The myth is that Bach's music had been forgotten until Mendelssohn resurrected him. You'll find it in biographic profiles and lists of interesting facts. It's an appealing tidbit because it seems so contrary to our perception of Bach today. Bach is one of the few classical composers that most people have even heard of; even if they can't name him, people can at least recognize a few bars of his work. Whenever we see a television character appreciating some Bach, we know we're meant to understand that their brain is processing information at a higher level, thanks to popular culture linking Bach's music to depictions of genius (a phenomenon that started in the twentieth century, as studied by my friend Kristi Brown-Montesano). Since Bach is ubiquitous nowadays, it would be easy to assume that it’s always been that way. Finding out that it was the exact opposite way for decades after his death is pleasantly surprising, in that it's something you can say to impress people at parties.
Like most myths, this one is based on a kernel of truth. Bach was not famous in his own time, certainly not an international superstar like Handel. Mendelssohn did organize a performance of the St. Matthew Passion, and that concert did much to popularize Bach. But it would be inaccurate to call Bach "forgotten" up to 1829, and Mendelssohn is not solely responsible for launching Bach's posthumous career. Though the myth of Mendelssohn "discovering" Bach might lead one to imagine him as a musical Indiana Jones stumbling across a dusty manuscript, eyes widening as he gradually realizes its brilliance, that just wasn't the case.
Instead of marking the beginning of the Bach revival, Mendelssohn's performance was part of a larger Bach appreciation movement that was already underway. The first biography of Bach was published in 1802 by Johann Nikolaus Forkel. Beethoven himself proclaimed that Bach (German for "brook") should have been named Meer ("sea") because his music was so great. Not bad for someone whose existence was allegedly unknown at that point!
As Christoph Wolff pointed out in 2004, Bach's music continued to circulate among two different groups: professional musicians (including Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven) and middle-class intellectuals. In the late eighteenth and nineteenth century, people with enough education and leisure time to do so liked to gather together in people's homes to discuss various smart topics; these gatherings were known as "salons." (We associate that word with hairdressers today because they were once seen to fulfill the same role in society: a place where people discuss the goings-on of the world.) Wolff's essay focuses on the salon of Sara Levy, which attracted people who were interested in old music at a time when newly composed music dominated the concert halls.
Sara Levy was Mendelssohn's great-aunt, so he came to know Bach by virtue of being born into a well-connected, intellectually active family. As a musician, he also knew of Bach through his composition studies with Carl Friedrich Zelter. Bach's music was revered, but it wasn't often performed. Around the time Mendelssohn started his career, though, there was a shift in concert culture: People became more receptive to hearing live performances of music by dead composers, a trend that dominates classical music culture today.
The 1829 performance of the St. Matthew Passion is an important landmark in the afterlife of Bach's music. It was a major event that took a lot of coordinated effort on Mendelssohn's part, and it brought Bach's music to people who had not heard it performed in a concert setting before. But Bach's music hadn't disappeared before that point, so calling him "completely forgotten by history" is an exaggeration.
Thank you to Jeff Sposato and Angela Mace Christian for their feedback on this topic!
For more information on Sara Levy, check out "Silence from the Salon: In Search of Sara Levy" by Rebecca Cypess on The Avid Listener, another blog devoted to public musicology.
Sources:
"Bach would’ve been completely forgotten by history without this document" by Rob Weinberg on Classic FM
http://www.classicfm.com/composers/bach/news/st-matthew-passion-contract/#x5Eu7V8jJLTsefeO.99
"A Bach Cult in Late-Eighteenth Century Berlin: Sara Levy's Musical Salon" by Christoph Wolff in the Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
https://www.amacad.org/publications/bulletin/spring2005/wolff.pdf
Great! If readers are interested in learning more about Sara Levy (including lovely performances of some of the music she sponsored) check out http://www.theavidlistener.com/2015/09/silence-from-the-salon-in-search-of-sara-levy.html and this http://musicologynow.ams-net.org/2015/05/sara-levys-world.html by Rebecca Schaefer Cypess ...
ReplyDeleteThanks! I've edited the original post to include the link to TAL.
DeleteHello, congratulations firstly for your blog.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of Bach, you could also write something against a myth that exists among some music teachers, at least here in Brazil, who says that "Bach hated pianos". They use such lie to discourage students from making use of specific features of the piano as an instrument when playing baroke repertoire.
As far as I came to discover by reading some old biographies, which I don't know if are entirely correct in this regard, Bach had a friend who was a piano manufacturer, and gave an instrument as a gift to Bach, who refused the instrument because he didn't like some characteristics of that particular model, not pianos in general. This happened around the 30s of the eighteenth century. Some years later, Bach went to visit his son in Berlin, then played an improved piano model, and became quite interested in the instrument.
Greetings.
Hello! Thank you for your comment. It's an interesting myth that says a lot about how people approach performance practice, so I did a little digging. I expect to write a post about this in a few days. Do you want me to identify you as "Cleverson," or would you prefer something else?
DeleteThis is wonderful! I love the image of Mendelssohn as Indiana Jones :-) Well done!
ReplyDeleteHi Linda, thank you for answering with kind interest. Yes, you may call me by my name Cleverson.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of performances, indeed, you could also write about that "historic informed" thing. It appears that the period instruments have almost monopolized the cenario, at least regarding new recordings, don't know how it is at concert halls around the world. I find it unfortunate, because for me, the modern instruments and way of execution lets me better see the greatness of a Bach for example. Of course this is a personal taste, but the fact is that at the baroke era, the composers didn't worry the least about their music being interpreted using completely other instruments than those they wrote the original score... As I use to say, the excess of comtemporary individualist culture ends up being disrespectful to the composers as individuals themselves, because they didn't necessarily intended their individuality to be frozen at the state they were at a given time...
Greetings.
Thank you Linda, another great episode of "Musical Mythbusters"! I look forward to discovering your findings about the verity of Bach's distaste (or not) for pieces written for or interpreted on other keyboard instruments.
ReplyDelete