One of the best and most effective means of popularising musical masterpieces is to perform them in public. In that way works of merit secure a widening audience. People listen to them with pleasure in the concert room, church, or theatre, remember the agreeable impression they created, and purchase them when published, even though they cannot always play them. But Bach’s works unfortunately are rarely heard nowadays; for the number of persons capable of playing them adequately is at best inconsiderable. It would have been otherwise had Bach given touring performances of his music,(9) a labour for which he had neither time nor liking. Many of his pupils did so, and though their skill was inferior to their master’s, the admiration and astonishment they excited revealed the grandeur of his compositions. Here and there, too, were found persons who desired to hear on their own instrument pieces which the performer had played best or gave them most pleasure. They could do so more easily for having heard how the piece ought to sound.
But, to awaken a wide appreciation of musical masterpieces depends upon the existence of good teachers. The want of them is our chief difficulty. In order to safeguard their credit, the ignorant and incompetent of their number are disposed to decry good music, lest they should be asked to play it. Consequently, their pupils, condemned to spend time, labour, and money on second-rate material, will not after half a dozen years, perhaps, show themselves farther advanced in sound musical appreciation than they were at the outset. Whereas, under a good teacher, half the time, labour, and money produces progressive improvement. Time will show whether this obstacle can be surmounted by making Bach’s works accessible in the music shops and by forming a Society among the admirers of his genius to make them known and promote their study.(10)
At any rate, if music is really an art, and not a mere pastime, its masterpieces must be more widely known and performed than in fact they are. And here Bach, prince of classic composers, can render yeoman service.(11) For his music is so well calculated to educate the student to distinguish what is trivial from what is good, and to comport himself as an artist in whatever branch of the art he makes his own. Moreover, Bach, whose influence pervades every musical form, can be relied on more than any other composer to correct the superficiality which is the bane of modern taste. Neglect of the classics is as prejudicial to the art of music as it would be fatal to the interests of general culture to banish Greek and Latin writers from our schools. Modern taste exhibits no shame in its preference for agreeable trifles, in its neglect of everything that makes a demand, however slight, upon its attention. To-day we are menaced by a proposal to banish the classics from our schoolrooms. Equally short-sighted vision threatens to extinguish our musical classics as well. And is it surprising? Modern art displays such poverty and frivolity that it well may shrink from putting itself in context with great literature, particularly with Bach’s mighty and creative genius, and seek rather to proscribe it.