Albert Schweitzer - J. S. Bach

BY

ALBERT SCHWEITZER

DR. THEOL., DR. MED., DR. PHIL., STRASBOURG

HON. MUS. DOC., EDINBURGH. HON. D.D., OXON. HON. LL. D., ST. ANDREWS

TRANSLATED BY

ERNEST NEWMAN

PREFACE BY C. M. WIDOR

VOLUME I

WITH THREE PLATES

TO

FRAU MATHILDE SCHWEITZER

IN GRATEFUL REMEMBRANCE

Within the last few years Bach research has made a notable advance. Among the books that have contributed to this progress, that of Dr. Albert Schweitzer takes a leading place. It is equally valuable on the sthetic and the practical sides; its convincing demonstration of the pictorial bent of Bachs mind must necessarily lead to a reconsideration not only of the older view of Bach as a mainly abstract musician, but of the aesthetics of music in general; while the chapters on the right manner of performing Bachs works throw many a new light on this obscure subject. Most of all are correct ideas on this latter point invaluable now, when Bach is beginning, as one hopes, to win his due popularity among not only musicians but music lovers as a whole.

The present translation has been made from the German version of Dr. Schweitzers book (1908), which is itself a greatly expanded version of a French original published in 1905. The text, however, has been largely altered and added to at Dr. Schweitzers request. The English edition is thus fuller and more correct even than the German.

Like most other translators I have found it convenientand indeed necessaryto preserve the word clavier to cover all the seventeenth and eighteenth century instrumentsthe harpsichord, clavichord, clavicembalo, &c.of the type now represented by the pianoforte.

For the benefit of the English reader I have given all the references to Spittas Life of Bach in the corresponding pages of the English edition of that book, published by Messrs. Novello & Co.

The index to the German original of Dr. Schweitzers book being hardly adequate, I have prepared a fuller one of my own, which I hope will increase the usefulness of the volumes.

ERNEST NEWMAN

In the autumn of 1893 a young Alsatian presented himself to me and asked if he could play something on the organ to me. Play what? I asked. Bach, of course, was his reply.

In the following years he returned regularly for longer or shorter periods, in order to habilitate himselfas they used to say in Bachs dayin organ playing under my guidance.

One day in 1899, when we were going through the chorale preludes, I confessed to him that a good deal in these compositions was enigmatic to me. Bachs musical logic in the preludes and fugues, I said, is quite simple and clear; but it becomes cloudy as soon as he takes up a chorale melody. Why these sometimes almost excessively abrupt antitheses of feeling? Why does he add contrapuntal motives to a chorale melody that have often no relation to the mood of the melody? Why all these incomprehensible things in the plan and the working-out of these fantasias? The more I study them the less I understand them.

Naturally, said my pupil, many things in the chorales must seem obscure to you, for the reason that they are only explicable by the texts pertaining to them.

I showed him the movements that had puzzled me the most; he translated the poems into French for me from memory. The mysteries were all solved. During the next few afternoons we played through the whole of the chorale preludes. While Schweitzerfor he was the pupilexplained them to me one after the other, I made the acquaintance of a Bach of whose existence I had previously had only the dimmest suspicion. In a flash it became clear to me that the cantor. of St. Thomass was much more than an incomparable contrapuntist to whom I had formerly looked up as one gazes up at a colossal statue, and that his work exhibits an unparalleled desire and capacity for expressing poetic ideas and for bringing word and tone into unity.

I asked Schweitzer to write a little essay upon the chorale preludes for the benefit of French organists, and at the same time to enlighten us as to the nature of the German chorale and the German church music of Bachs epoch, as we knew too little of them to enter thoroughly into the spirit of the cantors music.

He set to work at this. A few months afterwards he wrote to me that it was necessary to include the cantatas and Passions in his essay, since the vocal works explained the chorale works, and vice vers. Your essay, I replied, will simply be so much the more valuable to us.

The remarks upon the chorale and the church service in Bachs time grew into an epitome of the history of Protestant church music; the observations upon the nature of Bachs musical expression became a chapter upon Bachs tone-speech; a short literary portrait of the composer was seen to be desirable; then there came chapters on the practical performance of Bachs works; and so the essay upon the chorale preludes grew, in the space of six years, into a complete book upon Bach. The author sent me each chapter as it was written. When I wrote a preface to the book in Venice, on 20th October 1904, it was with the joyous feeling that the work would open up for us a free road to Bach.

Now, as I sketch the preface to the German edition, I cannot rid myself of a certain feeling of embarrassment. Is it not presumption for me, a Frenchman, to draw the attention of Germans to a work upon Bach?

I may partly plead in excuse that in a limited sense I am the joint originator of the book. It was at my request that Schweitzer undertook the work; it was I who induced him to persevere with it when the difficulties of the undertaking increased and began to look, at times, almost insurmountable.

I believe, therefore, that it is not only my right but my duty to prepare the way for this book in Germanyif that be necessarysince it seems to belong to a special category in the German literature of the arts. I rank it among the works the significance of which consists in the fact that while they are founded on a thorough professional knowledge, they treat their subject from the standpoint not of a single art but of art and science in general. Schweitzer is a philosopher through and through, as is shewn by his work on Kant; at the same time he is a theologian with a profound historical faculty, as may be seen from his well-known and comprehensive studies in the life of Jesus and in the literature of that subject; moreover he is an exceptionally good organist,one of the most skilful and experienced players that any conductor could desire to have at the organ during the performance of a Bach cantata or Passion.

The not unreasonable complaint is sometimes heard that our stheticians are so seldom executive artists also, and therefore cannot view things from the standpoint of the musician. There is no community of feeling between the philosophy of art and creative and executive art. For this reason works by practical men who are at the same time conversant with philosophical sthetic are always an event in the literature of music. To read Schweitzers Bach is not only to get to know the composer and his work, but to penetrate also into the essence of music in generalthe art per se. It is a book with horizons. Who could have supposed that a study of the great master of the Zopf epoch would throw a light on the moderneven the most modernproblems of music, as is done in the three chaptersPoetic and Pictorial Music, Word and Tone in Bach, and Bachs Musical Languagewith which Schweitzer prefaces his discussion of the cantatas and the Passions?

An introductory note by a Frenchman to a German book on Bach may further show that we on this side of the Vosges have also some rights in the composer. We have won them by the veneration we have felt for him. Our Bach worship does not date from yesterday. For a generation now our organists have been almost exclusively occupied with Bach; he is the master who has revealed afresh to us the true art of the sacred instrument. People speak of a new French organ school: it is founded on Bach. It was a curious dispensation of Providence that at the very time we were being led to Bach by the Belgian Lemmenswho had become acquainted with the classical organ-art through old Hesse, of Breslauthere arose an organ-builder after Bachs own heart, who gave us organs that made us the envy of Bach enthusiasts in every land. Cavaill-Colls instruments have revealed to us the beauty of the masters preludes and fugues; with these organs Bach has made his entry into our cathedrals and churches.