Passing from Muehlhausen to Weimar was to Bach as the step from school to a university. The nine years of his life there produced works in which almost any other musician might glory as the perfect consummation of his powers; but when we range them beside the performance of Bach’s middle life, we see that all this time was still a period of preparation. Wonderful indeed is this strenuous preparation, carried on with increasing earnestness to his thirty-second year; this prelude to a life-long study—the index of the faithful artist—which was never relaxed until sight and strength forsook him. And no less wonderful is the growth of his genius—when we look back upon his earlier performances—revealed in rapid stages from the beginning of his sojourn at Weimar. But it was not only the years that had come upon him, but also the opportunity they brought with them, that make this change so marked an epoch in his life. Little as we know of the court of Weimar, there are some facts about its condition at this time which let us see that its intellectual atmosphere could not have been without its excitement and inspiration to Bach.

The Duke, Wilhelm Ernst, was a man of naturally grave and religious character. It is told of him that at eight years old he preached a sermon before his parents and their company; and in later life his chief pleasure and occupation lay in building churches, organizing religious schemes, and founding schools. In the troubles of an unhappy marriage and the approach of a childless age, his serious temper deepened into austerity. But, if always averse from gaiety or the least approach to the wonted dissipations of a court, he was a good friend to arts and letters; and the forty-five years of his rule began the tradition of culture which led up to the historical era in the annals of Weimar a century later. He founded the library, had a collection of coins, and—what is more to our purpose—took a strong and pious delight in hearing and fostering the music in the castle chapel.

The strict and sombre discipline which the Duke imposed upon his homely court—it went to bed, we are told, at eight in winter, and only an hour later in summer—was relieved by the brighter influence of his brother, Johann Ernst, the prince with whom Bach had taken service as a violinist in 1703. He died in 1707, but his son, also Johann Ernst, inherited his father’s taste for the chamber-music of France and Italy, and showed himself in his short life a composer of promise. The boy liked to be surrounded by musicians, to take lessons from them, and hear his favourite music. At the present time there was a brilliant circle at Weimar, and in this the prominent figures were the town organist Walther, known for his Musical Dictionary, and Bach. A famous story connects the two. Bach, we are told, had boasted of his ability to play anything at first sight, and Walther determined to baffle him. He asked him to breakfast, and, knowing Bach’s habits, laid among the music upon the clavichord a piece of simple and innocent appearance. While the meal was making ready the host leaves the room. Bach comes upon the piece, tries it and halts, begins again, and breaks down. Then he leaves the instrument in exasperation, shouting to his friend, No, one cannot play everything off: the thing is impossible.

Of the routine of Bach’s life at Weimar we can only gather the outline. He held the double post of organist and musicus in the court. The latter function involved in Bach’s case either taking a fiddle in the orchestra—a band of sixteen performers all attired in a grotesque uniform of Hungarian heyducks—or accompanying from the basso continuo on the harpsichord (cembalo). When after some years he was appointed concertmeister he of course took the place of first violin. He was now required to supply a certain number of church compositions; and the age of the capellmeister often added to his duties the task of conducting. The series of church cantatas written at this time—among which the magnificent one, Ich hatte viel BekÜmmerniss, stands preËminent—are sufficient evidence of the energy with which he applied himself to his additional duties. If we ask how he lived in his household—and no man lived more than Bach in the life of his home—we are answered by a blank. We have not even a clue as to the manner of woman his wife was. Six of her seven children were born at Weimar, and two, twins, died there in 1713. The names of the sponsors to them show the varied popularity Bach had gained among the different ranks with whom he was thrown. Pages in waiting and a Muehlhausen clergyman appear beside Bach’s kinsfolk or his professional comrades—Telemann is among them—or the humbler associates of his early life at Ohrdruf or Arnstadt. His continually increased salary—it never indeed exceeded some thirty pounds, added to the usual perquisites paid in kind—is one of the many signs of his being valued. More significant is the request he was in as an organist throughout Saxony, and even in a wider circle. He was always being invited to try or inspect organs, to play at different courts and attend musical celebrations, till it came to be a yearly practice with him to break the busy monotony of his Weimar life by a holiday spent in answer to these various calls. Some accounts that remain of these journeys are the more interesting since they are the only record, outside his compositions, of these years.

