C. P. E.

Bach's "Versuch" Reconsidered

Author(s): Ralph Kirkpatrick
Source: Early Music, Vol. 4, No. 4 (Oct., 1976), pp. 384-392
Published by: Oxford University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3126153 .
Accessed: 12/05/2014 10:59
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Oxford University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Early Music.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 200.16.16.13 on Mon, 12 May 2014 10:59:19 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

P.

C.

E.

Germany of the 1750s saw the first intimation of a flood of instrumental

treatises that has never subsided to this day. Perhaps one of the most
famous of them all, and one of the earliest, was Carl Philipp Emanuel

Bach's

Versuch

Bach's Versuchiiber die wahre Art das Clavier zu Spielen, his 'essay on the true

reconsidered
RALPH
KIRKPATRICK

TIM

..
.

als.

theGreat'sPosthaus signboard,1776.
Frederick
Museum,Frankfurt
Bundespost

manner of playing keyboard instruments'. Its reputation has remained

constant ever since its last 18th-centuryedition but its accessibilityhas not
corresponded to its fame. Furthermore, the publication of the examples in
the original edition, in a large format separated from the main text of the
book itself, made consultation difficult, and generally brought about the
separation of the examples from the book and their subsequent loss. The
first part of the Versuchappeared in 1753, with a second edition in 1759,
and the second part in 1762. Latereditions of both parts came out in 1780,
and the last 18th-century edition of Part One with additions made many
years earlier by Philipp Emanuel Bach appeared in 1787 and that of Part
Two in comparable fashion in 1797. Since then there have been many
quotations that helped to keep the book from being forgotten. A badly
mauled edition was brought out in the mid- 19th century by one Schilling,
and a partial re-edition by Walter Niemann in 1906. The first complete
republication of the text appeared in 1949 in a rather infelicitous English
translation by William Mitchell, but without the sonatas that served as
supplements to the examples. Finally, in 1957, Breitkopf published a
facsimile of the first editions of both parts of the text and, separately, the
sonatas and sonatinas from the last edition of the example volume in a
wretchedly careless and inaccurate transcriptioninto modern notation. An
adequate reissue of the entire work must still be awaited.
Part One deals with keyboard playing, that is, with the playing of set
pieces. It is the first German keyboard manual of any consequence since
of 1571. It has copious
the prefatory material to Amerbach's Tabulaturbuch
introductory material, extensive discussion of fingering and
ornamentation, and a most revealing section on performance in general.
Part Two concerns itself with thoroughbass, accompaniment and
improvisation. Again, highly interesting introductory material is followed
by a very lucid survey of the materials of keyboard harmony and
thoroughbass, further particulars of accompaniment such as pedals,
suspensions, syncopations, ornaments. There are further highly revealing
chapters on performance, on the making of cadenzasand fermatas, on the
refinements of accompaniment, on certain precautions which the continuo
player needs to take, and on recitative. The final chapter on free fantasy
contains a fantasycomposed expresslyas an example.
While the first part is really epoch-making in its thoroughness in dealing
with keyboard playing, the second part, in dealing with thoroughbass,
descends from a long line of German treatises and practical manuals for
the continuo player. I think especially of such treatises as that of Niedt
which was quoted by J. S. Bach, of the Grosseand the KleineGeneralbass
Schule of Matthson (1731 and 1735 respectively), and the large and
of Heinichen of 1728.
extensive Generalbass
The keyboard part, the first part of the Versuch,bears little trace of
acquaintance with any of the earlier keyboard treatises. But this is not
surprising since most of them originated in other cultures and at earlier
times, like those of Santa Maria and Diruta. As usual, the highly important
treatiseof St Lambert of 1702 passes unnoticed, but Philipp Emanuel Bach
does mention Couperin, and he would have known Marpurg'sadaptation

384

This content downloaded from 200.16.16.13 on Mon, 12 May 2014 10:59:19 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

C?

