Great German Composers | Page 2

only by his wonderful powers as an organist, but by two of his earlier
masterpieces--"Gott ist mein König" and "Ich hatte viel
Bektlmmerniss." Under the influence of an atmosphere so artistic,
Bach's ardor for study increased with his success, and his rapid
advancement in musical power met with warm appreciation.
While Bach held the position of director of the chapel of Prince
Leopold of Anhalt-Kothen, which he assumed about the year 1720, he
went to Hamburg on a pilgrimage to see old Reinke, then nearly a
centenarian, whose fame as an organist was national, and had long been
the object of Bach's enthusiasm. The aged man listened while his

youthful rival improvised on the old choral, "Upon the Rivers of
Babylon." He shed tears of joy while he tenderly embraced Bach, and
said: "I did think that this art would die with me; but I see that you will
keep it alive."
Our musician rapidly became known far and wide throughout the
musical centres of Germany as a learned and recondite composer, as a
brilliant improviser, and as an organist beyond rivalry. Yet it was in
these last two capacities that his reputation among his contemporaries
was the most marked. It was left to a succeeding generation to fully
enlighten the world in regard to his creative powers as a musical
thinker.
II.
Though Bach's life was mostly spent at Weimar and Leipsic, he was at
successive periods chapel-master and concert-director at several of the
German courts, which aspired to shape public taste in matters of
musical culture and enthusiasm. But he was by nature singularly
retiring and unobtrusive, and he recoiled from several brilliant offers
which would have brought him too much in contact with the gay world
of fashion, apparently dreading any diversion from a severe and
exclusive art-life; for within these limits all his hopes, energies, and
wishes were focalized. Yet he was not without that keen spirit of rivalry,
that love of combat, which seems to be native to spirits of the more
robust and energetic type.
In the days of the old Minnesingers, tournaments of music shared the
public taste with tournaments of arms. In Bach's time these public
competitions were still in vogue. One of these was held by Augustus II.,
Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, one of the most munificent
art-patrons of Europe, but best known to fame from his intimate part in
the wars of Charles XII. of Sweden and Peter the Great of Russia. Here
Bach's principal rival was a French virtuoso, Marchand, who, an exile
from Paris, had delighted the king by the lightness and brilliancy of his
execution. They were both to improvise on the same theme. Marchand
heard Bach's performance, and signalized his own inferiority by
declining to play, and secretly leaving the city of Dresden. Augustus

sent Bach a hundred louis d'or, but this splendid douceur never reached
him, as it was appropriated by one of the court officials.
In Bach's half-century of a studious musical life there is but little of
stirring incident to record. The significance of his career was interior,
not exterior. Twice married, and the father of twenty children, his
income was always small even for that age. Yet, by frugality, the
simple wants of himself and his family never overstepped the limit of
supply; for he seems to have been happily mated with wives who
sympathized with his exclusive devotion to art, and united with this the
virtues of old-fashioned German thrift.
Three years before his death, Bach, who had a son in the service of the
King of Prussia, yielded to the urgent invitation of that monarch to go
to Berlin. Frederick II., the conqueror of Rossbach, and one of the
greatest of modern soldiers, was a passionate lover of literature and art,
and it was his pride to collect at his court all the leading lights of
European culture. He was not only the patron of Voltaire, whose
connection with the Prussian monarch has furnished such rich material
to the anecdote-history of literature, but of all the distinguished painters,
poets, and musicians, whom he could persuade by his munificent offers
(but rarely fulfilled) to suffer the burden of his eccentricities. Frederick
was not content with playing the part of patron, but must himself also
be poet, philosopher, painter, and composer.
On the night of Bach's arrival Frederick was taking part in a concert at
his palace, and, on hearing that the great musician whose name was in
the mouths of all Germany had come, immediately sent for him without
allowing him to don a court dress, interrupting his concert with the
enthusiastic announcement, "Gentlemen, Bach is here." The cordial
hospitality and admiration of Frederick was gratefully acknowledged
by Bach, who dedicated to him a three-part fugue on a theme composed