Indeed, he is not appreciated now, for a man can be appreciated only by his equals. But we have at last got an inkling of the treasure that still lies hidden away in Bach; and while Handel and the other idols of the age sound daily more thin and archaic, Bach grows ever richer as the understanding we bring to him increases, and still holds out his promise of novel and perennial artistic delights.
_W. R. Spalding: "Tonal Counterpoint." Edward Dickinson: "Study of the History of Music," Chapter XX. C. H. H. Parry: "Evolution of the Art of Music," Chapter VIII._
[7] Number the measures, and call the voices soprano, alto, and bass.
[8] The reader should examine the example of shifted rhythm given in the second chapter in dealing with the German song, "Sister Fair."
[9] In Book I, for example, Fugue II is as light and delicate as XII is serious and earnest; XVI is pathetic, XVII vigorous and rugged, XVIII thoughtful and mystical, etc.
In the last chapter we studied the most important applications of the "polyphonic" style, which originated in music for voices, to the music of instruments. We saw how in such music the attention of the composer was divided among several equally important voices or parts, and how much he made of the principle of imitation; and in connection with the fugue we remarked that the very complex interweaving of the different voices in such music, one beginning before another leaves off, and all together making an intricate web, presented certain difficulties to the listener accustomed to the more modern style, in which a single voice has the melody, and stops short at regular intervals, giving the hearer a chance to draw breath, as it were, and renew attention for what is coming next. Listening to modern music is like reading a series of short sentences, each clearly and definitely ended by its own full stop. Listening to the old polyphony is more like reading one of those long and involved sentences of De Quincey or Walter Pater, in which the clauses are intricately interwoven and mutually dependent, so that we can get the sense only by a long-sustained effort of attention.
This more involved style, suitable to voices, but less natural to instruments, had historically a very long life. Much of the instrumental music of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries was in fact nothing but a transference to instruments of music really conceived for voices. Thus, for example, in the sixteenth century, when madrigals and canzonas, which were compositions for voices in the polyphonic style but of a more secular character than church music, were exceedingly popular, the composers for stringed instruments and for the then very fashionable lutes, "when they wanted something of a superior order, ... simply played madrigals, or wrote music in imitation of any of the varieties of choral music, not realizing that without the human tones ... which gave expression to the rising and falling of the melodic material, the effect was pointless and flat."[10] Even Bach and Handel, in the eighteenth century, were, by their deeply-rooted habit of _thinking vocally_, in some degree hampered in the search for a purely instrumental style. Instrumental music, having to get along without words, must find some principle of coherence, some kind of definite design, which will make it intelligible without the help of words, and enable it to stand on its own feet.