Ae4czC-)

+VV*4Wl
ivL,9-?
1J
TItLD:V~~~Q~~
i -*&
S4bt
T
6I
A

I7

4,0.j,.,.~j

?MJ?
le~

I~mob

/JIQL~~Lbaaza~

-t-

C4.)4
C)

"-

"

_],

Apgfo C.

.E

ahs

w oyo hisVersuch i~n

of
th a hado
4

alliraI~C IlrW~
, L,_,

~St~?nk?

'^.

"7/"/ 7,x

~az~ek
-~it~-~~
/aP~-~?44 7
-7Ica;'p
A C

Ilusrae

prfssoalcpys,
i

Tutzing,

W.

aefo

.Bahs

Ctlouen

ah'

qva~
cp

ih

oreton

12

fHas

Germany,

~eiLr~~;~?
O4P

I~aH ~crt~w

W11
3I

isVrsc

hehndo

onhadriig
cnedeMuikniqara
n

1~

professional copyist, with Bach's correctionsin his own handwriting.

Illustrated in Catalogue no 132 of Hans Schneider, Musikantiquariat
Tutzing, W. Germany

385

This content downloaded from 200.16.16.13 on Mon, 12 May 2014 10:59:19 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

of L'Artde Toucherle Clavecinpublished as Die Kunstdas Clavierzu spielenin

1751. For logic and clarity Philipp Emanuel Bach's keyboard treatise
surpassesany of its predecessors.
This treatise representsa kind of fusion of Philipp Emanuel Bach's early
training in Leipzig as a pupil of his father with influences from the totally
different musical atmosphere at the court of Frederick the Great. He
arrived in Berlin and Potsdam in 1738 while Frederickthe Great was still
Crown Prince, and in 1740 had what he calls the honour of accompanying
the first flute solo that the then newly-crowned King played in the
CharlottenburgerSchloss in Berlin.
Johann Joachim Quantz, the royal flute master, had published his great
zu Spielenin 1752 with a
book, VersucheinerAnweisungdie Fldte Traversiere
dedication to Frederickthe Great. It is much more than a mere manual of
flute playing; it is a compendium dealing with almost every kind of musical
activity that went on at the Prussiancourt. He discusses not only the duties
of a flute player, but the duties of an accompanist, and the functions of
even the last wind player and ripieno violinist in the orchestra. It is a
perfect practical exposition of the musical life that went on in the evenings
at Berlin and Potsdam and of which there have been so many evocations
ever since.
Bach's book, unlike that of Quantz, has no dedication to the king, nor
indeed to anyone else. Like his father, C. P. E. Bach was only reluctantly
court-oriented. One has the impression that Quantz's book is more
practical, more realistic in terms of the ambience from which it came and
that Bach's has leanings toward a theoretical approach. Certainly the
organization and exposition of Bach is vastly superior to that of Quantz.
Bach's book owes as much of its carryingpower to this literate and logical
exposition as to its authority as the work of a first-class composer who is
also a first-class performer. One feels on every page that he is writing not
merely out of abstract speculation but also from observation and
experience, which he has had the intellectual power to elevate into the
domain of theory.
Bach's Versuchdirectly influenced a number of other treatisessuch as the
of Marpurg, published in 1755, which leans
Anleitungzum Clavier-spielen
on
Bach's
especially
terminology for ornamentation. Agricola's expanded
translation of Tosi's treatise on singing, published in 1757, is very close to
Philipp Emanuel Bach. Agricola was also a court composer at Potsdam.
And the last great German keyboard treatise of the 18th century, by J. G.
Turk, is likewise heavily beholden to Philipp Emanuel Bach.
Both parts of the Versuchpresent their expositions with an admirable
definitiveness in the face of imminent change in musical style and practice.
They strike a balance between playing of set pieces and improvising which
is later to be drastically upset in favour of set pieces as the age of
thoroughbass comes to an end.
Bach's thoroughbass doctrine in this book is one of its last and most
complete statements. In a way, it is a pity that something so good should
have come so late, almost too late. On the other hand, his writings about
keyboard playing are in many ways precursors of later and much more
highly developed discussions of the playing of set keyboardpieces.
This standing on a pinnacle mid-way, mid-century, between two musical
periods is nowhere more evident than in Philipp Emanuel Bach's relation
to keyboard instruments. As he repeatedly says, he is veering away from the
386

This content downloaded from 200.16.16.13 on Mon, 12 May 2014 10:59:19 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Ms.
X41

...
..................
...........
......

