And with the resumption of church work came difficulties of many kinds. The authorities never, from first to last, recognised that they had one of the world’s greatest geniuses to deal with; in fact they did not require a genius; all they asked was that their cantor should be able to carry out the church music in a respectable conventional manner. Bach, with his lofty ideals, was so often at variance with them that the history of his life at Leipsic seems at first sight to consist of one long turmoil and trouble.
Yet there are bright spots in the picture; and nothing was able to disturb the equanimity with which, in spite of external rubs, he for twenty-seven years continued to pour forth his marvellous Passion music and cantatas.
It was very important from Bach’s point of view that he should be in a position to control and regulate all the church music that was performed at Leipsic; and for this purpose he was obliged to take steps to obtain control of the students’ chorus, which now sang in the University Church. The organist there was Görner, a conceited and not very competent musician, who had been in the habit of directing the music after Kuhnau’s death.
Görner persuaded the authorities that the cantor of St Thomas could not possibly serve St Paul’s[42] as well as St Thomas and St Nicholas; and he therefore continued in his post as musical director to the University.
The music for the University Festivals had, however, been from time immemorial conducted by the cantor; and Bach seems to have gained his way in the matter. The cantor had a special payment for these services; but Görner had appropriated part of it. Bach tolerated this for two years, and then addressed a letter to the King of Saxony explaining that he, by right of office, conducted the music, but was only paid half the official salary. The letter was dated September 14, 1725, and on the 17th the Ministry of Dresden wrote to the University requiring them to restore the salary to the petitioner, or to show their reasons for not doing so.
The University wrote justifying themselves, whereupon Bach, suspecting that they had not properly stated the case, petitioned the King to allow him to see a copy of their justification. He wrote a refutation of this, and the business dragged on till May 23, 1726, when a document, which seems to have been in Bach’s favour, was presented to the University, and the matter appears to have ended. He and Görner were both employed to compose the music for extra festivals, but Bach the more often.[43]
Though Bach put all his energy into the music at the two chief churches, he took care not to be merely a cantor. He had formerly been, and still held honorary rank as capellmeister; and having a very proper pride in himself and his profession, he now always called himself Director Musices and Cantor. Considerable importance is attached in Germany to such titles as Professor, Doctor, Capellmeister, Musicdirector, etc., which have a recognised order of precedence; and it is significant of the conditions that prevailed between Bach and his church authorities that the latter nearly always persisted in giving him the lower title of cantor.
The first performance of the Matthew Passion music took place in Holy Week of 1729. In his efforts to improve the choir, he had asked the Council to allow nine of the scholarships to be allotted to boys with voices: and he hoped that the magnificent Passion music he had just composed and performed would show them the importance of providing better material; but all was in vain. They took no notice of his request, and showed a complete ignorance of the value of their cantor’s work.
About this time he became conductor of the Musical Union, which had been founded by Telemann, but even here troubles arose. The Union was expected to strengthen the choir at St Thomas’ Church. No money, however, being available to pay the students who took part, they naturally fell off. Yet when the church music deteriorated the Council were the first to blame the cantor.
They now began to observe, or imagine they observed, neglect of duty on his part, and addressed various warnings and admonitions to him. He became defiant and refused to explain, whereupon they said that he was incorrigible. The chief trouble arose over the teaching of Latin. We have already seen that the Council had originally offered to pay a deputy to do this part of the cantor’s work, but that Bach had undertaken the whole. Finding it too irksome, however, he had himself paid Pezold to act as his deputy, but the Council, considering Pezold incompetent, wished to employ one Krügel. Instead of settling the matter by insisting on Bach’s doing the work himself, they showed their petulance by bringing charges against him of not having behaved with propriety, of sending a member of the choir into the country without giving notice to the authorities, of going a journey without permission, of neglecting his singing classes, and, in short, of doing nothing properly. At first it was proposed to put him down to one of the lowest classes, next to refuse payment of his salary, and at the same time to admonish him. His doing “nothing” consisted in composing and conducting an enormous number of church cantatas, including the Matthew Passion.
But the Council merely required hack work of him, and no doubt as they paid him to do hack work (which could probably have been equally well done by an inferior musician) they had a right to demand it.
