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The name Albert Schweitzer is little known today but a century ago he was emerging as a highly-respected humanitarian as well as Bach scholar and performer, theologian, writer, and medical doctor. Eventual winner of the 1952 Noble Prize, he was a veritable Renaissance Man who hoped that his contributions would help lead to a better world but who was dismayed by the Great War just ended. His humanitarian and musical endeavors continued unabated despite another World War. His pursuit of music placed him at the heart of the emerging field of musicology as well as revival and formative movements: the Bach 20th century revivals, particularly the pioneer use of recordings, the Organ Reform Movement (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_reform_movement), and the Early Music Movement (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_music_revival#19th_century).
Schweitzer (1875-1965) grew up in the final quarter of the 19th century of Later Romantic music, also under the profound influence of Richard Wagner from his teacher Eugène Munch in Strasbourg. In 1898, he received his PhD in religion from the Sorbonne and renewed his studies with the organist Charles-Marie Widor (1844-1937, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles-Marie_Widor). This also was a serendipitous time when great concert halls with pipe organs were being built in Vienna, London, Paris, Boston, and NewYork and when the music of Bach was moving there from the church and salon. Soon organs would be installed in theaters to accompany silent movies.
Central to Schweitzer was, with his "theological insight," his use of pictorial and symbolical representation in J. S. Bach's religious music, says Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Schweitzer). To the famous French organist Widow, he brought a special understanding of Lutheran hymns to the organ figures and motives in the chorale preludes while Schweitzer also championed Bach's profane free-organ preludes and fugues in a symphonic style influenced by Widor's ten Organ Symphonies, the iconic Bach works being the "Toccata and Fugue in d minor, BWV 565, and the"Little Fugue in g minor, BWV 578. Widor and Schweitzer founded the Paris Bach Society in 1905 when the latter published his J. S. Bach: Le Musicien-Poète. They collaborated on a new edition of Bach's organ works, with Schweitzer commentaries on the preludes and fugues and Widor commentaries on the sonatas and concertos in six volumes published in 1912-14.1 Schweitzer undertook three more volumes of chorale preludes "to be worked on in Africa, but these were never completed, perhaps because for him they were inseparable from his evolving theological thought," says Wikipedia (Ibid.).
After the Great War, Schweitzer resumed his performing on a pedal piano in Africa and in the mid 1930s he began recording Bach's organ works in London for the Columbia (http://www.fampeople.com/cat-albert-schweitzer_3, https://publicdomainreview.org/collections/bachs-organ-works-played-by-albert-schweitzer-1935/) and Philipps labels, then the church of Ste Aurélie in Strasbourg and then Parish church, Günsbach, Alsace, for a documentary in 1952 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbU3preF97o), recording chorale preludes (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRgDxjgwWLc, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySRsQlgx6hk). Another chorale prelude is "An Wasserflussen Babylon," BWV 653.
The Early Music Movement began in the 20th century with Arnold "Dolmetsch's 1915 book The Interpretation of the Music of the XVIIth and XVIIIth Centuries (https://imslp.org/wiki/The_Interpretation_of_the_Music_of_the_17th_and_18th_Centuries_(Dolmetsch,_Arnold) was a milestone in the development of authentic performances of early music," says Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_music_revival#19th_century). Two major events in the 1930s were "the 1933 founding of the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in Basel, Switzerland by Paul Sacher" and "the 1937 presentation and recording of some of Monteverdi’s Madrigals by Nadia Boulanger in France. Early 20th century composers who pursued early music were Richard Strauss, Igor Stravinsky, Ottorino Respighi, and Ernst Bloch.
Schweitzer was at the forefront of recording Bach's music in the early 20th century and when visiting Europe he also delivered lectures and recitals. The "Toccata and Fugue in D minor" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgpgDlCA_rA) and the "Little Fugue" in G Minor (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HjtjIkK20E) became Schweitzer's signature pieces as well as the iconic Bach music in the 20th century Bach Revivals. The Toccata and Fugue represented to Schweitzer "the real experience of life" "that had lead him to medicine and Africa" and that is "a sermon in sound," says Paul Elie in his study of the Bach Revival driven by the new technology of audio recordings and broadcasts.2 In 1913, Schweitzer moved to his hospital in Lambaréné, French Equatorial Africa, now Gabon, and eventually playing on his pedal piano "resolved to study and learn by heart the works of Bach, Mendelssohn, Widor, César Franck, and Max Reger systematically.