:ial

?gg

NP.:

bi

?777

j ox
..........
....
fix.00:
xi:.
41?
..... ....

Xi'?

XM.

X.M.:::??i::i-i~lr

ji"!jx
Xi,
i:;0j:Z%:::&!jk:?:?:j?f
mi.

..........
..

Left:AdolphMenzel(1815-1905), a well-known
chronicler
ofPrussianhistory,drewthissketchof
C. P. E. Bach,possiblyat thetimehe wasworking
onhiscelebrated
paintingFlute Recital at Sans
Souci, begunin 1850 andJinishedin 1852.
engravingof C. P. E. Bach
Right:contemporary

he
harpsichord; the piano is not yet satisfactorily developed-this
and
of
his
the
instrument
all
is
the
frequently points out;
predilections
clavichord. Thus his keyboard style and his keyboard teaching is involved
with a period of transition. Much of it applies to a set of conditions with
respect to instruments that will never again return.
And his own style of composition, as the example pieces or any of his
other pieces show, retains a certain number of vestiges from the past,
although those that are obviously in the style of his father are very
infrequent. Basically his is an innovative style; it is looking forward and
indeed is to have a rich progeny well into the 19th century, through its
influence on Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and many others. And yet it is
itself about to be overwhelmed. The vision is constantly conjured up in
connection with the Versuch of the stability of its utterance and the
instability of its historical position. But its exposition of sound disciplined
musicianship, of observation from experience, give it enduring value. Like
most treatises, it indulges in the expression of a few personal prejudices,
but not as many as most, and in no way do they affect the book as a whole.
Its codification and nomenclature of ornaments is the clearest of any 18thcentury treatise, and as I have already said, its codification and exposition
of the elements of thoroughbass is unsurpassed.
There are perhaps some special, highly personal points of view that limit
the general applicability of this book. One of them is undoubtedly its
strong orientation toward the clavichord, especially if one takes into
consideration the limitations of that instrument in connection with public
performance, and its later overwhelming by the piano. Both halves of the
book are intensely concerned with the use of piano and forte dynamics to a
degree that is almost unprecedented. The musical style in connection with
387

This content downloaded from 200.16.16.13 on Mon, 12 May 2014 10:59:19 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

bibr bit aoobr

trt

r
uiU?Iupr
so

g epmg

Ahl

.lulm, t17s.