In 1713 he was at Halle, and so much attracted by the quality of a new organ then building as to offer himself for the organistship. The consistory eagerly accepted him, and Bach composed a cantata on the spot, and brought it out as a testimonial. The documents of office quickly followed him back to Weimar for signature. But Bach was dissatisfied with the terms, possibly the Duke had persuaded him to stay at the castle; in any case, he wrote a courteous letter asking for some changes in the conditions of the post. The church authorities were indignant, refused to alter a word in the agreement, and hinted, quite falsely, that Bach had merely played with them in order to get an increase of pay at Weimar. Bach wound up the correspondence by a vigorous and dignified defence of his action; and it is pleasant to know that peace was tacitly re-established by Bach’s accepting a flattering invitation to play upon that same organ on its completion in 1716.

Another autumn journey of Bach took him to Cassel (1714), where he played a pedal solo on the organ, a feat of miraculous agility, which few, one relates, could equal with their hands. The hereditary prince, who was present, took a precious ring from his finger and expressed by the oriental gift his admiration of the performance.12 Other years Bach went to Leipzig, perhaps to Meiningen, and his excursions from Weimar end with the celebrated visit to Dresden. Just before this, in 1716, Mattheson, one of the most influential musical critics of his day, had asked for his biography, and wrote of him as the renowned organist; in the following year his mere name vanquished a redoubtable harpsichord-player, Marchand, who had never before been confronted by an equal. The Frenchman was so popular at the Dresden court that some friends of Bach in the orchestra there seem to have induced the German master to stand forward in defence of his national music. It is certain that a challenge was sent to Marchand, and that a large company awaited the contest of the pianists in the house of one of the royal ministers. Bach was there, but not Marchand. After long expectation, a messenger at last was sent to his lodging, only to bring back the news that he had left Dresden by express post that morning. No defeat could be more decisive, especially when we remember that Bach’s fame had hitherto rested upon his consummate powers as an organist. It may be added that he was so far from being prejudiced by his personal relations with Marchand that he always valued the gracefulness and exuberant variety of the French composer; and Adlung, who tells the story, says that he only once was able to appreciate his music, and that was when Bach played it to him. Success never affected Bach’s judgment: his generosity was always without vanity.

In leaving Weimar in 1717, Bach ceased for ever to be by calling an organist, though the instrument remained always his chief delight, and once at least he was tempted again to resume it as a profession. As a performer he seems to have grown every year in mature strength. In 1720, when he visited Hamburg, his performance at S. Katharine’s Church was attended by the aged organist, Reincke, and an assemblage of many of the principal men of the city. How he impressed Reincke has already been related, and no doubt it was partly the enthusiasm with which he was greeted that made him view Hamburg as a congenial home for him. An organistship was vacant at one of the other churches there, and Bach directly offered himself for the place. He had to leave before the trial of the candidates took place, but was so eager for the appointment that he wrote from Coethen to repeat his willingness to accept it. The post as it turned out, was given to the man who paid the highest premium, and Mattheson was not the only man in Hamburg who expressed indignation at the well-to-do tradesman’s son, who could prelude better with dollars than with fingers, being preferred to the great virtuoso whose mastery excited the admiration of every one. Neumeister, who was chief preacher of the church, took occasion to remark in a sermon just after, that he was sure enough that if one of the angels who sang at Bethlehem were to come down from heaven and play divinely and desire to be organist of S. James’s, nevertheless if he had no money he might as well fly back again straight.

