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He was always very religious; his greatest works voice the noblest sentiments of exaltation. Bach's modesty and retiring disposition is illustrated by the following little incident. Carl Philip Emmanuel, his third son, was cembalist in the royal orchestra of Frederick the Great. His Majesty was very fond of music and played the flute to some extent.
And nothing is more irritating than to see an audience cold before a beautiful work. It is far better to keep to one's self treasures which will be unappreciated. One thing will always stand in the way of the vogue of Sebastian Bach's vocal works the difficulty of translation. When they are rendered into French, they lose all their charm and oftentimes become ridiculous.
I remember perfectly well though I knew nothing about music then, and, I may add, know nothing whatever about it now the intense satisfaction and delight which I had in listening, by the hour together, to Bach's fugues.
With him the voice rises or falls as a man's voice does when he experiences keen sensation; but the wavy line of the melody as it goes along and up and down the stave is treated conventionally and changed into a lovely pattern for the ear's delight; and as there can be no regular pattern without regular rhythm, rhythm is a vital element in Bach's music. So with Purcell, with a difference.
Then came Bach's cantatas; and their performance, given by M. Bordes in the Salle d'Harcourt, attracted large audiences and started the cult of this master in Paris. Then they sang Rameau and Gluck; and, finally, all ancient music, sacred or secular, was approved.
I worked and thought at home, studying hard on Sebastian Bach's Wohltemperirte Klavier. All of the pupils, however, were not so industrious. One day, when they had all failed and Benoist, as a result, had nothing to do, he put me at the organ. This time no one laughed and I at once became a regular pupil. At the end of the year I won the second prize.
The astonishing wonder is that none of the unhappy wretches suffered sun-stroke or went crazy while bound up in this manner, because the sun's heat intensely aggravated the agonies of thirst. But the sun-bath consummated Major Bach's greatest ambition. It caused the victim to writhe and twist more frantically, which in turn forced him to shriek and howl more vociferously and continuously.
One day Trenck had cast himself fully clothed upon his bed, in order to obtain a change of position in his cramped place of confinement. Lieutenant Bach was on duty as his guard. The young baron had retained in prison the proud and haughty demeanor which had formerly brought upon him so much censure at court. Lieutenant Bach's countenance also bore the imprint of incarnate pride.
His list of compositions for orchestra is also very large, and includes such popular pieces as the "Saltarello," "Funeral March of a Marionette," and the Meditation, based on Bach's First Prelude, which is accompanied by a soprano solo. He was elected a member of the Institut de France in 1866.
Yet he was not without that keen spirit of rivalry, that love of combat, which seems to be native to spirits of the more robust and energetic type. In the days of the old Minnesingers, tournaments of music shared the public taste with tournaments of arms. In Bach's time these public competitions were still in vogue.
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