Read Ebook: Johann Sebastian Bach by Peyser Herbert F Herbert Francis

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 77 lines and 16375 words, and 2 pages

Printed in the United States of America

Compared with the unimaginable richness of his inner life as the overpowering volume and splendor of his works reveal it, Bach's day-to-day existence seems almost pedestrian. It had none of the drama and spectacular conflicts that marked the careers of men like Mozart, Beethoven, and Wagner. His travels, far less extensive than those of his great contemporary, Handel, were confined to areas of a few hundred miles at most in central and northern Germany and were undertaken chiefly for sober professional purposes. The present volume, which advances no claim whatever to any new or original slant, aims to do no more than furnish for those who read and run a meager background of a few isolated highspots in Bach's outward life and a momentary sideglance at a tiny handful of his supreme creations. Its object will have been more than accomplished if in any manner it stimulates a radio listener to deepen his acquaintance with Bach's immeasurable art.

H. F. P.

There is probably nothing in the history of music to compare with Bach's ancestry from the standpoint of fertility, complexity, and endurance. There can be no question of tracing here its multiple ramifications and cross currents. Enough that we obtain our earliest glimpse of Sebastian's great-great-great-grandfather as far back as the latter part of the sixteenth century. The direct line of the great composer did not die out till 1845. Seven generations thus stretch between the extremes of this genealogical phenomenon. The Thuringian countryside around Arnstadt, Erfurt, Wechmar, Eisenach, and other communities of the region cradled the different branches of the family. Two traits, at least, all of them had in common--their love of music and their attachment to one another. Some became organists, some cantors, some town musicians, and their devotion to their craft was so proverbial that, for years after, all musicians in the town of Erfurt came to be known as "the Bachs" even if totally unrelated. The real Bachs felt each other's company so indispensable that, if the members of the family could obviously not all live in the same place, they made it a point to hold periodic reunions. After prayers and hymns they spent the day in feasting and jolly recreation. One of their favorite amusements was to extemporize choruses out of popular songs and these lusty medleys they would bellow for hours on end with great good humor, while the listeners laughed till their sides ached.

SON OF A COURT MUSICIAN

Johann Sebastian Bach was born in Eisenach on March 21, 1685, according to the Old Style reckoning, which is ten days behind the Gregorian calendar. His father, Johann Ambrosius Bach, had married an Elisabeth L?mmerhirt nearly twenty years earlier in Erfurt, where he was town player. Probably he became Court musician to Duke Johann Georg, at Eisenach, whither he had removed. His plea to return to Erfurt was disallowed by his noble employer and so it came that Johann Sebastian saw the light in Eisenach. Not, however, in the rambling house on the Frauenplan as traditionally supposed. Comparatively recent investigation has shown that the actual birthplace is a short distance away, in a street named after Martin Luther. A rather unromantic looking dwelling, it was occupied till just before the Second World War by a barber.

There is a certain symbolic propriety that Bach should have been born in Eisenach rather than in the more prosaic Erfurt. Eisenach had powerful religious and romantic associations. Luther had been entertained by Frau von Cotta in one of its gabled houses while the Reformer was still a boy. High above the city towered the Wartburg, where Luther translated the Bible, threw his inkwell at the Devil, and composed some of his sturdiest chorales. Up there, too, had dwelt the saintly Elisabeth, while in its halls knightly Minnesingers had competed in tourneys of song. In the remoter distances rose the fabled H?rselberg, where according to legend Dame Venus held her unholy court and ensnared the souls of unwary men. Just what impression these things made on the child Bach we cannot say. At any rate he could not remain untouched by the currents of music. The boy had a pretty treble voice and at the local school he sang in the so-called Currende choir, making a few pennies now and then on feasts and holidays, at weddings and at funerals, in company with his schoolmates. He may even have sat in the organ loft of St. George's Church, pulling out the heavy stops for his uncle, Johann Christoph Bach, who had been the organist there for many years.

