In recent decades, many studies have probed the reception of Bach's music by nineteenth-century composers, including Johannes Brahms, Frédéric Chopin, Fanny Hensel, Franz Liszt, Felix Mendelssohn, Clara Schumann and Robert Schumann. Among the monographs dedicated to the topic is Russell Stinson's own The Reception of Bach's Organ Works from Mendelssohn to Brahms (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), with chapters on Felix Mendelssohn, Robert Schumann, Liszt and Brahms.
Stinson takes a similar approach in Bach's Legacy, with chapters on Mendelssohn, Schumann, Wagner and Elgar. As the author states in his Introduction, his focus is not on how these composers engaged Bach's music in their own works, but rather on rather how they ‘responded to Bach's art . . . as performers, conductors, editors, scholars, critics, lecturers, or all-around ambassadors’ (2). Each chapter engages with one or two particular primary sources that Stinson explores in relation to Bach reception.
In the first chapter, ‘Felix Mendelssohn's Reception of Bach's Organ Works’, Stinson revisits a topic he has written about extensively in the past, but here in relation to letters that are widely accessible for the first time, through the publication of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy: Sämtliche Briefe (ed. Helmut Loos and Wilhelm Seidel, twelve volumes (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2008–2017)). The chapter is primarily an explication of a single letter, dated 28 July 1832, written to Marie Catherine Kiéné, a friend of the Mendelssohn family and resident of Paris. In this letter, the composer recounts to Kiéné his organ playing in London, particularly at St Paul's Cathedral. He names in particular two Bach organ works he played there, the Fugue in A minor (bwv543) and the setting of ‘Das alte Jahr vergangen ist’ from the Orgelbüchlein (bwv614). Stinson explores Mendelssohn's perspectives on both these pieces from various sources, then goes on to ponder two additional chorale preludes that Mendelssohn refers to, but does not name, in the letter. Stinson identifies these as ‘Schmücke dich, o liebe Seele’ (bwv654) and ‘Wir glauben all an einen Gott, Vater’ (bwv740). From there, he digresses to address what he explains as a common practice in Mendelssohn's circle: performing Bach's organ works as piano duets, with one keyboardist (usually Mendelssohn himself) playing the manual parts and another playing the pedal part (most commonly Felix's sister, Fanny). Stinson also notes that Fanny continued this practice, herself playing the manual parts while her sister, Rebecka, played the pedal part. In the final pages of the chapter, the author briefly considers six additional letters in the Sämtliche Briefe that relate to Mendelssohn's reception of Bach's organ works.
Chapter 2, ‘New Light on Robert Schumann's Bach Reception’, is a reworking of two articles Stinson published in Bach-Jahrbuch in 2015 and 2016. While the chapter's stated focus is Robert Schumann, it primarily addresses two figures who are less well known today, Eduard Krüger and Woldemar Bargiel. Krüger (1807–1885) was a schoolteacher and composer from Ostfriesland with whom Robert Schumann regularly corresponded and who became a contributor to the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik. The first half of the chapter focuses on Krüger's reception of Bach's organ works, in particular a collection of fourteen organ chorales Schumann had had copied and then sent to Krüger in 1843 (including eight of the ‘Great Eighteen’ organ chorales, bwv740, and five pieces from the Orgelbüchlein). Stinson cites, then analyses, Krüger's commentary on these fourteen compositions, first in a letter to Schumann in 1843 and then in a letter to the hymnologist Carl von Winterfeld in 1850. The second half of the chapter more closely reflects Robert Schumann's reception of Bach, but through the lens of composer and conductor Woldemar Bargiel (1828–1897), Clara Schumann's half-brother. Stinson explores the diary Bargiel kept during his visit to the Schumanns in Düsseldorf in July and August 1852. The focus is primarily on Robert Schumann's opinions of Bach's St John and St Matthew Passions. Stinson concludes the chapter by linking Schumann's perspectives on the Bach Passions back to an essay written by Eduard Krüger on these works in 1843.
