J. S. BACH Jonathan Berkahn - Victoria University - Victoria ...

of much that was excellent’. 3 In addition, we see the contemporary appetite for
musical heroism. 4 Divided, defeated, and humiliated, the German nation’s search for
identity had turned inward, toward culture, literature, and, especially, music:
The works which John Sebastian Bach has left us are an invaluable patrimony, with which no other
nation has anything to be compared. ... The preservation of the memory of this great man ... is an
object in which not merely the interest of the art but the honor of the nation itself is deeply involved. 5
J. N. Forkel’s appeal to the German nation is only the best known example of
this. Stephen Rumph has drawn out the nationalistic implications of E. T. A.
Hoffmann’s musical writings, 6 while Sanna Pederson has interpreted the entire concept
of ‘absolute music’ as a nationalist project. 7 But Weber’s amalgam of Bach-biography
and what sounds to us like the rhetoric of Beethoven reception serves as a unique
invitation to compare the two musicians, and draw out some curious parallels that
transcend the usual categories of historical influence and imitation.
From the very first, Beethoven’s name was linked with that of J. S. Bach: ‘He
plays keyboard skilfully and powerfully, sight-reads very well, and to sum it up, he
mostly plays Das Wohltemperirte Clavier of Sebastian Bach, which Mr Neefe placed
in his hands. Whoever knows this collection of preludes and fugues in all keys (which
3 This remark curiously echoes one made by Beethoven: ‘the older composers render us double
service, since there is generally real artistic value in their works (among them, of course, only the
German Händel and Sebastian Bach possessed genius)’, letter to Archduke Rudolph, 29 July 1819,
The letters of Beethoven, tr. and ed. Emily Anderson, 3 vols. (London: Macmillan, 1961), vol. II,
p.822.
4 For a discussion of Scott Burnham’s Beethoven Hero, see pp.377-8 below.
5 H. T. David and A. Mendel, The Bach Reader 2nd ed. (London: Dent, 1945, 1966), p.296.
6 ‘A kingdom not of this world’, 19 th -Century Music 19/1 (Summer 1995), 50-67.
7 ‘A. B. Marx, Berlin concert life, and German national identity’, 19 th -Century Music 18/2 (Autumn
1994), 87-107. Both Rumph and Pederson have been critiqued by Celia Applegate in ‘How German
is it? Nationalism and the idea of serious music in the early nineteenth century’, 19 th -Century Music
21/3 (Spring 1998), 274-296, who seeks a more nuanced approach to early nineteenth-century
German nationalism. See also E. Reimer, ‘Nationalbewusstsein und Musikgeschichtsschreibung in
Deutschland 1800-1850’, Die Musikforschung 46/1 (1993), 17-31.
310