Nevertheless, we have no elaborate record of Johann Sebastian's boyhood. His father, indeed, taught him the rudiments of violin and viola, and Terry credits the youngster with "patient concentration" in the pursuit of these instrumental studies. We do know that he became before long an uncommonly proficient violinist but took particular delight in playing viola when he participated in ensemble work. Like Mozart in after years, the youthful Bach loved to find himself "in the middle of the harmony."

EARLY YEARS AT SCHOOL

At the Eisenach "Gymnasium" he learned reading and writing, catechism, Biblical history, and the Psalms. And when only a little over eight he was fairly immersed in Latin conjugations and declensions. In Eisenach was laid the foundation of that learning which distinguished his whole life, though he never enjoyed the advantage of a college education such as he afterwards gave his famous sons. Yet his school attendance at this early stage showed a good deal of irregularity, due, perhaps, to illness or bereavement. He was only nine when he lost his mother. In a short time his father married again but his death terminated that union scarcely four months later.

The Eisenach household having broken up, Johann Sebastian was sent in 1695 to the home of his married brother, Johann Christoph, who lived at Ohrdruf, some thirty miles away. A pupil of the great Johann Pachelbel, the Ohrdruf Bach functioned as organist at the Church of St. Michael's. Johann Christoph, an accomplished musician, lost no time in giving his young brother his first lessons on the clavier. Presumably he supplemented them with instruction on the organ. In any case the boy seems to have had access to a large quantity of good music. He was an extraordinarily capable student with a voracious appetite for musical learning and no sooner had he mastered one difficult task than he plagued his brother for another more difficult still.

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. His high, clear voice and instinctive musicianship not only assured him a place in the chorus of the institution but in proper season gained him the friendly interest of Elias Herder, a young musician summoned to replace Johann Arnold, a highly unpopular teacher who had been dismissed as a "pest of the school, a scandal of the church and a cancer of the community." Through the good offices of Herder young Bach found an opportunity to join the select choir of St. Michael's Church in L?neburg, more than two hundred miles to the north.

STUDENT AT L?NEBURG

The time was ripe, at all events, for Johann Sebastian to leave Ohrdruf. His brother's family was increasing apace and the organist's quarters had been growing uncomfortably cramped. Furthermore, Bach was now fifteen, an age at which boys were expected to start earning their living. So the chance to remove to L?neburg proved a stroke of luck.

But there were more fascinating advantages to it than even the possibilities of bed and board. Easily accessible were several sources of musical and cultural inspiration. In L?neburg itself the Church of St. John had as its organist none less than Georg B?hm, one of the outstanding personalities in German music of the era preceding the full unfoldment of Bach's grandeur. Thirty miles off lay Hamburg, which harbored the venerable master of the organ, Adam Reinken; and the operatic life of that city had burst into bloom under the leadership of Reinhard Keiser. Up in the direction of the Danish frontier the town of L?beck sheltered still another giant, the organist Dietrich Buxtehude. Sixty miles in an easterly direction lay Celle, whose Duke, Georg Wilhelm, had married a beautiful and spirited French Huguenot, Eleanore Desmier d'Olbreuse, and turned his court into a miniature Versailles, where French musicians in particular were royally welcomed. Naturally, a little opera house formed part of this island of Gallic charm, elegance and culture, enlivened by a continual succession of ballets, operas, and other musical diversions. Whether Bach obtained admission to the auditorium or whether he was smuggled into the orchestra pit by some friendly player we do not know. But of one thing we are certain: his love for the music of the French masters and his intimate acquaintance with it was in large degree the result of what he heard and learned at the gracious ducal court of Celle.