Like the second half of the previous chapter, chapter 3, ‘Bach in Bayreuth: Richard Wagner and the Well-Tempered Clavier’, explicates the opinion of a composer from the perspective of another person's writing. The chapter is primarily based on Cosima Wagner's diaries, which Stinson studies in relation to Richard Wagner's copy of the Well-Tempered Clavier. Cosima Wagner documents a fascinating series of musical evenings, between 17 December 1878 and 2 March 1879, at which the pianist Joseph Rubenstein performed the entire Well-Tempered Clavier (both book 1 and book 2) for the private audience of the two Wagners. Throughout the chapter, Stinson analyses Cosima Wagner's diary entries on these performances, which primarily cite Richard Wagner's perspectives on the pieces.
Stinson concludes with a chapter on Edward Elgar, considering the composer's annotated copy of Albert Schweitzer's Bach biography, sent to him in 1911 by its English translator, Ernest Newman (J. S. Bach, two volumes (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1911)). Stinson indicates that Elgar wrote on 131 of the pages, and generally very negatively, hence the chapter's title, ‘Edward Elgar Reads Albert Schweitzer: A Case of Negative Bach Reception’. In fact, Stinson writes that ‘some of [Elgar's] more derogatory comments seem to exemplify not so much an acerbic wit as a mean spirit’ (140). But, as Stinson details, Elgar's negativity is primarily levelled against Schweitzer, and only secondarily against Bach. The chapter proceeds as an account of the composer's comments, presented roughly by topic at first, with passages addressing Bach's vocal writing, his cantatas, performance practice and his relation to Handel. From there, Stinson goes back and observes eleven additional comments in the order in which they appear in the Schweitzer volumes.
The four chapters of Bach's Legacy are distinct from each other in scope and argument, sharing only the fact that they offer perspectives on music of J. S. Bach by later composers. While each chapter is a valid contribution to research on Bach reception in the nineteenth century, the volume as a whole does not live up to the claim of its expansive title, Bach's Legacy: The Music as Heard by Later Masters. Stinson does not provide any explanation for including only these four composers among the ‘later masters’ who engaged with Bach's music, stating that the book's subject matter is simply ‘how four of the most prominent composers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries . . . engaged with Bach's legacy’ (1–2). The choice of these particular four composers seems to be arbitrary, as one could imagine a book on Bach reception by Clara Schumann, Johannes Brahms, Igor Stravinsky and Heitor Villa-Lobos similarly described.
In addition, Stinson's Introduction does not put forth a unified vision for the book. After two initial paragraphs explaining Bach reception and one stating his thesis, Stinson provides a brief overview of each chapter. He does not address either the choice of these four particular topics for inclusion in a single volume or attempt to relate the chapters to each other. Readers should thus be aware the book is composed of four distinct chapters, each similar in scope and nature to a journal article or chapter in a collection of essays. Both a more accurate title and a more detailed Introduction that casts a broader vision for the book would have aided the reader's consideration of it as a single work.
Also distracting is Stinson's tendency toward hyperbole throughout Bach's Legacy, as evidenced early in the volume by his description of Mendelssohn, Schumann, Wagner and Elgar as ‘four of the most prominent composers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries’ (1). In chapter 1 Stinson states that by playing the fugue from the Prelude and Fugue in A minor at St Paul's in London in 1837, Mendelssohn ‘revolutionized the whole art of organ playing in England’ (9). He further labels Mendelssohn's recital of Bach's organ works in Leipzig on 6 August 1840 as ‘the most famous organ recital ever given’ (37) and regards Mendelssohn as ‘the greatest champion of Bach's organ works in the whole history of music’ (42). Such exaggeration continues in later chapters. Surely we can recognize the importance of these events without such unsubstantiated claims of exceptionality.
In short, Bach's Legacy is a well-researched volume and contains helpful contributions to the reception history of J. S. Bach's music in nineteenth-century Europe. However, it would have benefited from a clearer recognition of its scope and contributions and a more realistic naming thereof throughout.