There are constant and innumerable proofs, besides the few we have noticed, of the impression Bach made as an organist: not the least striking among these is a note by Gesner, with whom Bach was closely connected in later years at Leipzig, illustrating a musical passage in Quintilian. After describing in vigorous rhetoric the almost superhuman powers of his friend, he adds, Though none can surpass me in my support of the ancients I opine that many Orpheuses and twenty Arions are comprehended singly in my Bach and any, if such there be, like to him.13 The characteristics which gave Bach his quite unique position as an organist are partly those of an extraordinary originality in the application of the mechanical resources of the instrument. How minutely he knew its structure is shewn by the frequency with which he was chosen, almost from boyhood, to pronounce upon the necessity and the detail of repair in organs, and to judge the success of the result. His arrangement of stops before he played was so singular as to make connoisseurs absolutely incredulous of the possibility of so producing harmonious combinations, but when he began the doubt was changed into amazement at the swiftness, the precision, and the power of his movements both of feet and hands. If, however, a by-stander expressed astonishment, he would silence him with quiet modesty. There is nothing to wonder at in that, he would say: you have only to touch the right key at the right time and the instrument plays itself. As a rule he gave the pedal a real part of its own, often of incredible difficulty; and by this means he left his hands free to develop the theme in the broadest manner, and to apply the stops, each as it appeared most appropriate and characteristic, with wonderful insight and ingenuity. He liked also to use the pedal to announce a tenor part whenever (as was the case at Weimar) he could find a four-foot register. Of difficulties he seemed unconscious, and this was equally true when he was elaborating a simple bass or a chorale, or improvising a fugue, as when he was playing from a written score. Indeed Forkel, who knew Bach’s sons, relates that “his unpremeditated voluntaries on the organ, where nothing was lost in writing down, are said to have been still more devout, solemn, dignified, and sublime,” than those which stand in record of his supreme command of the instrument. Forkel instances Bach and the son to whom his gifts were transmitted in a special measure, Wilhelm Friedemann, as solitary examples of consummate skill equally on clavichord and organ. “Both,” he says, “were elegant performers on the clavichord; but when they came to the organ, no trace of the harpsichord-player was to be perceived. Melody, harmony, motion, &c., all was different, that is, all was adapted to the nature of the instrument and its destination. When I heard Will. Friedemann on the harpsichord, all was delicate, elegant, and agreeable. When I heard him on the organ, I was seized with reverential awe. There, all was pretty; here, all was grand and solemn. The same was the case with John Sebastian, but both in a much higher degree of perfection. William Friedemann was here too but a child to his father, and most frankly concurred in this opinion.”14

I have already taken occasion to trace the studies by which Bach prepared himself to become the greatest organ composer as well as the greatest organist of all time. At the present break in his life it will be convenient to give a summary account of his total production in this department,15 though it must be little more than an enumeration of the works that survive; since organ music least of all lends itself to any but a scientific analysis, such as would be altogether out of place here. My references are to the compositions contained in the Fifth Series of Peters’ collected edition of Bach’s instrumental works.16

Bach’s organ works divide themselves into three great branches, the first of which is connected most closely with his religious office. It is well known that the German chorale since the days of Luther has always held its regular place in the service of the church. This form of melody, however much more beautiful, is essentially the same with what we in England used to sing as psalm tunes, at a time when one metrical version of the Psalter was employed and the modern hymn with its new words and heterogeneous structure had not yet made its voice heard. In Germany words and music were alike familiar to every one; they formed in fact the nucleus of Lutheran worship both in church and at home. We shall see hereafter how Bach collected two hundred and forty chorales for use in his household; and there are hardly any of his church cantatas which do not contain at least one. In church, whenever a chorale was announced, every one present could be trusted to sustain the melody, and it was allowed to the organist to vary the harmonies almost to any extent he pleased without fear of confusing the people.17 In this way it came to be a recognised part of the organist’s function, at least in Middle Germany, to adorn the simple grandeur or pathos of the chorale by means of preludes, interludes, and variations, generally improvised at the moment; and this treatment of chorales was so popular, through the influence of Johann Christoph and Michael Bach, Pachelbel, and a number of leading organists just before Sebastian Bach’s time, that it became extended so as to form the basis of independent instrumental compositions, for use at other intervals in the church service. It was a custom of which Bach was peculiarly fond, giving him, as it did, a firm groundwork, with high associations, upon which his fancy could build with the utmost freedom. And though he wrote down but a minute part of what he composed, we possess in print no less than a hundred and thirty elaborations of chorales (parts 5-7), besides twenty-eight of which the genuineness is disputed (suppl. 9-36). They range from short and slight preludes to works of the most intricate brilliancy, abounding in all the science as well as in all the melodious art of which Bach was master. Those to whom the organ chorales are inaccessible may learn their spirit by unravelling the harmonies he has used in the fivefold setting of one chorale in the S. Matthew Passion or from other no less remarkable instances in that according to S. John, to quote only from works which are best known in England. The inexhaustible invention which is pressed into the brief compass of these verses, is in the organ-chorales distributed over a long composition; but the extension is never for the purpose of display, and the fundamental motive insistently maintains itself throughout.

