Benjamin Bache

“ Johann Ludwig Krebs eventually became Court organist and music director at Altenburg, where he died in 1803. He was a very good organist and composer. Bach’s pun, “Ich habe in meinem Bache nur einen Krebs gefangen,” “I have only caught one Crab in my stream,” was intended to show the esteem in which he held him. [73]
J. G. Goldberg of Königsberg was declared by Bach to be one of his best pupils on the clavier and organ.
Altnikol, his son-in-law, a fine organ player, and organist at Naumburg. He helped his father-in-law considerably during his blindness. ”

“ Bach from time to time made his journeys to various towns, and paid visits to Erfurt, where his cousin, Joh. Christoph, and Adlung were settled. As he advanced in years he gave up these journeys. The last he made was to the Court of Frederick the Great at Potsdam in 1747. His son Emanuel had been capellmeister to Frederick since 1740; and the king had frequently, and always with more insistence, thrown out hints that he would like to hear the great artist. Bach being much occupied, and disinclined for travelling, did not accede to the king’s wishes until they amounted to a positive command. ”

“ Bach, Johann Sebastian, one of the greatest of musical composers, born in Eisenach, of a family of Hungarian origin, noted—sixty of them—for musical genius; was in succession a chorister, an organist, a director of concerts, and finally director of music at the School of St. Thomas, Leipzig; his works, from their originality and scientific rigour, difficult of execution (1685-1750) .
Bache, A. Dallas, an American physicist, born at Philadelphia, superintended the coast survey (1806-1867) .
Bachelor, a name given to one who has achieved the first grade in any discipline. ”

“ Four more of Johann Sebastian Bach’s sons grew to manhood and became musicians. The eldest of them, Wilhelm Friedermann Bach (1710–1784) was by common repute the most gifted; a famous organist, a famous improvisor and a complete master of counterpoint. But, unlike the rest of the family, he was a man of idle and dissolute habits, whose career was little more than a series of wasted opportunities. Educated at Leipzig, he was appointed in 1733 organist of the Sophienkirche at Dresden, and in 1747 became musical director of the Liebfrauenkirche at Halle. ”

“ The three towns of Erfurt, Arnstadt and Eisenach, now became the chief centres of the Bach family.
Christoph Bach (No. 5) , the grandfather of Sebastian, born at Wechmar, entered the service of the Grand Duke of Weimar as lackey and musician. In 1642 he was a member of the Guild of Musicians at Erfurt, and in 1654 was Court and Town musician at Arnstadt, where his younger brother Heinrich was living. He does not seem ever to have been an organist, but a “Kunstpfeifer.” ”

“ As we have said, Bach is the great lyric poet of his nation, the first great German genius after the devastating horrors of war. Looming on the sight, or as contemporaries, are Handel, Leibnitz, Wolf, Klopstock, Lessing, and Winckelmann. The modern era, with its philosophy and revolution, has arrived. The domain of thought is enwidened, and the Middle Ages blend and fade in the historic vista of the past. But the modern era commences with these great affirmations in art and poetry. Bach takes the narrative of the Passion, and erects the Cross anew with sympathetic genius of art and love. ”

“ Before blaming him, as is usually done, it may be well to reflect that Bach’s brother was not [13] necessarily moved by an impulse of cruelty but more probably felt the need of curbing somewhat an audacious and immature young genius, who threatened to get out of hand.
During the five years he spent in Ohrdruf Bach attended the town school which enjoyed an unusually high reputation throughout Thuringia. His studies, naturally, ranged much further afield than at Eisenach and his scholastic progress appears to have been rapid. ”

“ Walter Bache was professor of the pianoforte at the Royal Academy of Music for some years before his death, and the foundation of the Liszt scholarship at that institution was mainly due to his efforts. He died in London on the 26th of March 1888.
An interesting memoir of the two brothers, by Miss Constance Bache, appeared in 1901 under the title Brother Musicians.
BACHELOR (from Med. Lat. baccalarius, with its late and rare variant baccalaris—cf. Ital. baccalare—through O. Fr. bacheler) , in the most general sense of the word, a young man. ”

