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William greeted him with old-fashioned courtesy, using the elaborate politeness of our great grandfathers, and after having presented the little painter to all the guests, the ladies curtsying deeply in the fashion of the Court of Versailles, and the men bowing low, Menzel was led by the emperor to a seat beside the empress, and the emperor's private band, whose uniforms were in perfect keeping with the costumes of the guests, played first of all several of Frederick the Great's compositions for the flute, and then a few of Bach's loveliest morceaux.
Bach's teachings and influence may be said to have educated a large number of excellent composers and organ and piano players, among whom were Emanuel Bach, Cramer, Hummel, and Clementi; and on his school of theory and practice the best results in music have been built. * An old instrument which may be called the nearest prototype of the modern square piano.
The mere musicianship is as consummate as Bach's, for, like Bach, Mozart possessed that facility which is fatal to many men, but combined with it a high sincerity, a greedy thirst for the beautiful, and an emotional force that prevented it being fatal to him. For delicacy, subtlety, due brilliancy, and strength, the orchestral colouring cannot be matched.
She stands free before him to serve his will his will purified by conception and incessant effort and he will lead her in her new-found freedom and place her in the path of progress. Bach's compositions at this time include the early part of one of the greatest of his works, the Wohltemperirte Clavier.
And it is only in these later pieces that he achieved the perfection of form, particularly of the sonata form, of which the Ninth Sonata is the magistral example, and which makes his craft comparable to Bach's in its mastery of a medium, and enables one to mention the "Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue" and the Ninth Sonata justly in a single breath.
He also could play the piano with force and finish, read well at sight and knew nearly the whole of Bach's "Well Tempered Clavichord." This was a pretty good record for a boy of 11, who, if he went on as he had begun, it was said, would become a second Mozart. Neefe was ordered to proceed with the Elector and Court to Münster, which meant to leave his organ in Bonn for a time.
As a contrapuntal feat it remains, with some of Bach's organ fugues and Bach's and Handel's choruses, a veritable miracle of musical art not of ingenuity alone, for each separate fibre in the musical web has character and combines with the other fibres to produce an ensemble of overwhelming strength and beauty.
We know the wonderful Bach Preludes, which grew out of a free improvisation to the collection of dance forms called a suite, and the preludes which precede his fugues. In the latter Bach sometimes exhibits all the objectivity of the study or toccata, and often wears his heart in full view. Chopin's Preludes the only preludes to be compared to Bach's are largely personal, subjective, and intimate.
Sister Mary John shook her head authoritatively, and said that she quite understood that Miss Innes did not approve of the liberty of writing any melody over Bach's beautiful prelude. Besides, it required a violin. The conversation then turned on the music at St. Joseph's. Sister Mary John listened, breaking suddenly in with some question regarding Palestrina.
Augustus sent Bach a hundred louis d'or, but this splendid douceur never reached him, as it was appropriated by one of the court officials. In Bach's half-century of a studious musical life there is but little of stirring incident to record. The significance of his career was interior, not exterior. Twice married, and the father of twenty children, his income was always small even for that age.
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