This first trip to Hamburg was by no means Bach's last. And thereby hangs a tale--a fish story, if you will, but nevertheless true and related a number of times by Bach himself. Tired and hungry on his long jaunt back to L?neburg, the boy sat down for a moment's rest outside the kitchen of an inn whose open windows exhaled tempting savors. Suddenly there fell at his feet the heads of two herrings, a fish prized as a great delicacy in his native Thuringia. Eagerly picking them up he found inside of each a Danish ducat obviously put there by some kindly soul who had caught sight of the famished young wanderer. Whether or not Bach ate the heads, he suddenly found himself with money enough for an ample dinner and sufficient also to defray the expenses of another visit to Hamburg.

ORGANIST AT ARNSTADT

It may be taken for granted that Bach planned an eventual journey to L?beck to hear the mighty Buxtehude. In any case this trip was deferred. Hard as he had studied at L?neburg and greatly as his musical powers had grown, it was becoming clear that he must put his talents to practical use. He had been earning a living of a sort with his singing and likewise as a violin and viola player. But his voice had changed and was no longer of great use as a source of revenue. His powers as an organist, on the other hand, were expanding prodigiously, a fact which had become known not only in L?neburg but far away in his native Thuringia. He began to long for an organ post of his own and the steady income it would assure.

Late in 1702 the news spread that a new organ was being completed at the Church of St. Boniface in Arnstadt, one of the ancestral seats of the Bach family and rich in its traditions. Doubtless Arnstadt had its eyes on the promising disciple of B?hm and Reinken, young as he was. Bach, too, felt it wise to watch the situation at close range. So he returned to Thuringia. The new instrument of St. Boniface was not ready nor was it completed till the summer of 1703. Sangerhausen offered a possibility, but that was thwarted by the machinations of high-placed people with influence.

Yet by Easter Bach found himself enrolled in the service of Duke Johann Ernst, brother of the reigning Duke Wilhelm Ernst of Weimar. His stay in Weimar on this occasion was brief though it seems to have earned him some honors, including the useful if misleading title of "Princely Saxon Court Organist." But scarcely three months later he was back in Arnstadt, where the St. Boniface organ was ready for its test. That Bach should have been entrusted with so responsible a task indicates how high must have been his reputation already. He examined the instrument, reported favorably on it and, to demonstrate his satisfaction, played an inaugural recital which impressed the Consistory to such a degree that on August 9 he was officially appointed organist.

It was not long before he was at odds with the authorities. He had, in addition to his organ playing, the disagreeable job of training the choristers, a shiftless, good-for-nothing rabble from the local school who, as the city council complained, "behave in a scandalous manner, resort to places of ill repute and do other things we shrink from naming." Bach, for his part, had already developed that obstinate, uncompromising nature that grew more violent the older he became and brought him into no end of difficulties throughout his life. When his mind was fixed on achieving a certain end nothing would swerve him from it. He could be as hardheaded and intransigent a fighter for what he considered his rights and as ruthless in combating opposition as were Beethoven and Wagner in later generations.

His extraordinary talents did not prevent him from attracting a number of enemies which progressively increased. One of the most bitter of these was a bassoonist named Geyersbach whom Bach on more than one occasion had to reproach for his musical incompetence. Matters came to a head when the organist, escorting a lady home one night, was set upon by the ruffian accompanied by a brawling rout of students who attempted to cane him. As tough a fighter as the best of them, Bach took to his sword when Geyersbach shouted, "Hundsfott" , and with a roar of "Zippelfagottist" laid about him so furiously that the "nanny-goat bassoonist" escaped manhandling only by the prompt help of his cronies. The incident caused considerable agitation among the townsfolk.

INSPIRATION FROM THE MASTER, BUXTEHUDE

One may be sure that the immense inspiration he received from Buxtehude was as potent and influenced the current of his genius as fully as had B?hm and Reinken a little earlier. That he exhibited his own powers on the L?beck organ and profited by the example and suggestions of Buxtehude is clear. Forgetting the flight of time and his obligations in Arnstadt, Bach let the winter months slip by. It is even possible that he weighed the question of stepping into the shoes of the seventy-year-old master. But there was a condition attached to that which made him hesitate as it had Handel and Mattheson before him. Whoever wanted Buxtehude's job had to take Buxtehude's daughter in the bargain. The lady, it appears, was not especially well favored and she was all of twenty-eight--scarcely the most alluring prospect to a young man only twenty, and one which involved the further possibility of having to house the father-in-law for as long as the Lord might choose to spare him!

