of the
Chromatic Fantasy, suggesting that the latter at least occasionally remem-
bered what the guardians of the Forkel tradition considered both tasteful
and appropriate for Bach. Which Bach he preferred is, alas, not known.
Liszt’s chameleon-like ability at the keyboard, an essential part of his col-
orful reputation, owed not only to his wide-ranging interests as a composer
34
AMZ 44/48 (November 30, 1842), 965: “… trug der geniale, ganz natürliche Knabe … die chro-
matische Fantasie von Joh. Seb. Bach und die Sonate pathéthique von Beethoven, wenn auch nicht
mit der Titanengewalt eines Liszt, so doch mit verhältnissmässiger Kraft, grosser Zartheit, sicher
und ganz im Geiste der Kompositionen mit lebhaftem Beifall vor.”
35
As cited in Stinson, he Reception of Bach’s Organ Works, 106–107.
156 Engaging Bach

and performer but to his rigorous training: he probably studied WTC and
other Bach works with Czerny from 1822 to 1823, during the Liszt family’s
stay in Vienna, and reputedly transposed Bach fugues daily at the keyboard.36
Liszt taught and performed excerpts from WTC (like Clara Schumann, he
favored the intensely chromatic C sharp minor Fugue from Book I) and he
knew he Art of Fugue and a number of the big organ works as well. As Russell
Stinson has noted, Liszt’s veneration of Bach prevented him from imposing
too much of his larger-than-life personality on either his editing activities
or on his playing: an anonymous critic praised Liszt’s performance of the
Chromatic Fantasy in Berlin in 1841 as a model of “clarity” – a surprising
choice of adjectives, to be sure.37 he occasional pan from an equally hor-
rified critic shows that Liszt’s demonstration for Laurens wasn’t just a parlor
game, however. Marx for one couldn’t bear Liszt’s Bach; his AMZ essay on the
Chromatic Fantasy excoriates the famous virtuoso’s frenzied interpretation of
the fugue especially, which was “twice as fast as one normally hears and …
with octave doublings nearly everywhere in the bass … entirely unexpected
sforzandos … like sudden flashes of lightening in the night sky.”38
Although Liszt’s playing was controversial, even for those who never
heard him, he and other great virtuosos of the day embraced at least one
central aspect of the Forkel tradition. Liszt was famous for coloring each
voice differently, in whatever he happened to be playing, so that one
sensed not just a piano but an entire orchestra bringing the notes to life.
Griepenkerl, who never thought to articulate in a single place the crucial
features of his practice, nevertheless maintained that “Sebastian Bach, his
two sons Friedemann and Emanuel, and Forkel … played fugues … with
an abundance of expressiveness – not with the same character in all voices
but with distinct characters, not only in the outer but in the inner voices
as well.”39 Griepenkerl therefore advocated an “elastic and highly flexible
… touch,” since Bach’s music must always have a singing quality to it,
regardless of medium or the particular figuration.40 his part of the Forkel
tradition is undeniably authentic: on the title page to the Inventions and
36
Ibid., 103–104, citing Michael Heinemann, Die Bach-Rezeption von Franz Liszt (Cologne: Studio,
1995), 28–32.
37
Stinson, he Reception of Bach’s Organ Works, 105–106 and 114.
38
Marx, “Seb. Bach’s chromatische Fantasie,” 37:
[Liszts] durchstürmte Fantasie und Fuge wie in bacchantischem Rausch (die Fuge etwa doppelt so
schnell, als man sie zu hören gewohnt und – im Stande ist), verdoppelte in der Fuge den Bass fast
durchgängig mit Octaven und warf in diesen Tonsturm die unerwartetsten Sforzato-Töne … die
bald in dieser, bald in jener Stimme, wie jähe Blitze am Nachthimmel, um so schärfer hervorzuck-
ten, je weniger sie im Gange der Fuge bedingt waren.
39
Griepenkerl, “Noch einmal: J. S. Bach’s chromatische Phantasie,” 99: “Sebast. Bach, seine beiden
Söhne, Friedemann und Emanuel, und Forkel … spielten die Fugen … mit einer solchen Fülle des
Ausdrucks – nicht nur in den beiden äusseren Stimmen, sondern auch in den mittleren, nicht blos
bei gleichem Charakter aller Stimmen, sondern auch bei verschiedenen Charakteren.”
40
Letter of April 24, 1842 from Griepenkerl to Böhme, in Lehmann, Die Anfänge einer Bach-
Gesamtausgabe, 439: “… man muß sich den elastischen, höchst geschmeidigen bachischen Anschlag
erworben haben.”
 Modes of interpretation and performance, 1820–1850 157

Sinfonias, Bach emphasizes the importance of developing a “singing style

in playing.” Not content merely to make the piano sing, however, Liszt dis-
pensed with traditional interpretation when it suited him to do so, some-
thing the more circumspect Griepenkerl was unable to countenance.

e di ti ons a nd thei r audi e nce s

he urge to fix a detailed interpretation on the printed page may not have
appealed to Liszt, whose published piano arrangements of six Bach prel-
udes and fugues for organ lack tempo, dynamic, articulation, and phrase
markings; but for Czerny and Griepenkerl, the Peters Oeuvres complets pro-
vided an ideal platform for their respective ideas about Bach performance.
his edition owed more than its name to the ambitious though aborted
Oeuvres complettes of Hoffmeister & Kühnel (1801–1804). In 1814 Carl
Friedrich Peters acquired the Bureau de musique from Kühnel’s estate, and
for more than a decade, he preserved its primary focus on keyboard music.
A few months after Peters’s death in late 1827, Böhme bought the firm and,
along with fellow Leipzigers Ferdinand August Roitzsch and Carl Gustav
Probst, began planning a second Bach edition, one intended for a wide
audience. Aiming for as much stature and respectability as they could mus-
ter for their new edition, Böhme and his colleagues asked Mendelssohn
to serve as editor, but their plan to include interpretive suggestions did
not accord with the latter’s ideas about how to edit such music, and so he
declined. Böhme found a willing collaborator in 1836, when Czerny vis-
ited the Peters firm and offered his services for an edition that was already
eagerly anticipated by a number of pianists and Bach enthusiasts.
As Karen Lehmann relates in her documentary study of both early
“complete works” editions of Bach’s music, the relationship between pub-
lisher and editor began well but soured quickly, mostly because of Czerny’s
controversial ideas about how to present such works in published form.41
hough Böhme remained convinced of the basic virtues of his firm’s new
Bach edition, he became less and less enthusiastic about Czerny’s perform-
ance indications, and within a few years was clearly frustrated by the lat-
ter’s “insatiable” appetite for fingerings and other editorial suggestions: “one
must represent Bach as he really was,” Böhme complains in an 1839 letter
to the Bach collector and singer Franz Hauser, “without Czernifying him.”
At the same time, Böhme was pleased that Czerny’s indications encouraged
dilettantes to study and play this music, and in the same letter proudly notes
that “no one wants any more the old editions without the fingerings.”42
Qualifying this a few years later, Böhme admitted that “those who have a
deep understanding of Bach’s style can do without tempo, interpretation,
and fingering marks,” but as he stressed in a letter to Griepenkerl, only the

41
Ibid., 155ff.
42
Letter of November 30, 1839 from Böhme to Hauser, in ibid., 387.
158 Engaging Bach

Peters edition provided the “simplified interpretation” of Bach’s music so

desperately needed by students and amateurs.43
From the outset, Böhme intended the Oeuvres complets to “set out a
clearer and more correct path than has yet been possible for dilettantes
to develop ideas about Bach’s music.”44 he German musical press was,
on the whole, favorably impressed with Volume I, consisting of Czerny’s
edition of Book I of WTC: early reviewers were grateful that this storied
collection was now within reach of “all who want to experience the thrill
of playing such demanding works.”45 Private assessments were another
matter, however. One of the most damning letters to reach Böhme’s desk
came from Hauser, who complained that Czerny hardly knew Bach from
Handel. Mendelssohn, Hauser suggests, would have been a far better
choice as editor and ought to be consulted without delay so that sub-
sequent volumes would not suffer the same fate as had the first several.
Regretting Mendelssohn’s refusal to get involved with this project, Böhme
gamely replied that one need not follow all of Czerny’s suggestions.46
Other experts were just as unsparing. Seeking Griepenkerl’s advice and
assistance in April of 1842, Böhme admits that “Czerny has done as he
thinks best, though I have occasionally noticed that in many respects he’s
gone too far.”47 In reply Griepenkerl acknowledges Czerny’s renown as a
pianist and pedagogue but complains that “he knows nothing about play-
ing Bach’s music”; nor did Griepenkerl think much of Czerny’s ability to
produce a reliable musical text, having found more than thirty discrep-
ancies with more reliable editions of WTC in particular. To avoid calling
attention to the numerous problems of the Peters edition, Griepenkerl rec-
ommended that Böhme delay at least a year before releasing an improved,
more scrupulous version of the work, adding (rather unkindly) that he
knew no one who was happy with Czerny’s edition of WTC. Confidence
in Griepenkerl’s superior musical taste, coupled with his access to more
reliable sources, convinced Böhme that Czerny had to go.48

43
Letter of April 5, 1842 from Böhme to Griepenkerl, in ibid., 423.
44
Quoting from a letter of September 5, 1840 from Böhme to Moritz Hauptmann, Lehmann com-
ments (ibid., 195): “Die Idee des Verlages, mit seinen Oeuvres complets ‘geschickten Dillettanten
eine sichern und leichten Weg zu bahnen, um sich auch an Bachs Werken mehr bilden zu können,
als es bisher zu geschehen vermochte.’”
45
Unsigned review (by G. W. Fink) of WTC, ed. Carl Czerny (Leipzig: Peters, 1837), AMZ 40/19
(May 9, 1838), 297–299 (BD VI, C13): “Dadurch sind diese herrlichen grossartigen Stücke wirk-
lich erst recht gemeinnützlich für Alle geworden, die Lust haben, sich erst bis auf die Höhe des
Vortrags strenger Werke zu erheben.”
46
Letter of January 4, 1842 from Böhme to Hauser, in Lehmann, Die Anfänge einer Bach-Gesamtausgabe,
418. Cf. Lehmann, “Mendelssohn und die Bach-Ausgabe bei C. F. Peters: Mißglückter Versuch
einer Zusammenarbeit,” BJ 83 (1997), 87–95.
47
Letter of April 5, 1842 from Böhme to Griepenkerl, in Lehmann, Die Anfänge einer Bach-
Gesamtausgabe, 422: “Ich will nicht in Abrede stellen, daß H. Czerny nach seiner besten Einsicht
verfahren ist, jedoch habe ich zuweilen bemerkt, daß derselbe in manchen Punkten sich zu sehr
getrauet hat.”
48
Letter of April 15, 1842 from Griepenkerl to Böhme, in ibid., 425–426.
 Modes of interpretation and performance, 1820–1850 159

he tipping point came with the contents of both Volume III, which
mixed most of he Art of Fugue with a few movements from the Musical
Offering, and Volume IV, which comprised various independent fantasies
and fugues; bits of the keyboard toccatas; and (most egregiously) Partita
6 from the Clavier-Übung, Part I, presented not as an integral suite but
instead as a series of independent pieces. For such seemingly random
cherry-picking of Bach’s music, the critics lambasted Czerny. In response,
Böhme had the first of these volumes re-edited in house; a revised (com-
plete) edition of he Art of Fugue appeared less than a year later. Angry
about not only the bad press but the expense of reissuing the volume,
Böhme also instructed Czerny that henceforth “everything from Bach’s
hand must, in every case, be left as a whole and complete work.”49 In
1841 the Peters firm also published Moritz Hauptmann’s Commentary
(Erläuterungen) on he Art of Fugue, in which this successor to Bach at the
Leipzig homasschule laid out an analytic system for understanding the
work and Bach’s fugal procedures in general.
Unfortunately, there was no easy solution to the problem of Volume IV.
Defending his choices, Czerny justified his selection of pieces as entirely in
keeping with the current fashion for “like with like” in literary publications:
Schiller’s complete works, as he reminded Böhme, comprised several volumes
of poetry, then dramatic works, and finally historical works. For Czerny the
most practical kind of Bach edition would present first the keyboard works
with fugues, then those without, hence his dismemberment of various col-
lections and multi-movement works in the editing process.50 Böhme and
his Leipzig colleagues, who had become increasingly suspicious of Czerny’s
heavy editorial hand, disagreed strongly with the wholesale reorganization of
Bach’s major collections for keyboard. Böhme allowed Czerny to continue
as editor but only with those volumes that were already underway; others
went to Hauptmann and eventually Griepenkerl, who edited the series from
1843 until his death in 1849. In addition, all but one of Czerny’s volumes
were reissued (and re-edited by either Griepenkerl himself or “par un Comité
d’Artistes”)51 with new readings from more reliable sources.
During the same decade, A. B. Marx, in his dual capacities as a Bach
editor and critic, made similar efforts to help students and amateurs
understand this remarkable music without imposing too many constraints
on interpretation. hough he had little patience for Czerny’s method,
especially the fingerings and tempo indications, Marx allowed in an 1840
review of the Oeuvres complets that some pianists find this kind of edi-
torial assistance “virtually indispensable,” and so for providing it, Czerny

