Sebastian Bach

d their wives there. Two of the family, and no less men than Johann Christoph and Johann Bernhard, had successively filled the post of organist in the town church. T

in one of the most beautiful of the valleys of Thuringia, that the rest of his boyhood was passed. The impression of this country of soft hills and warm wooded valleys became a part of Sebastian's nature and still lives in his music. The least attentive listener cannot mistake the inclination to a pastoral treatment which

ompositions by several of the great German masters, Froberger, Bruhns, Pachelbel, and Buxtehude; but the obtuseness of the elder brother forbade his venturing into studies too high for him. So the boy went every moonlit night to the cupboard in which

arithmetic and rhetoric. Of these subjects indeed Latin only had any pretence to thoroughness, and, although its range of reading did not extend beyond Cicero and Cornelius Nepos, it included a good deal of composition bo

he travelled, with a comrade of the school, to Lueneburg, and the lads together joined the choir of the Micha?lisschule. It seems that Thuringian boys were in special request for their musica

which each should take to avoid an unseemly wrangle. This custom of itinerant choirs, however bad for the singers' voices, was of service in quickening the popular sympathy with music; and the rivalry itself was useful in stimulating the ardour of the colleges. The principal work of the school of S. Michael's was to prepare the music for the choral services of its chur

eed to one of the universities. We shall see hereafter that he obtained an exemption from the classical work of the Thomasschule at Leipzig. At Lueneburg poverty conspired with his natural impulse to keep him closely to the profession as well as to the study of music. It was the period of his apprenti

rning and method of the great Amsterdam organist was diffused through the entire length of Northern Germany. From the dexterous and graceful toccatas which still attest Reincke's powers Bach probably derived little; the principal reward of his Hamburg visits was the insight he acquired into the scope of organ composition, a lesson whic

Bach learned much from him, but more in the manner of instrumental treatment and in the theory of composition, than by any direct influence on his writings. At this time also he made acqua

g out his special bent. An organ had recently been built in the new church of the town, but the burghers had not yet succeeded in finding a musician who satisfied their notion of the importance of the post. The man they had engaged they watched so jealously that he was not even trusted with the keys of his loft: one of them was deputed to receive them back from him as soon as playing was over. It is significant of the skill which Bach had already won, that he no

the week, and the townspeople were well satisfied if he did not fall short in them. In this languid atmosphere he found no incitement to convince the town, by his performances, how far his hopes and ambitions exceeded those of the ordinary organist. He seems in time to have been content with a b

e enthusiasm with which his art was attended was such that his influence remained in the town until the present century. One of the causes of his popularity was the custom which he innovate

music developed in Pachelbel and Johann Christoph Bach was lacking in Buxtehude. His strength lay in pure instrumental music and was displayed specially in fugue-writing, to the development of which he contributed much, both in the combination of several themes in a fugue and in the extended function he assigned to the pedal. The form is conceived with breadth and freedom

o complete the studies hitherto influenced by the school of Pachelbel. The subjects in them are ingeniously constructed, but the entire compositions are deficient in relief and coherence. They shew the earnest spirit in which he worked, but also that this earnestness acted as a weight upon the freedom and brightness of the result. Outwardly he retires under the established musical forms of his time, but even now his individuality forces itself into view. An instance of his technical immaturity is afforded

that may befall the traveller in a strange land. They seek in vain to stay him, and, finding him resolute, join in a general lamento-a fine composition, by the way, written upon two ground-basses, and tenderly pathetic-ere they take leave. When the slow fare-*well is ended, the postilion makes his appearance, and the sorrow of the departure is exchanged for the lively bustle of the road, the picture ending gaily with the post-horn deftly worked into a fugue.10 This curiously elementary form of what it is the fashion to call programme-music may appear to have been suggested by the fantastic compositions of Couperin and others, which Bach heard at Celle. But, in this regard at least, the old German Froberger was another Couperin. He is recorded to have written a suite

wise that the congregation was thereby confounded. In the future, continues the Minute, when he will introduce a tonus peregrinus, he is to sustain the same and not to fall incontinent upon another, or even, as he hath been wont, to play a tonus contrarius. A witness added that the organist Bach hath at the first played too tediously; howbeit, on notice received from the superintendent, he hath straightway fallen into the other extreme and made the music too short. Evidently he had brought things into a bad way, for the next charge is, that he refused to train the choir. Bach retorted by demanding a conductor. He was allowed time to consider whether he would c

d to make his own terms as to the salary he should receive. He modestly stipulated the same sum as he had been allowed at Arnstadt-it was indeed considerably in excess of Ahle's salary-together with the accustomed dues of corn, wood, and fish, to be delivered without charge at his door. He asked also for a cart to bring his goods to his new house.11 These trifling details are oddly characteristic of the man, and remind us of a letter he wrote long after to a relative, thanking him for

's work to create anew. The organist held to a close friendship with his pastor's hot antagonist at the Church of S. Mary, and seems to have gone into the neighbouring villages whenever he wished to produce music upon which he could not venture in his own church. This can hardly have been, however, the principal reason of his leaving Muehlhausen so quickly as he did. The charges of married life made his stipend barely a maintenance, even without a family. He had had enough of the subordination of a town organist. But most of

at Leipzig he was never free from the harass of the wiseacres of his consistory-may surprise us, unless we conclude that the experience of his intervening years had