Bach did neither one thing nor the other but lived for a while in an uneasy state of compromise. He was not in the least minded to renounce the company of the "strange maiden"--probably the same one he was seeing home the night Geyersbach and his rowdies attacked him. She was none other than his cousin, Maria Barbara, and daughter of Bach's uncle Michael from nearby Gehren. It was not long before he proposed to the musically talented girl and was accepted--the first case of intermarriage between two of the Bach stock. In the fullness of time she became the mother of two of Bach's most gifted sons.

Bach's Arnstadt days were drawing to a close. This is not to intimate that when he left it or any other town in which he had filled positions he never returned to them. Throughout his life he traveled repeatedly over familiar ground, either to participate in family meetings, to inspect organs, give recitals or engage in other social or professional activities. To be sure these wanderings were limited to a few hundred miles in Central and Northern Germany. But such as they were he took them often and gladly, either alone or with members of his family.

YEAR AT M?HLHAUSEN

Despite the high esteem Bach enjoyed in M?hlhausen he remained there only a year. The municipal heads and the authorities of the Church of St. Blasius regretted his going but were unable to prevent it. He conceded frankly that he wanted to improve his material position. Yet, a deeper reason lay at the back of his departure. It was at the bottom the byproduct of a religious question. For some time a reaction had been developing against certain dogmatic formularies in the Lutheran body. The dissidents, known as Pietists, gradually came to sword's points with the orthodox sect, and M?hlhausen, especially, became a hotbed of Pietism, whose adherents strongly opposed the use of music in public worship. This, of course, flew violently in the face of Bach's ideal, which was the betterment of music in the church and its heightened employment to sacred ends. It became solely a question of time when such a situation would render his position at St. Blasius untenable. The Consistory was so well disposed to Bach that it promptly agreed to a variety of modifications in the organ which he had recommended. Before these were carried out he had given notice of his departure and his employers realized they could do nothing about it. He promised, however, to come over to M?hlhausen from nearby Weimar in order to see how the alterations were being executed.

WEIMAR

One of the concertmaster's duties was to provide cantatas for a variety of occasions and, beginning in 1714, he wrote a number of them. His choir consisted of twelve singers. Wilhelm Ernst had from the first been impressed by Bach's powers as an organist. The musician's diverse labors were gratifyingly recompensed and in nine years he had doubled his income. At its smallest it was twice as large as at M?hlhausen. It is claimed that never in his life did Bach have at his disposal an organ truly worthy of his powers and even at Weimar the instrument was inferior to that in M?hlhausen. Nevertheless, the organ works he composed at Weimar exceeded anything he had ever done before in sumptuousness of inspiration, imaginative grandeur, and technical exaction.

One hears comparatively little of Maria Barbara. Bach's wife appears, however, to have been a fitting helpmeet to her busy husband, handling his household and his numerous pupils with tact and discretion and bearing him children with regularity. Some of these died early, others lived till a ripe age. In 1710 was born his oldest son, Wilhelm Friedemann, a genius in his own right and ever his father's favorite, but all his life wayward and something of a black sheep. At this stage one might as well mention two other musically outstanding sons of Bach among the twenty children he was to beget. The more prominent of these was Carl Philipp Emanuel, who served Frederick the Great and whose reputation as a pianist and composer was such that, whenever in the latter part of the eighteenth century, it was a question of Bach, people usually meant Philipp Emanuel. Another, Johann Christian , lived and died in London, composed operas, and became an intimate of the youthful Mozart.