He had, it is true, given over half the singing practices to the choir prefect, but this was only in accordance with long established custom, and no one had previously complained. Moreover the Council themselves had refused Bach’s request for a more efficient choir, and it was only natural that he should not take much interest in the drudgery of teaching an unruly rabble, when he was occupied with work which was to prove so much more important to the world at large.
In the constant state of conflict between masters, boys, Council and Consistory, Bach chose to go his own way. With the Rector, Ernesti, who troubled himself little about the musical arrangements, he had been on excellent terms.
Several stories are told of the petty tyranny sought to be exercised over the great man by an ignorant and fussy vestry. Thus, Bach insisted, for sufficient reasons, on his right of choosing the hymns and ignoring those selected by Gaudlitz, the subdean of St Nicholas. Gaudlitz reported him to the Consistory, who sent him a notice that he must have the hymns sung which were chosen by the preacher. He therefore appealed to the Council, showing that it had been the custom for the cantor to select the hymns. This caused a squabble between the Council and the Consistory, but it is not known how the matter ended.
Another instance occurred over the announcement of the performance of a Passion music, for which the Council suddenly discovered that their permission was necessary. The work had been performed several times previously, and the irritating restriction was entirely uncalled for. Bach simply reported to the superintendent of the Consistory that the Council had forbidden the performance; and thus produced another quarrel between the two bodies which was to his advantage.
Bach had not only to organise and train his choir, but to teach some of his pupils to play on instruments, since the town musicians were only seven in number, four wind and three string players. Money was not forthcoming to pay professional musicians, though there were plenty in Leipsic. Bach therefore got hold of the more gifted of his pupils and taught them instruments, and many of them became accomplished artists.
The regulations ordered that two hours of singing practice should be held on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays, from 12 to 2; but as this arrangement interfered with the cantor’s dinner hour, his colleagues petitioned that it should be changed. The Council refused to alter the regulation, and in consequence Bach soon began to absent himself.
As the Council could not withhold his salary, they not only confiscated certain fees collected for various outside duties but also contrived that he should obtain no benefit from a legacy left to be divided among the teachers and poorer scholars of the School. Bach was silent for a time, but, when at last forced to speak, he wrote a long letter, showing how absolutely inadequate were the means placed at his disposal: incompetent town players, with mere boys to complete the bands; singers who, not having had time to be trained, were obliged to be admitted to the vacant places before they had any knowledge of music; choirs with only two voices to a part, one of whom would often be, or pretend to be, ill.
Bach’s letter irritated the Council, who, however, let the matter drop after expressing their opinion on it.
The Council acted according to their lights. Though they would not give Bach the means he required for carrying out the music properly, they could understand when an organ required repairing, and voted sums of money from time to time for this purpose, and for the purchase of violins, violas, violoncellos for church use; and they allowed Bach to purchase Bodenschatz’s Florilegium Portense[44] for the use of the scholars. They did not actively hinder Bach’s development, but they had no conception of the greatness of the man they had to do with. They curtailed his income in a moment of anger, but soon afterwards reinstated it.
Bach became thoroughly hurt, and sought for a means of leaving Leipsic. The friend of his boyhood, Erdmann, now held a post at Dantzic, under the Emperor of Russia, and to him Bach applied, in an interesting letter which is still extant.[45] He describes his wish to leave Leipsic under four heads: (1) that the post was by no means so advantageous as he was led to expect; (2) that many of the fees had been stopped; (3) that the place is very dear to live in; (4) that the authorities were strange people, with small love of music, who vexed and persecuted and were jealous of him. Bach asked Erdmann to find him a post at Dantzic, but nothing came of it, for he remained at Leipsic. In spite of the high prices of necessities, he saved enough to leave behind him a well-furnished house, a sum of money and a collection of instruments and books. Like many other good organists he had his rubs with an unthinking vestry, but got over them.
The Rector, Ernesti, died in 1729, and in 1730 Bach’s Weimar friend, Gesner, was appointed: a member of the Council saying that he “hoped that they would fare better in this appointment than they had done in that of the cantor.”[46]
The new rector was in most respects the opposite of Ernesti. He was energetic; had the power of governing, with a special talent for the management of schoolboys. He was a brilliant scholar, and did much to revive the study of Greek as part of a mental and moral training rather than as a mere intellectual gymnastic.
The Council were delighted, and did everything for him. As he was in delicate health they not only had him carried to and from the school in a chair, but remitted his duty of inspecting the school once every three weeks. He smoothed over the disputes among the masters so that they were no longer at enmity among themselves; won the affection of his pupils by his new methods of instruction, his interest in their welfare, and the enforcement of discipline and morality.