In opposition to these the second branch of Bach’s organ works stands remote from the church. It was not choice only but also the determined bent of musical taste at Weimar that directed his study again to the instrumental music of Italy; and the influence for the present lay strongly upon his organ music as well as upon the rest of his compositions. Three of Vivaldi’s violin-concertos with a movement of a fourth (part 8, 1-4) he arranged for his instrument; he wrote fugues on themes by Legrenzi and Corelli18 (4. 6, 8), and a fugue and canzone (8. 6; 4. 10) recalling the manner of the great Roman organist, Frescobaldi, whose Fiori Musicali, published in 1635, he possessed.

But it would be a great mistake to imagine that Bach was at this time engrossed by the Italian masters. On the contrary Weimar was the place where he wrote the bulk of his organ works of the third branch, the preludes, fantasias, toccatas, and fugues, in which his strong religious sense united with his power of musical creation to build up masterpieces of a perfection never approached either before or since. The list of his works of this period is as follows:—

1. Three Preludes, in A minor, C, and G (4. 13; 8. 8, 11):

2. Three Fugues, in G minor, C, and G minor (4. 7; 8. 10, 12):

3. Fifteen Preludes and Fugues in A, F minor, C minor, G minor, E minor, C, G, and D; besides a collection of eight shorter ones (2. 3, 5, 6; 3. 5, 10; 4. 2, 3; 8. 5. i-viii.):

4. Three Toccatas and Fugues, in F, C, and D minor (3. 2, 8; 4. 4):

5. Two Fantasias and Fugues both in C minor (3. 6; 4. 12): to which must be added three single works, namely a Fantasia in C (8. 9); a Pastorale in F (1. 3); and the superb Passacaglio in C minor, well known to all organists worthy of the name (1. 2).

For the years succeeding those he spent at Weimar, Bach has left us, with one grand exception, no certain record on the organ; we shall see hereafter that he was otherwise occupied. But there is hardly a doubt that he took advantage of the exceptional opportunity offered by his Hamburg visit in 1720, to produce his famous Fantasia and Fugue in G minor (2. 4). It does not surprise us to find that the Fugue, which English musicians have personified as the Giant, left an abiding impression among the listeners.19 As we possess it, it has undergone a rigorous revision, to which, in common with the major part of his younger works, Bach afterwards submitted it when at Leipzig.

Accordingly the short series which he is believed to have composed in later years does not represent more than a fraction of his activity in this direction; since revising in his case usually meant re-writing, certainly re-thinking. The compositions which are presumed to date originally from the year 1723 onwards, consist of seven Preludes and Fugues, in C, G, A minor, E minor, B minor, E flat, and D minor,20 (2. 1, 2, 8, 9, 10; 3. 1, 4), and a Toccata and Fugue in D minor, known as the Doric toccata (3. 3); together with six Sonatas written to exercise the growing skill of Bach’s eldest boy, Wilhelm Friedemann (1. 1).21

It is impossible to characterise in a few words the works which gave Bach his chief renown among contemporaries, and the familiarity of many of the greatest of them renders such an attempt unnecessary. It may suffice to direct attention to the majestic motion of the august Passacaglio, as contrasted with the idyllic grace of the Pastorale which follows it in the printed edition, and which remains lamentably a fragment;—to the broad directness of the Fugue in C (2. 1), the daring invention of the longest of the fugues, that in E minor (2. 9), which proceeds almost entirely by chromatic intervals, the irresistible charm of the G minor, or the marvellously varied solemnity of the E flat, naturalised in England as the S. Ann Fugue. It is as an organ composer that Bach stands, as a colossus, absolutely unapproached and unapproachable.