49
Letter of September 29, 1839 from Böhme to Czerny, in ibid., 376 (also in BD VI, C19).
50
Letter of October 6, 1839 from Czerny to Böhme, in Lehmann, Die Anfänge einer Bach-
Gesamtausgabe, 379–382.
51
In a letter of March 31, 1843 to Böhme (ibid., 547), Griepenkerl congratulated Böhme on this
nicely vague formulation, which in his view was “clever and avoids many potential difficulties.”
160 Engaging Bach

should be thanked.52 By 1848 Marx seems to have rethought the issue,

however: his essay on the Chromatic Fantasy rejects both romantic excess
and slavish adherence to tradition, and criticizes those who would play
Bach with “modern sentimentality … romantic warmth and fantasy … or
as Beethoven perhaps allowed or demanded.” To impose such a manner
of playing on Bach’s music was, to Marx’s way of thinking, “to misunder-
stand, distort, and even profane it.”53 In a competing volume of Bach key-
board works published in Berlin in 1844 and in London a few years later,
Marx nevertheless followed Czerny’s editorial lead, adding his own layer of
interpretation with occasional dynamic and articulation markings, but his
longish introduction cautions that one should not take too literally such
additions to the musical text.54 Making an example of the Czerny WTC,
Marx favored a more flexible approach to tempo; the former’s metronome
marks, he writes, “[do] not suffice for compositions in which every phrase,
and often each single part, has its own peculiar meaning … such indica-
tions of time should always be made subservient and interpreted according
to the maxim, that ‘the more deeply and richly developed, and the more
minutely delineated are the contents of a composition, the more time must
be allowed to the mind of the hearer to follow the movement.’”55
In general Marx preferred less specific advice, requiring only that every
part in fugue must always be both audible and expressive.56 He rejected
Czerny’s rigorous foregrounding of thematic entries by emphasizing the
“bigger picture” of fugue:
he subject is certainly the leading idea of every part but does not constitute it
entirely; on the contrary, each part contains its song, sometimes as a counterpoint
to the subject, sometimes as an episode, and its content – though often opposed
to, or contrasting with, the subject – forms one connected whole. It is this con-
tinual and truly dramatic dialogue between the parts which constitutes the real
nature and life of the fugue. What sort of justice would it be doing to the artist
52
Adolf Bernhard Marx, review of the first seven volumes of the C. F. Peters Oeuvres complets, Neue
Zeitschrift für Musik 13/35 (October 28, 1840), 137.
53
Marx, “Seb. Bach’s chromatische Fantasie,” 33.
54
Adolf Bernhard Marx, Auswahl aus Sebastian Bach’s Kompositionen veranstaltet und mit einer Abhandlung
über Auffassung und Vortrag seiner Werke am Piano Forte (Berlin: Challier, 1844); and A Selection from
Seb. Bach’s Compositions for the Piano Forte prefaced with an Essay on the proper study and execution of
these and similar Works by Dr. Adolf Bernhard Marx. Translated and Edited … by Augustus H. Wehrnan
(London: Robert Cocks & Co., 1853). Marx republished his introduction in the Berliner musikalische
Zeitung 1/28 (August 3 and 10, 1844), 1–2. Subsequent quotations in the main text adapt the English
of the 1853 London edition, with the German original given in the notes.
55
Marx, A Selection, vi; Auswahl, vii:
Czerny hat (in der Gesammtausgabe bei Peters) die Tempobezeichnungen theilweis’ ergänzt und
erweitert, er hat sogar metronomische Bezeichnung zugefügt. Allein … ist auch damit nicht auszu-
reichen, wo jeder Satz, bisweilen jede Stimme von eigenthümlicher Bedeutung beseelt ist … Man
muss solchen Bestimmungen gegenüber als Grundsatz festhalten: je reicher und tiefer der Inhalt, je
mehr er sich in einzelnen Zügen ausspricht, desto weniger gestattet er dem theilnehmenden Gemüth
Darüberhineilen.
Marx gives no source for the quoted maxim.
56
See Marx, A Selection, v: “On the polyphonic style of playing”; Auswahl, v: “Technik für polyphones
Spiel.”
 Modes of interpretation and performance, 1820–1850 161

and his work, if we, like bad actors in a play, cared about nothing but the crucial
bits in the different parts?57
Nor did Marx agree with Czerny about the proper place for amateurs to
begin studying and playing Bach. Questioning the by-then common prac-
tice of using the WTC preludes and fugues to introduce piano students
to Bach, Marx notes elsewhere that while the younger generation might
be intellectually prepared for such music, their choice of particular works
often prevented “a deep and life-changing beginning with this music.”
With evident frustration, he observes that WTC is “almost without excep-
tion … the first work [of Bach] one comes to know – and often remains
the last.”58 One should not, Marx insists, begin here “at the remotest point
where everything looks strange … where the composer has revealed him-
self and his times in the richest and most characteristic manner.” Rather,
one should begin “at the points which lie nearest, and where the general
aspect of things is more like that to which we have been accustomed.”59
To that end, Marx recommended the “little” preludes, the Inventions and
Sinfonias – all works that build familiarity with the strict style without pos-
ing the manifold challenges of fugues with multiple subjects or flamboy-
antly rhetorical preludes, which WTC has in abundance – while reserving
collections like WTC and he Art of Fugue for expert players. Virtually all
reviewers who addressed this issue agreed that dilettantes oftentimes bit off
more than they could chew, when they ought to be playing either simpler
or perhaps simplified works, like the 1842 Schott edition of WTC for four
hands. his latter edition, as an admiring reviewer for the AMZ noted,
not only made Bach’s music easier to play; it provided a kind of primer
in keyboard technique for budding pianists. he anonymous writer was
also happy to find this edition free of fingerings such as those in “a recent
edition for two hands” (an unsubtle reference to Czerny’s edition of the

57
Marx, A Selection, viii; Auswahl, ix:
Das hema … ist allerdings Hauptgedanke des Ganzen für jede Stimme. Allein jede Stimme führt
ihren Gesang in Gegen- und Zwischensätzen einheitvoll (wenn auch oft im Widerspruch und
Ankämpfen gegen das hema) weiter. Dies, dieser stets und in jeder Stimme beseelte wahrhaft
dramatische Dialog ist eben das Wesen und Leben der Fuge. Wie wollte man ihr gerecht werden
und dem Dichter genugthun, wenn man gleich schlechten Komödianten nur die Schlagworte, die
sogenannten Abgänge geltend machte?
58
Marx, “Aus dem Vorwort des Werkes Auswahl aus Joh. Seb. Bach’s Compositionen: Zur ersten
Bekanntschaft mit dem Meister am Pianoforte,” Berliner musikalische Zeitung 57/28 (August 3,
1844), 41.
59
Marx, A Selection, iii; Auswahl, iii:
Wem wäre der Ruhm dieses Werkes unvernommen geblieben? welchem Kenner hätte man noch
nöthig, diesen Reichthum tiefsinnigster, karaktervollster, kunstreichster Gebilde, von denen nicht
eins dem andern gleicht, in Erinnerung zu bringen? … Ein durchaus eigenthümlicher, durch
ein Jahrhundert von uns und unsrer Welt getrennter Künstler muss uns und unsrer Denk- und
Redeweise gerade da am fernsten stehn, wo er sich und die Idee seiner Zeit am eigenthümlichsten
und reichsten ausgesprochen hat. Nicht am Fremden und Fernen, sondern am Nächstliegenden,
unsrer Weise Verwandten ist, wie mir scheint, anzuknüpfen.
162 Engaging Bach

work): such things are “irritating to the eye” and finally superfluous, since
“anyone who plays or wishes to play the Bach works … must first master
the rules of fingering.”60
Questions about the appropriateness of Bach’s most learned keyboard
works for amateurs and students dominate early reception of the Peters
Oeuvres complets. Although some reviewers recognized the “important mis-
sion” of this edition in making accessible a “classic work” like WTC,61 others
challenged the wisdom of encouraging widespread engagement with Bach;
the new interpretive editions, they feared, would only encourage false hopes
among those who were incapable of either playing or understanding such
complex scores; worse, Czerny’s rules might promote an unthinking or
automatic mode of interpretation. hus Leipzig organist and Bach enthu-
siast Carl Ferdinand Becker, in a review that Schumann rejected in 1838
as “really too unkind” for publication in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik,62
began by observing that in fugue, “if emphasis is given to individual figures
or notes in a single voice, it will immediately lend an objectionable manner
[to the performance]: the fugue will become a caricature. Only in those
places where the voices consolidate, or where a melodic line or some such
thing has begun, is this edition of the fugues effectively correct.”63
he standard practice of adding nothing to editions of old music was, to
Becker’s way of thinking, crucial to the survival of this repertory.
he legitimacy of this view is not assured by the present keyboard fugues, but rather
with collections of old and new fugues for voices, with or without orchestra. In all
these works one will seldom or never find this edition’s [dynamic] indications. Just
try adding a p. and f., a pp. and ff., a dim. and cresc. to Handel’s Hallelujah, lis-
ten to the jubilant heavenly choir, and ask yourself whether the whole hasn’t been
essentially lost, whether this can still be called the same work.64

60
Anonymous review of Bach, Das wohltemperirte Clavier … eingerichtet zu 4 Hände von H. Bertini
(Mainz: Schott), AMZ 44/16 (April 20, 1842), 336: “Wir müssen in dieser Beziehung von einer
unlängst erschienenen zweihändigen Ausgabe bemerken, dass die vielen Zahlen nur störend auf das
Auge wirken, ja sogar oft nur zum Misslingen Veranlassung geben, da wir der Meinung sind, dass,
wer diese Bach’schen Werke spielt, und mit Erfolg spielen will, auch mit den Regeln des Fingersatzes
… bekannt sein muss.”
61
Anonymous review, AMZ 39 (August 2, 1837), Intelligenz-Blatt V/24.
62
A letter of December 2, 1838 from Schumann to Becker reads: “Don’t take offense that I didn’t
take your review. It was really too unkind. Peters complained about it, [and asked for] something
much milder.” As cited in F. G. Jansen, “Ungedruckte Briefe von R. Schumann,” Die Grenzboten
52/3 (1898), 72. On Schumann’s problematic relationship with Becker, see Stinson, he Reception
of Bach’s Organ Works, 77.
63
Carl Ferdinand Becker, review of Le clavecin bien tempéré – par J. S. Bach: Edition nouvelle par
Ch. Czerny, Euterpe 2 (January, 1842), 8–10 (10): “Zu dieser Gattung von Tonstücken muß ein
Hervorheben einzelner Gedanken oder Töne in einer einzelnen Stimme sogleich als eine verwerfli-
che Manier erscheinen, die Fuge wird zur Carricatur. Nur an den Stellen, wo die Stimmen sich zu
einem Ganzen vereinen, oder ein melodischer Satz u. dgl. angebracht ist, macht der Vortrag in der
Fuge sein Recht geltend.”
64
Ibid., 10:
Für die Richtigkeit dieser Ansicht bürgen nicht allein alle vorhandenen Klavierfugen, sondern auch
sämmtliche ältere und neuere Fugen für Gesang mit oder ohne Orchester. In allen diesen Werken
 Modes of interpretation and performance, 1820–1850 163

