Sebastian Bach

The name of Bach would have been famous in musical history without Johann Sebastian, but with his name added it becomes the most illustrious that the world has ever known. Bach had many pupils, but none surpassed his own sons, six of whom became great musicians, but with these the musical faculty died.

--Sir Hubert Parry

The art of today is imitative. Once men had convictions, but we have only opinions, and these are usually borrowed. The artificiality of life, and the rush and the worry afford no time for great desires to possess our souls.

We average well, but no Colossus looms large above the crowd and goes his solitary way unmindful of the throng: we look alike, act alike, think alike, and in order that the likeness may be complete, we dress alike.

To wear a hat of your own selection or voice thoughts of your own thinking is to invite unseemly mirth, and finally scorn and contumely.

The great creators were solitary, rural in their instincts, ignorant and heedless of what the world was saying and doing. They were men of deep convictions and enthusiasms, unmindful of laughter or ridicule, caring little even for approbation.

No "boom town" can possibly produce a genius: it only fosters sundry small Napoleons of finance. America is a nation of boomers--financial, political, social and theological.

We have sarcasm and cynicism, and we possess much that is clever, all produced by snatches of success, well mixed with disappointment and the bitterness which much contact with the world is sure to evolve. Our age that goes everywhere, knows everybody's business, and religiously reads only "the last edition," produces a Bill Nye, a Sam Jones, a Teddy Roosevelt, a DeWitt Talmage, a Hopkinson Smith, a Sam Walter Foss, a Victor Herbert; but it is not at all likely to produce a Praxiteles, a Michelangelo, a Rembrandt, an Immanuel Kant or a Johann Sebastian Bach.

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What Shakespeare is to literature, Michelangelo to sculpture, and Rembrandt to portrait-painting, Johann Sebastian Bach is to organ-music. He was the greatest organist of his time, and his equal has not yet been produced, though nearly three hundred years have passed since his death. "The organ reached perfection at the hands of Bach," says Haweis. As a composer for the organ, Bach stands secure--his position is at the head, and is absolutely unassailable.

In point of temperament and disposition Bach bears a closer resemblance to Michelangelo than to either of the others whose names I have mentioned. He was stern, strong, self-contained, and so deeply religious that he was not only a Christian but a good deal of a pagan as well. A homely man was Bach--quiet, simple in tastes and blunt in speech.

The earnest way in which this plain, unpretentious man focused upon his life-work and raised organ-music to the highest point of art must