Sebastian Bach

ge to review the great ranges of church-music which fell as an official task to the cantor. The four years of Gesner's rule are the ripest and busiest in Bach's life; not that they include his gr

revising, solidifying, and balancing his earlier works. He must also have retired more into the quiet of his family life, a

cceeded in winning a victory for his own schemes, but at the expense of the ruin of the music. Bach was not the only sufferer; the same dispute was going on elsewhere in Germany at the time, and was in fact one of the incidents of a transitional period in the history of education. The Thomasschule from its double government, the cantor having an

emned to a public flogging before the school. Bach, who had had nothing to do with his subordinate's crime, interposed by taking the whole blame upon his shoulders. The rector was in a rage, and refused to remit the punishment: so the prefect had to leave, and the rector filled up the vacancy. Hence the quarrel. To Bach it must have been irritating beyond bearing to have a man, little more than half his age, intruding upon his incontestable rights, still more to find the Town Council and consistory unscrupulous in supporting the claim of the stronger, by declining to disturb a right which had no precedent. It was not until he had appealed to the King, and delighted him by some evening-music, produced when he was next at Leipzig, that the matter came for a fair hearing. As often h

ship. It appeared anonymously in Scheibe's own review, the Critische Musicus, in 1737; nor was Bach's name given, though the reference was too clear to escape notice. Bach is said to have resented the attack, which was a mere flippant pasquinade upon his music, bitterly;

and court musician at Berlin), not to mention the most eminent of all, Bach's two eldest sons. Another, J. T. Goldberg, was the clavichord-player for whom Bach made his Thirty Variations. He was attached to the suite of the Baron von Kayserling, an invalid who suffered greatly from sleeplessness. The Baron would often have Goldberg pass the night in a room adjoining his, that he might play to him when he could not rest. Once he said to Bach that he should like to have some music "of a soothing and rather cheerful character, that he might be a little amused by them in his sleepl

oin at first; though to a man of smaller generosity it would have been a blow to see Handel chosen as an honorary member. The occasion on which even courtesy should have decided a resort to Bach's advice and co-operation was the establishment in 1743 of the Grosse Concert, the parent of the famous concerts of the Gewandhaus. It was arranged by an association of rich burghers; and its tendencies were from the outset in a distinctly modern direction. Rossini-of all people-notes Dr. Spitta, supplanted Beethoven among contemporaries; and the great Leipzig master became a stranger in his own town. But the fact that Bach had nothing to do with the beginning of the decisive musical movement68 of the town does a great deal to fix his position in one's mind. Equally significant is the circumstance that some time, perhaps some years, after 1736 he resigned the leadership of the

rick the Great. The king had often expressed a desire to see him and Emanuel had informed his father of it. But Bach was usually now too busy to undertake so long a journey. At last, in 1747, he decided t

t immediately turned to the assembled musicians, and said, with a kind of agitation, Gentlemen, old Bach is come. The flute was now laid aside, and old Bach, who had alighted at his son's lodgings, was immediately summoned to the Palace.... At that time it was the fashion to make rather prolix compliments. The first appearance of J

here to try and to play unpremeditated compositions." The king gave him a subject to develop in fugue, and Bach concluded by adding one that occurred to himself, which he extemporized in six voices. It was the greatest display of Bach's life, and certainly an exhibition that has never been equalled on its own lines. A permanent re

h. The Art of Fugue stands nearest to the Musical Offering, since it too consists of fugues and canons, all upon a single subject. It differs from that work inasmuch as here he wrote not to display his own skill, but to illustrate the final possibilities of contrapuntal art. But equally it appeals to a very limited class of musicians; to us in the present moment it is chiefly interesting as shewing that, if Bach's productive ener

ive works. Not a bar but was subjected to the most thoughtful remodelling.71 The first part in particular needed many a trial before it could find the master's approval, and thrice did he transcribe the whole with his own hand. Every idea that was out of place, every line that led nowhere, was ruthlessly pruned away. When the root of the piece was reached, perhaps the motive of the original would germinate afresh, and the whole would assume a quite new and statelier form. The two parts are in some measure distinguished by the greater development of some of the preludes in the secon

ces of a fugue. "He considered his parts," it has been finely said, "as persons, who conversed together, like a select company. If there were three, each could sometimes be silent, and listen to the others, till it again had something to the purpose to say. But, if in the midst of the most interesting part of the discourse, some uncalled and importunate note suddenly stepped in, and attempt

e of the most learned contrapuntists of his day, but also a man who discerned clearly the limits of counterpoint and the difference between m

perfect purity; the exclusion of every arbitrary note, not necessarily belonging to the whole; unity and diversity in the style, rhythmus, and measure; and lastly, a life diffused through the whole, so that it sometimes appears to the performer or hearer, as if every single note were animated; these are the properties of Bach's fugue.... All Bach's fugues ... are endowed with equally great excellencies, bu

east of all does the grandeur of the fugue rest upon its complexity. It is the character-drawing of the several voices, and the nobility of them, that make their discourse sublime-three voices entirely contrasted and entirely blended-each time with a new and surprising effect, now of pomp, now of

wo eldest sons stood near him, "he always, as soon as he had heard the introduction to the theme, said before-*hand what the composer ought to introduce, and what possibly might be introduced. If th

o penetrate still further into the labyrinth of harmonic combinations, and to write, so it is said, a fugue in four parts with four subjects, all of them to be reversed in each of the parts. He had not, however, gone much beyond the introduction of the third subject, which contained in the German notation the letters of his own name, when his excessive application was terminated by a painful disorder in the eyes. He had always been near-sighted, and now his vision almost failed. He consulted an English oculist of repute, who was then in Leipzig; but after two operations he became totally blind, and the medical treatment he underwent broke his hitherto ha