n, after that emotion. I like
movement, rhythmical variety, polyphonic life. It is only in a few
latter-day composers that I find music that moves, that sings, that
thrills.

How did I discover that Bach was in the very heart of Wagner? In the
simplest manner. I began playing the _E-flat minor Prelude_ in the first
book of the _Well-tempered Clavichord_, and lo! I was transported to the
opening of _Goetterdaemmerung_.

Pretty smart boy that Richard Geyer to know his Bach so well! Yet the
resemblance is far fetched, is only a hazy similarity. The triad of
E-flat minor is common property, but something told me Wagner had been
browsing on Bach; on this particular prelude had, in fact, got a
starting point for the Norn music. The more I studied Wagner, the more I
found Bach, and the more Bach, the better the music. Chopin knew his
Bach backwards, hence the surprisingly fresh, vital quality of his
music, despite its pessimistic coloring. Schumann loved Bach and built
his best music on him, Mendelssohn re-discovered him, whilst Beethoven
played the _Well-tempered Clavichord_ every day of his life.

All _my_ pupils study the _Inventions_ before they play Clementi or
Beethoven, and what well-springs of delight are these two- and
three-part pieces! Take my word for it, if you have mastered them you
may walk boldly up to any of the great, insolent forty-eight
sweet-tempered preludes and fugues and overcome them. Study Bach say I
to every one, but study him sensibly. Tausig, the greatest pianist the
world has yet heard, edited about twenty preludes and fugues from the
Clavichord. These he gave his pupils _after_ they had played Chopin's
opus 10. Strange idea, isn't it? Before that they played the
_Inventions_, the symphonies, the _French_ and _English
Suites_--Klindworth's edition of the latter is excellent--and the
_Partitas_. Then, I should say, the Italian concert and that excellent
three-voiced fugue in A minor, so seldom heard in concert. It is
pleasing rather than deep in feeling, but how effective, how brilliant!
Don't forget the toccatas, fantasias, and capriccios. Such works as _The
Art of Fugue_ and others of the same class show us Father Bach in his
working clothes, earnest if not exactly inspired.

But in his moments of inspiration what a genius! What a singularly happy
welding of manner and matter! The _Chromatic Fantasia_ is to me greater
than any of the organ works, with the possible exception of the _G
minor F