Analysis 5 - Julius August Philipp Spitta (1841–1894)

Summary

With Spitta for the first time we encounter analysis of individual pieces in the service of historical biography. In two earlier instances we have already seen analysis at work within biographical studies: namely, those by Baini and Ulïbïshev (vol. 1, Analyses 14 and 15). However, in the case of Baini, the analysis was stylistic and classificatory, as is true also of Ulïbïshev, where, moreover, biography was dispensed with after the first quarter of the book. In Spitta's case, biography is the backbone of the book, its first part devoted to ‘Bach's forebears’ and subsequent five parts to periods of his life. Analysis is thus set within a framework of information that embraces personal and family particulars, patronage and employment, duties of office, day-to-day events, relations with other musicians, influences from other composers and national styles, forms and genres of composition, religious and liturgical considerations, instrument design, construction, tuning and temperament, and countless other matters. As Spitta himself realized, this organization forfeited any occasion for a coherent overall view of Bach's musical output, any single perspective on his total stylistic development. Moreover, analysis was thus relegated to a relatively minor facet of a many-sided complex; and yet it was the ‘window’ through which the work itself was allowed indirectly to speak to us.