Sebastian Bach was not only the descendant of a widely-known musical
family, but was himself the direct ancestor of about sixty of the
best-known organists and church composers of Germany. As a master of
organ-playing, tradition tells us that no one has been his equal, with
the possible exception of Handel. He was also an able performer on
various stringed instruments, and his preference for the clavichord *
led him to write a method for that instrument, which has been the basis
of all succeeding methods for the piano. Bach's teachings and influence
may be said to have educated a large number of excellent composers and
organ and piano players, among whom were Emanuel Bach, Cramer, Hummel,
and Clementi; and on his school of theory and practice the best results
in music have been built.
* An old instrument which may be called the nearest
prototype of the modern square piano.
That Bach's glory as a composer should be largely posthumous is probably
the result of his exceeding simplicity and diffidence, for he always
shrank from popular applause; therefore we may believe his compositions
were not placed in the proper light during his life. It was through
Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven, that the musical world learned what a
master-spirit had wrought in the person of John Sebastian Bach. The
first time Mozart heard one of Bach's hymns, he said, "Thank God! I
learn something absolutely new." Bach's great compositions include his
"Preludes and Fugues" for the organ, works so difficult and elaborate
as perhaps to be above the average comprehension, but sources of delight
and instruction to all musicians; the "Matthäus Passion," for two
choruses and two orchestras, one of the masterpieces in music, which was
not produced till a century after it was written; the "Oratorio of the
Nativity of Jesus Christ;" and a very large number of masses, anthems,
cantatas, chorals, hymns, etc. These works, from their largeness and
dignity of form, as also from their depth of musical science, have been
to all succeeding composers an art-armory, whence they have derived
and furbished their brightest weapons. In the study of Bach's works the
student finds the deepest and highest reaches in the science of music;
for his mind seems to have grasped all its resources, and to have
embodied them with austere purity and precision of form. As Spenser
is called the poet for poets, and Laplace the mathematician for
mathematicians, so Bach is the musician for musicians. While Handel may
be considered a purely independent and parallel growth, it is not too
much to assert that without Sebastian Bach and his matchless studies
for the piano, organ, and orchestra, we could not have had the varied
musical development in sonata and symphony from such masters as
Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. Three of Sebastian Bach's sons became
distinguished musicians, and to Emanuel we owe the artistic development
of the sonata, which in its turn became the foundation of the symphony.