Becker was confident that any self-respecting musician could decide such
interpretive matters for himself; a sound musical intuition, he notes, is the
best way to keep Charakter from turning into Carricatur. Firmly exclud-
ing those who had no previous experience with Bach, Becker predicted
that “well-formed musicians and those music lovers of a similar level –
not beginners, for whom the old master intended other works – will use
this exquisite collection of fugues and their preludes for their intellectual
entertainment.”65
Such a view, though fundamentally at odds with the central aim of the
Peters Oeuvres complets, was shared by some of the finest musicians of the
day. In an equally harsh critique, Schumann dismisses Czerny’s preface as
“rather brief and written too hastily,” and notes dryly that “the fingering
… is Czerny’s business, and he understands it well; of course, we have not
tried out all his indications.” Like Marx, Schumann saved his most cut-
ting criticism for the central features of Czerny’s method, protesting that
“nothing can be more tiresome or contrary to the meaning of Bach than
to drone out his fugues or to restrict one’s representation of his creations
to a mere emphasis on the successive entries of the principal theme. Such
rules are suited to students.”66 Despite having marked most of the subject
entries in his own copy of the Peters–Czerny WTC,67 Schumann com-
plains that “a Philistinic accentuation of the entries of the fugue subject
is far from sufficient.” A lyrical manner, in which every voice was allowed
to sing, was paramount for Schumann, and so he played Bach’s preludes
and fugues as he did everything else, with “individual lights and shades,”
as “character pieces of the highest art.”68
Schumann considered this music as vital sounding form, not as a means
by which one might connect with the authentic spirit of eighteenth-cen-
tury performance. His reading of these works reflects, in other words, a
different kind of relationship with the Bach keyboard legacy than that
of Czerny, Griepenkerl, or even Mendelssohn: both Robert and Clara
Schumann discovered Bach independently and relatively late in life, and
reports of their Bach playing suggest a thoroughly modern understanding

wird sich selten oder nie eine Andeutung des Vortrags finden und man füge – um sich sogleich zu
überzeugen – Händels Halleluja ein p. und f., ein pp. und ff., ein dim. und cresc. zu, höre dann
das himmelaujauchzende Chor, und frage sich: ob das Ganze nicht wesentlich verloren habe, ob es
noch dasselbe Tonstück zu nennen ist.
65
Ibid., 9: “Gebildete Künstler und mit diesen auf gleicher Stufe stehende Kunstfreunde, nicht
Anfänger, für die der alte Meister ganz andere Werke bestimmt hat, werden diese köstliche
Fugensammlung mit ihren Vorspielen zu ihrer geistreichsten Unterhaltung wählen.”
66
Robert Schumann, Gesammelte Schriften, 2 vols., Vol II (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1891), 91–92.
Schumann first published these thoughts about Czerny’s edition of WTC in a critique of the latter’s
Schule des Fugenspiels (1838).
67
Hans-Joachim Köhler, “Bach als Katalysator der Identitätssuche Robert Schumanns,” in Hartinger,
Wolff, and Wollny, Bach-Rezeption im Zeitalter Mendelssohns und Schumanns, 237–254 (243).
68
Adapted from Robert Schumann, On Music and Musicians, trans. Paul Rosenfeld (New York:
Pantheon Books, 1946; Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1983), 89.
164 Engaging Bach

of his music. In contrast, both Czerny and Griepenkerl drew on their

respective connections to a specific lineage: the Viennese circle of Bach
admirers that included Beethoven and the Forkel tradition, respect-
ively. he Schumanns’ way of presenting Bach was likewise distinct from
that of other musicians who had grown up with this repertoire: unlike
Mendelssohn’s organ recitals in England or his historic all-Bach program
at the Leipzig homaskirche in 1840, the Schumanns included preludes
and fugues from WTC and piano transcriptions of the Bach organ works
on programs that mixed such pieces with more recent works by them-
selves and by other composers.69 As Robert Schumann once famously
remarked, WTC was his “daily bread”70 – a precious commodity, to be
sure, but one that could vary in realization from one day to the next and
be consumed in a variety of different ways. His disdain for interpretive
editions of Bach’s keyboard music had less to do, finally, with any particu-
lars than with the expectation that when playing from such a score, one
follows its advice.
A number of Schumann’s colleagues on the board of the Bach-
Gesellschaft shared his reservations about the new pedagogical editions of
the Bach keyboard works. Founded during the centenary of Bach’s death,
this society outlined its project in a July, 1850 issue of the Neue Zeitschrift
für Musik: its goal was to create “an edition of [Bach’s] works character-
ized by thorough, critical treatment and which meets the requirements of
scholarship and art.”71 From the outset its board of directors realized that
in order to preserve not only the spirit but the letter of Bach’s legacy, the
many projected volumes of this monumental series needed a common edi-
torial policy. A set of statutes was adopted later that year, but not all the
directors agreed to every provision. Moritz Hauptmann, who edited the
first installment of this Gesamtausgabe, decided while working with Bach’s
church cantatas that the piano reduction specified in the original statues
should, in the end, not be included in Volume I. Arguing against the initial
decision of the directors to include keyboard reductions in the concerted
works, Hauptmann observed that a reduction was unable to render clearly
the polyphonic textures of Bach’s music, and that even continuo figuration
was properly the role of the interpreter, not the editor (though few if any
pianists then alive had any experience realizing a figured bass). Despite a
spirited rejoinder from Ignaz Moscheles, who also served on the board,

69
See Janina Klassen, “Von Vor- und Übervätern: Familiäre und musikalische Genealogien im
Selbstkonzept der Mendelssohns, Schumanns und Wiecks,” in Hartinger, Wolff, and Wollny, Bach-
Rezeption im Zeitalter Mendelssohns und Schumanns, 51–58.
70
Robert Schumann, Gesammelte Schriften über Musik und Musiker, ed. Martin Kreisig, 2 vols., Vol.
II (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1914), 166.
71
Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 33/8 (July 26, 1850), 37–38; as translated in Barbara David Wright,
“Johann Sebastian Bach’s Matthäus-Passion: A Performance History 1829–1854,” Ph.D. disserta-
tion, University of Michigan, 1983, 389.
 Modes of interpretation and performance, 1820–1850 165

a majority of the directors agreed with Hauptmann and the statute was
changed.72
In addition to settling the matter of piano reductions in the vocal works,
Hauptmann also articulated an editorial credo of sorts for the edition as
a whole. his society, as Hauptmann states in an 1851 letter to the Bach-
Gesellschaft Board, would
set forth only one edition, which cannot be contrasted with any other view. In this
case only the pure text and nothing but the pure text is presented as it is contained
in Bach’s original autograph and where this is not extant, in reliable old copies,
avoiding all addition of tempo and execution indications as well as the harmonic
realization of the bass accompaniment.73
Franz Kroll’s preface to the 1866 Bach-Gesellschaft edition of WTC con-
firms the unbridgeable gulf that arose between those who considered
themselves guardians of the “pure text” and those who wanted a wider
audience for Bach. In an annotated list of previous editions of the work,
Kroll notes that Czerny “burdened [his edition] with many arbitrary
emendations,” whose ultimate purpose was to generate an “extraordinary
circulation,”74 something the Bach-Gesellschaft edition attained only in
the late twentieth century, thanks to the Dover firm and its inexpensive
reprints.
A friendlier review of Volume I of the Peters Oeuvres complets (consist-
ing of WTC, Book I) from Czerny’s friend Karl Borromäus von Miltitz
puts a more positive spin on its populist agenda: finally someone has made
“these great and glorious works available to all who aspire to the heights
of performance of strict works … to a greater number of younger talents
and educated dilettantes of all nationalities that would claim some know-
ledge of the musical art, and no longer only to professionals.”75 Schumann,
Becker, Hauptmann, Kroll, and others remained unmoved. Bach’s texts, in

72
See Martin Ruhnke, “Moritz Hauptman und die Wiederbelebung der Musik J. S. Bachs,” in
Festschrift Friedrich Blume zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. Anna Amalie Abert and Wilhelm Pfannkuch
(Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1963), 305–319 (317–318); and Wright, “Johann Sebastian Bach’s Matthäus-
Passion,” 394–401.
73
Hauptmann’s letter is given in its entirety in Hermann Kretzschmar, “Die Bach-Gesellschaft:
Bericht über ihre hätigkeit,” in Johann Sebastian Bach Sämtliche Werke, ed. Hermann Kretzschmar,
Bach-Gesellschaft 46 (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1899), xl–xlii. As translated in Wright, “Johann
Sebastian Bach’s Matthäus-Passion,” 398.
74
Franz Kroll, ed., Joh. Seb. Bach’s Clavierwerke. Dritter Band: Das Wohltemperirte Clavier. Erster
heil. 1722; Zweiter heil. 1744; Anhang. Varianten und Erläuterungen, Bach-Gesellschaft 14
(Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1866), xx.
75
Karl Borromäus von Miltitz, “Joh. Sebastian Bach’s Klavierwerke,” AMZ 40/19 (May 9, 1838),
297–299:
Dadurch sind diese herrlichen grossartigen Stücke wirklich erst recht gemeinnützlich für Alle
geworden, die Lust haben, sich erst bis auf die Höhe des Vortrags strenger Werke zu erheben … So
werden denn Bach’s unvergängliche Werke auch den Engländern zugänglich, und zwar nicht mehr,
wie bisher, nur den Meistern, sondern auch einer grossen Zahl jüngerer Talente und gebildeter
Dilettanten aller Völker, die auf Bildung in der Tonkunst Anspruch machen dürften.
166 Engaging Bach

their collective opinion, were better served by an edition of unimpeachable

authority without any editorial assistance for the player. As Carl August
Haupt explained: “Bach will and can never be truly popular. He will how-
ever always possess those for whom the intellect and serious contemplation
of art is worth more than mere sensual gratification. his part of the public
is truly cultured.”76 Even Marx, who edited at least one Bach volume for
the amateur market, nevertheless considered him “one of the few compos-
ers who gives inexhaustible joy to the initiated.”77 As these witnesses illus-
trate, with the new pedagogical editions of the Bach keyboard works in
the 1830s and 1840s came the realization that the publishing industry also
had to serve those who did not want a particular interpretation imposed
on them. he editorial principles of the Bach-Gesellschaft edition, devised
by experts who preferred Bach’s musical texts unfiltered, were at least in
part a reaction to the Peters Oeuvres completes, as conceived by Böhme and
as edited by Czerny, Griepenkerl, and others for the benefit of those who
needed some guidance with the notes.
hese distinct modes of editing Bach’s music each had their partisans, to
be sure, though many recognized the worth of both approaches. Gottfried
Wilhelm Fink, for one, in a review of Czerny’s edition of he Art of Fugue,
admonished readers of the AMZ that “he who fails to study carefully such
a work, the greatest of its kind, is hardly worthy of being called a true
artist,”78 while wondering in another issue of the same journal whether it
was a good thing “that the playing of Bach’s works should remain a mon-
opoly for a few.”79 For this writer at least, useful advice from an editor
made much more sense than the alternative of no help at all: there were
“fewer than a hundred,” Fink estimates, who would have been comfortable
playing the Six Sonatas for violin and obbligato keyboard without assist-
ance from an expert, hence the need for interpretive editions of at least the
more practical works.
he emerging consensus, that a “one size fits all” approach to Bach edit-
ing and performance had become both inappropriate and unattainable,
can also be seen in Mendelssohn’s various Bach activities. he famously
abridged 1829 St. Matthew Passion notwithstanding, Mendelssohn the edi-
tor repeatedly insisted that historically important musical texts be allowed
to speak for themselves, without editorial intervention. In an edition of

