Bach
Edited by Francis Hueffer
SEBASTIAN BACH
By REGINALD LANE POOLE, M.A.
BALLIOL COLLEGE, OXFORD
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF LEIPZIG
LONDON
SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON & COMPANY
LimitedSt. Dunstan’s HouseFetter Lane, Fleet Street, E.C.
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PREFACE.
No one will expect a life of Bach to be amusing, butit will be my own fault if the present Essay does notoffer an interest of a high and varied character. Ifit labours under a disadvantage, as the first biographyof the master written in this country, on the otherhand it is only now that, thanks to the devotionof Professor Spitta, we can congratulate ourselveson the possession of absolutely all the attainablefacts. Hitherto, three translations or abridgementsof German works have appeared in England; andthe first is one of those books which, however incomplete,can never really be superseded. It is atranslation of the “Life” of J. N. Forkel, publishedat Leipzig in 1802, and in London in 1820. Forkelwas not only pre-eminent among the learned musiciansof the end of the last century, but also the friend andscholar of Bach’s sons Friedemann and Emanuel. Hepresents us, therefore, with more than a masterlycriticism of Bach’s science, knowing, it should seem,little beyond the organ and clavichord works: he isfull of anecdotes and reminiscences of the master, allthe more valuable, because told with a naïveté andfreshness that stamp them at once as genuine anduncoloured.
The translation of Forkel was followed after along interval by a volume based partly upon it,partly upon a sketch written by Hilgenfeldt as acentenary memorial in 1850. Though presumablyedited by the late Mr. Rimbault, whose initials areappended to the preface, the abstract is so unfaithfuland illiterate as to be practically without value. Thethird biography to which I have alluded is of a differentcharacter; it is a plain and conscientious abridgementof the work of C. H. Bitter, now minister of financein Berlin, and only to be laid aside in view of the morecomplete materials which have been made accessible tous by Professor Spitta, and in the later publications ofthe Bach-Gesellschaft.
Dr. Spitta’s “Johann Sebastian Bach,” publishedat Leipzig in two volumes in 1873 and 1880, representsthe many years’ study of a professed musician.For all the facts of Bach’s life, and all the obtainabledata relative to his works, it is a final andexhaustive trea