Sebastian Bach

“ 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. ”

“ 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 is continually appearing not in the professed Pastorales, as in the Christmas Oratorio, merely, but throughout the compass of Bach’s works; still more striking is his vein of idyllic melody, peculiarly obvious in the fine gold into which he transmuted the baser metal of the Italian aria, to illuminate his church cantatas. ”

“ The life and character of John Sebastian Bach have a peculiar interest, not only for musicians and amateurs of music, but for every one who can appreciate sterling worth, combined with genius of the highest rank, and a modesty as great as it is rare. “Anyone,” said Bach, “could do as much as I have done if he worked as hard.” And this capacity for hard work is perhaps not the least among the many remarkable characteristics of the man. We find in him little of that desire for applause, for recognition, which is usually one of the strongest motives in an artist. ”

“ With him the descendants of Johann Sebastian Bach became extinct. He was a good pianoforte and violin player, but his modesty prevented him from often appearing, and although he wrote much, in many styles, very little of his music is published.
Carl Philipp Emanuel [25] , third son of Sebastian, often styled the Berlin or Hamburg Bach, born at Weimar March 14, 1714. His general precocity, quickness, and openness to impressions, induced his father to bring him up to the study of philosophy. ”

“ But these light-hearted Thuringians, and even those of their family who treated their art more seriously and worthily, would not have escaped oblivion had there not emerged in the fulness of time one whose genius and renown reflected their splendour and brilliancy on his forbears. This man, the glory of his family, pride of his countrymen, most gifted favourite of the Muse of Music, was Johann Sebastian Bach. ”

“ But Nature has sowing and springing and ripening in other and far distant fields; and if we, unseeing, comprehend not, let it suffice that she, the wise and provident, wholly knows what sun is shining on those fields, and the diameter of the orbital turning of their world she knows, and the orderly come and go of their unfailing seasons. And so it befell that in fitly appointed time, and not in capricious moment, she gave to the world Sebastian Bach to be the great individualizer and father of German music. ”

“ In no family, perhaps, is it of greater moment than in that of Sebastian Bach, wherein his special tastes and powers all have their prophecy and preparation in a tradition where everything is musical.
From the first years of the sixteenth century—so soon, in other words, as the arising of a national religion has revealed to us the life of the German people—we have already traces of Bachs scattered among the valleys of Thuringia. There are Bachs near Arnstadt, in Erfurt, and Gotha, and Wechmar, places hereafter to be remembered in the musicalPg 2 vocations of their descendants. ”

“ On the contrary, all composers since his time have felt the stimulus of his great tone poems, and Mendelssohn, Schumann, Chopin and Wagner found him the most productive of great masters.
The life of Bach need not long detain us. A musician of the tenth generation, member of a family which occupies a liberal space in German encyclopedias of music, art and literature, Sebastian Bach led the life of a teacher, productive artist and virtuoso, mainly within the limits of the comparatively unimportant provincial city of Leipsic. ”

“ Johann Sebastian Bach was born at Eisensach, Saxe-Weimar, Germany, March 21, 1685. His father, Johann Ambrosius Bach, was one of twin brothers; a violinist; twice married and blessed with a large family—two conditions in which his son was destined to follow his example. Both he and his wife died when Sebastian was ten years old; and the boy, who had already acquired from his father the rudiments of the violin, was taken into the house of Johann Christoph, the eldest son of the family, who was then organist at Ohrdruf. ”

“ For us, who now see this longing for the first time clearly expressed in his life, and who know what important fruits it was destined to bear in the future, this stage in the career of Sebastian Bach possesses a peculiar interest. In his letter to the town council announcing his resignation he explains that he has 'always striven to make the improvement of Church music, to the honour of God, his aim,' but that he has met with opposition such as he sees no chance of being enabled to overcome in the future. ”

“ In the pedigree of Sebastian Bach they fade to a comparative obscurity; viewed by themselves they are luminaries of signal brilliance. Johann Christoph was more than a complete master of the musical science of his day; he was also one of the first who ventured to deviate from the rigid rules of the early contrapuntists, to make them freer, more flexible, and more significant. He is a link between ancient and modern music, blending the old church modes with the modern tonality of major and minor. Besides this, he marks an important step in the growth of dramatic music. ”

“ He could no longer endure the state of things in Passion Week, and, since in 1723 the great and famous Sebastian Bach had become cantor of the Thomas School and music director of the two chief churches at Leipsic, he associated himself with him in order to see if his ideas could be put in practice. The idea which he propounded to Bach was this: “The early arrangement of the service was the best, but was only suitable to its own date: we must try and make our arrangement on the model of the earliest, but in keeping with modern requirements. ”

“ One and another exclaimed, 'Hasse!' 'Vogler!' 'Hegel!' 'Storace!' 'Weber!' But it was clear the point had not been contested. Then he folded his arms together and laid them on his breast, with a very low bow that brought all the hair into his eyes. Then he shook back the curls and laughed.
"'It is Bach, my dear and revered Sebastian Bach,—of all the Bachs alone the Bach; though indeed to any one Bach, one of us present is not fit to hold a candle. You do not love Bach,—I do. You do not reverence him,—he is in my religion. You do not understand him,—I am very intimate with him. ”

