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In 1703 he became violinist in the Saxe-Weimar orchestra, and in the same year, aged eighteen, he was appointed organist at the new church at Arnstadt, where other members of his family had held similar positions.
When he returned to Arnstadt, the spirit of Buxtehude was upon him. Henceforth the quiet people of Arnstadt knew no rest. Variations, subtle, beautiful, a refined and fuller contrapuntal treatment, mingled with the chorale. The conservatism of Arnstadt received a severe shock a dreadful experience, doubtless, to the quiet German town.
The Dancing Mania of the year 1374 was, in fact, no new disease, but a phenomenon well known in the Middle Ages, of which many wondrous stories were traditionally current among the people. In the year 1237 upwards of a hundred children were said to have been suddenly seized with this disease at Erfurt, and to have proceeded dancing and jumping along the road to Arnstadt.
Blasius at Mülhausen, near Eisenach, he accepted at once. He was told he might name his own salary. If Bach had been avaricious he could have asked a large sum, but he modestly named the small amount he had received at Arnstadt with the addition of certain articles of food which should be delivered at his door, gratis.
Lübeck was fifty miles from Arnstadt, but the courageous boy made the entire journey on foot. He enjoyed the music at Lübeck so much that he quite forgot his promise to return in one month until he had stayed three. His pockets being quite empty, he thought for the first time of returning to his post.
The Swedish army now crossed the Thuringian forest in two columns, by Gotha and Arnstadt, and having delivered, in its march, the county of Henneberg from the Imperialists, formed a junction on the third day near Koenigshofen, on the frontiers of Franconia.
His mother died when he was nine years old, but with Bachic haste his father remarried; the new wife was a widow and seemed to be in the habit of it, for she buried J. Ambrosius two months after the wedding. The boy Sebastian was put in charge of an uncle. At eighteen he was organist at Arnstadt at twenty-one he went on foot fifty miles to Lübeck to hear the great Buxtehude play the organ.
The Swedish army now crossed the Thuringian forest in two columns, by Gotha and Arnstadt, and having delivered, in its march, the county of Henneberg from the Imperialists, formed a junction on the third day near Koenigshofen, on the frontiers of Franconia.
The dancing mania of the year 1374 was, in fact, no new disease, but a phenomenon well known in the Middle Ages, of which many wondrous stories were traditionally current among the people. In the year 1237, upward of a hundred children were said to have been suddenly seized with this disease at Erfurt, and to have proceeded dancing and jumping along the road to Arnstadt.
A few years later Schink published another and very similar volume with the title, “Launen, Phantasieen und Schilderungen aus dem Tagebuche eines reisenden Engländers,” Arnstadt und Rudolstadt, 1801, pp. 323. It has not been possible to find an English original, but the translator makes claim upon one, though confessing alterations to suit his German readers, and there is sufficient internal evidence to point to a real English source. The traveler is a haggard, pale-faced English clergyman, who, with his French servant, La Pierre, has wandered in France and Italy and is now bound for Margate. Here again we have sentimental episodes, one with a fair lady in a post-chaise, another with a monk in a Trappist cloister, apostrophes to the imagination, the sea, and nature, a
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