76
Carl August Haupt, “Recensionen von Ciaccona 3 Sonate no. 2 per il violino solo, composta da Joh.
Seb. Bach. Per il violino con accompagnamento di pianoforte ed. da F. W. Ressel,” Cäcilia 25/98 (1846),
103–106 (103–104): “Freilich wird und kann Bach nie eigentlich populär werden; aber er wird für
alle Zeiten den heil des Publikums für sich haben, dem das Geistige, der Gedanke in der Kunst
höher steht als der blosse Sinnenreiz, und diese Publikum ist das wahrhaft Gebildete.”
77
Marx, “Aus dem Vorwort,” 41.
78
Gottfried Wilhelm Fink, review of J. S. Bach, L’art de la fugue, ed. Carl Czerny for C. F. Peters, AMZ
41/1 (January 2, 1839), 3–5 (5) (BD VI, C16).
79
Gottfried Wilhelm Fink, review of J. S. Bach, Six grandes sonates, ed. Carl Czerny for C. F. Peters,
AMZ 43/7 (February 17, 1841), 145–148 (147).
 Modes of interpretation and performance, 1820–1850 167

Bach’s chorale-based organ works for Coventry & Hollier in 1845–1846,

Mendelssohn espoused the emerging “Urtext” philosophy of music edit-
ing: his preface notes that he “tried to make this edition deviate as little
from Bach’s original writing as I possibly could.”80 Yet, as we have seen
with the Chromatic Fantasy, Mendelssohn the player made the occasional
alteration in performance to the published text of a musical work. A close
friend and early biographer remembered that Mendelssohn’s “chief excel-
lence lay, as Goethe said, in his giving every piece, from the Bach epoch
down, its own distinctive character; and yet with all his loyalty to old mas-
ters, he knew just how to conceal their obsolete forms by adding new
graces in the very manner of his playing.”81 From this and other reports,
it seems that Mendelssohn the performer, like many of his contemporar-
ies, made every effort to communicate the “distinctive character” of Bach’s
music. When it came to fixing this same character on the printed page,
however, Mendelssohn balked, refusing to make explicit the finer points of
his own interpretation.
he clean appearance, limited circulation numbers, and prohibitive price
of the Bach-Gesellschaft volumes realized this mindset on a monumental
scale. Its editors and board members had no desire to tell the world how
to play this music, nor did they feel obliged to market it to the uniniti-
ated; instead, they wanted to establish reliable texts for all the works, thus
preserving Bach’s entire output for posterity. Succinct subscriber lists show
just how limited a public this edition reached: the first volume of canta-
tas (1851) contains about 250 names, while the WTC volume released
some fifteen years later contains just a few more. (Even Czerny, though
he lived to see the first several volumes in print, was never a subscriber;
his pedagogical agenda apparently could not be reconciled to the aims
of nineteenth-century scholarship.) Rejecting Czerny’s and Griepenkerl’s
ostensibly historical interpretations, those who put their faith in the notes
themselves relied instead on their own inspiration and artistry. Today
those relationships appear to have been turned around, with scrupulous
texts produced by editors with scholarly pedigrees enabling “historically
informed” playing, and interpretive editions serving those for whom the
study of historical performance practice is either impractical or unappeal-
ing. But the neat bifurcation of editions and audiences that obtained in
the middle of the nineteenth century is mostly a thing of the past, thanks
to the vastly larger Bach public of our own day and the multiple ways in
which we interact with this and all other kinds of music.
Popularity, it seems, always comes with a price. Broader engagement
with Bach in the nineteenth century meant editorial accommodation to

80
As cited in Stinson, he Reception of Bach’s Organ Works, 69.
81
Wilhelm Adolf Lampadius, he Life of Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, trans. W. L. Gage (Boston:
Oliver Ditson, 1849/1887), 330.
168 Engaging Bach

the needs of those who otherwise might never have embraced his music
and thereby ensured its present ubiquity. Fortunately, the indestructible
nature of his keyboard works in particular has rendered moot any lingering
anxiety about the potential ill effects of a wider reception. Once carefully
tended and nurtured by a few, Bach’s musical legacy now belongs to all
who choose to engage with it.
 Epilogue

he founding of the Bach-Gesellschaft in 1850 hardly concluded any of

the various kinds of interaction with Bach’s keyboard works that I have
fleshed out here; indeed, one could follow the same or analogous currents
of reception a good deal farther in music history. But in working with
this material, I became increasingly convinced that the most momentous
episodes in the posthumous life of this remarkable music happened early,
before it circulated widely and became part of every aspiring keyboard-
ist’s repertoire. Certain works and collections strongly affected musical
thought and practice in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries,
with the fugal works acquiring extraordinary status among composers and
serious students, and during this time some pieces also found their way
into the new world of the public concert. he earnest advocacy of German
and English devotees and the first pedagogical editions, aimed primarily at
amateurs and dilettantes, sparked a broader engagement with Bach’s key-
board works than the composer himself ever imagined. Arguments about
the worth of “traditional” modes of interpretation are perhaps the clearest
evidence of a growing maturity in the movement as a whole as the hun-
dredth anniversary of the composer’s death approached. he prospect of
a rigorous and reliable edition of Bach’s complete works lent institutional
heft and vigor to a diverse legacy, whose enormous potential was becoming
steadily more apparent.
I have tried to highlight that diversity by looking closely at various man-
ifestations, some independent and some overlapping, of the keen interest
in Bach’s keyboard works between 1750 and 1850. he second half of
the eighteenth century was for Bach’s posthumous reputation a kind of
historical crucible, during which his heirs and followers sought to ensure
the continued viability of those parts of his output they considered both
useful and representative of his unique gifts. An array of influential writ-
ers on music enabled the cause by re-evaluating Bach’s peculiar mastery of
Harmonie (the basic horizontal and vertical components of tonal music) as
somehow reflective of contemporary values. he first posthumous editions
needed a practical argument as well, one that the Berlin circle struggled
to articulate. he fairly rapid acceptance of Bach’s four-part chorales as
normative (something that would have been inconceivable in this genre

169
170 Engaging Bach

before the 1780s) doubtless surprised even his most fervent champions
in the late eighteenth century. Within the narrower confines of compos-
itional interaction with this music, Mozart’s productive encounter with a
few WTC fugues epitomizes reception of this collection among the better
composers, for whom it served as a source of deep compositional truths.
New editions and public advocacy in the early nineteenth century brought
Bach’s keyboard legacy to new audiences, who needed a frame of reference
and powerful reasons for engaging with it, either as listeners or as players.
Culturally specific rationales were a defining feature of the Bach movement
among the Germans and the English, as devotees trumpeted the diverse
merits of his keyboard works and attempted to build a permanent place in
the repertoire for them. Questions about how to interpret Bach’s patently
old-fashioned music, the final piece of my historical mosaic, became an
overriding concern only after its worth had been firmly established, and at
precisely that moment when editions began to diverge in order to address
the distinct needs of expert and amateur players.
Other moments and issues in the historical reception of the Bach key-
board works are certainly of comparable import and might have been
included had I not been pulled towards these topics in the course of
researching and writing this book. he rejected possibilities include a
number of well-known interactions with this music and others that have
yet to engage scholars seriously. Much has been written, for example,
about Beethoven’s assimilation in his late works especially of a Bachian
sensibility.1 hough Beethoven’s was doubtless a more thoroughgoing
encounter with Bach’s music than Mozart’s comparatively brief dabbling
with WTC, their respective engagements with Bach were of essentially the
same kind, hence my decision to devote the sole chapter on compositional
influence to the specific content of Mozart’s lesson from Bach. he pre-
1850 reception of Bach’s keyboard music in France, on the other hand,
is barely addressed in the literature, despite growing evidence that at least
a few works were in circulation and had some influence on both com-
position and performance.2 Other potential topics merit separate studies
of their own: nineteenth-century reception of the “Goldberg” Variations,
for instance, which inspired not only Beethoven but also Liszt, E. T. A.
Hoffmann, and plenty of others.3
A comprehensive accounting of Bach’s posthumous influence would
require, as others have noted, an entirely new history of western music
1
Among others, see Martin Zenck, Die Bach-Rezeption des späten Beethoven: Zum Verhältnis von
Musikhistoriographie und Rezeptionsgeschichtsschreibung der “Klassik” (Wiesbaden: Steiner Verlag,
1986); and “‘Bach der Progressive’: Die Golberg-Variationen in der Perspektive von Beethovens
Diabelli-Variationen,” Musik-Konzepte 42 (1985), 29–92.
2
here is, for example, an early source of the Chromatic Fantasy with a French provenance: see Mary
Cyr, “Bach’s Music in France: A New Source,” Early Music 13/2 (May, 1985), 256–259.
3
A useful summary is given in Peter Williams, Bach: he Goldberg Variations (Cambridge University
Press, 2011), 93–102 (“Questions of Reception”).
 Epilogue 171

written from that particular point of view. his book offers instead a con-
stellation of studies – linked by common themes and a common reper-
toire – that show a diversity of responses to Bach’s estimable keyboard
legacy. Its findings, surely not the last word on any of the topics covered
here, should help to dispel misconceptions about Bach reception during
the time in question and will hopefully do much to enrich our understand-
ing of an essential repertoire.
 Select bibliography

Albrechtsberger, Johann Georg, Gründliche Anweisung zur Composition (Leipzig,

1790).
Anderson, Emily, ed., Letters of Mozart and His Family, 3 vols. (London:
Macmillan, 1938/1985).
Applegate, Celia, Bach in Berlin: Nation and Culture in Mendelssohn’s Revival of
the St. Matthew Passion (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press,
2005).
“How German Is It? Nationalism and the Idea of Serious Music in the Early
Nineteenth Century,” 19th-Century Music 21/3 (Spring, 1998), 274–296.
Barger, Judith, Elizabeth Stirling and the Musical Life of Female Organists in
Nineteenth-Century England (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007).
Bauer, Wilhelm A. and Otto Erich Deutsch, eds., Mozart Briefe und
Aufzeichnungen: Gesamtausgabe, 7 vols. (Kassel: Bärenreiter,
1962–1975).
Becker, C. F., review of Le Clavecin bien tempéré – par J. S. Bach: Edition nouvelle
par Ch. Czerny, Euterpe 2 (January, 1842), 8–10.
Beedell, A. V., he Decline of the English Musician 1788–1888 (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1992).
Blume, Friedrich, Two Centuries of Bach: An Account of Changing Taste, trans.
Stanley Godman (London: Oxford University Press, 1950).
Breig, Werner, “Grundzüge einer Geschichte von Bachs vierstimmigem
Choralsatz,” Archiv für Musikwissenschaft 45/3 (1988), 165–185.
Brown, A. Peter, “Haydn and Mozart’s 1773 Stay in Vienna: Weeding a
Musicological Garden,” Journal of Musicology 10/2 (Spring, 1992),
192–230.
Bruckner-Bigenwald, Martha, Die Anfänge der Leipziger Allgemeinen
Musikalischen Zeitung (Hilversum: Frits Enuf, 1965).
Buelow, George J., “In defense of J. A. Scheibe against J. S. Bach,” Proceedings of
the Royal Musical Association 101 (1974/1975), 85–100.
Burney, Charles, “Account of an Infant Musician,” Philosophical Transactions of
the Royal Society of London 5/69 (1779), 202.
A General History of Music, from the Earliest Ages to the Present Period (London,
1789).
he Present State of Music in Germany, the Netherlands, and United Provinces;
or, he Journal of a Tour through hose Countries, Undertaken to Collect
Materials for a General History of Music (London, 1773).
Butler, Gregory G., “J. S. Bach and the Schemelli Gesangbuch Revisited,” Studi
musicali 13 (1984), 241–257.

