The German Genius

psychology, one of the beginnings certainly. The problem with this new approach was that it emerged before Darwinian understanding had been evolved. This had major consequences for psychology, which for many has always been seen more as a form of philosophy rather than a form of biology. It is one reason why the unconscious, and with it the therapeutic approach to life, was at root a German idea.

The High Renaissance in Music: The Symphony as Philosophy
     
    I n Germany, as elsewhere in Europe, vocal music was more popular than instrumental music well into the sixteenth century. (Martin Luther had a lusty singing voice.) 1 But then arose, in Italy, the first great European organ school. As artists like Dürer visited Venice to learn from the masters there, so many Germans now visited La Serenissima to study the organ and return with new techniques of polyphonic writing. 2 This development would lead in time to Heinrich Schütz (1585–1672), one of many musicians who traveled to Venice to study under Giovanni Gabrieli, and to Johann Jacob Froberger ( c . 1617–67), Johann Pachelbel (1653–1706), and Dietrich Buxtehude (1637–1707). Like Georg Philipp Telemann (1681–1767), Buxtehude was in his lifetime far more famous than Bach (who traveled sixty miles on foot to hear him). But their reputations have not lasted quite as Bach’s has, and German music’s first culmination is in fact found in the works of the Leipzig master and one other composer with whose name he is inseparably linked: Georg Friedrich Handel.
    Born in the same year, in towns barely eighty miles apart, they never met but they shared the highest peaks of technical perfection, which their predecessors had been struggling toward but had not yet achieved. Beyond that, they could not have been more different. Handel was a worldly figure, cosmopolitan, at ease with success, whereas Bach was above all devout and a “thoroughgoing provincial.” 3
    Handel has been described as “the greatest assimilator of pre-existing material in the history of music.” What this means is that he was a magpie, who borrowed or stole—mainly from Italian composers—theme after theme, even whole movements, reworking them as his own. In his oratorio Israel in Egypt , no fewer than sixteen of the thirty-nine tunes rely (in some cases heavily) on themes devised by other composers. Handel invariably adds his own brand of grace and polished simplicity. 4
    For many people, professional musicians in particular, Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750) is the greatest composer the world has seen. In contrast to Handel, he never left Germany, remaining for many years as the cantor at St. Thomas’s Church in Leipzig. Hardly any of his music was published in his lifetime, his reputation being less that of a composer and more that of an organist and improviser at the keyboard. 5 Practically, Bach played an important part in the development of the organ and had his instruments modified to meet his wishes. He was fortunate, too, in living in the great age of baroque organ builders, men such as Arp Schnitger (1648–1718) and the well-known Silberman family. Andreas Silberman, who begat the tradition, designed and built the Strasbourg Cathedral organ (1714–16), while his brother Gottfried did the same for the cathedral at Freiberg in Saxony in 1714. Gottfried brought the pianoforte to Germany after its invention in Florence by Bartolomeo Cristofori.
    Bach’s ability to juggle themes, to state thesis and antithesis, to explore a melody in diverse directions, returning almost unnoticed to the main thread, is a form of musical weaving unparalleled in human achievement, not just in its technical intricacy, which went—goes—beyond anything anyone else has ever been able to do, but because at the same time it retains and maintains emotional richness and satisfaction. Nor should we overlook his formal innovations: under his guidance, the harpsichord was transformed from an accompaniment to a virtuoso solo instrument. 6
    Though Johann Sebastian was a genius by any standard, in the midand late eighteenth century the name of Bach that most people knew was Carl Philipp Emanuel (1714–88), one of a number of talented musician-sons, who included Wilhelm Friedman (1710–84), the eldest, a composer of church cantatas and keyboard concertos, and Johann Christian (1735–82), the “London Bach,” who spent several years by the Thames and penned a score of Italian operas and