taste and his principles. Philipp Emmanuel speaks with irony of musical science, especially of canons, "which are always dry and pretentious." He regards it "as a defect of genius to abandon oneself to these dreary and insignificant studies."[1] He asks Burney whether the latter has met with any great contrapuntist in Italy. Burney replies in the negative. "Faith," says Philipp Emmanuel, "if you did find one it wouldn't be a very valuable discovery, for when one knows counterpoint there are other things too that are necessary to make a good composer."
Burney is wedded to his own opinion, and both agree that "music must not be a large gathering where everybody speaks at once, so that there is no longer any conversation, nothing but wrangling and ill-breeding and noise. A sensible man should wait for the moment in conversation when he can put in his word with effect."—It was the school of pure melody, in the Italian style, that condemned the old German polyphony. Italianism had permeated even the Bach family.
Johann Sebastian himself was possibly not indifferent to the charm of Italian opera. According to his historian, Forkel, he relished the work of Caldara, Hasse and Graun. He was a friend of Hasse's and La Faustina's; and in Leipzig or Dresden he often went, with his elder son, to hear the Italian opera. He used laughingly to apologise for the pleasure which he took in these little escapades. "Friedmann," he would say, "shall we go and hear those pretty little Dresden songs
- ↑ This opinion acquires a particular meaning when we read, a little farther on, that "Johann Sebastian Bach had pitilessly forced him to spend the first few years of his life" in such studies.
