Bach und die Nachwelt. Band 1: 1750-1850

Music history has not become concerned with studying classics or canon nearly as quickly or fully as English literature. Music acquired a canonic tradition relatively late--internationally only around the middle of the nineteenth century--but it has become so deeply rooted in modern thinking that neither musicologists nor humanists in general have made the subject a major priority. Often assuming that norms of classical music are a natural part of musical life, musicologists do not ask basic questions about when, where, and why they arose. Thus it is so refreshing to read this collaborative work on the Nachwelt of so profoundly canonized a composer as Johann Sebastian Bach. The nine authors have no doubts about their task, which they attack with clarity, interest, and a welcome avoidance of cliché. Together they suggest a methodology for how music historians might proceed with other composers, since nothing as comprehensive has been accomplished for any other figure (except for Gernot Gruber's useful but less extensive Mozart und die Nachwelt (1987)).

The first of four projected volumes traces the Bachian tradition from his sons' work on his behalf through the interest in him held by Beethoven, Mendelssohn, and Robert and Clara Schumann. The traditional wisdom on Bach was that his style was quite out of date by his death in 1750, the manner of his polyphony having been outmoded by new styles found as early as the 1720s. But it has recently been suggested that some aspects of his music bore considerable relationship to the polyphonic textures of what we call the Classical style as it emerged in the last decades of the eighteenth century. Richard Schäffertöns and Michael Heinemann probe this question in a chapter on "Paradigma Bach," showing how his music for keyboard instruments and his academic contrapuntal works remained well known after his death, at least within a world of serious German musicians. This chapter impressively surveys writings on fugue and in the process shows that Bach, though a major influence, was only one of a diverse set of contributors to the practice and theory of fugue.

With similar specificity and precision, Peter Wollny discusses how autographs and copies of Bach's works passed through copyists and collectors. Historians will be interested in the geographical sites Wollny defines as the loci of the Bachian tradition, chiefly Saxony, Thuringia, Berlin, and a few other areas of northern Germany. The tradition developed within a social nexus that included Bach's sons, students, and admirers, almost all organists or choirmasters in cities with serious musical interests. Wollny shows the idiosyncrasies of each site: Wilhelm Friedemann Bach kept certain of his father's cantatas alive in the Liebfraukirche in Halle; the Kantors of the Thomaskirche in Leipzig continued to perform the oratorios and taught with his music in the Thomasschule. Less well known is the strength of interest in Bach's music within Thuringian cities such as Arnstadt, Weimar, and Erfurt. It is striking how much cultural and political leadership emerged within Thuringia and Saxony in the next hundred years.

Oddly enough, while Germany is usually regarded as the heartland of classical music, relatively little has been written on Johann Nikolaus Forkel, without question the first full-fledged music historian in that country. H. J. Hinrichsen contributes an extremely interesting chapter on Forkel's writings on Bach, especially his 1802 Ueber Johann Sebastian Bachs Leben, Kust und Kunstwerke. He demonstrates how closely Forkel's thinking on Bach was involved in his larger theoretical interests--ideas of a philosophical nature much more sophisticated than what is found in the music histories of Charles Burney or John Hawkins. Yet it would seem that Forkel also established much of the early language for writing about great musicians in journalistic terms, the normative term "classical" most of all. It is important to see how intimately journalistic and academic writings could relate to one another in that society, much more than is the case today. Hinrichsen, much like David Gramit has done recently, approaches Forkel with something of a Foucauldian concern for how his writing defines the place and the authority of the Kenner over the Liebhaber. Raising such questions can take us far in understanding the most fundamental intellectual roots of the classical music tradition.

Karen Lehmann contributes a useful chapter on the history of projects for a Bach Gesamtausgabe. The idea originated in the desire to publish the Wohltemperierten Klaviers, broached as early as 1790 by J. C. F. Rellstab in Berlin. Lehmann shows the importance of drawing parallels between the publishing and pedagogy of Bach and that of other composers such as Mozart, Clementi, Cramer, Dussek, Steibelt, and Kalkbrenner. Interest in Bach was not as unifocal as it tends to be in the present day; in the process of publishing the editions, conflicts developed over the nature of his authority that have since continued in other contexts.

Susanne Oschmann's chapter on Bach and the Berlin Singakademie further suggests how classical music was being defined as high art. While England established the first canonic repertory in the eighteenth century (as I have argued in my 1992 book), Germany contributed strongly-defined ideals for a high musical art as early as the 1770s, before many older works had been canonized and kept in performance. The Singakademie's direct statement of these ideals is therefore of great consequence. While in the early nineteenth century the directors of the Gewandhaus concerts were shy to identify its purpose as that of presenting classical music, the Singakademie did so from its inception in 1791, making it probably the first German performing institution to do so.

The final three chapters discuss aspects of what Bach's music meant to Beethoven, Mendelssohn, and Robert and Clara Schumann. Though this material is generally better known than what is discussed in the early chapters, the contributors present useful syntheses of present knowledge, together with some interesting additions to it. William Kindermann shows how Bach influenced Beethoven through the toccata just as much as the fugue; Wolfgang Dinglinger elaborates how Mendelssohn was trained from Bach's music at an early age; and Bodo Bischoff gives tables showing a significant number of public performances of Bach's works by Clara Schumann. But focusing on great composers has distinct limits: we need much more comprehensive study of where and how much Bach's music was performed in public and taught in schools. My impression is that few pianists offered it often until the end of the nineteenth century, and I have found that few students played it in their examinations at the Leipzig Conservatorium as late as the 1860s. Volume 2 (1999) treats 1850-1900; volume 3 is due to come out soon.