HISTORY OF MUSIC. 



48 preludes and fugues, besides a number of 

 pianoforte and orchestral suites, and organ fugues, 

 several complete masses, and other works. 



Bach's choral compositions are very difficult, 

 and were probably not much performed even 

 in his lifetime ; and after his death, the more 

 important of them fell entirely out of sight 

 until the time of Mendelssohn, who, by his 

 -enthusiasm, aroused public interest again in the 

 works of the grand old master. What Men- 

 delssohn did for Bach's choral compositions, the 

 modern school of pianists, Liszt, Hans von 

 Biilow, Halle, Frau Schumann, and others have 

 done for his pianoforte compositions, many of 

 which are now universally familiar. 



Bach's greatest choral work is his Matthew- 

 Passion, intended for performance in the Lutheran 

 Church on Good-Friday evenings. It may be 

 perhaps rightly called an oratorio, but yet differs 

 much in form from the oratorios of HandeL It 

 describes the whole of the events related in the 

 26th and 27th chapters of Matthew in the words 

 of the text, interspersed with comments upon 

 them in the form of hymns and chorales. The 

 music is highly dramatic solo voices telling the 

 story and taking the parts of Caiaphas and Pilate, 

 and of Jesus, while the chorus speaks for the 

 Jews, soldiers, and disciples ; and the one answer- 

 ing to the other, as when the multitude shout 

 tumultuously, ' Barabbas !' and ' Let him be cruci- 

 fied !' in answer to Pilate's questions. This won- 

 derful work may truly be said to be the apotheosis 

 of the chorale. Five different chorales are intro- 

 duced, one of them as many as five times ; the 

 words are varied each time, and generally the 

 harmony also. These old melodies, as thus 

 harmonised by Bach, seem to be transfigured. 

 In appearance, the under parts are as formal and 

 heavy as the chorale itself (which is in the 

 soprano) ; but when once they are heard, all the 

 formality disappears ; you are unconscious that 

 what you listen to is written in conformity to a 

 hundred artificial rules ; you hear only the great 

 soul of the most religious of musicians pouring 

 out its noblest thoughts, and are lifted unresist- 

 ingly into some calmer, serener atmosphere, above 

 all the littlenesses and commonplaces of life. We 

 speak of the music by itself, not of the words to 

 which it is sung ; the latter are acceptable to one 

 class of religionists only, the former belongs to 

 religion itself. In whatever place Bach may 

 be played, said Mendelssohn, that place becomes 

 a church. 



The Matthew-Passion rested for a century, till 

 Mendelssohn had it performed in Berlin in 1829. 

 It has lately been performed in London a number 

 of times (twice at Westminster Abbey on Good- 

 Fridays), and also in Glasgow. It seems, indeed, 

 as if the prophecy of a recent German critic 

 (Riehl) must be true, that Bach 'was born for 

 schools and connoisseurs in the eighteenth century, 

 but for the nation in the nineteenth.' 



Of Bach's instrumental works, the best known 

 is his Wohltemperirte Klavier, a set of 48 pre- 

 ludes and fugues for the piano. To characterise 

 these compositions would be difficult ; they have 

 never been young, and will never be old ; they 

 seem almost to form a genus by themselves. 

 They are exceedingly difficult to play well; even 

 the mere playing of the notes calls for no small 

 technical skill ; but nevertheless they must be 



both studied and mastered by any one who really 

 wishes to be a first-rate pianist 



HANDEL. 



George Frederick Handel* was bora in the same 

 year with Bach, and survived him nine years. 

 The greatest musicians of their time indeed, of 

 all time, in their own departments were thus 

 contemporaries ; but they do not seem to have met 

 each other, or even to have influenced each other's 

 work, as did Mozart and Haydn later on ; while 

 in circumstances and life they were as opposite as 

 can well be imagined. In 1710, Handel came to 

 England, a young man of twenty-five, and from 

 that time until his death his permanent residence 

 was in this country, although he was frequently 

 on the continent, generally travelling in search of 

 artists for his opera company. We have already 

 spoken of the English school of the Second Period. 

 This school can scarcely be said to have flour- 

 ished as a school later than the time of Orlando 

 Gibbons ; but our greatest composer, Henry Pur- 

 cell (1658-1695), stands out alone in the latter 

 half of the i7th century. His operas are his most 

 important works, and, besides their other merits, 

 shew a power of musical expression which places 

 him ahead of most of his contemporaries. Some 

 parts of them, as 'Britons, strike home,' and 

 'Come, if you dare' (both from King Arthur), 

 are still familiar to all, although the operas, as a 

 whole, will never be resuscitated. It is important 

 to mention Purcell here, however, because at the 

 time when Handel came to England, his music 

 was heard at every theatre and in every house, 

 and it seems to have exercised a marked influence 

 upon Handel's later and greater style. 



For seven-and-twenty years, Handel devoted 

 himself almost entirely to opera writing and 

 management. He wrote during this time five- 

 and-thirty complete operas, besides numberless 

 other works, and at the end of it all, in 1737, 

 nearly ruined financially, and broken down in 

 health, he was compelled to leave opera and Eng- 

 land together. A short stay at Aachen restored 

 his health, and on his return to his adopted 

 country, to which he was really attached, he 

 commenced at the age of fifty-three the com- 

 position of those works which alone have made 

 him immortal. Of his earlier choral works, 

 Alexander's Feast, U Allegro^ and Acts and 

 Galatea alone survive entire ; the operas no one 

 would now care to listen to. In oratorio music, 

 he reached at one bound the utmost height that as 

 yet has been reached by any musician. Israel in 

 Egypt, his greatest work, was also his first, being 

 composed in 1738, soon after his return from the 

 continent He wrote nothing afterwards equal to 

 it as a work of art ; but his fame in popular esti- 

 mation certainly rests chiefly upon the Messiah^ 

 which, strange to say, was rejected in London on 

 its first performance (April 12, 1741), and first met 

 with appreciation on its performance in Dublin 

 shortly afterwards. This oratorio is so well known, 

 :hat it is unnecessary here to say anything as to 

 its nature. It owes its popularity probably as 

 much to the nature of the words as to the music. 

 There is nothing in it to equal ' The people shall 



* Handel's name ought to be spelled Haeodel, or (as usually 

 written) Handel ; but it is so well known to us in the incorrect 

 form, that it seems pedantry to alter it now. 



