In the matter of development, the Bach sonatas are in one respect particularly striking; the composer seems to have resolutely turned away from the fugal style, and in so doing probably found himself somewhat hampered.  Like the early Florentine reformers, Bach was breaking with the past, and with a mightier past than the one on which the Florentines turned their back; like them, he, too, was occupied with a new form.  Not the music itself of the first operas, but the spirit which prompted them, is what we now admire; in E. Bach, too,—­especially when viewed in the light of subsequent history,—­we at times take the will for the deed.

We meet with much the same kinds of development as in Scarlatti:  phrases or passages taken bodily from the first section and repeated on different degrees of the scale, extensions of phrases, and passage-writing based on some figure from the exposition, etc.  The short development section of the Sonata in G (Collection No. 6) offers examples of the three methods of development just mentioned.  Bach, like Scarlatti, was a master of his instrument, and even when—­as was said of Mendelssohn—­he had nothing particular to say, he always managed to say that little well.  E. Bach has already much to suffer in the inevitable comparison with Beethoven; and the fact that we have the full message of the one, but not of the other, no doubt accentuates the difference.

In many ways Bach reminds one of Beethoven.  There are unexpected fortes and pianos, unexpected crescendos and diminuendos.  Of such, the noble Larghetto in F minor of the Sonata in F (Collection 1779, No. 2) offers, indeed, several fine examples.  Particularly would we notice the passage just before the return of the opening theme; it begins ff, but there is a gradual decrease to pp; the latter seems somewhat before its time, and therefore surprises.  Then, again, we meet with out-of-the-way modulations.  Bach was extremely fond of enharmonic transitions,[71] and the same can be said of Beethoven in both his early and his late works.  The means employed by the two composers may be the same, but the effect is, of course, always more striking in Beethoven, whose thoughts were deeper, and whose means of expressing them were in every way more extended.  And once again, in some of the forms of melody, in figures and passages, traces can be found of connection between the two masters.  To our thinking the bond of union between E. Bach and Beethoven is stronger than the oft-mentioned one between the early master and Haydn:  Haydn was practically Bach’s pupil; Beethoven, his spiritual heir.  This it is which gives interest to any outward resemblances which may be detected, not the resemblances themselves.