articular feeling, emotion, or sensation discovered and exploited by
the man of this time that men of other ages did not experience! But
before Bach I knew no one who ranged the keyboard of the emotions so
freely, so profoundly, so poignantly.

Touching on his technics, I may say that they require of the pianist's
fingers individualization and, consequently, a flexibility that is
spiritual as well as material. The diligent daily study of Bach will
form your style, your technics, better than all machines and finger
exercises. But play him as if he were human, a contemporary and not a
historical reminiscence. Yes, you may indulge in _rubato_. I would
rather hear it in Bach than in Chopin. Play Bach as if he still
composed--he does--and drop the nonsense about traditional methods of
performance. He would alter all that if he were alive today.

I know but one Bach anecdote, and that I have never seen in print. The
story was related to me by a pupil of Reinecke, and Reinecke got it from
Mendelssohn. Bach, so it appears, was in the habit of practising every
day in the Thomas-Kirche at Leipsic, and one day several of his sons,
headed by the naughty Friedmann, resolved to play a joke on their good
old father. Accordingly, they repaired to the choir loft, got the
bellows-blower away, and started in to give the Master a surprise. They
tied the handle of the bellows to the door of the choir, and with a long
rope fastened to the outside knob they pulled the door open and shut,
and of course the wind ran low. Johann Sebastian--who looked more like
E. M. Bowman than E. M. B. himself--suddenly found himself clawing
ivory. He rose and went softly to the rear. Discovering no blower, he
investigated, and began to gently haul in the line. When it was all in
several boys were at the end of it. Did he whip them? Not he. He locked
the door, tied them to the bellows and sternly bade them blow. They did.
Then the archangel of music went back to his bench and composed the
famous _Wedge_ fugue. How true all this is I know not, but anyhow it is
quaint enough. Let me end this exhortation by quoting some words of
Eduard Remenyi from his fantastic essay on Bach: "If you want music for
your own and music's sake--look up to Bach. If you want music which is
as absolutely full of meaning as an egg is full of meat--look up to
Bach."

Look up to Bach. Sound advice. Profit by it.

XI

SCHUMANN: A VANISHING STAR

The missing meteors of Novemb