Titlepageoffirsteditionof Versuch, PartI, 1759

which these dynamics are used has little to do with that of an earlier age, so
that fundamentally they are relevant only to the music of Philipp Emanuel
Bach and his contemporaries. Throughout the book, in fact, despite the
universal validity of many of its generalizations, most of the particular
examples are drawn from Philipp Emanuel Bach's own highly personal
style of composition.
My own experience with the Versuchnow covers a span of over forty
years. I first encountered it in an atmosphere in which the concept of early
or old music was still relativelynew. There was a tendency to lump all kinds
of styles and periods together under the rubric of early music. This can
easily be seen in the organization and tenor of a book like Dolmetsch's
and EighteenthCenturies.The work
Interpretation
of-theMusicof the Seventeenth
of Arnold on thoroughbass and that of Dannreuther on ornamentation is
not that much more discriminating. Their quotations, with which I was
already familiar, were regarded by me as having a kind of general authority
that I would no longer ascribe to them, but Bach's book, of which I
acquired a copy of the 1780 edition, together with its examples, in
December 1932, not only constituted, along with Goethe's WilhelmMeister,
some of the first reading I ever did in German, but it has remained with me
ever since. What most influenced me at the beginning was its attitude
toward the clavichord, its comments on touch and the examples
themselves. I think the style and language of ornamentation that I evolved
over the years owes as much to Philipp Emanuel Bach as to any other
treatise. And I learned a certain amount from the sections on
thoroughbass, but practical experience was later to teach me much more
than studying Philipp Emanuel Bach's examples.
For many years I continued, whether rightly or wrongly, to use Philipp
Emanuel Bach's terminology for ornamentation. I used it in the preface of
but I now think to an excessive
my 1938 edition of the GoldbergVariations,
to
choice
with
the
between long and short
degree, especially
respect
a
And
I
still
used
it
as
of
basis terminology in my Scarlatti
appoggiaturas.
book of 1953, mainly because of its clarity and general applicability. The
Versuchdoes cover a large amount of the ornamentation that was practised
in the fifty or seventy-fiveyears preceding its time, but one can be misled by
its excessive codification and by its almost exclusive orientation toward the
style represented by Philipp Emanuel Bach himself. In recent years I
became more and more conscious of the unsuitability to the performance
of earlier music of the long appoggiaturas which Philipp Emanuel Bach so
abundantly uses. I developed great reservations about many of those
appoggiaturas ofJ. S. Bach which I formerly played as long, and more and
more they have tended to disappear in favour of short grace notes.
My most recent reassessment of this book leaves unabated my
admiration for it, but provokes me to a few new observations. I had not
really studied the thoroughbass chapters of Part Two since before gaining
the experience of years and years of continuo playing. On returning to it
now I find some of the same solutions to all sorts of problems that I had
been obliged to work out in the heat of battle, so to speak; I find all the
tricks of the trade mentioned in one spot or another. If one reads these
pages before having had practical experience for one's self they have a
tendency to go in one eye and out the other. But now it was a fascinating
experience to see how fully C. P. E. Bach has dealt with continuo playing,
from what sound experience, and with what finesse of hearing and of taste.

388

This content downloaded from 200.16.16.13 on Mon, 12 May 2014 10:59:19 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

I think that no other continuo treatise exhibits such impeccable taste, much
of which is applicable in any style.
My recent experience of going through most of the examples of
Ibtr bitt an rre Wrt
ornamentation in Part One and playing through again all the sonatas and
bae$
sonatinas of the Probestiicke
showed me even more than I had ever realized
how closely the book is allied to C. P. E. Bach's own style. Certainlyit has
itf r onbam
intom bit
Wl~tepancmat been more convenient than accurate to use Philipp Emanuel Bach as a
unbWr freen antape
source book for J. S. Bach. There is, however, no one source that can be
used for application to J. S. Bach; one is obliged to compile and assess a
sahse.da.u.m.afL
... ...... U
'Q. S.....
variety of sources in the light of historical judgement and experience in
order to draw conclusions, of which many will alwaysremain debatable.
showed me that much more limited
My re-examination of the Probestiicke
I
is
made
than
had
use
of
the
wide range of ornamentation
thought
bdln, 1762.
*uk* Sv gqoe kIm3.'a.
discussed in the text and examples. Of many of the variants cited in
connection with trills that turn up in other schools, Philipp Emanuel Bach
TitlepageofVersuch, PartII, 1762
himself makes no use. I was surprised to see how far away I had been
carried by the consistent but perhaps idiosyncratic style of dealing with
ornaments that over years I had worked out for myself. As I said before,
this took much of its impetus from my initial study of Philipp Emanuel
Bach, but in the intervening years it has been much more strongly fortified
by a study of French treatises and of French style. The basic principles of
my own style have been taken over by most of my pupils, but often with a
quite different effect. It is certain that with equal faithfulness to the sources
it is possible to treat many ornaments in a way quite different from mine.
What is important, however, is the combination of consistency and
flexibility that assures communicative power to any language.
The distance of Philipp Emanuel Bach from the French style is much
greater than I had recalled. I was aware that Philipp Emanuel Bach's use of
appoggiaturas is almost entirely harmonic, whereas the Frenchuse of them
is almost entirely melodic and declamatory. The rigorous ornament-onthe-beat prescriptions of Philipp Emanuel Bach are not borne out by much
of early music and especially not by much French music. In general, the
regularly measured appoggiaturas that he prescribesare attributesmore of
his own music than of that of anyone else.
There is a great difference in his treatment of trills. His use of the
termination (Nachschlag)instead of the stopping of a trill on a note is so
frequent that even without the presence of a sign he takes its insertion for
granted. This is in direct contrast to the more precise indications of the
French, who, moreover, use far fewer terminations and many more trills
that do not demand them. There seems to be a great deal more variety in
the French school in the variations of speed within trills and in their
rhythmic function in general. The French school would seem to have a
much greater variety in tied trills, that is in trills of which the first auxiliary
tone is tied to a preceding descending interval. With Philipp Emanuel
Bach, both inprecept and application, this tied trill becomes what he calls
a Pralltriller,and it is always short and not extended through the note. Also
he has a peculiar association of this ornament with a turn, which is also a
short ornament in a way quite differentfrom what appears to be implied by
the French.
Although Philipp Emanuel Bach is obviously using ornamentation as a
means of declamation, his usage is totally different from that of the French.
It is much more emphatic, as is the nature of the German language itself.
389

