tion: Fig. 51.

JOHN SEBASTIAN BACH.]

It is the remarkable glory of Bach to have rendered his compositions
indispensable to thorough mastery in three different provinces of
musical effort. The modern art of violin playing rests upon two works,
the six sonatas of Bach for violin solo, and the Caprices of Paganini.
The former contain everything that belongs to the classical, the
latter everything that belongs to the sensational. In organ playing
the foundation is Bach, and Bach alone. Nine-tenths of organ playing
is comprised in the Bach works. Upon the piano his influence has been
little less. While it is true that at least four works are necessary
for making a pianist of the modern school, viz., the "Well Tempered
Clavier," of Bach; the "_Gradus ad Parnassum_," of Clementi; the
"Studies," of Chopin, and the Rhapsodies, of Liszt, the works of Bach
form, on the whole, considerably more than one-third of this
preparation. Nor has the influence of Bach been confined to the
province of technical instruction alone. 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. His three wives in succession and his twenty-one children
were the domestic incidents which bound him to his home. Here he
trained his choir, taught his pupils, composed those master works
which modern musicians try in vain to equal, and the even tenor of his
life was broken in upon by very few incidents of a sensational kind.
We do not understand that Bach was a virtuoso upon the violin,
although no other master has required more of that greatest of musical
instruments. Upon the piano and organ the case is different. Bach's
piano was the clavier, upon which he was the greatest virtuoso of his
time. His touch was clear and liquid, his technique unbounded, and his
musical fantasy absolutely without limit. Hence in improvisation or in
the performance of previously arranged numbers he never failed to
delight his audience. It was the same upon the organ. The art of
obligato pedal playing he bro