During the years of his Weimar residence Bach made three journeys which are conspicuous among the brief ones that punctuated his life. One was to Cassel toward the end of 1714, presumably to examine a new organ. Possibly, too, he accompanied his ducal master on a ceremonial visit. Like Weimar, Cassel had a reputation for culture and evidently the Duke would have been pleased to exhibit the prowess of his own court organist. A reference to Bach's incredible virtuosity on this visit has come down to us. "His feet, flying over the pedals as though they were winged," wrote an observer, "made the notes reverberate like thunder in a storm till the prince, confounded with admiration, pulled a ring from his finger and presented it to the player. Now bethink you, if Bach's skilful feet deserved such bounty what gift must the prince have offered to reward his hands as well?" Other stories of his miraculous playing had long circulated throughout the country. People said it was a habit of his to climb into the organ loft of an inconspicuous rural church and so astound people with his improvisations that the cry would go up: "That must be Bach or the Devil!" The tale, one can depend on it, is a myth.

Another trip was to Halle, birthplace of Handel. True, he did not go there in search of his greatest contemporary but to examine a new organ. His playing created so profound an impression that the Collegium Musicum made an earnest effort to secure him for Halle. Bach was flattered but, because of his Weimar connections, unable to accept. The Halle council, believing he was seeking higher pay, was irritated. Nevertheless, a little later it summoned Bach in company with Johann Kuhnau and Christian Friedrich Rolle to inspect the organ of the Church of Our Lady. The officials omitted nothing that might please their distinguished guests. A staff of servants and coachmen was placed at their service, a reception was held at which the chief musical personages of the town were summoned to meet them and, after the organ had been examined in great detail, the visitors were entertained at a banquet whose culinary abundance and gastronomic quality may be judged from the following bill of fare which has come down to us:

As Bach returned safely to Weimar, it may be assumed he passed up a few of the courses! He was even paid a fee for the little outing. It came to .50.

The third trip carried him to Dresden. There, under the rule of Augustus II, musical life flourished. In 1717 a season of Italian opera was in full blast. It was not opera, however, which fascinated Bach. He looked upon it with gentle condescension and, even in later years, was in the habit of chaffing his son, Friedemann, with the question: "Well, shall we go over to Dresden and listen to the pretty little tunes?" What did attract Bach was the presence at the Saxon court of the celebrated French clavecinist and organist, Louis Marchand. Bach had studied his compositions closely and admired them. A gifted but intolerably arrogant person, Marchand had fallen into disgrace in Versailles and found it prudent to emigrate. An official of Augustus II conceived the idea of summoning Bach from Weimar and arranging on the spot a musical contest between the two. Such is, at least, the traditional story. Whatever the exact truth may have been, Bach arrived on the scene of the proposed contest at the specified hour but Marchand, afraid of a rival whose prowess he well knew, left Dresden secretly and let the match go by default. Bach thereupon performed alone, stirring his hearers to unlimited admiration. Marchand returned to France where he lived, apparently none the worse for his ignominious failure, till 1732.

KAPELLMEISTER WITH PRINCE LEOPOLD

At C?then he began a new life. For one thing, he no longer filled the post of organist. The court of Prince Leopold was of the Calvinistic faith. Church services, being of a particularly austere nature, required no organ playing of a virtuoso type or the production of sacred cantatas, such as Bach had hitherto been turning out in quantity. Yet Leopold was an ardent music lover, whose tastes ran to instrumental composition. He maintained an orchestra of eighteen of which Bach now became Kapellmeister. Such cantatas as he wrote in C?then were secular ones, chiefly in honor of his employer. For the most part his creative energies were now concentrated on concertos, suites, sonatas, and clavier works including some of his very greatest.