pr
3wepter
lac

This content downloaded from 200.16.16.13 on Mon, 12 May 2014 10:59:19 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

detailof
C. P. E. Bach(?) at thekeyboard,
theGreatandhis
engravingofFrederick
musiciansbyP. Haas

The accents are much stronger, the contrasts much sharper, and the
declamation of consonants, diphthongs, and vowel sounds much less
subtle, as one would expect from the inherent qualities of German as
compared with French. In fact, in comparison with the French style Philipp
Emanuel Bach seems ever so slightly crude, except for his abundant use of
dynamics. There is much finesse in his playing, but it is obviously intended
to be achieved through the swelling and tapering of notes whereas the
entire French keyboard school is based on the harpsichord and not on the
clavichord, and on dealing with non-inflecting instruments and with means
of providing compensation. I think this perhaps may explain the greater
complexity and subtlety of French ornamentation, namely that it could not
fall back on taperings and swellings. In fact, Couperin says as much: 'Le
Clavecin est parfait quant A son etendiie, et brillant par luy merme; mais
comme on ne peut enfler, ny diminuer ses sons, je sgauray to ijours gr $a
ceux qui par un art infini, soutenu par le goit, pouront ariver a rendre cet
instrument susceptible d'expression'.
Philipp Emanuel Bach shares with Couperin an evident abhorrence of
gymnastics as a substitute for expression. While his digital technique in
terms of passage work and figuration is somewhat more extended than
Couperin's, his fingering is not nearly as subtle. While his principles of
fingering open the way to the modern ten-finger system, his chief
innovation is the passing under of the thumb as against the passing of long
fingers over shorter as was the case with Couperin. It is surprising that
Philipp Emanuel Bach almost never changes fingers on repeated notes.
This is a cardinal principle of my own technique, because a failure to
change fingers can produce a kind of shove of the hand or the wrist that
risks upsetting the general cohesion of the passage being played. Couperin
evidently felt this, because he nearly always changes fingers on repeated
notes, and often does a great deal of binding by changing fingers on one
note, far more than Philipp Emanuel Bach. The Probestiickeare full of
cantabile passages in which the same finger plays successive diatonic
intervals in a way which makes a legato almost impossible. One of the few
mentions of Couperin in the Versuchoccurs in connection with a criticism
of his unnecessary changing of fingers on sustained notes. But the gestures
of Philipp Emanuel Bach's fingerings and their very crudity perhaps imply
a kind of Germanic Heftigkeit, a kind of bear-like enthusiasm, one might
better say, dog-like enthusiasm as compared with the cat-like desinvolture
and the invariably smooth movements and concealed intensity of the
French. In the Germanic style the heart is laid out on the sleeve, and
certainly in Philipp Emanuel Bach's music his Heftigkeit shows itself not
only in keyboard gestures but in strong dynamic changes ranging from
pianissimo to fortissimo, in rapidly alternating fortes and pianos and in
surprising modulations of a kind that would have been considered quite
outrageous by Couperin.
Yet Philipp Emanuel Bach was vastly better educated and intellectually
infinitely more disciplined than Couperin. He writes very much better.
Couperin writes really quite badly; he expresses himself with more colour
than clarity. Philipp Emanuel Bach continually shows the benefits of a
classical education and probably also those of his four years of study of
law. (Until 1738, when he accepted his first appointment at the court of the
Crown Prince, he was not intended to be a professional musician.) His
intellectual interests were considerable. His culture he acquired, I think,

