Quintilian. After describing in vigorous rhetoric the almost superhuman powers of his friend, he adds, Though none can surpass me in my support of the ancients I opine that many Orpheuses and twenty Arions are comprehended singly in my Bach and any, if such there be, like to him.13 The characteristics which gave Bach his quite unique position as an organist are partly those of an extraordinary originality in the application of the mechanical resources of the instrument. How minutely he knew its structure is shewn by the frequency with which he was chosen, almost from boyhood, to pronounce upon the necessity and the detail of repair in organs, and to judge the success of the result. His arrangement of stops before he played was so singular as to make connoisseurs absolutely incredulous of the possibility of so producing harmonious combinations, but when he began the doubt was changed into amazement at the swiftness, the precision, and the power of his movements both of feet and hands. If, however, a by-stander expressed astonishment, he would silence him with quiet modesty. There is nothing to wonder at in that, he would say: you have only to touch the right key at the right time and the instrument plays itself. As a rule he gave the pedal a real part of its own, often of incredible difficulty; and by this means he left his hands free to develop the theme in the broadest manner, and to apply the stops, each as it appeared most appropriate and characteristic, with wonderful insight and ingenuity. He liked also to use the pedal to announce a tenor part whenever (as was the case at Weimar) he could find a four-foot register. Of difficulties he seemed unconscious, and this was equally true when he was elaborating a simple bass or a chorale, or improvising a fugue, as when he was playing from a written score. Indeed Forkel, who knew Bach’s sons, relates that “his unpremeditated voluntaries on the organ, where nothing was lost in writing down, are said to have been still more devout, solemn, dignified, and sublime,” than those which stand in record of his supreme command of the instrument. Forkel instances Bach and the son to whom his gifts were transmitted in a special measure, Wilhelm Friedemann, as solitary examples of consummate skill equally on clavichord and organ. “Both,” he says, “were elegant performers on the clavichord; but when they came to the organ, no trace of the harpsichord-player was to be perceived. Melody, harmony, motion, &c., all was different, that is, all was adapted to the nature of the instrument and its destination. When I heard Will. Friedemann on the harpsichord, all was delicate, elegant, and agreeable. When I heard him on the organ, I was seized with reverential awe. There, all was pretty; here, all was grand and solemn. The same was the case with John Sebastian, but both in a much higher degree of perfection. William Friedemann was here too but a child to his father, and most frankly concurred in this opinion.”14

I have already taken occasion to trace the studies by which Bach prepared himself to become the greatest organ composer as well as the greatest organist of all time. At the present break in his life it will be convenient to give a summary account of his total production in this department,15 though it must be little more than an enumeration of the works that survive; since organ music least of all lends itself to any but a scientific analysis, such as would be altogether out of place here. My references are to the compositions contained in the Fifth Series of Peters’ collected edition of Bach’s instrumental works.16

Bach’s organ works divide themselves into three great branches, the first of which is connected most closely with his religious office. It is well known that the German chorale since the days of Luther has always held its regular place in the service of the church. This form of melody, however much more beautiful, is essentially the same with what we in England used to sing as psalm tunes, at a time when one metrical version of the Psalter was employed and the modern hymn with its new words and heterogeneous structure had not yet made its voice heard. In Germany words and music were alike familiar to every one; they formed in fact the nucleus of Lutheran worship both in church and at home. We shall see hereafter how Bach collected two hundred and forty chorales for use in his household; and there are hardly any of his church cantatas which do not contain at least one. In church, whenever a chorale was announced, every one present could be trusted to sustain the melody, and it was allowed to the organist to vary the harmonies almost to any extent he pleased without fear of confusing the people.17 In this way it came to be a recognised part of the organist’s function, at least in Middle Germany, to adorn the simple grandeur or pathos of the chorale by means of preludes, interludes, and variations, generally improvised at the moment; and this treatment of chorales was so popular, through the influence of Johann Christoph and Michael Bach, Pachelbel, and a number of leading organists just before Sebastian Bach’s time, that it became extended so as to form the basis of independent instrumental compositions, for use at other intervals in the church service. It was a custom of which Bach was peculiarly fond, giving him, as it did, a firm groundwork, with high associations, upon which his fancy could build with the utmost freedom. And though he wrote down but a minute part of what he composed, we possess in print no less than a hundred and thirty elaborations of chorales (parts 5-7), besides twenty-eight of which the genuineness is disputed (suppl. 9-36). They range from short and slight preludes to works of the most intricate brilliancy, abounding in all the science as well as in all the melodious art of which Bach was master. Those to whom the organ chorales are inaccessible may learn their spirit by unravelling the harmonies he has used in the fivefold setting of one chorale in the S. Matthew Passion or from other no less remarkable instances in that according to S. John, to quote only from works which are best known in England. The inexhaustible invention which is pressed into the brief compass of these verses, is in the organ-chorales distributed over a long composition; but the extension is never for the purpose of display, and the fundamental motive insistently maintains itself throughout.

In opposition to these the second branch of Bach’s organ works stands remote from the church. It was not choice only but also the determined bent of musical taste at Weimar that directed his study again to the instrumental music of Italy; and the influence for the present lay strongly upon his organ music as well as upon the rest of his compositions. Three of Vivaldi’s violin-concertos with a