The Brandenburg Concertos are in a somewhat different case. They were composed for Christian Ludwig, Margrave of Brandenburg and a son of the Great Elector, whom Bach appears to have met on a journey with Prince Leopold. Christian Ludwig had a hobby of collecting concertos by various composers and he commissioned Bach to write him "some pieces." In an elaborate preface couched in extraordinary French and dated "C?then, March 24, 1721," the composer begged his noble patron to accept these products of his "slight talents" and to "overlook their imperfections." Whether the private orchestra of the Margrave played the works or not we cannot say. Neither do we know if Bach's gift was even acknowledged. After Christian Ludwig died, the catalogue of his richly stocked library had no mention of Bach's half dozen "trifles." The precious masterpieces turned up in a mass of scores offered for sale in job lots!

It is practically certain, however, that the Brandenburg Concertos were performed by the princely Kapelle at C?then in Bach's presence, for the composer had been wise enough to make copies of his scores. They are not concertos in the modern sense of the term, but continuations and developments of those "concerti grossi" of masters like Torelli, Vivaldi, and Corelli. In various permutations and combinations they contrast groups of solo instruments with the background of the "tutti." The "concerti grossi" of Handel furnish examples of the same principle of balance and diversity. The fact that none of the Brandenburg Concertos is in a minor key and that somber moods are rare, points to the probability that they were written for entertainment purposes.

Their variety is astonishing, with no two quite alike. The first, in F major, is the only one which calls for horns; and for the performance of this concerto two horn players were specially engaged at C?then. The second, likewise in F, requires a trumpet--the solitary appearance in the entire set of this instrument. To choose between the Brandenburg Concertos, to determine their relative musical worth is impossible. Yet in some respects the sixth, in B flat, if perhaps the least frequently played, is the most unusual. No violins are used in its scoring. The employment of two violas, two viole da gamba, and cello gives the work a peculiar dark string color wholly its own.

Let us mention here the wondrous concerto for two violins, another sublime inspiration of Bach's C?then days. It is probable that it was played by the concertmaster, Josephus Spiess, and the excellent violinist, Johann Rose , with the composer conducting the orchestral accompaniment.

And Prince Leopold, himself, who not only enjoyed music but played it well, doubtless took part in the sonatas for clavier and viola da gamba. He could not do without his musicians apparently and, when, in 1718, he went to take the "cure" at Carlsbad, he had a sextet from his Kapelle accompany him. Bach was one of the retinue. The following year the Kapellmeister made a pilgrimage to nearby Halle in an effort to meet Handel, who had come to the Continent to engage singers for his operatic ventures in London. But neither at this time nor on a subsequent occasion when he tried to make the acquaintance of his great contemporary was he successful. Handel had already returned to England, seemingly far less eager to meet Bach than Bach was to meet him.

In May 1720, Prince Leopold again went to take the Carlsbad waters and once more Bach was in his train. The visit was somewhat longer this time and it ended grievously for the composer. When he set out he left his wife in the best of health and spirits. When he came back he found her dead and buried. With Maria Barbara gone there was, apparently, no one to look after Wilhelm Friedemann, Philipp Emanuel and Johann Gottfried Bernhard, the eldest not more than ten. The blow seems to have struck Bach the more heavily because, engaged in worldly music-making as he now was, he lacked the spiritual consolation of churchly activities and the communion with his inner self which he enjoyed in the organ loft.

It was not long before Bach realized that if his children were to be brought up in the traditions of rectitude he had himself inherited, they could not remain without a mother's care, the more so as his many occupations left him little leisure to oversee a company of lively youngsters. And so on December 3, 1721, Bach took to himself a second wife, Anna Magdalena Wilcken, the daughter of a court trumpeter of Weissenfels. A gentle, lovable soul, musical, devoted to her great husband and the mother of a fresh host of children, she was as ideal a helpmeet for Bach as her predecessor had been.

A week after his Kapellmeister's marriage, Prince Leopold took a wife in his turn. But the lady, the prince's cousin, quickly troubled the musical atmosphere of the C?then court. Her tastes were for masquerades, dances, fireworks, illuminations and other forms of tinseled show, not for concerts of orchestral and chamber music. Bach called her an "amusa"--a person of no culture. Her installation at C?then was the prelude to Bach's departure. As so often happened in his career, however, a more or less inopportune incident created a situation from which he might profit.