“ BACHE, FRANCIS EDWARD (1833–1858) , musician, born 14 Sept. 1833 at Birmingham, was the eldest son of Samuel Bache [q.v.] . From a very early age he showed extraordinary talent for music, learning assiduously the piano, organ, and violin, in the last of which instruments he made such progress under the tuition of Alfred Mellon as to play in the orchestra of the Birmingham festivals of 1846 and 1847. Having determined to adopt music as his profession, he left school in the summer of 1849, and, after studying for a short time with Mr. ”

“ The activities of this society, together with the new movement to restore Bach's vocal music to its place in the Lutheran Church, cannot fail to have a salutary effect on the future of music.
BACH, KARL PHILIPP EMANUEL (1714-1788) , German musician and composer, the third son of Johann Sebastian Bach, was born at Weimar on the 14th of March 1714. When he was ten years old he entered the Thomasschule at Leipzig, of which in 1723 his father had become cantor, and continued his education as a student of jurisprudence at the universities of Leipzig (1731) and of Frankfort on the Oder (1735) . ”

“ An interesting feature in his private life is his choice of persons to act as god-parents to his children. They were seldom his own relations, but persons of distinction, who might be able to help the children on in their subsequent career. Among them were Bach’s great friend, Prince Leopold of Cöthen, his brother Prince August Ludwig, his sister Princess Elenore, Privy Councillor Von Zanthier, Dr Gilmar, one of the chief men in the church at Mühlhausen; Gesner, rector of the Thomas School. ”

“ Many a genius has towered the one exception in a family not intellectually prominent. Unlike the majority of his class, Bach owed much to heredity. Others of his blood, immediate ancestors and numerous living relatives, all had accomplished something worthy of mention in music. Nor did Nature expend her energies in producing him the greatest of the Bachs. That of which his genius was the culmination, ceasing not with himself, experienced a gradual decline through his numerous descendants.
Never was a genius more thoroughly equipped for his life work than was Sebastian Bach. ”

“ 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. The king then gave up his concert for that evening, and invited Bach to try his forte-pianos, made by Silbermann, which stood in several rooms of the palace. The musicians went with him from room to room, and Bach was invited every where to play unpremeditated compositions. After he had gone on for a short time, he asked the king to give him a subject for a fugue, in order to execute it immediate-y without any preparation. ”

“ He looked up imploringly into his father's face—but the hand at his coat-tails restrained him. "I will promise," he whispered, "I want to promise." [42]
"Ja, ja, little son," whispered the father; and he and the fat Bach exchanged smiles across the round head.
Heinrich's glance swept the crowd once more.... "You will not promise? Then let me tell you—" He raised his small hand impressively.
"There shall come of the Bachs one so great that all others shall fade. He only shall be known as Bach—he and his sons; and before him the name of Reinken shall be as dust!" ”

“ Bach’s harpsichord music attained perfection. A river flowed into the sea. Further than this no art can go. Where a parallel excellence seems since to have been achieved, the growth of which it was the ultimate perfection was from another root. Bach is hardly more the father of Beethoven, Schumann and Chopin, than Praxiteles is the father of Michelangelo, or Sophocles of Shakespeare. But he left a standard in music of the complete mastery and welding of all the elements which make an art everlasting,—of form, of texture, of noble and impassioned emotion. ”

“ The indirect influence no one could escape, for whatever in modern music is not traceable to Sebastian Bach is traceable to his sons, who were encouraged by their father in the cultivation of those infant art-forms which were so soon to dazzle the world into the belief that his own work was obsolete.
Bach’s place in music is thus far higher than that of a reformer, or even of an inventor of new forms. He is a spectator of all musical time and existence, to whom it is not of the smallest importance whether a thing be new or old, so long as it is true. ”

“ The life of Bach, contrary to most artists’ careers, manifests no repression of spontaneous, all-around development. “He was an affectionate father, laboring manfully and incessantly to support a large family; a good citizen ... a musician without an equal in the profundity of his knowledge and the richness of his productions; the founder of modern music, the master of the organ, a composer of the highest forms of sacred music; a plain humble man.” This view of the man fills the volume which belongs to “Life stories for young people.” ”