The State, he said, had need of every kind of talent: and if he saw boys working at something useful, which was not actually school work, he would encourage them. He also revived the Latin prayers morning and evening, which had been replaced by prayers in the German language.
Between him and Bach there grew up a strong friendship. He helped the music in every way he could: himself applying to the Council for the books, etc., required by Bach.
Gesner did all he could to smooth away Bach’s troubles, and probably the latter was much happier than under the disorder which prevailed while J. H. Ernesti was rector. Moreover, after one more dispute, Bach and the Council at last learned to understand one another, and quarrelled no more.
Chapter VI
Home life at Leipsic—Personal details—Music in the family circle—Bach’s intolerance of incompetence—He throws his wig at Görner—His preference for the clavichord—Bach as an examiner—His sons and pupils—His general knowledge of musical matters—Visit from Hurlebusch—His able management of money—His books and instruments—The Dresden Opera—A new Rector, and further troubles—Bach complains to the Council.
Let us now turn for a moment from this account of troubles and see what the man was like in his own home. We have fairly full accounts from which to draw a picture. It was related in chapter i. how the various members of the Bach family clung together, meeting once every year at various towns. The same traits are found in the household. The pupils and sons all loved him. His character was amiable in the extreme, but at the same time such as to command respect from all. Of his hospitality, especially towards artists, we have special mention; no musician passed through Leipsic without visiting him. He never cared either himself to blame, or hear others find fault with, his fellow-musicians. Of the Marchand incident he would never willingly speak. He was modest in the extreme, and never seemed to know how much greater he was than all the musicians he was fond of praising.
In the midst of all his occupations he found time for music in the family circle, and in later years he used to prefer playing the viola, as he was then “in the midst of the harmony.” He would occasionally extemporise a trio or quartet on the harpsichord from a single part of some other composer’s music: if the composer happened to be present, however, he would first make sure that no possible injury would be done to his feelings.
Though kindly and generous in his criticisms of others, he would never tolerate superficiality and incompetence. He was therefore looked upon as an excellent examiner when a new organist was to be appointed to a church. He was quick-tempered, like most musicians in matters of music. It is related that on one occasion, when the organist of the Thomas Church, Görner, made a blunder, he pulled the wig off his own head, threw it at Görner, and, in a voice of thunder, cried: “You ought to be a shoemaker.”
His favourite instrument was the clavichord, on account of its power of expression: and he made his pupils chiefly practise on this. He learned to tune it and the harpsichord so quickly that it never took him more than a quarter of an hour. “And then,” says Forkel, “all the twenty-four keys were at his service: he did with them whatever he wished. He could connect the most distant keys as easily and naturally together as the nearest related, so that the listener thought he had only modulated through the next-related keys of a single scale. Of harshness in modulation he knew nothing: his chromatic changes were as soft and flowing as when he kept to the diatonic genus.”
Of his conscientiousness in examining organs and organists, Forkel ironically remarks, it was such that he gained few friends thereby. But when he found that an organ-builder had really done good work, and was out of pocket by so doing, he would use his influence to obtain further payment for the man, and in several cases succeeded.
If he happened to be away from home with his son Friedemann on a Sunday, he would make a point of attending the church service. He would criticise the organist; would tell his son what course the fugue ought to take (after hearing the subject), and would be delighted if the organist played to his satisfaction.
He did his best for his sons and pupils; in fact he treated the latter as sons. He sent his two eldest sons to the University of Leipsic, and used his influence to get appointments for them and their brothers. On the marriage of his daughter Elizabeth with his pupil Altnikol, he obtained an organistship for him at Naumburg without informing him beforehand.
Though he would have nothing to say to musical mathematics, his knowledge of everything to do with the art and practice of music was astounding. He was intimate with every detail of organ construction; he not only tuned but quilled his own harpsichords, and, as we shall see later, he invented new instruments. When he was shown the newly built opera house at Berlin, he observed the construction of the dining saloon, and said that if a person whispered in a corner, another person, standing in the corner diagonally opposite would hear every word, though no one else could do so. Experiment proved this to be a fact, though neither the architect nor anyone else had discovered it.
