CHAPTER XV
CHURCH MUSIC IN BACH'S TIME
115. General Survey.—The number of musicians of note in
the 18th century is at least three times as great as in the 17th,
but of these the majority belong to the time after 1750. For
this reason and because then distinctly new points in musical
procedure become prominent, the century may well be divided
into two parts, the first related closely to the 17th century, the
second looking forward toward the 19th. The first is popularly
known as the age of Bach and Handel, the second as that of
Haydn and Mozart, though in both a host of other masters demand
attention and in neither was the historical movement
dictated by individuals, however great.
The political conditions from about 1690 were extremely complicated.
Only the barest hints of these are needed, since music was but indirectly
affected by them. The longest reigns were those of Louis XV. of France
(1715-74), Peter the Great of Russia (1696-1725), George II. of England
(1727-60), Maria Theresa of Austria (1740-80), and Frederick the
Great of Prussia (1740-86). The mediæval vision of a Holy Roman Empire
was vanishing. Salient events were the dynastic changes in England
in 1688 and 1714, the latter involving entanglements with Germany;
the War of the Spanish Succession, ending with the Peace of Utrecht
(1713) and the success of the Bourbons; the brilliant, but short-lived,
influence of Sweden under Charles XII. (1697-1718); the rise of Russia
under Peter the Great (St. Petersburg founded in 1703); the strong
advance of Prussia that began with Frederick I. (d. 1713) and that forthwith
tended to displace the waning eminence of the Empire; the complicated
War of the Austrian Succession (1741-8); and the Seven
Years' War (1756-63), incidental to which were repeated collisions between
France and England on both sides of the Atlantic.
Probably the widespread political unrest and the economic disorders of the time somewhat checked musical enterprise. All the fine arts, too, suffered temporarily from the diffused spirit of intellectual doubt and criticism that now set in. The age was one of readjustments of thought, and, while important gains were made in preparing for the science and literature of the future, the immediate impulse to creation in art was for the time lessened.