“ Mrs. Bache returned home with her family shortly after, but in the following autumn the approach of the British army after their victory on the Brandywine, again drove them from Philadelphia. On the 17th of September, 1777, four days after the birth of her eldest daughter, Mrs. Bache left town, taking refuge at first in the hospitable mansion of her friend Mrs. Duffield, in Bensalem Township, Bucks County. They afterwards removed to Manheim Township in Lancaster County, where they remained until the evacuation of Philadelphia by the British forces. ”

“ Forkel, however, was not the first to assemble the known facts of Bach's career or to assert his place in the music of Germany.
Putting aside Johann Gottfried Walther's brief epitome in his Lexikon (1732) , the first and most important of the early notices of Bach was the obituary article, or “Nekrolog,” contributed by his son, Carl Philipp Emmanuel, and Johann Friedrich Agricola, one of Bach's most distinguished pupils, to the fourth volume of Mizler's Musikalische Bibliothek, published at Leipzig in 1754. The authors of this appreciation give it an intimacy which renders it precious. ”

“ The duke, however, would not dismiss him, but gave him a deputy, G. C. Strattner, at a salary of 200 gülden. Drese died on December 1, 1716, and it would seem natural that Bach should be appointed in his place. For some reason, however, he was passed over, and Drese’s son (who had succeeded Strattner as deputy capellmeister) was installed. Bach, therefore, accepted an offer made by Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Cöthen of a capellmeister-ship, and in November 1717 moved to [49] Cöthen. His post at the Weimar Castle organ was filled by his pupil Schubart. ”

“ The genius of Bach was a mighty [31] power working unseen, buried beneath a simple exterior. Unlike Handel, that other great master of his time with whom he has been so often compared, Bach lived a life of comparative retirement, never travelling beyond the confines of his own country, making no bid for popularity, and to the last remaining unaffected by praise or censure. ”

“ Bach is first “our Demi-God,” “our grand Hero,” “our Sacred Musician,” “our Apollo,” “this marvellous Man.” At length Wesley’s rhetoric fails, and his idol becomes “The Man (which expression I prefer to any epithet of great, or wonderful, &c., which are not only common, but weak, as is every other epithet applied to one whom none can sufficiently praise) ,” p. 36.
[82] Curiously enough, Johann Adam Hiller, a respectable musician and a successor of Bach at the Thomasschule, admired Bach’s counterpoint and part-writing, but found his melodies "odd" (sonderbar) . ”

“ In point of temperament and disposition Bach bears a closer resemblance to Michelangelo than to either of the others whose names I have mentioned. He was stern, strong, self-contained, and so deeply religious that he was not only a Christian but a good deal of a pagan as well. A homely man was Bach—quiet, simple in tastes and blunt in speech.
The earnest way in which this plain, unpretentious man focused upon his life-work and raised organ-music to the highest point of art must command the sincere admiration of every lover of honest endeavor. ”

“ The music stole through his musings and touched him. He lifted his face as the sound swept through the church. The fire and strength of youth had gone from the [74] touch, but something remained—something inevitable and gentle that soothed the spirit and lifted the heart—like the ghost of a soul calling to itself from the past.
Bach started. A hand had fallen on his shoulder. It was the choirmaster, small-eyed and eager. Bach followed him blindly.
At the top of the stairs the choirmaster turned and waited for him. "At last we have the honor. Welcome to the greatest master in Germany!" ”

“ Nicolai declares that what Quintilian says of Cicero may be applied VAN SWIETEN AND CLASSICAL MUSIC. [378] with equal truth to Bach: that those who have learnt to appreciate his works above all others have made a marked advance along the path of knowledge. 24 The school of Joh. Sebastian Bach was represented in all its severity and scholarly learning by his son Wilhelm Friedemann Bach (1710-1784) , who passed the later years of his life in Berlin, as much admired as an artist of genius and scholarship 25 as he was dreaded and disliked by reason of his overbearing egotism and eccentric fancies. ”