390

This content downloaded from 200.16.16.13 on Mon, 12 May 2014 10:59:19 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

for himself, instead of by osmosis as did Couperin. Philipp Emanuel Bach

is known to have frequented nearly all the best poets of his time, and men
of letters in general, and also to have had strong connections with the
visual arts.
He represents an embodiment of two opposing characteristicsthat in its
way is typical of many late 18th-century figures with their balance on the
.
one hand, of vigorous logic, and on the other, of exceedingly personal
.I.
sentiment. C. P. E. Bach has a predilection for the kind of direct expression
that among keyboard instruments only the clavichord can give. And yet his
logic and his tendency to theorize is always based on practical experience.
I have formed a theory or two that might explain Philipp Emanuel
Bach's dislike of Rameau. He rejected Rameau's principle of fundamental
bass and inversion, and I think quite rightly, because Bach's traditional
thoroughbass classification of chords in his treatise relates to the way in
which they are actually used. The classification of chords by inversion is
purely theoretical and has absolutely nothing to do with the manipulation
C. P. E. Bach'sautograph,
September
1774,from
or with the conduct of the fingers on the keyboard in
thefacsimile
ofC.P.E.Bach's
autobiography of part writing
Frits
Amsterdam
thoroughbass playing. I think Bach had an instinctive mistrust of Rameau
publishedby
Knuf,
as a theoretician. Rameau's theoretical writings do not always function as
an extension of his activities as a composer; in their abstractnessthey have
rather a tendency to do violence to his own very great genius. He is capable
of pursuing a system for its own sake, regardless of what experience or
feelings may have told him about it. That Rameau was able to be so
brutally rationalistic is perhaps explained by the fact that he was essentially
a non-performing composer. His keyboard playing is reputed to have been
quite primitive, as was also his violin playing, and his precepts for
performance bear the hallmark of distance from practical experience.
Philipp Emanuel Bach in his balance between logic and sentimentality is
in his way a perfect representativeof the age of enlightenment, of the whole
turn of thought of the last half of the 18th century. It is dominated on the
one hand by the conception of man as a superlativelyrational being, and
by investigation into all realms of knowledge on the part of scientists and
encyclopedists, and on the other hand by the conception of man as a
creature of infinite capacities for feeling. These capacities find their
Zeit in Germany and in
exacerbation in the products of the empfindsame
novels like La Nouvelle Hiloise of Rousseau, or in a quite different and
highly ironic sense in Sade's Justine. On one hand, homely subjective
unqualified sentimentality, on the other hand, noble magnificent objective
structures of reason and logic. This antithesis is abundantly shown on the
stage in such a work as Mozart's Zauberflite.And Philipp Emanuel Bach
represents, as I have said already, a mixture of a solid heritage from the era
of his father, of a solid classical education and of the modishness and
stylishness of the court of Frederick the Great. This court had its very
special atmosphere. It was capable of inviting Voltaire as a privileged guest
but it was also capable of having terrific rows with him. It harboured all
sorts of quaintnesses and sentimentalities. In Potsdam monumental
colonnades adjoin simulated peasant houses and windmills, and the rooms
at Sans Souci lead from marble formality to rococo intimacy. On the
occasion of my last visit to Sans Souci I was provoked to remark that in
Proustian terms one could describe the atmosphere as a kind of combined
emanation of the Baron de Charlusand of Mme Verdurin.
Like most of the Bach family C. P. E. Bach seems to have been a very
391

Vl.