“ While little Sebastian Bach was laboriously copying out music by pale moonlight, because of his great love for it, another child of the same age was finding the greatest happiness of his life seated before an old spinet, standing in a lumber garret. He was trying to make music from those half dumb keys. No one had taught him how to play; it was innate genius that guided his little hands to find the right harmonies and bring melody out of the old spinet.
The boy's name was George Frederick Handel, and he was born in the German town of Halle, February 23, 1685. ”

“ The development of the opera in Germany, during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, has now been traced, and next we will turn our attention to the progress of instrumental music after Sebastian Bach.
No more remarkable instance of lack of appreciation of a great man’s genius has ever been known than that furnished by the history of Bach’s works. The reasons for this are perhaps twofold. Like Shakespeare, Bach must have been ignorant of the supreme excellence of his artistic creations. ”

“ If we must call it a coincidence, it is, at any rate, a remarkable one, that Sebastian, in whom the gifts of his race reached their highest perfection, should also be the only one of its members to take a Bach to wife. If we are right in regarding the marriage union of individuals from families not allied in blood as the cause of a stronger growth of development in the children, Bach's choice may signify that in him the highest summit of a development had been reached, so that his instinct disdained the natural way of attempting further improvement, and attracted him to his own race. ”

“ Bach was laid to rest in the churchyard of St. John's at Leipsic, but no stone marks his resting place. Only the town library register tells that Johann Sebastian Bach, Musical Director and Singing Master of the St. Thomas School, was carried to his grave July 30, 1750.
But the memory of Bach is enduring, his fame immortal and the love his beautiful music inspires increases from year to year, wherever that music is known, all over the world. ”

“ After a whispered consultation the eldest voiced the final decision: “We have agreed, dear Johann Sebastian, to let you go the way you have chosen, hoping and praying it may end well; we have the utmost confidence in the sincerity of your purpose, and as for the rest we leave you in the Almighty’s hands. Forget not, among strangers, who you are and where you belong. We, the elders, will remain here, and when you return to the dear Thuringian land, come as a true Bach, as an able and pious musician, as a worthy son of your brave, faithful father.” ”

“ He grew up in simple and quiet habits, surrounded by the purest influences, conversant with bright examples of piety, modesty, and integrity, which gave to his imagination 'the velvety tenderness that characterizes the plants which have never been exposed to the dust of the beaten highways.' Commencing the study of music when he was but nine years old, he was soon after confided to a passionate disciple of Sebastian Bach, who for many years directed his studies in accordance with the prevailing classic models. ”

“ There are six of these strange compositions, upon the stories of David and Goliath, of David and Saul, of Jacob and Leah, and others. Some years later they undoubtedly suggested to Sebastian Bach the delicate little capriccio which he wrote upon the departure of his brother for the wars. Apart from this they are of slight importance except as indications of the experimental frame of mind of their composer. Indeed, beyond imitation and to a small extent description, neither harpsichord nor pianoforte music has been able to make much progress in the direction of program music. ”

“ In this new field of musical art he was fortunate in having the coöperation of such a genius as Bach.
Bach belonged to the fifth generation of a remarkable family of musicians. As many as thirty-seven of the family are known to have held important musical positions. John Sebastian, who is by far the greatest musician the Protestant Church has produced, was born in Eisenach, on March 21, 1685. The greater part of his life was spent in Leipzig, where he labored from 1723 until his death in 1750 as cantor of the Thomas school and director of music at the Thomas and Nicolai churches. ”

“ It was, in fact, the artist temperament that led Bach to make the great and sublime his goal. For that reason his music is not merely agreeable, like other composers', but transports us to the regions of the ideal. It does not arrest our attention momentarily but grips us the stronger the oftener we listen to it, so that after a thousand hearings its treasures are still unexhausted and yield fresh beauties to excite our wonder. Even the beginner who knows but the A B C of his art warms with pleasure when he hears Bach's music and can open his ear and heart to it. ”

“ All three, it will be seen, united in turning their attention to instrumental music in general and to church music in particular, cultivating more especially the science of organ-playing, and it may here be remarked that no one of their descendants up to the time of Sebastian Bach departed from this sphere of activity. It was in this great man that true German art first sought expression, and therefore the family in its totality must forever be regarded as an embodiment of the artistic aspiration of the nation. ”

“ But there is no doubt that Bach was born with a passion for music, which formed the mainspring of his industry, and was the true secret of his success. When a mere youth, his elder brother, wishing to turn his abilities in another direction, destroyed a collection of studies which the young Sebastian, being denied candles, had copied by moonlight; proving the strong natural bent of the boy’s genius. Of Meyerbeer, Bayle thus wrote from Milan in 1820:—“He is a man of some talent, but no genius; he lives solitary, working fifteen hours a day at music.” ”

“ Fully to appreciate the importance of these qualities in the development of the race, we must consider that these predecessors of Johann Sebastian lived in the miserable time of the Thirty Years' War, and in the midst of the moral indifferentism and collapse of intellectual power which distinguished that unhappy period. Yet the house of Bach exhibits an almost uniform example of moral worth together with a constant endeavour after the highest ideals—qualities which are all the greater because under the circumstances of the time they could hardly meet with recognition or encouragement. ”