musicians, to take lessons from them, and hear his favourite music. At the present time there was a brilliant circle at Weimar, and in this the prominent figures were the town organist Walther, known for his Musical Dictionary, and Bach. A famous story connects the two. Bach, we are told, had boasted of his ability to play anything at first sight, and Walther determined to baffle him. He asked him to breakfast, and, knowing Bach’s habits, laid among the music upon the clavichord a piece of simple and innocent appearance. While the meal was making ready the host leaves the room. Bach comes upon the piece, tries it and halts, begins again, and breaks down. Then he leaves the instrument in exasperation, shouting to his friend, No, one cannot play everything off: the thing is impossible.

Of the routine of Bach’s life at Weimar we can only gather the outline. He held the double post of organist and musicus in the court. The latter function involved in Bach’s case either taking a fiddle in the orchestra—a band of sixteen performers all attired in a grotesque uniform of Hungarian heyducks—or accompanying from the basso continuo on the harpsichord (cembalo). When after some years he was appointed concertmeister he of course took the place of first violin. He was now required to supply a certain number of church compositions; and the age of the capellmeister often added to his duties the task of conducting. The series of church cantatas written at this time—among which the magnificent one, Ich hatte viel Bekümmerniss, stands preëminent—are sufficient evidence of the energy with which he applied himself to his additional duties. If we ask how he lived in his household—and no man lived more than Bach in the life of his home—we are answered by a blank. We have not even a clue as to the manner of woman his wife was. Six of her seven children were born at Weimar, and two, twins, died there in 1713. The names of the sponsors to them show the varied popularity Bach had gained among the different ranks with whom he was thrown. Pages in waiting and a Muehlhausen clergyman appear beside Bach’s kinsfolk or his professional comrades—Telemann is among them—or the humbler associates of his early life at Ohrdruf or Arnstadt. His continually increased salary—it never indeed exceeded some thirty pounds, added to the usual perquisites paid in kind—is one of the many signs of his being valued. More significant is the request he was in as an organist throughout Saxony, and even in a wider circle. He was always being invited to try or inspect organs, to play at different courts and attend musical celebrations, till it came to be a yearly practice with him to break the busy monotony of his Weimar life by a holiday spent in answer to these various calls. Some accounts that remain of these journeys are the more interesting since they are the only record, outside his compositions, of these years.

In 1713 he was at Halle, and so much attracted by the quality of a new organ then building as to offer himself for the organistship. The consistory eagerly accepted him, and Bach composed a cantata on the spot, and brought it out as a testimonial. The documents of office quickly followed him back to Weimar for signature. But Bach was dissatisfied with the terms, possibly the Duke had persuaded him to stay at the castle; in any case, he wrote a courteous letter asking for some changes in the conditions of the post. The church authorities were indignant, refused to alter a word in the agreement, and hinted, quite falsely, that Bach had merely played with them in order to get an increase of pay at Weimar. Bach wound up the correspondence by a vigorous and dignified defence of his action; and it is pleasant to know that peace was tacitly re-established by Bach’s accepting a flattering invitation to play upon that same organ on its completion in 1716.

Another autumn journey of Bach took him to Cassel (1714), where he played a pedal solo on the organ, a feat of miraculous agility, which few, one relates, could equal with their hands. The hereditary prince, who was present, took a precious ring from his finger and expressed by the oriental gift his admiration of the performance.12 Other years Bach went to Leipzig, perhaps to Meiningen, and his excursions from Weimar end with the celebrated visit to Dresden. Just before this, in 1716, Mattheson, one of the most influential musical critics of his day, had asked for his biography, and wrote of him as the renowned organist; in the following year his mere name vanquished a redoubtable harpsichord-player, Marchand, who had never before been confronted by an equal. The Frenchman was so popular at the Dresden court that some friends of Bach in the orchestra there seem to have induced the German master to stand forward in defence of his national music. It is certain that a challenge was sent to Marchand, and that a large company awaited the contest of the pianists in the house of one of the royal ministers. Bach was there, but not Marchand. After long expectation, a messenger at last was sent to his lodging, only to bring back the news that he had left Dresden by express post that morning. No defeat could be more decisive, especially when we remember that Bach’s fame had hitherto rested upon his consummate powers as an organist. It may be added that he was so far from being prejudiced by his personal relations with Marchand that he always valued the gracefulness and exuberant variety of the French composer; and Adlung, who tells the story, says that he only once was able to appreciate his music, and that was when Bach played it to him. Success never affected Bach’s judgment: his generosity was always without vanity.

In leaving Weimar in 1717, Bach ceased for ever to be by calling an organist, though the instrument remained always his chief delight, and once at least he was tempted again to resume it as a profession. As a performer he seems to have grown every year in mature strength. In 1720, when he visited Hamburg, his performance at S. Katharine’s Church was attended by the aged organist, Reincke, and an assemblage of many of the principal men of the city. How he impressed Reincke has already been related, and no doubt it was partly the enthusiasm with which he was greeted that made him view Hamburg as a congenial home for him. An organistship was vacant at one of the other churches there, and Bach directly offered himself for the place. He had to leave before the trial of the candidates took place, but was so eager for the appointment that he wrote from Coethen to repeat his willingness to accept it. The post as it turned out, was given to the man who paid the highest premium, and Mattheson was not the only man in Hamburg who expressed indignation at the well-to-do tradesman’s son, who could prelude better with dollars than with fingers, being preferred to the great virtuoso whose mastery excited the admiration of every one. Neumeister, who was chief preacher of the church, took occasion to remark in a sermon just after, that he was sure enough that if one of the angels who sang at Bethlehem were to come down from heaven and play divinely and desire to be organist of S. James’s, nevertheless if he had no money he might as well fly back again straight.

There are constant and innumerable proofs, besides the few we have noticed, of the impression Bach made as an organist: not the least striking among these is a note by Gesner, with whom Bach was closely connected in later years at Leipzig, illustrating a musical passage in