Sebastian Bach

s had already begun to take a favourable turn for him. The year before, the organist of the New Church had left, and Bach had followed him as director of the Musical Society,

ote to Erdmann. For the new rector of the school, Gesner, prov

f the school he saved him from the petty annoyances to which he had hitherto been subjected. Bach had now his just share of the fees which made the largest item in his income and which were now the more necessary as his family was growing up. Moreover, thrifty as he was, his different posts must have involved expensive journeys to Coethen and Weissenfels; and he was fond of making short visits to Dresden to hear the opera, at that time under the leading of his friend Hasse, Il Sassone, as he is known by the Italians, among whom he lived for many years, and whose music in turn he naturalised in Germany. Friedemann, let us go again and hear the pretty Dresden songs, B

ble calling, and withal from the pleasant harmony to establish among themselves so like a sweet-sounding agreement of tempers, as oftentimes is mainly lacking in their conversation. We may think of Bach as realising this description, as he presided over the amateur gatherings held on w

dly ever acted in costume, they were often presented, not in a room, but with the natural scenery, for instance, of a garden. Bach rarely spent his best work on such ephemeral displays-they mostly had to be got ready in a few days-and whenever he found afterwards that he had included in them anything in his judgment worth preserving, he incorporated it in a church cantata or some more lasting composition. In this way nearly the whole of a drama, written for the Queen's birthday in 1733, came subsequently to form part of the Christmas oratorio. But we must guard against the inference that Bach was careless of the relation between music and words. On the contrary, we have the distinct statement of a friend, himself a teacher of rhetoric at Leipzig, that Bach's mastery over the qualities and the excellencies which music has in common with rhetoric is such as not only to add unfailing pleasure to hi

Kortte,40 11th December, 1726. 3. The Contest of Ph?us and Pan,41 1731. 4. Hercules at the Boundary,42 5th September, 1733. 5. At the Q

ertain satirical allusions, under the character of Midas, to one Scheibe, a poor musician, whom Bach had rejected as candi

flected in his Cantate en Burlesque, known as the Peasant's Cantata.46 It was composed in 1742 for a feast-day in a village near Leipzig to celebrate the coming of a new landlord, and is full of a frolicsome gaiety that looks like the freshness of a young man's work; only we know, for instance, from the Winter's Tale, that such may often shew the mellowed spirit of older years. The libretto is made up of badinage, more or less clumsy, between the countrymen, who like their own old fashion of doing honour to their lord, and

solemnities, and which are indeed only distinguished from the rest of his church music by the personal reference. The music he wrote in 1729 on the death of his patron is lost; but it is supposed to have been to a great extent built upon the S. Matthew Passion. That which he composed, however, two years earlier, for the Queen of Poland remains to us, and apparently was subsequently re-*erected into the (now lost) Passion according to S. Mark.52 On these occasions the appointed mourning

d his younger works, though never without a scrupulous revision. Of this marvellous series about two hundred remain. Musicians owe an incalculable debt to Dr. Spitta for the exhaustive scrutiny to which he has subjected every individual number; and although his results, which will be found tabulated at the end of this volume, are in a cer

nipulation of voices in an instrumental manner. When at Weimar he pursued his studies through the entire range of Italian chamber-music accessible to him, the effect was not to make him in any sense imitate them. His chamber-music is almost wholly of later date. What he did was to apply the forms of the sonata and concerto to the clavichord, the organ, and above all to the church cantata. In this way he brought to perfection his art of writing solo-arias, of which the earlier examples are so complete and mature as to leave no room for future improvement. Here accordingly he made little change in the course of his later composing; and the same holds good for his treatment of the recitative, arioso, and simple chorale. The variety he threw into the structure of the cantata is infinite. Sometimes a whole cantata takes the shape of a concerto, or of an orchestral partie; sometimes its second division is opened by a re

een his early and later writing is rather the uniform massiveness and magnificence of the latter-the more complete absorption in them of the organ-style. Though generally formed on a figured subject, they are wrought with far greater freedom and force. The choruses, based upon the melod

us religious poetry of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. One cannot but suspect that the finer judgment of Gesner-they all bear traces of having been composed during his stay at Leipzig-had something to do with the improved choice of subject. But commonly the texts are derived from three contemporary poetasters, Franck and Neumeister of Weimar and Picander of Leipzig. The last was a neighbour of Bach's and a docile follower. In fact we cannot, where he was con

recitative, to dimensions scarcely inferior to those of modern times; only Bach seldom employed the whole available body at once. He liked to have a reserve, to prevent the

the year, and the Epiphany. It has, however, a unity of feeling running through it, which stamps it as a single work. We have already noticed and explained the presence here of much that had previously formed part of secular cantatas; but it may be added that there is the less incongruity in the case when we consider how largely the rejoicing of Christmastide was mixed up with social festivities. That Bach, however, was careful lest the deeper meaning of the incarnation should be forgotten, is shown by the employment of the melody of a we

e Christmas Oratorio takes a worthy place, rather by virtue of its great compass and masterly performance, than

in the present day the weekly motet-singing in his own Church at Leipzig remains one of the most popular institutions of the town. Contrary, however, to the custom now, Bach seems to have had the motets accompanied, apparently on the organ; and this fact indicates their principal distinction from the older style. They are in fact based upon an organ treatment, and have precise parallels in several chorale-movements in the church cantatas. Few, however, have survived the carelessness of Bach's

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