172
 Select bibliography 173

“Der vollkommene Capellmeister as a Stimulus to J. S. Bach’s Late Fugal

Writing,” in New Mattheson Studies, ed. George J. Buelow and
Hans-Joachim Marx (Cambridge University Press, 1983),
293–305.
Butt, John, “Bach’s Metaphysics of Music,” in he Cambridge Companion to
Bach, ed. John Butt (Cambridge University Press, 1999),
46–59.
Music Education and the Art of Performance in the German Baroque
(Cambridge University Press, 1994).
Capell, Richard, “Wesley, Mrs. Oom and the Forty-Eight,” he Musical Times 61
(March 1, 1920), 170–171.
Christensen, homas, “Bach among the heorists,” in Bach Perspectives 3:
Creative Responses to Bach from Mozart to Hindemith, ed. Michael Marissen
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998), 23–46.
Clark, Stephen L., ed. and trans., he Letters of C. P. E. Bach (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1997).
Clarke, Mary Cowden, he Life and Labours of Vincent Novello, by His Daughter
(London: Novello, 1862).
Cowart, Georgia, he Origins of Modern Music Criticism: French and Italian
Music 1600–1750 (Ann Arbor: UMI Press, 1981).
“Sense and Sensibility in Eighteenth-Century Musical hought,” Acta
musicologica 45 (1984), 251–266.
Croll, Gerhard, “Eine neuentdeckte Bach-Fuge für Streichquartett von Mozart,”
Österreichische Musikzeitschrift 21 (1966), 508–514.
Crotch, William, Elements of Musical Composition: Comprehending the Rules of
horough Bass, and the heory of Tuning (London, 1812).
Specimens of Various Styles of Music Referred to in a Course of Lectures Read at
Oxford & London, 3 vols., Vol. III (London, [c. 1809]).
Czerny, Carl, he Art of Playing the Ancient and Modern Piano Forte Works, trans.
John Bishop (London: Cocks, n.d.).
Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben, ed. Walter Kolneder (Strasbourg and Baden-
Baden, 1968).
Die Kunst des Vortrags der älteren und neueren Klavier-Kompositionen:
Vollständige theoretisch-practische Pianoforte-Schule, Op. 500, 4 vols., Vol. IV
(Vienna: Diabelli, 1846).
Dahlhaus, Carl, “Zur Entstehung der romantischer Bach-Deutung,” BJ 64
(1978), 192–210.
Daub, Peggy, “he Publication Process and Audience for C. P. E. Bach’s Sonaten
für Kenner und Liebhaber,” in Bach Perspectives 2, ed. George B. Stauffer
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996), 65–84.
Daw, Stephen, “Muzio Clementi as an Original Advocate, Collector and
Performer, in Particular of J. S. Bach and D. Scarlatti,” in Bach, Handel,
Scarlatti: Tercentenary Essays, ed. Peter Williams (Cambridge University
Press, 1985), 61–74.
Deutsch, Otto Erich, Mozart: A Documentary Biography, trans. Eric Blom,
Peter Branscombe, and Jeremy Noble (Stanford University Press,
1965).
Diettenhofer, Joseph, A Set of Ten Miscellaneous Fugues with Two Introductions
and One Voluntary for the Organ or the Piano Forte … hird Set (London,
[c. 1802]).
174 Select bibliography

Dreyfus, Laurence, Bach and the Patterns of Invention (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1996).
“he Hermeneutics of Lament: A Neglected Paradigm in a Mozartian
Trauermusik,” Music Analysis 10/3 (1991), 329–343.
“Matters of Kind: Genre and Subgenre in Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, Book
I,” in A Bach Tribute: Essays in Honor of William Scheide, ed. Paul Brainard
and Ray Robinson (Kassel: Bärenreiter; Chapel Hill: Hinshaw, 1994),
101–119.
Dürr, Alfred, “On the Earliest Manuscripts and Prints of Bach’s Well Tempered
Clavier in England,” in A Bach Tribute: Essays in Honor of William H.
Scheide, ed. Paul Brainard and Ray Robinson (Kassel: Bärenreiter; Chapel
Hill: Hinshaw, 1994), 121–134.
Edwards, Frederick George, “Bach’s Music in England,” he Musical Times
37 (September–December, 1896), 585–587, 652–657, 722–726,
797–800.
“A Celebrated Nonconformist Organist: Benjamin Jacob, of Surrey Chapel,”
he Nonconformist Musical Journal (April–May, 1890), 57–58, 71–74.
Einstein, Alfred, Mozart: His Character, His Work, trans. A. Mendel and N.
Broder (New York: Oxford University Press, 1945).
Eisen, Cliff, New Mozart Documents (Stanford University Press, 1991).
Emerson, Isabelle Putnam, “he Role of Counterpoint in the Formation of
Mozart’s Late Style,” Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1977.
Fellinger, Imogen, “Mattheson als Begründer der ersten Musikzeitschrift,” in
New Mattheson Studies, ed. George J. Buelow and Hans Joachim Marx
(Cambridge University Press, 1983), 179–197.
Fétis, François-Joseph, “Concerts historiques de la musique de piano,” Revue et
Gazette Musicale de Paris 5/6 (February 11, 1838), 62–64.
Traité du contrepoint et de la fugue (Paris, 1824, 1846).
Fink, Gottfried Wilhelm, review of J. S. Bach, L’art de la fugue, ed. Carl Czerny
for C. F. Peters, AMZ 41/1 (January 2, 1839), 3–5.
Review of J. S. Bach, Six grandes sonates, ed. Carl Czerny for C. F. Peters,
AMZ 43/7 (February 17, 1841), 145–148.
Finscher, Ludwig, “Bach and the Viennese Classics,” Miscellanea musicologica:
Adelaide Studies in Musicology 10 (1979), 47–59.
“Bach und die Wiener Klassik,” in Bachtage Berlin, ed. Günther Wagner
(Neuhausen-Stuttgart: Hänssler Verlag, 1985), 139–151.
Forkel, Johann Nikolaus, Allgemeine Geschichte der Musik, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1788,
1801).
Über Johann Sebastian Bachs Leben, Kunst und Kunstwerke (Leipzig:
Hoffmeister & Kühnel, 1802).
Gauntlett, Henry John, “John Sebastian Bach & Geo. Frederic Handel,” he
Musical World 5/62 (May 19, 1837), 145; 5/63 (May 26, 1837), 162.
Gerber, Ernst Ludwig, Historisch-biographisches Lexicon der Tonkünstler (Leipzig,
1790).
Neues historisch-biographisches Lexicon der Tonkünstler (Leipzig,
1812/1814).
Glöckner, Andreas, “‘Ich habe den alten Bachen wieder lebendig gemacht, aber
er hat mich weidlich schwitzen lassen’: Carl Friedrich Zelter und die Bach-
Aufführungen der Sing-Akademie zu Berlin,” in “Zu groß, zu unerreichbar”:
Bach-Rezeption im Zeitalter Mendelssohns und Schumanns, ed. Anselm
 Select bibliography 175

Hartinger, Christoph Wolff, and Peter Wollny (Wiesbaden: Breitkopf &

Härtel, 2007), 329–355.
“Neuerkenntnisse zu Johann Sebastian Bachs Aufführungskalender zwischen
1729 und 1735,” BJ 67 (1981), 60–69.
Godman, Stanley, “he Early Reception of Bach’s Music in England,” Monthly
Musical Record 82 (1952), 255–260; 83 (1953), 32–39, 69–71.
Gramit, David, Cultivating Music: he Aspirations, Interests, and Limits of
German Musical Culture, 1770–1848 (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2002).
Griepenkerl, Friedrich Konrad, “Noch einmal: J. S. Bach’s chromatische
Phantasie,” AMZ 50/7 (February 16, 1848), 97–100.
GutsMuths, J. C. F., “Wollen alle Deutschen Musikanten werden?” Bibliothek
der pädagogischen Literatur (November, 1804), 295–299.
Hammerstein, Reinhold, “Der Gesang der geharnischten Männer: Eine Studie
zu Mozarts Bachbild,” Archiv für Musikwissenschaft 13 (1956), 1–24.
Haupt, Carl August, “Recensionen von Ciaccona 3 Sonate no. 2 per il violino solo,
composta da Joh. Seb. Bach. Per il violino con accompagnamento di pianoforte
ed. da F. W. Ressel,” Cäcilia 25/98 (1846), 103–106.
Hawkins, John, A General History of the Science and Practice of Music (London,
1776).
Herl, Joseph, Worship Wars in Early Lutheranism: Choir, Congregation and hree
Centuries of Conflict (Oxford University Press, 2004).
Hinrichsen, Hans-Joachim, “Johann Nikolaus Forkel und die Anfänge der
Bachforschung,” in Bach und die Nachwelt, 4 vols., Vol. I, ed. Michael
Heinemann and Hans-Joachim Hinrichsen (Laaber Verlag, 1997),
193–253.
Holmes, Edward, he Life of Mozart (London, 1845; New York: Da Capo Press,
1979).
“Progress of Bach’s Music in England,” he Musical Times 2 (June, 1851),
192–193.
Holschneider, Andreas, “Die musikalische Bibliothek Gottfried van Swietens,”
Bericht über den Internationalen musikwissenschaftlichen Kongress Kassel 1962
(Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1963), 174–178.
“Zu Mozarts Bearbeitungen Bachscher Fugen,” Die Musikforschung 17 (1964),
51–56.
Hosler, Bellamy, Changing Aesthetic Views of Instrumental Music in 18th-Century
Germany (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1978/1981).
Hughson, David, London: Being an Accurate History and Description of the British
Metropolis and Its Neighbourhood, 6 vols., Vol. IV (London, 1807).
Hummel, Johann Nepomuk, A Complete heoretical and Practical Course of
Instructions on the Art of Playing the Piano Forte, 3 vols. (London: Boosey,
[c. 1828]).
Johnson, Claudia L., “‘Giant HANDEL’ and the Musical Sublime,” Eighteenth-
Century Studies 19/4 (Summer, 1986), 515–533.
Kaiser, Rainer, “Palschaus Bach-Spiel in London: Zur Bach-Pflege in England
um 1750,” BJ 79 (1993), 225–229.
Kassler, Michael, “he Bachists of 1810: Subscribers to the Wesley/Horn Edition
of the ’48,’” in he English Bach Awakening: Knowledge of J. S. Bach and
His Music in England 1750–1830, ed. Michael Kassler (Aldershot: Ashgate,
2004), 315–340.
176 Select bibliography

“Broderip, Wilkinson and the First English Edition of the ’48,’” Musical Times
147/1895 (Summer, 2006), 67–76.
“Chronology of the English Bach Awakening,” in he English Bach Awakening:
Knowledge of J. S. Bach and His Music in England 1750–1830, ed. Michael
Kassler (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), 1–33.
he English Bach Awakening: Knowledge of J. S. Bach and His Music in England
1750–1830 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004).
“he English Translations of Forkel’s Life of Bach,” in he English Bach
Awakening: Knowledge of J. S. Bach and His Music in England 1750–1830,
ed. Michael Kassler (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), 169–209.
Kerman, Joseph, “A Few Canonic Variations,” Critical Inquiry 10 (September,
1983), 107–125.
Kevorkian, Tanya, Baroque Piety: Religion, Society, and Music in Leipzig, 1650–
1750 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007).
King, Alec Hyatt, “Mozart’s Counterpoint: Its Growth and Significance,” Music
and Letters 26 (1945), 12–20.
Kirkendale, Warren, Fugue and Fugato in Rococo and Classical Chamber Music
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1979).
“KV 405: Ein unveröffentlichtes Mozart-Autograph,” Mozart Jahrbuch 10
(1962/1963), 140–155.
“Mehr Licht,” Die Musikforschung 18 (1965), 195–199.
“More Slow Introductions by Mozart to Fugues of J. S. Bach?” Journal of the
American Musicological Society 17 (1964), 43–65.
Kittel, Johann Christian, Der angehende praktische Organist (Erfurt, 1808).
Koch, Heinrich Christoph, Versuch einer Anleitung zur Composition, 3 vols.
(Rudolstadt and Leipzig, 1782–1793).
Köhler, Hans-Joachim, “Bach als Katalysator der Identitätssuche Robert
Schumanns,” in “Zu groß, zu unerreichbar”: Bach-Rezeption im Zeitalter
Mendelssohns und Schumanns, ed. Anselm Hartinger, Christoph Wolff, and
Peter Wollny (Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Härtel, 2007), 237–254.
Kollmann, August Friedrich Christoph, Essay on Practical Musical Composition
(London, 1799).
“Of John Sebastian Bach, and His Works,” Quarterly Musical Register 1
(January, 1812), 30.
Konrad, Ulrich, Mozarts Schaffensweise (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht,
1992).
Kropfinger, Klaus, “Klassik-Rezeption in Berlin (1800–1830),” in Studien
zur Musikgeschichte Berlins im frühen 19. Jahrhundert, ed. Carl Dahlhaus
(Regensburg: Gustav Bosse, 1980), 301–379.
Krummacher, Friedhelm, “Bach- und Händel-Traditionen,” in Handbuch der
Musikwissenschaft V: Die Musik des 18. Jahrhunderts (Laaber Verlag, 1985),
383–395.
Lampadius, Wilhelm Adolf, he Life of Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, trans. W. L.
Gage (Boston: Oliver Ditson, 1849/1887).
le Huray, Peter, and James Day, eds., Music and Aesthetics in the Eighteenth and
Early Nineteenth Centuries (Cambridge University Press, 1988).
Leaver, Robin, “Bach and Hymnody: he Evidence of the Orgelbüchlein,” Early
Music 13/2 (May, 1985), 227–236.
“Bach, Hymns and Hymnbooks,” he Hymn 36/4 (1985), 7–13.
 Select bibliography 177