ZI

P-

0-

This content downloaded from 200.16.16.13 on Mon, 12 May 2014 10:59:19 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Apagefroman accountbookat Frederick

the
Great'scourtshowinga paymentof300 thalerto
C. P. E. Bach(10thentrydown). Thesinger
Astruadrew4725, Graunand Quantz2000 each.
StaatsarchivsPreusischer
Geheimen
Kulturbesitz,
Berlin

VIP

.i
A4......
.............

i4e5i

poor courtier. He was not popular with the King; his pay was never raised
until very late in his career; and in 1768 he was happy to leave for
Hamburg. The Versuch,although a product of Berlin and Potsdam and
Leipzig, foreshadows in a way the later life of Philipp Emanuel Bach and
the later function of music in Germany. Its orientation is not toward the
court and the aristocracy,hence the absence of any dedication whatsoever.
It is toward the rising cultivatedbourgeoisie that was to make 19th-century
German literature and music possible, toward that exceedingly high
middle-class culture, higher probably in the first half of the 19th century
than in any country in Europe except England, because in other countries
either the middle class scarcelyexisted or it was desperately uncultivated as
in Franceunder the shadow of a highly sophisticatedaristocratictradition.
brought me once again to the problem
My re-examination of the Versuch
of Philipp Emanuel Bach's music. My own relations with it have never been
for any length of time more than chilly. It is undeniably first-class music,
but I have never been able to sustain the moments of enthusiasm and
surprise which it has sometimes aroused on first encounter. Yet its high
reputation is fully justified by its quality. An enormous amount of this
music has been republished, but one wonders how much of it is ever
played. The rare occasions on which I played any of it myself in public have
never left me with any feeling of real success. Of the half dozen harpsichord
concertos that I have played at least once there is not one which I would
particularlycare to play again, and of the fifty or sixty which I have actually
seen there are few that I would have considered even playing once. I played
one of the sonatas on the harpsichord on what may have been at least thirty
recitals in half a dozen different countries with what seemed to be a
remarkably consistent failure to render it attractiveto the public, but as a
protagonist of the piece I myself developed quite a liking for it. In fact I
played it with considerable sincerity and passion. But the unfamiliarity to
audiences of the style, its failure to give an audience what it had been
expecting, and its failure to dazzle was so complete I finally eliminated it.
I think I would be more strongly attractedby the big clavichordfantasies
if it were not for the problem of obtaining adequate instruments. These
pieces do not lend themselves at all to performance on any other
instrument than the clavichord. Yet in my entire life I have encountered
fewer than half a dozen clavichords that live up to the demands posed by
this music. Among them is one in the Claudius collection in Copenhagen,
and another is in the Berlin collection. Usually old clavichords have such
weak discants or have lost their tone so completely that there is no hope of
obtaining from them anything but a travestyof these pieces. Among large
modern clavichords I have never encountered an upper register adequate
to the demands of the fantasies.
My own attitudes towards Philipp Emanuel Bach are chequered with a
kind of alternation between frustrationand the hope that one day I might
achieve a relationship with his music. Given its obvious quality I cannot
help feeling that the fault is mine, unless it be Haydn's and Mozart's for
satisfying me so much more. I do not know whether any kind of final
conversion to this music will ever be granted me, whether anywhereor with
the general public it will achieve the admiration that it once enjoyed.
The Versuch,however, is certainly sure of survivalby virtue of its double
role as a document of performing practices and by virtue of its position as
the utterance of a consummate musician.

392

This content downloaded from 200.16.16.13 on Mon, 12 May 2014 10:59:19 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions