The Bach Family
THIS appears to be the first attempt to grapple with the entire Bach dynasty, biographically and critically, within a single volume. To make such a survey palatable to the reader requires a breadth of vision and qualities of style such as few musicologists possess. Dr. Geiringer writes clearly in a language not his own (there are occasional oddities, as when he discovers 'romantic sensuality' in some slow movements by Johann Christian, of all Bachs); but he lacks grace, and his painstaking care over detail deadens the general picture.
Admittedly the Bachs do not inspire lively writing. They were worthy, prolific, obstinate and clannish; their humour was coarse (Dr. Geiringer is a little shy over this), and a certain mustiness surrounds their preoccupation with death. Of the documents they left, a high proportion concern bitter disputes with municipal and other authorities over duties and salaries. From Thuringia they colonised the courts and organ-lofts of north Germany—a plot of Bach towns calls to mind the colonisation maps in manuals of natural history—but with one exception they spread no further. Of the innumerable Bachs we meet here—the index lists more than a hundred, ten of them bearing the names Johann Christopl\, and Dr. Geiringer analyses the music of sixteen—Sebastian's son Johann Christian alone settled outside Germany, abandoned the Lutheran faith and, eschewing what Dr. Geiringer persistently calls 'the king of instruments,' took to writing for the theatre.
The Bach family prejudice against opera seems to have been assimi- lated by the author. He writes of a concerto by Johann Christian: The Andante . . ., is not free from operatic elements. Some of the passages sound as if they were meant for a coloratura soprano rather than for a keyboard instrument; but the healthy melodic invention inspired by folksongs cannot but captivate the listener.' His con- cern with musical 'progress' is apt to mar the historical perspective, and leads him to play down Sebastian's conservatism. He finds evidence of a 'contemporary' spirit in the influence of Steffani's old-fashioned duets in the B minor Mass, and of a ' progressive attitude' in J. C. F. Bach's use of the Alberti bass in the 1780s forty years after Alberti's death. The truth is that for most of the eighteenth century Italy, not Germany, was the source of new musical ideas ; the eclectic genius of both J. S. Bach and Handel represents the end, not the beginning, of a period.
Dr. Geiringer devotes 180 out of 500 pages to the great Sebastian and incorporates a number of corrections to Spitta and Terry; but his discussion of the music, though pertinent, is painfully compressed, as was perhaps inevitable if the book was not to burst its bounds, and some important questions, especially concerning the manner of performance, are crowded out. He has missed Lady Jeans's paper (Royal Musical Association Proceedings, 1950-51) demonstrating that the so-called organ trios were written for pedal clavichord. The most valuable chapters are undoubtedly those in which he analyses and quotes from the music of the lesser Bachs, much of it still unpublished. All these Bachs were concerned to reconcile the Italian melodic and dramatic style with their German heritage, as was Sebastian himself, and Dr. Geiringer finds examples of mutual influence among the kinsmen, as well as some cheerful borrowing from the ancestral store. An agreeable side-show is his discussion and illustration of the work of the several Bachs who became professional painters; one of them supplies a new and vigorous portrait of Sebastian,
reproduced here for the first time. WINTON DEAN
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