Lehmann, Karen, Die Anfänge einer Bach-Gesamtausgabe 1801–1865: Editionen

der Klavierwerke durch Hoffmeister und Kühnel (Bureau de musique) und C.
F. Peters in Leipzig 1801–1865 (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 2004).
“ ‘Eines der vortrefflichsten Kunstwerke, die aus deutschem Geist entsprossen
sind’: Zur Rezeption von Bachs chromatischer Fantasie und Fugue im
Zeitalter Mendelssohns und Schumanns,” in “Zu groß, zu unerreichbar”:
Bach-Rezeption im Zeitalter Mendelssohns und Schumanns, ed. Anselm
Hartinger, Christoph Wolff, and Peter Wollny (Wiesbaden: Breitkopf &
Härtel, 2007), 357–366.
“Die Idee einer Gesamtausgabe: Projekte und Probleme,” in Bach und die
Nachwelt, 4 vols., Vol. I, ed. Michael Heinemann and Hans-Joachim
Hinrichsen (Laaber Verlag, 1997), 255–303.
Leppert, Richard, Music and Image: Domesticity, Ideology and Socio-Cultural
Formation in Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge University Press,
1988).
Lippman, Edward, A History of Western Musical Aesthetics (Lincoln: University of
Nebraska Press, 1992).
Musical Aesthetics: A Historical Reader (Stuyvesant, NY: Pendragon, 1986).
Litzmann, Berthold, ed., Letters of Clara Schumann and Johannes Brahms, 2 vols.
(New York: Vienna House, 1971).
Loesser, Arthur, Men, Women, and Pianos (New York: Simon and Schuster,
1954).
Mainka, Jürgen, “Zum Naturbegriff bei Bach: Aspekte des Scheibe–Birnbaum-
Disputs,” in Bericht über die wissenschaftlich Konferenz zum III.
Internationalen Bach-Fest der DDR (Leipzig: Deutscher Verlag für Musik,
1977), 155–163.
Mann, Alfred, he Study of Fugue (New York: Dover, 1987).
Marshall, Robert L., “Bach and Mozart’s Artistic Maturity,” Bach Perspectives 3:
Creative Responses to Bach from Mozart to Hindemith, ed. Michael Marissen
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998), 47–79.
he Compositional Process of J. S. Bach, 2 vols. (Princeton University Press,
1972).
“How J. S. Bach Composed Four-Part Chorales,” Musical Quarterly 56/2
(April, 1970), 198–221.
Martini, Giovanni Battista, Esemplare o sia saggio fondamentale pratico di
contrappunto fugato, 2 vols. (Bologna, 1775).
Marx, Adolf Bernhard, Auswahl aus Sebastian Bach’s Kompositionen veranstaltet
und mit einer Abhandlung über Auffassung und Vortrag seiner Werke am Piano
Forte (Berlin: Challier, 1844).
“Seb. Bach’s chromatische Fantasie,” AMZ 50/3 (January 19, 1848), 33–41.
A Selection from Seb. Bach’s Compositions for the Piano Forte prefaced with an
Essay on the proper study and execution of these and similar Works by Dr. Adolf
Bernhard Marx. Translated and Edited … by Augustus H. Wehrnan (London:
Robert Cocks & Co., 1853).
Mattheson, Johann, Johann Mattheson’s Der vollkommene Capellmeister: A
Revised Translation with Critical Commentary, ed. and trans. Ernest C.
Harriss (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1981).
Michaelis, Christian Friedrich, “Ueber das Erhabene in der Musik,”
Monatsschrift für Deutsche 1801, Part I (January, 1801), 49–50; reprinted
178 Select bibliography

as “Einige Bemerkungen über das Erhabene in der Musik,” Berlinische

musikalische Zeitung 1/46 (1805), 179–181.
“Ueber einen Aufsatz mit der Ueberschrift: Wollen alle Deutschen
Musikanten werden?” AMZ 7 (1805), 229–237.
Miltitz, Karl Borromäus von, “Joh. Sebastian Bach’s Klavierwerke,” AMZ 40/19
(May 9, 1838), 297–299.
Monk, Samuel, he Sublime: A Study of Critical heories in XVIII-Century
England (New York: Modern Languages Association, 1935; Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press, 1960).
Morrow, Mary Sue, German Music Criticism in the Late Eighteenth Century:
Aesthetic Issues in Instrumental Music (Cambridge University Press,
1997).
Moscheles, Charlotte, ed., Life of Moscheles, with Selections from His Diaries and
Correspondence, trans. A. D. Coleridge, 2 vols. (London: Hurst and Blakett,
1873).
Nägeli, Hans-Georg, Johann Sebastian Bach [1802–1804], ed. Günter Birkner
(Zürich: Hug, 1974).
“Vorläufige Nachricht … der … Werke von Johann Sebastian Bach,” AMZ 3
(February, 1801), Intelligenz-Blatt VI, 22.
Niemetschek, Franz, Life of Mozart [1798], trans. Helen Mautner, ed. A. Hyatt
King (London: Leonard Hyman, 1956).
Olleson, Edward, “Gottfried, Baron van Swieten and His Influence on Mozart
and Haydn,” D.Phil. dissertation, Oxford University, 1967.
Olleson, Philip, ed., he Letters of Samuel Wesley: Professional and Social
Correspondence, 1797–1837 (Oxford University Press, 2001).
“Samuel Wesley and the English Bach Awakening,” in he English Bach
Awakening: Knowledge of J. S. Bach and His Music in England 1750–1830,
ed. Michael Kassler (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), 251–313.
“Samuel Wesley and the Music Profession,” in Music and British Culture,
1785–1914: Essays in Honour of Cyril Ehrlich, ed. Christina Bashford and
Leanne Langley (Oxford University Press, 2000), 23–38.
Samuel Wesley: he Man and His Music (Woodbridge and Rochester: Boydell
Press, 2004).
Philippsborn, Magali, “Die Frühdrucke der Werke Johann Sebastian Bachs
in der ersten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts: Eine kritisch vergleichende
Untersuchung anhand des Wohltemperierten Klaviers I,” Ph.D. dissertation,
Frankfurt-am-Main, 1975.
Plantinga, Leon B., “Clementi, Virtuosity, and the ‘German Manner,’” Journal of
the American Musicological Society 25 (1972), 303–330.
Poulin, Pamela L., ed. and trans., J. S. Bach’s Precepts and Principles for Playing
the horough-Bass or Accompanying in Four Parts: Leipzig, 1738 (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1994).
Poulin, Pamela L., “Noch eine Mozart–Bach-Verbindung,” BJ 76 (1990),
79–80.
Reichardt, Johann Friedrich, Briefe eines aufmerksamen Reisenden die Musik
betreffend (Frankfurt, 1774/1776).
“Einige Anmerkungen zu Forkels Schrift: Ueber Joh. Sebast. Bach,” Berlinische
Musikalische Zeitung 2/38 (1806): 149–150; 2/40: 157–159; 2/51:
201–202.
 Select bibliography 179

“Fortgesetzte Nachricht über Kirchenmusik zu Leipzig,” Berlinische

musikalische Zeitung 1/31 (1805), 123–124.
Richards, Annette, “Automatic Genius: Mozart and the Mechanical Sublime,”
Music and Letters 80 (1999), 366–389.
he Free Fantasia and the Musical Picturesque (Cambridge University Press,
2001).
Riepel, Joseph, Unentbehrliche Anmerkungen zum Contrapunct (Regensburg,
1768).
Riley, Matthew, Musical Listening in the German Enlightenment: Attention,
Wonder, and Astonishment (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004).
Rochlitz, Friedrich, “Geschmack an Sebastian Bachs Kompositionen, besonders
für das Klavier,” in Für Freunde der Tonkunst, 4 vols., Vol. II (Leipzig,
1825), 205–207, 210–229.
“Über den Geschmack an Sebastian Bachs Kompositionen, besonders für das
Klavier,” AMZ 5/31 (April 27, 1803), 509–522.
“Vorschläge zu Betrachtungen über die neueste Geschichte der Musik,” AMZ
1/40 (July 3, 1799), 625–629.
Rohr, Deborah, he Careers of British Musicians, 1750–1850 (Cambridge
University Press, 2001).
Rose, Stephen, “Daniel Vetter and the Domestic Keyboard Chorale in Bach’s
Leipzig,”Early Music 33/1 (February, 2005), 39–53.
Rosen, Charles, “he Shock of the Old,” New York Review of Books 37/12 (July
19, 1990), 46–52.
Ruhnke, Martin, “Moritz Hauptman und die Wiederbelebung der Musik J. S.
Bachs,” in Festschrift Friedrich Blume zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. Anna Amalie
Abert and Wilhelm Pfannkuch (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1963), 305–319.
Sadie, Stanley, “Mozart, Bach and Counterpoint,” Musical Times 105/1 (January,
1964), 23–24.
Saint-Foix, Georges de, W.-A. Mozart: Sa vie musicale et son oeuvre, 5 vols. (Paris:
Desclée, 1937–1946).
Salwey, Nicholas, “Women Pianists in Late Eighteenth-Century London,” in
Concert Life in Eighteenth-Century Britain, ed. Susan Wollenberg and
Simon McVeigh (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), 273–290.
Scheibe, Johann Adolph, Critischer Musikus, 2nd edn. (Leipzig, 1745;
Hildesheim: G. Olms, 1970).
Schering, Arnold, “Joh. Phil. Kirnberger als Herausgeber Bachscher Choräle,” BJ
15 (1918), 141–150.
Scholes, Percy A., ed., Dr. Burney’s Musical Tours (London: Oxford University
Press, 1959).
Schultz, Johann Abraham Peter, Gedanken über den Einfluß der Musik auf die
Bildung eines Volks, und über deren Einführung in den Schulen der königl.
dänischen Staaten (Copenhagen: Christian Gottlob Prost, 1790).
Schulze, Hans-Joachim, “‘150 Stücke von den Bachischen Erben’: Zur
Überlieferung der vierstimmigen Choräle Johann Sebastian Bachs,” BJ 69
(1983), 81–100.
“Sebastian Bachs Choral-Buch in Rochester, NY?” BJ 67 (1981),
123–130.
Schumann, Robert, Gesammelte Schriften über Musik und Musiker, ed. Martin
Kreisig, 2 vols. (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1914).
180 Select bibliography

