ments on the same lines by so true a composer as his son, Philip Emmanuel. The first is one of the greatest movements ever written for a keyed instrument; the latter soon reveal a mechanical emptiness, when the formulas and types of phrase of an Italian pattern are given in ecstatic fragments, which are utterly inconsistent with the formal Italian style. It is perhaps possible, on the other hand, to write something new on the lines of the toccata; but in his particular polyphonic treatment of the form Bach's work is so high and noble that it entirely forbids all hope of advance beyond his standard. People have very rarely attempted toccatas of his kind again. The modern type is of a totally different order, for some curious convention seems to have grown up that a toccata is a movement in which rapid notes must go on from beginning to end. Bach's works were founded on the types of the old organists, and it was a very congenial style to himas he revelled in the grand successions of powerful harmonies, and the contrasts of brilliant passages, and the varieties of all possible imitative passages, and expressive counterpoint. Indeed he had a gift for rapid ornamental passages almost unequalled by any other composer; for with him they never suggest mere emptiness and show, but have some function in relation to the design, or some essential basis of effect, or some ingenious principle of accent, or some inherent principle of actual melodic beauty which puts them entirely out of the category of things purely ornamental. Thus even into the merest trifles he infused reality. The same genuineness and sincerity look out from every corner of his work, and-art having been happily at the right stage for his pur poses-give the world assurance of artistic possessions which the passage of time and more intimate acquaintance only render the more lovable. CHAPTER IX THE BEGINNINGS of modern INSTRUMental MUSIC It would have been an eminently pardonable mistake for any intelligent musician to have fallen into, in the third quarter of the eighteenth century, if he concluded that J. S. Bach's career was a failure, and that his influence upon the progress of his art amounted to the minimum conceivable. Indeed the whole course of musical history in every branch went straight out of the sphere of his activity for a long while; his work ceased to have any significance to the generation which succeeded him, and his eloquence fell upon deaf ears. A few of his pupils went on writing music of the same type as his in a half-hearted way, and his own most distinguished son, Philip Emmanuel, adopted at least the artistic manner of working up his details and making the internal organisation of his works alive with figure and rhythm. But even he, the sincerest composer of the following generation, was infected by the complacent, polite superficiality of his time; and he was forced, in accepting the harmonic principle of working in its Italian phase, to take with it some of the empty formulas and conventional tricks of speech which had become part of its being, and which sometimes seem to belie the genuineness of his utterances, and put him somewhat out of touch with his whole-hearted father. The fact of J. S. Bach's isolation is so obvious that it is often referred to and accounted for on the ground that he was so far ahead of his time. It is true that his gift for divining new possibilities of combination, new progressions of harmony, and new effects and procedures of modulation, was so great that his contemporaries could not keep pace with him. The very plenitude of his inventiveness exhausted their faculties before they got to the point of following his drift; and succeeding generations plodded on for a long time before they came up with him, and ultimately grasped that he aimed not at pure technical ingenuities as ends in themselves, but at infinite variety of artistic devices as means to expression. This, however, is not a complete explanation of the situation, but only an individual example among the more widely acting causes which governed the progress of art. The very loftiness of Bach's character and artistic aims prevented his condescending to do some of the work which had to be done before modern music could be completely matured; and the supremacy of Italian music, both operatic and otherwise, in the next generation, and the simultaneous lowering of standard and style, was as inevitable as a reaction as it was necessary as a preliminary to further progress. Handel and Bach had carried the art of expressive counterpoint to the utmost extremes possible under the artistic conditions of their time, which were limited to the combination of polyphonic writing with the simplest kind of harmonic form. The harmonic element is still in the background in their work because so much energy is expended upon the details of the complex choral and contrapuntal expression. As long as composers aimed chiefly at choral effect, they were impelled to individualise the parts out of which the harmony was composed, to make them worthy of the human voices; aiming rather at melodic than rhythmic treatment. And though they submitted to certain general principles of harmonic sequence, the principle of systematic harmonic design was more or less a secondary consideration. But after Handel and Bach there did not seem much to be done in the line of polyphonic expression. Genuine secular influences began to gain strength, and with them the feeling for instrumental music; and men began to feel their way towards a line of art which could be altogether complete without the ingenuities of counterpoint or the words which formed a necessary part of vocal utterance. As has been pointed out, an instinctive desire for harmonic design and for clear definite distribution of harmonies had been in the air for a long time. It is as though there had been a wrestle for supremacy between the two principles of treatment. Composers who belonged to the same class as Handel and Bach looked upon the independent and equal freedom of motion of all parts (which is called counterpoint) as the essence of good style; and the massing and distribution of the harmonies as secondary. The two great masters carried their feeling for contrapuntal effect into every department of art. Even in their arias the principle is often discernible. For though they generally only wrote out the voice part and special instrumental parts, and left the harmonies to be supplied from figures by the accompanist, yet in a large proportion of instances even the bass part moves about quite as vivaciously as the melody; as, for instance : It is true that the use of harmony in the lump was early attempted in solo arias and recitatives, and examples, such as "Comfort ye," may be quoted to show that Handel could use harmonic methods of accompaniment with effect; but by far the larger proportion of the solo movements in his operas and oratorios have accompaniments which are contrapuntally conceived; and Bach's impulse was even more strongly to make all parts of his scheme equally alive and individual. But as soon as their work was done the index swung over. and the balance went down on the harmonic side. Counter point, and interest in the subordinate parts of the music, became of secondary importance (or even less), and clearness and intelligibility of harmonic and melodic progressions became the primary consideration. Composers made a show of counterpoint now and then, but it was not the real thing. The parts in ostensibly contrapuntal works of the time immediately following Bach and Handel are not in the least interesting or alive. They are mechanically contrived to have the appearance of being busy, and serve for nothing more; and it was no great loss when such pinchbeck was undisguisedly replaced by the conventional figures of accompaniment which became so characteristic of the harmonic period even in the palmy days of Mozart and Haydn. But such traits and contrivances had to be found out like everything else, and in the time at present under consideration they were not in common use. Indeed as far as the Italian share of the work of developing harmonic form goes, the early period contem poraneous with Handel and Bach is the purest and most honourable. That most remarkable school of Italian violinists and composers who began with Corelli and Vivaldi forms as noble and sincere a group as any in music; and to them, more than to any others, the credit of establishing the principles of harmonic form on a firm basis for instrumental music is due. The great Italian violin-makers had, in the course of the seventeenth century, brought their skill up to the highest perfection, and put into the hands of performers the most ideally perfect instrument for expression that human ingenuity seems capable of devising. Their achievement came just at the right moment for artistic purposes, and Italian musicians of the highest gifts took to the instrument with passionate ardour. In the violin there is so little intervening mechanism between the player and his means of utterance that it becomes almost part of himself; and is as near as possible to being an additional voice with greater compass and elasticity than his natural organ of song. To the Italian nature such an instrument was even specially suitable, and as the inartistic |