The German composer Felix Mendelssohn arranged a performance of the Passion of St. Matthew in 1829, which did much to awaken popular interest in Bach. The Bach Gesellschaft, formed in 1850, devoted itself assiduously to finding, editing, and publishing Bach's works.
Because the “Bach revival” coincided with the flowering of the romantic movement in music, performance styles were frequently gross distortions of Bach's intentions. Twentieth-century scholarship, inspired by the early enthusiasm of the French Protestant medical missionary, organist, and musicologist Albert Schweitzer, gradually has unearthed principles of performance that are truer to Bach's era and his music.
Bach was largely self-taught in musical composition. His principal study method, following the custom of his day, was to copy in his workbooks the music of French, German, and Italian composers of his own time and earlier. He did this throughout his life and often made arrangements of other composers' works.
Master of Counterpoint
The significance of Bach's music is due in large part to the scope of his intellect. He is perhaps best known as a supreme master of counterpoint. He was able to understand and use every resource of musical language that was available in the baroque era. Thus, if he chose, he could combine the rhythmic patterns of French dances, the gracefulness of Italian melody, and the intricacy of German counterpoint all in one composition. At the same time he could write for voice and the various instruments so as to take advantage of the unique properties of construction and tone quality in each. In addition, when a text was associated with the music, Bach could write musical equivalents of verbal ideas, such as an undulating melody to represent the sea, or a canon to describe the Christians following the teaching of Jesus.
Bach's ability to assess and exploit the media, styles, and genre of his day enabled him to achieve many remarkable transfers of idiom. For instance, he could take an Italian ensemble composition, such as a violin concerto, and transform it into a convincing work for a single instrument, the harpsichord. By devising intricate melodic lines, he could convey the complex texture of a multivoiced fugue on a single-melody instrument, such as the violin or cello. The conversational rhythms and sparse textures of operatic recitatives can be found in some of his works for solo keyboard. Technical facility alone, of course, was not the source of Bach's greatness.