Schweitzer, Bach Recordings, 2nd Revival.
The impact of the "Toccata & Fugue in D Minor," says Elie, has continued to today, despite questions about its origins and authenticity. "The music made in those 10 minutes is still bright, brave, and confident in it cause," he says (Ibid. 15f). "It beams Bach out into the night with an electrical charge, which will outlast us the way it has outlasted him." It is immortal music from "a technician of the sacred and a representative of a prior epoch in which spirit and technique went hand in hand." The music registers the technique of that age while the initial Schweitzer recording with its lack of contemporary fidelity is "the source of its power," sounding like the past in its vintage aura, summarizing the European past prior to 1935. Schweitzer's playing, like his comments in his Bach biography, evoke the past with "a touch of religious elevation" with "a grandeur the present lacks," says Elie (Ibid.: 17). "Even as the recording gives us access to the past, it reminds us that we will never hear the past whole. It sends two signals that blend into one: it brings the past close to us, and it makes clear how distant the past really is, makes decline and fall audible." The music is intrinsically an "annunciation," says Elie (Ibid.: 31f), "an independent mastery," and "a spontaneous freshness of invention" as the sacred and profane are united, "evidence of a more perfect past," as well as "music of the shattered, anguished present."
A fresh, renewed perspective of Schweitzer is found in Elie's book: a man of "complex religious faith" and training, a musician of unbounded insight who had much to teach his mentor Charles Widor, a revivalist on the cusp of renewal, a thorough Bachian who presented the sacred vocal works of the cantatas and passions through the Paris Bach Society with Widor, and a force that grew as it shaped the world around him. Schweitzer also was an advanced biblical scholar whose perspective and musical aptitude enabled him to explore all the facets of Bach's art and craft through Bach's biography, who as a creatureof the Late Romantic period with its sense and sensibility saw the long-dimension of time and place. The recording industry improved the quality of the reproduced sound from acoustic to electric technology and other developments such as the microphone and vacuum tube which stimulated a fresh interest in the pipe organ. In 1934, the Columbia Gramophone Company, a subsidiary of EMI invited Schweitzer to record an album of Bach, as Schweitzer had spent much of the year on the continent with lectures and concerts. Schweitzer took up Bach again through recordings and created a second revival.
Free-Form Preludes & Fugues
Schweitzer expanded the initial publication of his Bach musical biography in his native German to two volumes, J. S. Bach, soon translated into English.3 The first volume begins with a background history of the chorale in Bach's art, Chapters II - IV: "The Origin of the Texts of the Chorales" (http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Articles/CT-Schweitzer.htm); "The Origin of the Melodies of the Chorales" (http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Articles/CM-Schweitzer.htm); and "The Chorale in the Church Service" (http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Articles/index.htm). Following the Bach biography and commentary on his person, encounters, and musicianship, Schweitzer takes up the organ works. Observing the Bach Gesellschaft publication order, he first considers the free works of the preludes and fugues, and divided them into four groups, although he acknowledges that "only in exceptional cases that we can determine precisely the date of composition (Ibid: 267f). The earliest works from Ohrdruf and Arnstadt under the influence of Frescobaldi and Buxtehude, followed by "those in which his independent mastery is evident," "the consummate compositions of the Weimar period," and the final works from his last years in Leipzig.
