page_title: Clavier-Übung III
section_title: Eighteenth century
hierarchical_section_title: Clavier-Übung III / Reception and influence / Eighteenth century
caption_attribution_description: Depicted person: Carl Friedrich Christian Fasch
context_page_description: The Clavier-Übung III, sometimes referred to as the German Organ Mass, is a collection of compositions for organ by Johann Sebastian Bach, started in 1735–36 and published in 1739. It is considered Bach's most significant and extensive work for organ, containing some of his most musically complex and technically demanding compositions for that instrument.
  In its use of modal forms, motet-style and canons, it looks back to the religious music of masters of the stile antico, such as Frescobaldi, Palestrina, Lotti and Caldara. At the same time, Bach was forward-looking, incorporating and distilling modern baroque musical forms, such as the French-style chorale.
  The work has the form of an Organ Mass: between its opening and closing movements—the prelude and "St Anne" fugue in E♭ major, BWV 552—are 21 chorale preludes, BWV 669–689, setting parts of the Lutheran mass and catechisms, followed by four duets, BWV 802–805. The chorale preludes range from compositions for single keyboard to a six-part fugal prelude with two parts in the pedal.
context_section_description: Finally, Mr. ——— is the most eminent of the Musikanten in ———. He is an extraordinary artist on the clavier and on the organ, and he has until now encountered only one person with whom he can dispute the palm of superiority. I have heard this great man play on various occasions. One is amazed at his ability, and one can hardly conceive how it is possible for him to achieve such agility, with his fingers and with his feet, in the crossings, extensions, and extreme jumps that he manages, without mixing in a single wrong tone, or displacing his body by any violent movement. This great man would be the admiration of whole nations if he had more amenity, if he did not take away the natural element in his pieces by giving them a turgid and confused style, and if he did not darken their beauty by an excess of art.
  — Johann Adolf Scheibe, 1737
  In 1737, two years before the publication of Clavier-Übung III, Johann Adolf Scheibe had made the above notoriously unfavourable comparison between Bach and another composer of the time, now identified as Georg Frideric Handel. His comments represented a change in contemporary musical aesthetics: he advocated the simpler and more expressive galant style, which after Bach's death in 1750 would be further developed during the classical period, in preference to fugal or contrapuntal writing, which by then was considered old-fashioned and out-moded, too scholarly and conservative. Although Bach did not actively participate in the ensuing debate on musical styles, he did incorporate elements of this modern style in his later compositions, in particular in Clavier-Übung III. Bach's musical contributions, however, could only be properly assessed at the beginning of the 19th century, when his works became more widely available: up until then much of his musical output—in particular his vocal works—was relatively little known outside Leipzig.
  From 1760 onwards a small group of ardent supporters became active in Berlin, keen to preserve his reputation and promulgate his oeuvre. The group centred around his son Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, who in 1738 at the age of 24 had been appointed court harpsichordist at Potsdam to Frederick the Great, then crown prince before his accession to the throne in 1740. C.P.E. Bach remained in Berlin until 1768, when he was appointed Kapellmeister in Hamburg in succession to Georg Philipp Telemann. (His brother Wilhelm Friedemann Bach moved to Berlin in 1774, although not to general acclaim, despite his accomplishments as an organist.) Other prominent members of the group included Bach's former pupils Johann Friedrich Agricola, court composer, first director of the Royal Opera House in Berlin and collaborator with Emanuel on Bach's obituary (the Nekrolog, 1754), and more significantly Johann Philipp Kirnberger.
  Kirnberger became Kapellmeister to the court in 1758 and music teacher of Frederick's niece, Anna Amalia. Not only did Kirnberger build up a large collection of Bach's manuscripts in the Amalien-Bibliothek, but with Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurg he promoted Bach's compositions through theoretical texts, concentrating in particular on counterpoint with a detailed analysis of Bach's methods. The first of the two volumes of Marpurg's Treatise on fugue (Abhandlung von der Fuge, 1753–1754) cites the opening segment of the six-part fugal chorale prelude Aus tiefer Noth BWV 686 as one of its examples. Kirnberger produced his own extensive tract on composition Die Kunst des reinen Satzes in der Musik (The true principles for the practice of harmony), twenty years later, between 1771 and 1779. In his treatise Marpurg had adopted some of the musical theories on the fundamental bass of Jean-Philippe Rameau from his Treatise on Harmony (1722) in explaining Bach's fugal compositions, an approach which Kirnberger rejected in his tract:
  Rameau filled this theory with so many things that had no rhyme or reason that one must certainly wonder how such extravagant notions can have found belief and even champions among us Germans, since we have always had the greatest harmonists among u
caption: Carl Fasch
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