An amusing story is told of a visit paid to him at Leipsic by one Hurlebusch, a superficial and exceedingly conceited organist. Hurlebusch had the reputation of being angry if his listeners praised him instead of being so overcome with his playing that they could say nothing. His visit to Bach was made, not to hear but to be heard by, and to astonish, the great man. Bach took him to the harpsichord and listened attentively to a very feeble minuet with variations. Hurlebusch, taking Bach’s politeness as a recognition of his great talent, showed his gratitude by presenting Friedemann with a printed collection of very easy sonatas, recommending him to practise them diligently. His host, who could hardly repress a smile, thanked him politely, and took leave of him without in the least betraying his amusement.
When we think that the education of his large family, the hospitality to strangers, the journeys to try organs in various places, were all accomplished on an income of not much over £100 a year, we must admire the business-like capacity of the man, even though all due allowance is made for the difference in the purchasing power of money in those days.[48] But he managed to collect a by no means contemptible library of music and theological books; for in his simple piety he took great interest in religious questions. He also possessed a goodly number of keyboard instruments, several of which he gave to his sons on their obtaining appointments. Of stringed instruments he possessed enough for the performance of concerted music in the home circle. Some few of his personal belongings are preserved in the De Wit collection at Leipsic, not twenty yards from his residence. They consist of his clock, a few pictures and trifles belonging to his study table, and show at once that they come from a house of refinement and comfort.
In later life he heard and studied with great pleasure the works of Fux, Handel, Caldara, Keiser, Hasse, the two Grauns, Telemann, Zelenka, Bendax, and others. He knew most of these personally, and received Hasse and his wife Faustina as visitors at Leipsic. He often went to Dresden from Leipsic to hear the opera there, and used to say to his son “Friedemann, shall we not go and hear the pretty little Dresden songs again?” He was, says Forkel, far too deeply interested in his art and his home life to enrich himself by travelling and exhibiting his powers, though he might, especially at the time in which he lived, have easily become wealthy by so doing. He preferred the quiet homely life, and the unbroken work at his art, and was contented with his lot. The “glory of God,” not fame, was his object. But though his home life and his work were a source of so much happiness, the external horizon began to be stormy again.
Gesner resigned his post in 1734, and was succeeded by the Conrector, Joh. August Ernesti, a young and learned man, who, however, had no sympathy with music.[49] He was at first on excellent terms with the cantor, and was godfather to two of his sons; but, unfortunately, his want of appreciation of music led, within a short time, to trouble. Poor Bach seems at Leipsic to have been rarely free from disputes and worries. It is true he was proud, sensitive, and irritable, where the dignity of his art or his own personal rights were concerned; but that the fault was not all on his side is shown by his friendly relations with the Dukes of Weimar and Cöthen, and with all true artists. His reputation throughout Germany was by this time enormous; and in Leipsic itself he was considered by all except the Council and Consistory, as the “glory of the town.” It is true his compositions were heard with more respect than appreciation; but his fame as an organist, harpsichord player, and learned musician was recognised at Leipsic as elsewhere.
Bitter says that the fault lay as usual on both sides: but with this we cannot agree. Bach was a man nearly twice as old and experienced as the rector; and he was undoubtedly within his rights in insisting on choosing those responsible for carrying out the music. On this occasion Ernesti said he was “too proud to conduct a simple chorale.”
Chapter VII
Bach obtains a title from the Saxon Court—Plays the organ at Dresden—Attacked by Scheibe—Mizler founds a musical society—Further disputes—Bach’s successor chosen during his life-time—Visit to Frederick the Great—Bach’s sight fails—Final illness and death—Notice in the Leipsic Chronicle—The Council—Fate of the widow and daughter.
At the end of 1736 Bach went to Dresden where he was given the title of composer to the Saxon Court. He had applied for a title three years before, in the hope that it would place him in a better position with regard to the Council and Consistory; but it was in vain that he hoped for this. Neither his works nor his titles were able to impress them.