In the some one dozen preludes and fugues, "the storm and stress of the whole of the early organ art comes to life again," with a "dramatic excitement" in the preludes and strong proportions in the fugues, says Schweitzer. In these are Bach's development of his "perpetually improving organ technique" based on compositional studies of Legrenzi, Corelli, and Vivaldi. The two iconic organ works are singled out as examples of his "independent mastery": the "Little Fugue" for its "vigorously and broadly laid out theme," "not to be met with in previous organ music," and "the rapid and weighty development of the fugue," and the "Toccata and Fugue" with its "strong and ardent spirit" observing the laws of the toccata form that moves in wave after wave and also in the fugue with its intercalated passages reinforcing the climax. In them Schweitzer finds the "spontaneous freshness of invention. They affect the hearer almost more powerfully than any other of Bach's organ works and to play them is always to experience something of what the master himself must have felt," he says (Ibid.: 269).
The fugues in particular are "brilliant and dashing" with "an extraordinary display of virtuosity." These "masterpieces of his youth and his real masterpieces" show a clearly perceptible line; the former he left as they were; at the others he worked incessantly until he had given them their definitive form, from original copies, to autographs and finally manuscripts that survive in the hands of his students "that embody the work in its latest form," says Schweitzer (Ibid.: 270). Even then, Bach scholars have differed over the chronology, the "genesis," of the individual prelude and fugues, whether free-form or chorale-based. To call various versions "revisions" or "improvements" is to fall into the 19th century romantic trap of viewing the act of creation as the intense struggle towards superiority or perfection. Bach was simply looking at different perspectives and features of each work, bringing out new, fresh insights while possibly adapting them to different performance conditions, showing inherent invention, transcription and transformation.
Meanwhile, in the Weimar fugues,"virtuosity becomes less and less prominent with the themes more compact and unadorned, "almost severe," and their working out without "any thought of effect," says Schweitzer (Ibid.: 273). "On the borderline stands the G Major Fugue," BWV 550b (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIhaE5YdBl8), with its melody transcribed in the minor in the opening chorus of Cantata 21, "Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis" (I had much affliction in my heart, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-rGhtTvAaE) for the 3rd Sunday after Trinity 1714 in Weimar," and adapted "for any time." It is one of Bach's earliest ventures into transcription from one medium to another, here mostly keyboard to cantata with 11 such borrowings found in Norman Carrell's study.4 While it is virtually impossible to cite all Bach's borrowings, they were a continual and pervasive practice throughout Bach's career, giving him the opportunity to recycle, to reinvent, his music in new contexts and guises, despite the objections of today's purists to so-called "self-plagiarism." The most prolific, versatile and utilitarian of Bach's borrowing are found in the organ music where Bach for example in composing and compiling in the late 1720s six trio-sonatas BWV 525-530, possibly for Friedemann's use, borrowed many of the movements from other works (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_organ_compositions_by_Johann_Sebastian_Bach: "Six Sonatas (BWV 525–530"). Schweitzer has special praise for these sonatas, as well as the "Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor," BWV 582 (Ibid.: 278ff, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVoFLM_BDgs). At the same time, other composers sought to pay homage to Bach with their own transcriptions, often from keyboard works — producing new wine in old bottles — and their work is now legion, if not legend (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_transcriptions_of_compositions_by_Johann_Sebastian_Bach). "Bach himself was no purist — he regularly cannibalized his own catalogue with all the efficiency of an overworked jingle writer, says one commentator.5
It is difficult to determine which free preludes and fugues were composed together or separately. While it appears that as Bach continued to compose such works, particularly in Leipzig, he first began revising these works in the late 1720s when Friedemann and Emmanuel were able to play their father's compositions, says Schweitzer (Ibid.: 275). Toward the end of his Leipzig period, Bach revisited these works, notably the so-called "Great Leipzig 18," composed originally in Weimar. "It is possible that he had the idea of making [and publishing] a complete collection of his preludes and fugues, as well as of the larger chorales he had revised,"observes Schweitzer (Ibid.: 276). Student copies of groups of preludes and fugues proliferated after Bach's death, supporting this contention. The best of the "mature" preludes and fugues are those in C Major, BWV 545 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LrkuKW99kM); B minor, BWV 544 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WJTwo_YW7I); and E minor, BWV 548 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JS20cvSWyIE), says Schweitzer, culminating in the Prelude and Triple Fugue in E-Flat, BWV 552 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqm8UUisPX0, which "symbolizes God-like majesty," as it frames the 1739 published Clavierübung III. The organ works of this period . . . show a return to the style of Buxtehude, says Schweitzer (Ibid.: 276), with the added dimension of concerted, expansive, contrasting music now transfigured as "symphonic works of Bach's old age.
Several organ preludes and fugues may have been composed in Leipzig to open and close special, occasional services: Prelude & Fugue in E-Flat, BWV 552, Clavierübung III 1739 German Organ Mass & Catechism, for Trinityfest and catechism services; Prelude and Fugue in B minor, BWV 544, for the Saxon Electress Christiane Eberhardine memorial service in 1727; and Prelude and Fugue in C Major, BWV 545, for an unknown special service as well as the 10th Sunday after Trinity. The Prelude and Fugue in E minor, BWV 548, may have been composed for a memorial service. Most of the other so-called secular, non-chorale organ works, BWV 525-591, often involving fugues and found in the Bach Compendium J 1-83, Free-Organ Works (http://www.bach-cantatas.com/NVD/CompleteOrgan.pdf) also were composed for organ recitals held on Sunday afternoons.
In the more than a century since Schweitzer first championed the "Toccata and Fugue in D minor," becoming the signature piece of Bach, its unclear origin has lead to its authenticity being challenged recently and the jury is still out (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toccata_and_Fugue_in_D_minor,_BWV_565). Soon after Schweitzer's commentary in his Bach musical biography, Sir Edward Elgar, a trained organist in his youth, weighed in with critical comments on it, the "Little Fugue" and the early preludes and fugues which Schweitzer held in high regard. "Elgar, for his part, was singularly unimpressed, not only with the works themselves, but also with Schweitzer's comments on them," says Russel Stinson in his collection of Bach organ essays.6 Elgar called the "Little Fugue" charming but not powerful (Stinson concurs). Elgar "evidently preferred to dismiss all of these pieces as flawed juvenilia." Elgar thought highly of other Bach organ works, notably the "Fantasy & Fugue in C minor," BWV 537, and the "Prelude & Fugue in E minor," BWV 548, "The Wedge," which he transcribed for full orchestra, the former in 1921 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eh2-yX7296M). Give his Catholic upbringing, Elgar showed little interest in the chorale-based organ works, found in the Peter's Edition, Volumes 5-8, although he was impressed in his youth with Samuel Sebastian Wesley's 1875 playing of "The Wedge," as well as the Prelude on "Wir Glauben all an einem Gott," BWV680 from Clavierübung III, music that introduced English cathedral choir festivals (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqm8UUisPX0)
Chorale-Based Organ Works
Turning to the chorale-based organ works, Schweitzer consistently holds them in high regard, both the Weimar era Orgelbüchlein and the works of the final years in the five collections of some 90 preludes. Of the then-extant 50 early, miscellaneous chorales, Schweitzer particularly admired the prelude on the 1720 original version of "Am Wasserflüssen Babylon," BWV 653, which he thinks Bach would have revised again in the "Great 18" which were not completely revised for publication. The incomplete Orgelbüchlein with its varied forms developing the prelude genre is "one of the greatest achievements in music," he says (Ibid: 284). "Never before has anyone expressed the texts in pure tone in this way," being the lexicon of Bach's musical speech." The settings primarily for the de tempore feast days of Christmas, the Passion, and Easter as miniature oratorios, challenged Bach with their "strong pictorial or characteristic quality," "little tone-pictures" with "effects of contrast," while "the texts of the [124] numbers not completed lack these musical qualities."