On Music and Musicians, trans. Paul Rosenfeld (New York: Pantheon Books,
1946; Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1983).
Serwer, Howard, “Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurg (1718–1795): Music Critic in a
Galant Age,” Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 1969.
“Marpurg versus Kirnberger: heories of Fugal Composition,” Journal of
Music heory 14/2 (Winter, 1970), 209–236.
Shapiro, Alexander H., “‘Drama of an Infinitely Superior Nature’: Handel’s
Early English Oratorios and the Religious Sublime,” Music & Letters 74/2
(May, 1993), 215–245.
Sheehan, James J., German History 1770–1866 (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1989).
Shield, William, An Introduction to Harmony (London, 1800).
Smend, Friedrich, “Zu den ältesten Sammlungen der vierstimmigen Choräle J.
S. Bachs,” BJ 52 (1966), 5–40.
Smidak, Emil F., Isaak-Ignaz Moscheles: he Life of the Composer and His
Encounters with Beethoven, Liszt, Chopin and Mendelssohn (Aldershot:
Ashgate, 1989).
Solomon, Maynard, “he Rochlitz Anecdotes: Issues of Authenticity in Early
Mozart Biography,” Mozart Studies, ed. Cliff Eisen (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1991), 1–59.
Spitta, Philipp, Johann Sebastian Bach [Leipzig, 1873–1880], trans. Clara
Bell and J. A. Fuller-Maitland as he Life of Bach (London: Novello,
1884–1889).
Stauffer, George B., ed., he Forkel–Hoffmeister & Kühnel Correspondence: A
Document of the Early 19th-Century Bach Revival (New York: Peters, 1990).
“Johann Mattheson and J. S. Bach: he Hamburg Connection,” in New
Mattheson Studies, ed. George J. Buelow and Hans-Joachim Marx
(Cambridge University Press, 1983), 353–370.
Stinson, Russell, he Reception of Bach’s Organ Works from Mendelssohn to Brahms
(Oxford University Press, 2006).
Taling-Hajnali, Maria, Der fugierte Stil bei Mozart (Bern: Schweizerischen
Musikforschenden Gesellschaft, 1959).
Talle, Andrew, “J. S. Bach’s Keyboard Partitas and heir Early Audience,” Ph.D.
dissertation, Harvard University, 2003.
“Nürnberg, Darmstadt, Köthen: Neuerkenntnisse zur Bach-Überlieferung in
der ersten Hälfte des 18. Jahrhunderts,” BJ 89 (2003), 143–172.
Terry, Charles Sanford, he Four-Part Chorals of J. S. Bach with German Text
of the Hymns and English Translations (London: Oxford University Press,
1929).
John Christian Bach (London: Oxford University Press, 1929/1967).
hibaut, A. F., Über Reinheit der Tonkunst (Heidelberg, 1825), trans. John
Broadhouse as Purity in Music (London: W. Reeves, 1882).
Tomita, Yo, “he Dawn of the English Bach Awakening Manifested in Sources
of the ‘48,’” in he English Bach Awakening: Knowledge of J. S. Bach and
His Music in England 1750–1830, ed. Michael Kassler (Aldershot: Ashgate,
2004), 35–167.
J. S. Bach’s Das Wohltemperierte Clavier II: A Critical Commentary, 2 vols.
(Leeds: Household World, 1995).
“‘Most Ingenious, Most Learned, and Yet Practicable Work’: he English
Reception of Bach’s he Well Tempered Clavier in the First Half of the
 Select bibliography 181

Nineteenth Century Seen through the Editions Published in London,” in

he Piano in Nineteenth-Century British Culture: Instruments, Performers
and Repertoire, ed. herese Ellsworth and Susan Wollenberg (Aldershot:
Ashgate, 2007), 33–67.
Triest, Johann Karl Friedrich, “Bemerkung über die Ausbildung der
Tonkunst in Deutschland im achtzehnten Jahrhundert,” AMZ 3/14–26
(January 1–March 25, 1801), trans. Susan Gillespie as “Remarks on the
Development of the Art of Music in Germany in the Eighteenth Century,”
in Haydn and His World, ed. Elaine Sisman (Princeton University Press,
1997), 321–394.
Vachon, Monique, La fugue dans la musique religieuse de W. A. Mozart (Québec:
Les Presses de l’Université Laval; Tours: Editions Van de Velde, 1970).
Wachowski, Gerd, “Die vierstimmigen Choräle Johann Sebastian Bachs:
Untersuchungen zu den Druckausgaben von 1765 bis 1932 und zur Frage
der Authentizität,” BJ 69 (1983), 51–79.
Wagner, Günther, “Die Bach-Rezeption im 18. Jahrhundert im Spannungsfeld
zwischen strengem und freiem Stil,” Jahrbuch des Staatlichen Instituts für
Musikforschung 1985–86 (1989), 221–238.
“J. A. Scheibe–J. S. Bach: Versuch einer Bewertung,” BJ 68 (1982), 33–49.
Weber, William, he Rise of Musical Classics in Eighteenth-Century England:
A Study in Canon, Ritual, and Ideology (Oxford University Press,
1992).
Wesley, Eliza, ed., Letters of Samuel Wesley to Mr. Jacobs [sic] … Relating to the
Introduction into his Country of the Works of John Sebastian Bach (London:
William Reeves, 1875).
Wesley, Samuel, “Lectures on Musical Subjects” [1811–1830], BL, MS Add.
35014, 35015.
“Reminiscences” [c. 1836], BL, MS Add. 27593.
Wesley, Samuel and Carl Friedrich Horn, eds., New and Correct Edition of
the Preludes and Fugues of John Sebastian Bach (London: Robert Birchall,
1810–1813).
Whittaker, W. Gillies, he Cantatas of Johann Sebastian Bach, Sacred and Secular
(Oxford University Press, 1959).
Williams, Peter, J. S. Bach: A Life in Music (Cambridge University Press,
2007).
“J. S. Bach and English Organ Music,” Music & Letters 44 (1963),
140–151.
Williams, Peter ed., he Wesley Bach Letters, in facsimile (London: Novello,
1988).
Wolff, Christoph, Bach: Essays on His Life and Music (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1991).
“Defining Genius: Early Reflections of J. S. Bach’s Self-Image,” Proceedings of
the American Philosophical Society 145/4 (December, 2001), 474–481.
Johann Sebastian Bach, the Learned Musician (New York: Norton, 2000).
Wollenberg, Susan and Simon McVeigh, eds., Concert Life in Eighteenth-Century
Britain (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004).
Wollny, Peter, “Abschriften und Autographe, Sammler und Kopisten: Aspekte
der Bach-Pflege im 18. Jahrhundert,” in Bach und die Nachwelt, 4 vols.,
Vol. I, ed. Michael Heinemann and Hans-Joachim Hinrichsen (Laaber
Verlag, 1997), 43–51.
182 Select bibliography

“Wilhelm Friedemann Bach’s Halle Performances of Cantatas by his Father,”

Bach Studies 2, ed. Daniel R. Melamed (Cambridge University Press,
1995), 202–228.
Wright, Barbara David, “Johann Sebastian Bach’s Matthäus-Passion: A
Performance History 1829–1854,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of
Michigan, 1983.
Yearsley, David, Bach and the Meanings of Counterpoint (Cambridge University
Press, 2002).
Young, Percy, he Bachs: 1500–1850 (London: J. M. Dent, 1970).
Zenck, Martin, Die Bach-Rezeption des späten Beethoven: Zum Verhältnis von
Musikhistoriographie und Rezeptionsgeschichtsschreibung der “Klassik”
(Wiesbaden: Steiner Verlag, 1986).
“Stadien der Bach-Deutung in der Musikkritik, Musikaesthetik und
Musikgeschichtsschreibung zwischen 1750 und 1800,” BJ 68 (1982), 7–32.
 Index

Abel, Carl Friedrich, 120, 130 Clavierbüchlein for Anna Magdalena Bach, 44
Academy of Ancient Music, 119 Clavier-Übung, 3, 36, 59, 111, 122, 159
Addison, Joseph, 132 Concerto “in the Italian Style”, 10, 36
Agricola, Johann Friedrich, 20, 21, 22, 35, 37, Goldberg Variations, 36, 111, 129, 130,
48, 93 170
Albrechtsberger, Johann Georg, 66 Ouverture “in the French Manner”, 36
Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, 30, 90, 91, 93, Part 3 (organ works), 111
96, 101, 105, 116, 117, 153–154, 156, Partitas, 36, 111
161, 166 Concerto in D minor (BWV 1052), 142,
amateurism, growth of, 18–19, 30, 32, 34, 143
41–44, 91–92, 98–99, 103–108, “Dietel” chorale collection, 44
114–118, 140–141, 143–145, 157–158, English Suites, 59, 108, 117, 118
159–163, 166 Fantasie in C minor (BWV 906/1), 111
Anna Amalia, Princess, 59 Four-part chorales, 34, 35, 37–40, 43–54,
Applegate, Celia, 102, 104, 105 91, 114, 169
Arnold, Samuel, 112 Christ lag in Todesbanden (BWV 277),
Attwood, homas, 59 52–53
Austen, Jane, 135 French Suites, 59, 108, 111
Sarabande in E major (BWV 817/3), 20
Bach “Revival”, 19, 102, 118, 143 Fugue in A minor for unaccompanied violin
Bach Gesellschaft, 112, 144, 164–167, 169 (BWV 1003/2), 9, 12–13
Bach, Carl Philipp Emanuel, 156 Fugue in G minor for organ (BWV 542/2),
advocacy of his father’s music, 20, 21, 22, 24, 10
35, 37–39, 46–47, 48, 90, 122, 150 Harpsichord Concertos, 36
his own music and general style, 26, 28, 37, Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis (BWV 21), 6–9,
62 17, 18
Bach, Johann Christian, 119–120, 130 Inventions and Sinfonias, 23, 59, 108, 111,
Bach, Johann Sebastian 156, 161
“complete works” editions, 30, 34, 91, Invention in C major (BWV 772), 152
100–104, 109–114, 143–145, 157–168, Kleine harmonische Labyrinth, 59
169 “Leipzig” chorale preludes, 36
difficulty of his music, 5–9, 24–25, 51, 92, Mass in A major (BWV 234), 118
101, 103, 107, 108, 117, 123, 129, Matthew Passion, 104, 118
141, 147 Musical Offering, 36, 59, 78, 159
and Harmonie, 22, 24, 35, 37, 45, 51, 89, 95, Nimm, was dein ist, und gehe hin (BWV
96, 97, 118, 169 144/1), 14–19
wo rks Orgelbüchlein, 45
Ach, Herr, mich armen Sünder (BWV 135), Prelude and Fugue in A minor (BWV 543),
118 155
Art of Fugue, 10, 21, 34–35, 37, 46, 78, 122, Prelude and Fugue in E♭ major (BWV 552),
155, 158, 159, 161, 166 131, 138
B-minor Mass, 20 Schemelli Gesangbuch, 40, 44, 45, 46
Brandenburg Concertos, 35, 143 “Schübler” chorales (BWV 645-650), 36
Canonic Variations on “Vom Himmel hoch” Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied (BWV 225),
(BWV 769), 36 55, 59
Chromatic Fantasie and Fugue (BWV 903), Six “Little” Preludes (BWV 933-938), 111,
111, 125, 151, 152–156, 160, 167, 170 161