We learn from a Dresden newspaper of that date that he played from two to four in the afternoon of December 1st on the new organ in the church of St Paul, in the presence of the Russian Ambassador, von Kayserling, and many artists and other persons who heard him with very great admiration. In the same year, 1736, was published a book of hymns with their melodies by Schemelli, as a second volume to the book of Freylingshausen, to which Bach had in his early days contributed some of the music. On the 14th of May, 1737, there appeared a severe criticism of the way in which Bach wrote out all his manieren or grace notes, instead of leaving them for the performer to add at his discretion. The music thereby loses all its charm of harmony, says the critic, and the melody becomes incomprehensible. He wonders that a man should give himself so much trouble to act against reason. The writer was J. A. Scheibe, a young man who had failed in a competition for an organistship in which Bach was one of the examiners. The attack was answered by Birnbaum, a friend of Bach’s, in an interesting critical analysis of Bach’s works. This was answered by Scheibe, and the dispute went on for some time, other writers joining in it, until, as Bitter remarks, “all their powder was exhausted.” Bach, however, worked away without troubling himself about the matter.
In 1738 Mizler,[50] a pupil of Bach’s, founded a society for raising the status of music. Though it was successful, the great musician was not induced to join it until 1747, nine years later, when he handed into the society a triple canon in six voices on the chorale “Vom Himmel hoch, da komm’ ich her” as an “exercise.” It is to Mizler’s society that we owe the preservation of the portrait by Hausmann, now in the Thomas-schule, which is reproduced in this work: and still further have we to thank it for the account of his life, on which all later biographies are based.
A newspaper account of the visit to Frederick varies in several details from the above; but as the account of the son, who was with Bach, and perhaps an eye-witness, is the more trustworthy, we have not thought it necessary to trouble our reader with the second account.[53]
In the following year the enormous strain he had all his life put upon himself began to take its effect. Although of unusual strength, the work had worn out his body. First his eyes, which had been used day and night from the time he copied his brother’s book by moonlight, began to give way. The weakness gradually increased, and pains began to trouble him, yet he could not believe that he was near his end. Friends persuaded him to undergo an operation at the hands of an eminent English oculist, who was then in Leipsic. But the result of two operations was that he lost his sight altogether, and his health was so broken down by them that he never again left his house, while he was in constant pain till his death.
But he continued to work, even through his hours of greatest suffering. He set the chorale “When we are in the greatest need” in four parts, dictating them to Altnikol, his son-in-law. An extraordinary thing happened ten days before his death; one morning he was able to see well and to bear daylight; but a few hours after an apoplectic stroke, followed by a violent fever, completely overcame him. The attentions of the two best doctors in Leipsic could not avail against the illness, and at a quarter past eight o’clock in the evening of July 28, 1750, he breathed his last.
He was buried in St John’s churchyard, and, like that of Mozart, his grave was forgotten and lost. The churchyard was altered early in the nineteenth century, to allow of a new road being made, and his bones with those of many others were removed. Some remains lately discovered on the south side of the church are supposed with good reason to be those of Bach; but nothing is known for certain.
On his deathbed he had dictated to Altnikol the chorale “Vor deinen Thron tret ich hiemit.” The Leipsic Chronicle notices his death as follows: “July 28, at eight in the evening the famous and learned musician Herr Joh. Sebastian Bach, composer to His Majesty the King of Poland and Elector of Saxony; Capellmeister to the Courts of Cöthen and Weissenfels, Director and Cantor of the school of St Thomas, died.” Here follows a sketch of his life. “The Bach family came from Hungary, and all, as far as is known, have been musicians, from which perhaps arises the fact that even the letters b, a, c, h, form a melodic succession of notes.”[54]
That is all; not one word of regret. Nor do we find that much notice anywhere was taken of the death of the great man. A meeting of the Council took place shortly afterwards in which, while no expressions of sympathy were heard, the remark was made, “Herr Bach was a great musician no doubt, but we want a schoolmaster, not a capellmeister”; and they proceeded at once to arrange for the instalment of Harrer.
The sons of the first marriage took possession of all music that was of value, and sold the rest of the property. Görner, Bach’s former rival, undertook the duties of guardian to his younger children, and seems to have fulfilled the task with propriety and reverence. Bach’s widow was allowed her husband’s salary for six months, after which, receiving no help from her stepsons, she supported her younger children as well as she could, and becoming gradually poorer, died in an almshouse and was buried in a pauper’s grave. The youngest daughter, Regina, lived till 1809, and was supported by charity in her old age.
The family of Joh. Sebastian Bach gradually died out, and is now extinct, the last representative, a farmer of Eisenach, having died in 1846.
