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 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 focalised. 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 signalised 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 sympathised 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 by the king, known under the name of "A Musical
Offering." But he could not be persuaded to remain long from his
Leipsic home.
Shortly before Bach's death, he was seized with blindness, brought on
by incessant labour; and his end was supposed to have been hastened by
the severe inflammation consequent on two operations performed by an
English oculist. He departed this life July 30, 1750, and was buried
in St. John's churchyard, universally mourned by musical Germany,
though his real title to exceptional greatness was not to be read
until the next generation.