LEIPZIG AND THE ST. JOHN PASSION

This particular incident was the death, half a year after Bach's second marriage, of Johann Kuhnau who, for more than twenty years, had held the Cantorship of St. Thomas's School in Leipzig. Whether or not the post seemed to Bach himself as desirable as a Kapellmeistership, the sudden vacancy attracted a flock of candidates, some of them men of distinction. Most preferable in the eyes of the Leipzig civic council was George Philipp Telemann who in Bach's day ranked higher in the esteem of many musicians than Bach himself. Another was Christoph Graupner of Darmstadt. We need not pursue in detail the complicated negotiations and the extensive intrigue the choice of Kuhnau's successor involved. Telemann was offered the job and things progressed so far that the authorities debated whether the address welcoming him should be in Latin or in German. But Telemann, who already held a lucrative position in Hamburg, determined to find out which town would offer him the better inducement. Hamburg increased his already considerable stipend, so in Hamburg he remained. Graupner, on the other hand, would have come gladly. But his Darmstadt masters declined to release him.

BACH'S GREATER WORK

Bach settled in Leipzig at the age of thirty-eight. He remained there the rest of his life. True, he came and went, and he made journeys of one sort or another, but they were never far distant or protracted. In Leipzig he created his grandest, his most colossal, and also his profoundest and subtlest works. His duties were incredibly numerous and often heart-breakingly heavy. He was responsible, it has been said, "to all and to none." Again and again he had the rector of the St. Thomas School, the city council, the church Consistory, and yet others about his ears. He had to look after the musical services in four churches, two of them the most important in the town. Under exasperating conditions he had to teach turbulent and ruffianly pupils. He had to combat official ill will and intrigue. For the performances he was obliged to conduct he had vocal and instrumental forces that strike us as laughably inadequate and were in numberless cases grossly unskilled. The demands on his physical and spiritual strength must have been appalling. Yet Bach appears to have had the resources and the resistance of a giant. We know that over and again his temper, his obstinate nature and inborn pugnacity were tried to the uttermost. But in the face of all irritations he was earning enough, his home life was comfortable, he met and entertained artists, he had the satisfaction of knowing that his sons could enjoy the educational advantages of Leipzig, and he gradually gathered about him a company of greatly gifted young students and devoted disciples.

The rector of St. Thomas' School during Bach's first years in Leipzig was Johann Heinrich Ernesti, with whom Bach's relations were cordial enough, though the rector was a slipshod disciplinarian. Matters remained pleasant enough under Johann Gesner, but presently the latter left St. Thomas to assume a more profitable post at G?ttingen. His successor, Johann August Ernesti, quickly proceeded to stroke Bach's fur the wrong way by declaring that altogether too much attention was given to the study of music. "So you want to be a pot-house fiddler," he used to say to youths he found practising the violin. It was only a question of time when the surly new rector and the combustible Bach would come into collision.

What has been called the "battle of the Prefects" was long drawn out and bitter. The details need not detain us. Trouble was intensified by the appointment to a responsible position of a person named Krause, whom Bach had angrily described as "ein liederlicher Hund" . Things went from bad to worse. Bach accused the rector of usurping his functions. He wrote long, circumstantial letters setting forth his case to "their Magnificences," the Burgomaster, the civic council, and other outstanding authorities. "Their Magnificences" replied with legalistic hair-splittings and things grew so violent that Bach in one case undertook to drive Krause from the choir loft. The lengthy series of undignified squabbles was finally brought to an end by Augustus the Strong, King of Poland, Saxony, "etc., etc., etc." . We are not certain that the composer obtained the satisfaction he demanded, but everyone seems to have tired of the interminable quarrel and was relieved to see it peter out.

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet