Johann Sebastian Bach - booksnow.scholarsportal.info

120 JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH.assured that he has already grasped a great part of thewhole art.^"^^ This shows that when Kirnberger insists onbeginning his instructions in composition with thoroughbass,calling it " the first lines of composition," it is quitein accordance with Bach's views. The great importanceattached by Bach to a knowledge of thorough-bass, notonly for the purpose of accompanying, is confirmed by otherevidence. In the instruction book now before us the pupilis led up to the accompaniment of short fugal movements.There can scarcely be any doubt that a collection of sixtytwopreludes and fugues which remains to us, written throughouton one stave, with figured basses, and bearing the nameof Bach as the composer, served as the continuation of histhorough-bass instructions,^^" and that Bach was accustomedto lead his advanced pupils up to the point of making an extempore accompaniment, even to independent pieces of music,by means of a figured bass and a few other indications.However, this work of Bach's on figured bass is notaltogether original. In chapters i to g of the section whichis entitled " Gründlicher Unterricht des General Basses,"Bach has relied largely on Part I. of Friedrich ErhardtNiedt's Musicalische Handleitung, and in parts the originalarguments of Niedt are merely abridged and compressed.In other places, it is true, the development is differentlyworked out, particularly in chap. 8, where not a trace ofNiedt's hand remains ; the examples of musical notationalso are some of them new, and some of Niedt's are renderedmore instructive and concise. The whole work is so treatedand altered that Bach might well regard it as his own. Atthe same time, it is interesting to know that Bach wasfamiliar with Niedt's instruction book and found materialof which he could make use for his own purposes.In a preparatory instruction book for composition such asin itthis is, it seems evident that Bach, like Kirnberger, shouldin actual teaching have preferred the method which leadsstraight on, after treating of intervals, to chords, chord-1" In Cap. 5 (" Of the Harmonic Triad").180 See Vol. II., p. 98, note 138.