The late chorale collections Schweitzer also holds in great regard. The Clavierübung III, BWV 669-689, of 1739 with their dogma of brief and extended settings of omnes tempore early Lutheran Mass and Catechism hymns, presents great contrasts of form, style, and expression, notably "a sublime musical expression," he says (Ibid.: 289). The collection of "18 Chorales," BWV 651-668, revision begun in 1742 but not fully revised, "are plainly masterpieces" (Ibid.: 291f), often treated as "fantasias on broad lines." The last organ chorale setting, the 1747 Canonic Variations on "Vom Himmel hoch," BWV 769, "brings the Pachelbel style of chorale treatment to perfection." It "shews the tendency to abstract that was characteristic of his last years," while being "full of Christmas joyousness and cheerfulness," says Schweitzer (Ibid.: 283). Of the transcription Schübler Chorales, BWV 645-50, Schweitzer questions the purpose of publication since Bach had available "in his portfolio dozens of splendid chorales ready for engraving," (Ibid.: 282). These trio settings of chorale arias found in cantatas, while not the most challenging on the organ, show Bach's affinity for adapting instrumental form in vocal music. The very early individual chorale partitas as variations, BWV 766-768, 770, "are clever student exercises," he says (Ibid.: 282), with the setting of "Sei gegrüsset, Jesu gütig," BWV 768 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0z_WBY_Otzw), "is a masterpiece," while Bach had no further opportunity to use this extended form in services in Weimar or Leipzig. Individual chorale settings also are singled out for Schweitzer's praise: "Am Wasserflüssen Babylon," BWV 653 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXoxDwcSmbo); "Ein feste Berg ist unser Gott," BWV 720 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6phVvCNSk6g), now attributed to Johann Michael Bach; the Prelude: Fuga sopra il. Magnificat, BWV 733 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAdX4-EyahM); "Nun freut euch lieben Christen g'mein, BWV 734 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6z6UAMqxDd0); and "Erbarm dich mein, o Herre Gott," BWV 721 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpEX4YF_NFU).
Schweitzer Publications
Schweitzer initially was a theologian studying at Kaiser Wilhelm University in Strasbourg in 1893 and receiving his PhD dissertation on The Religious Philosophy of Kant at the Sorbonne in 1898. He is best known for his books, The Quest of the Historical Jesus (1910, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Quest_of_the_Historical_Jesus), The Philosophy of Civilization (1923), and The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle (1931), as well as Out of My Life and Thought: An Autobiography (1933/1998. Biographies include Schweitzer: A Biography, by George N. Marshall and David Poling (Doubleday, 1971; https://books.google.com/books?id=UC5sXn1CwT4C&pg=PA24#v=onepage&q&f=false), Albert Schweitzer: A Biography by James Barbazon (Syracuse University Press, 2000; https://books.google.com/books?id=zOm0iqkRsYEC&pg=PA84&dq=Albert+Schweitzer+berlin&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwje1tCh6OLZAhVRIqwKHS6RCwYQ6AEIJzAA#v=onepage&q=Albert%20Schweitzer%20berlin&f=false). Various biographical films on Schweitzer have been produced (see "Portrayals," https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Schweitzer).
FOOTNOTES
1 Schweitzer-Widor published Bach organ music; https://www.amazon.com/Johann-Sebastian-Complete-Organ-Works/dp/B0094MY790, https://www.amazon.com/COMPLETE-Critico-Practical-Nies-Berger-Schweitzer-Concertos/dp/B07B6SSQQ5/ref=sr_1_12?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1546381458&sr=1-12&keywords=j.s.+bach%2C+schweitzer)
2 Paul Elie, Part 1, "Revival," in Reinventing Bach (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2012); https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/08/books/reinventing-bach-by-paul-elie.html, https://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/essays/articles-and-reviews-for-em-reinventing-bach-em-by-paul-elie).
3 Albert Schweitzer, J. S. Bach, eng. trans. Ernest Newman (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1911).
4 Norman Carrell, Bach the Borrower (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1967: 57f).
5 See Gregory Van Den Toorn, liner notes, "Bach Transcriptions: Esa Pekka Salonen (http://bach-cantatas.com/NVP/Salonen-EP.htm).
6 Russell Stinson, "Edward Elgar as a receptor of Bach's Organ Works," in J. S. Bach at His Royal Instrument: Essays on his Organ Works (Oxford& New York: Oxford University Press, 2012: 99). |