183
184 Index

Bach, Johann Sebastian (cont.) Beckford, Peter, 140

Toccata in D Minor (BWV 913), 109, 111 Beethoven, Ludwig van
“Trauungschoräle” (BWV 250-252), 44 and the anxiety of influence, 74
Trio Sonatas, organ (BWV 525-530), 59, and Bach performance, 146, 155, 160, 164
125, 131 Bach’s influence on, 170
Violin Sonatas (BWV 1014-1019), 130–131, as teacher, 146
166 and the WTC, 90, 123, 146
Well-Tempered Clavier, 3, 13, 30–33, 34, 35, Bernhard, Christoph, 12
36, 59–61, 65, 73, 78, 83–84, 89–93, Bildung, 102–104
95, 101–102, 106–114, 117, 122–127, Birchall, Robert, 125
128–131, 133–140, 141–142, 143, Birnbaum, Johann Abraham, 11–12
145–146, 147, 150, 155, 158, 160–164, Birnstiel, Friedrich Wilhelm, 37–40,
165, 167 46–47, 52
Prelude in C major (BWV 846/1), 107, Böhme, Carl Gotthelf Siegmund, 152–153,
109, 111 157–159, 166
Fugue in C major (BWV 846/2), 75, 111, Breitkopf, Johann Gottlob Immanuel, 105
136 as a publisher of Bach’s music, 38–40, 44, 45,
Prelude in C# major (BWV 848/1), 109 46, 47, 49–51
Fugue in C# minor (BWV 849/2), 107, Broderip & Wilkinson, 91
136, 155 Burke, Edmund, 131
Fugue in D major (BWV 850/2), 131, 138 Burney, Charles
Prelude in D minor (BWV 851/1), 107, as a critic of Bach’s music, 24, 90, 122,
123 127–129, 130, 138, 141
Fugue in E♭ major (BWV 852/2), 136 as a general writer on music, 27, 100, 120,
Prelude in E♭ minor (BWV 853/1), 107 122–123
Prelude in E minor (BWV 855/1), 110
Fugue in F# major (BWV 858/2), 139 Callcott, John Wall, 129
Prelude in G# minor (BWV 863/1), 32 Cherubini, Luigi, 66
Fugue in A minor (BWV 865/2), 136 Chopin, Frederic, 152
Prelude in B♭ minor (BWV 867/1), 107 Clementi, Muzio, 90, 123, 129, 134, 139, 140,
Fugue in B♭ minor (BWV 867/2), 107 142
Fugue in B major (BWV 868/2), 136 Clifton, J. C., 139
Prelude in B minor (BWV 869/1), 136 Concerts of Ancient Music (“King’s Concert”),
Fugue in B minor (BWV 869/2), 21 119, 120
Fugue in C minor (BWV 871/2), 61, 75, Couperin, François, 11, 111
82, 107, 147 Coventry & Hollier, 167
Fugue in C# minor (BWV 873/2), 107 Cramer, Johann Baptist, 90, 123
Fugue in D major (BWV 874/2), 61, 62, Crotch, William, 128, 129–131, 133, 136,
139, 147 138
Fugue in D minor (BWV 875/2), 107 Czerny, Carl
Fugue in E♭ major (BWV 876/2), 61, 107, as Bach editor, 152, 157–167
139, 147 and Bach performance, 145–149, 150–151,
Fugue in D# minor (BWV 877/2), 61, 155, 157–158
139, 147
Fugue in E major (BWV 878/2), 61, 62, Dahlhaus, Carl, 101, 103
107, 139, 147 declamation, in fugue, 5–9, 14–17
Fugue in E minor (BWV 879/2), 20–21 Diettenhofer, Joseph, 136
Fugue in F major (BWV 880/2), 107 Doles, Johann Friedrich, 39, 43
Fugue in F minor (BWV 881/2), 25–29, Dreyfus, Laurence, 64, 83–84
107, 150 Dürer, Albrecht, 60, 96
Fugue in F# major (BWV 882/2), 107
Fugue in G major (BWV 884/2), 107 Ebeling, Christoph Daniel, 19
Fugue in G minor (BWV 885/2), 107 Einstein, Alfred, 60, 78
Fugue in A♭ major (BWV 886/2), 107 Elliott, homas, 130, 137
Fugue in A major (BWV 888/2), 107 Empfindsamkeit, 26–28
Fugue in A minor (BWV 889/2), 107 Ernesti, Johann August, 105
Fugue in B♭ major (BWV 890/2), 13, 107
Fugue in B♭ minor (BWV 891/2), 61, 107 Fasch, C. F. C., 99
Fugue in B major (BWV 892/2), 107 Fétis, François-Joseph, 66, 142, 147
Bach, Wilhelm Friedemann, 143, 152, 156 Field, John, 123
Becker, Carl Ferdinand, 53, 162–163, 165 Fink, Gottfried Wilhelm, 166
 Index 185

Forkel, Johann Nikolaus advocacy of the Bach chorales, 24, 38–39,

as Bach advocate, 90, 91–96, 99–102, 48–49, 51
103–104, 107–111, 118, 120, 138, 144 exchanges with Marpurg, 13, 21, 23
on fugue, 28, 115–116, 150 teacher of Anna Amalia, 59
as guardian of the Bach “tradition”, 151–156, Kittel, Johann Christian, 107
164 Knecht, Justin Heinrich, 48, 49, 51–52
on musical listening, 114–116 Koch, Heinrich Christoph, 66
Frederick the Great, 56 Kollmann, A. F. C., 90, 100, 123–125, 129,
Freylinghausen, Johann Anastasius, 40 138
Fux, Johann Joseph, 61, 65, 70 Krause, Christian Gottfried, 18
Kroll, Franz, 165
Gauntlett, Henry, 133 Kühnau, Johann Christoph, 39, 49, 51, 53
Gerber, Ernst Ludwig, 29, 49, 56, 89, 96, 115
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 25, 110, 111, 167 Laurens, J. B., 155–156
Gottsched, Johann Christoph, 5 Lehmann, Karen, 157
Gramit, David, 98, 103, 117 Levy, Sara, 143
Graupner, Christoph, 41, 53 Liszt, Franz, 151, 154–157, 170
Griepenkerl, Friedrich Konrad, 108, 151–159, Loesser, Arthur, 141
163, 166, 167 Longinus, 132
GutsMuths, J. C. F., 116 Lüdke, F. G., 50, 53

Handel, George Frederic, 3, 36, 99, 120, 158 Mainwaring, John, 99

“Amen” Fugue sketches, 63–64, 72, 83 Marchand, Louis, 96
“Hallelujah” Chorus, 138, 162 Marpurg, Friedrich Wilhelm, 66
posthumous rivalry with Bach, 119, 122, as Bach critic, 13–19, 22–23, 25, 27, 62
131–134 as editor of the Bach chorales, 37, 48
reception of, 24, 25, 27, 29, 56–58, 95, 111, exchanges with Kirnberger, 18, 21
112, 120, 122, 130, 131–133, 136, 140, on stretto, 62, 66
141, 149 Martini, Giovanni Battista, 65, 119
Hanover Square Rooms, London, 129–131, 141 Marx, Adolf Bernhard, 118, 153–154, 156,
Härtel, Gottfried Christoph, 105 159–161, 163, 166
Haupt, Carl August, 166 Mattheson, Johann
Hauptmann, Moritz, 159, 164–165 as Bach critic, 6–10, 12–13, 17, 18, 122
Hauser, Franz, 157–158 general opinions, 66, 83, 97, 150
Hawkins, John, 99, 115, 120, 122 Mendelssohn, Fanny, 153
Haydn, Franz Joseph, 99, 112, 128, 130 Mendelssohn, Felix, 120, 143
String Quartets, Op. 20, 58 as Bach editor, 157–158, 166–167
Heinichen, Johann David, 66 and Bach performance, 139, 152–154,
Herder, Johann Gottfried, 99 163–164
Hiller, Johann Adam, 39, 51 Meyerbeer, Giacomo, 154
Hoffmann, E. T. A., 134, 170 Michaelis, Christian Friedrich, 29, 84, 94, 110,
Hoffmeister & Kühnel, 85, 91, 93, 99, 100, 116, 132
108–109, 112, 145, 157 Miltitz, Karl Borromäus von, 165
Holmes, Edward, 127–128, 136 Mizler, Lorenz, 11
Horn, Carl Friedrich, 91, 128 Moritz, Karl Philipp, 31, 97
as a Bach editor, 60, 112, 125, 135, Morrow, Mary Sue, 97
137, 139 Moscheles, Ignaz, 141–142, 151, 164
Horn, Charles Edward, 139 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 94, 99, 112
Hummel, Johann Nepomuk, 146–147, 150 reception of, 123, 130
and stretto, 61–85
Imbault, Jean-Jérôme, 91 and the WTC, 59–62, 89, 134, 145, 147,
151, 170
Jacob, Benjamin, 129, 130–131, 137, 139 wo rks
Johnson, Claudia, 132 Fantasie in F minor (K 608), 84
Finale to String Quartet in D minor (K 173),
Kant, Immanuel, 97 67, 69–72
Kassler, Michael, 128, 135 Finale to String Quartet in F major (K 168),
Kerby, Caroline, 140 67–69
Kerman, Joseph, 116 Finale to the String Quartet in G major
Kirkendale, Warren, 77–78 (K 387), 73–74
Kirnberger, Johann Philipp Fugue in C minor (K 426), 61, 77–85
186 Index

wo rks (cont.) Scheibe, Johann Adolph, 5–6, 9, 10, 12, 96, 122
“Kyrie” from the Requiem, 57 Schemelli, Georg Christian, 40
Mass in C (K 427), 61, 75–77 Schiller, Friedrich, 94, 103, 159
Mass in C (K 66), 67 Schlegel, August Wilhelm, 53
Prelude and Fugue in C major (K 394), Schoenberg, Arnold, 128
74–75, 77 Schuback, Jacob, 50
Te Deum (K 141), 67 Schulz, Johann Abraham Peter, 21, 49, 51, 105
WTC fugue transcriptions (K 405), 59–61, Schumann, Clara, 145, 155, 163–164
147–150 Schumann, Robert, 60, 145, 162–164, 165
Shapiro, Alexander, 133
Nägeli, Hans-Georg Shield, William, 123
as Bach critic, 32–33 Simrock, Nicolaus, 90, 91
as publisher of Bach’s music, 91, 112 Sing-Akademie, Berlin, 99, 104, 120, 143
natural or naturalness, 4–6, 10, 12–17, 20–22, Smith, William, 132
24, 25–27, 29, 30, 32–33, 122, 151 Spitta, Philipp, 17
nature and art, 5–6, 11–13, 28, 31, 32–33, 49, Stanhope, Philip, Earl of Chesterfield, 140
110, 122 Stinson, Russell, 156, 162
Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, 162, 164 Stirling, Elizabeth, 139, 141
Nichelmann, Christoph, 20 sublime, the, 84, 131–135, 138
Nissen, Georg Nikolaus von, 59 Sulzer, Johann Georg, 98
Novello, Vincent, 128, 129, 130–131 Surrey Chapel, London, 130–131, 136, 141
Surrey Institution, 130
Olleson, Philip, 125, 128
organ building, English, 137 Telemann, Georg Philipp, 3, 37, 50–53
Terry, Charles Sanford, 38, 46
Palschau, Johann Gottfried Wilhelm, 90, 123 halberg, Sigismund, 153, 154
patriotism, German, 95–104 homas Church, Leipzig, 164
Paul, Jean, 27, 97 homas School, Leipzig, 20, 105, 159
Peters, C. F., 108, 112, 145, 151–152, Tieck, Ludwig, 98
157–159, 162–163, 165–166 Triest, Johann Karl Friedrich, 93–94, 95, 98,
Portuguese Embassy Chapel, London, 130 100–101, 103–104, 107, 115, 118
Potter, Cipriani, 90, 142 Türk, Daniel Gottlob, 48, 49
Probst, Carl Gustav, 157
Purcell, Henry, 95, 132, 141 unity in variety, 20–21, 22–23, 30, 106, 132

Rameau, Jean-Philippe, 13, 21, 25, 36, 49 van Swieten, Baron Gottfried, 59, 60, 61, 73,
Reichardt, Johann Friedrich, 20, 32, 50–51, 96, 78, 147, 149
101, 110, 111, 118, 122, 178 Vetter, Daniel, 41–43
on the F-minor Fugue (BWV 881/2), 24–30, Vogler, Georg Joseph, 49, 53
151 voluntary, English, 136
Reincken, Johann Adam, 9, 56 Vopelius, Gottfried, 40, 41
Rellstab, J. C. F., 90
Richards, Annette, 84 Wackenroder, Wilhelm Heinrich, 28
Riepel, Joseph, 66 Weber, Carl Maria von, 151
Riley, Matthew, 114 Wesley, Charles, 127
Rochlitz, Friedrich Wesley, Eliza, 127
as Bach advocate, 30–32, 96, 101–102, 104, Wesley, John, 127
106–108, 114, 117–118, 120, 144 Wesley, Samuel
on the Bach-Mozart connection, 56, 57 as Bach advocate, 125–131, 133–141
as editor of the AMZ, 105–106, 115, 116 Bach editions, 91, 112
Roitzsch, Ferdinand August, 157 writings, 127–128
Rosen, Charles, 149 Whittaker, Gillies, 139
Royal Institution of Great Britain, 129 Woelfl, Joseph, 90
Rubenstein, Anton, 155 Wolff, Christoph, 12
Russell, William, 139
Rust, Friedrich Wilhelm, 89 Yearsley, David, 66

Salomon, Johann Peter, 130, 131 Zedler, Johann Heinrich, 10

salon, musical, 18, 58, 60, 73, 123, 147 Zelter, Carl Friedrich, 99, 110, 120, 143
Scarlatti, Domenico, 141 Zenck, Martin, 25, 170