Bach’s music fell more and more into oblivion, and for a time his name seems to have been forgotten. In 1883 a room in the Thomas-schule was used as the English Church, and on the first floor a smaller room was used as the vestry. In the latter was a cupboard in which the communion plate and surplices were kept. The writer was told that this cupboard had formerly been full of music MSS., and that during the years of oblivion, whenever a Thomas-schule boy wanted a piece of paper to wrap up his “Butterbrod” he was allowed to tear out a sheet of paper from one of Bach’s manuscripts.[55]
Thus after his death were treated the family and works of the man “to whom music owes as much as religion does to its founder.”
Chapter VIII
The Cantatas and the Chorale
The prevailing characteristics in Bach’s compositions are intense earnestness of purpose, and, in his church music, a deep religious feeling, too deep for the ordinary everyday person to appreciate; an absolute absence of anything extraneous, such as concessions to singers and performers, or to the fashion of the day. When Bach writes florid or highly ornamental passages, they are not intended merely to exhibit the skill of the performer—their most important purpose is the exact expression of the words or emotions in hand. In this he and Beethoven were at one. Their difficulties of execution arise from the necessities of artistic expression, and such difficulties will be found in all the truest and best art, the art that lives beyond the fashion of the hour.
Bach, like Beethoven, suffered from the influx of a superficial kind of music which so easily captivates an unthinking public.
The proximity of the Dresden Court, with its Italian Opera Company and the opening of an opera-house in Leipsic itself, had much the same effect in attracting the Leipsic public away from the solidity and severity of the cantor (whom, all the same, they never ceased to respect) as the Rossini fever had in the beginning of the nineteenth century at Vienna with regard to Beethoven’s music. Bach, however, was in a worse position than Beethoven, for he lived and worked in a small circle of German towns, and only in the domain of church music. Teutonic to the backbone, he expressed his thoughts in his own way without swerving to the right or left. He never had occasion to try and please any but a North German public, and he mostly endeavoured only to please himself, and promote the “glory of God” in his own way, by adhering strictly to what his genius told him was right; and posterity has endorsed his views.
Beethoven, on the other hand, lived at a time when communications between countries were beginning to be more rapid and frequent. The French Revolution, and the constant wars brought about by the ambition of Napoleon, though temporarily hostile to the actual practice of art, had the effect of making whatever art was produced more cosmopolitan, and therefore more easily appreciated outside the artist’s country. Thus Beethoven’s music soon became known in England: and at the very time when the Rossini fever was causing him to be forgotten in Vienna (the town of his adoption) the English Philharmonic Society was negotiating with the great composer for the composition of a symphony, and these negotiations, as is well known, resulted in the production of the greatest symphony the world has yet seen.
It is customary to compare the two musical giants of the first half of the eighteenth century, Handel and Bach. Both were born in the same year, 1685, Handel being the senior by one month only: both were natives of small German towns, within a few miles of each other. Both received their earliest musical education in Germany, but with the difference that Bach, coming of a family of professional musicians, there was never any thought of bringing him up to any other profession, while Handel’s father, a surgeon, had all the prejudices of his time and profession against music, and did his best to stifle his son’s proclivities, till they became too strong for him to longer withstand.
After early childhood the ways of the composers were widely different. While Bach was painfully acquiring the technique of his art, by making long journeys on foot to hear and get instruction from eminent German organists, by practising assiduously day and night, and by copying all the best music he could lay hands on, Handel was playing the violin and harpsichord in the German opera conducted by Keiser at Hamburg.
At the age of twenty-one Handel went to Italy and remained there three years studying, and successfully composing operas for the Italians, who called him “Il caro Sassone,”—“the dear Saxon.” At twenty-one Bach was organist of a small and unimportant German town, still working hard to improve his technical powers in every direction. Everyone knows that Handel made his first reputation as a composer of Italian operas which are completely forgotten, and not till he was fifty-five years old did he begin that series of oratorios or sacred dramas by which he is immortalised. Bach, on the other hand, making the organ and the chorale his starting point, continued all his life to compose sacred music—“church music” as it was called, and never wrote for the theatre. Handel, domiciled in England, knew his public and knew them so well that he wrote works which not only became popular at once, but have never ceased to be popular. Bach either did not know, or did not care to please his public, and wrote far above their heads, so that for a time after his death he was forgotten entirely: only when Mozart, and afterwards Mendelssohn, became acquainted with the wonders of his genius did the public, almost against their will, begin to appreciate what a giant had been on the earth in those days.[56]