12 SEBASTIAN BACH AND HIS WORKS. 



The Forty-eight Preludes and Fugues form a master work 

 unique of its kind. He who knows only the fugues of the greatest 

 of other couiposers cannot possibly form any idea of the pitch to 

 which this art may be brought, of the ends to which it may be 

 adapted, or of the feelings which it may excite. Of the fugues of 

 other composers, he who knows one knows all, and can play all ; 

 but each of Bach's fugues is a study of itself, and requires separate 

 study properly to understand it. A characteristic and, at the same 

 time, a beautiful subject, a delicious and equal flow of melody in all 

 the parts, complete connection between the ideas, so that one seems 

 necessarily to arise from the other, a bold and ever- varying modula- 

 tion, perfect conformity of each part to the whole, and the result 

 of all these, the highest degree of ease and freedom, of sublimity 

 and beauty, of which the heart is capable — these are the distin- 

 guishing features of Bach's fugues. To say that they break 

 through many of the (at that time) recognized rules of musical 

 composition, is only saying that they opened new and hitherto un- 

 trodden paths of harmony and melody, which, once discovered, lead 

 us through scenes of beauty and loveliness of which before we could 

 form no idea. It is generally imagined that harmony and melody 

 are totally independent branches of the art, and that the one may 

 be perfected without the aid of the other. This is only partially 

 correct, for while melody may acquire considerable excellence with- 

 out the intervention of harmony, the latter improves only in pro- 

 portion to the improvement of the former : in short, melody is no- 

 thing but a constituent part of harmony, which only arrives at its 

 highest excellence by a judicious union of well-conceived and well- 

 amalgamated harmonies. This union of melodies equally scientific 

 and poetical is the essence of all Bach's harmonies; this it is which 

 makes his works the admirable models they are. He is almost the 

 only composer we are acquainted with who, taking this principle 

 as his starting-post,* carries it out, fearless of the diiRculties it in- 



never laid aside the critical file in order to make his fine works still finer. 

 Any of his early works tnat were at all suscejitible of improvement he im- 

 proved. The desire to improve was extended even to some of his engraved 

 works. Under this bead I reckon the most of what he composed before the 

 year 1725. A great many later compositions, but which, for reasons easily 

 understood, are hkewise known only in manuscript, bear too evidently about 

 them the stamp of perfection to allow us to doubt whether we shall number 

 them among the essays or among the works of the accomplished artist." 



• Weber, in his Euryanthe, has shewn what may be achieved in secular mu- 

 sic by following this principle : but, in consequence, this mastei'-jiiece of art 



