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The Bach festival danced before him.... Uncle Heinrich on the platform "The great Reinken will no one of you promise?" His father's face smiling, his father's hand on his head.... Slowly his hands dropped to the keys. The audience settled back with a sigh. At last they should hear him the great Bach.
The boy extracted them from their resting-place, and we see the young tone-prophet striving to master the art-forms of Reinken, Buxtehude, Frescobaldi, Kerl, Froberger, and Pachelbel, endeavoring to wrest from them their style and inmost meaning by the light of the moon's pale rays, which led, alas! in after-years to blindness. What revelations came to the soul of the young musician we know not.
He sprang to his feet. "We will go to the festival, the great Bach festival. You, my little son, shall play like a true Bach." As they walked along the road he hummed contentedly to himself, speaking now and then a word to the boy. "What makes one Bach great, makes all. Remember, my child, Reinken is great but he is only one; and Bohm and Buxtehude, Pachelbel. But we are many all Bachs all great."
Presently he returned with a pewter mug. It was foaming at the top. "Drink that," he commanded. The youth drank it with hearty quaffs and laughed when it was done. "Ja, that is good!" he said simply. The old man eyed him shrewdly. "In half an hour Reinken comes to play," he suggested craftily. The youth started and flushed. "To-night?" "Ja." "I did not think he came at night," he said softly.
He was too poor to take lessons, for he was almost entirely self-dependent a penniless scholar, living on the plainest of fare, yet determined to gain a knowledge of the music he longed for. One of the great organists of the time was Johann Adam Reinken. When Sebastian learned that this master played the organ in St.
When he turned, the old man was gone. Down below in the loft he watched his twinkling path as the taper flashed from candle to candle. The great Reinken was a little late. He came in hurriedly, pushing back the sleeves of his scholar's gown as they fell forward on his hands. The hands were wrinkled, the boy noted, and old. He had forgotten that the master was old.
Then he touched his sturdy legs with his hand and laughed. "I mean that these are the horses to carry me to Hamburg and back many times. I shall hear the great Reinken play! And I, too, shall play!" he added proudly. "Do you never doubt, Sebastian?" asked the other thoughtfully, as they moved on. "Doubt?"
"You walked?" The youth nodded. "I have seen you before, here." "Yes." The old man watched him a minute. "You ought to have some beer with that bread and cheese," he said. "Have you no coppers?" The youth shook his head. "Reinken is my beer," he said, after a little. His face was lighted with a sweet smile. The old man chuckled. "Ja, ja!" He limped from the room.
The great Heinrich swept them with his eagle glance. "Is there not one," he went on slowly, "who dares promise, in the presence of the Bachs that before Reinken dies he will meet him and outplay him?" The Bachs were silent. They knew Reinken. Sebastian, wedged between his father and the fat Bach, gulped mightily. He struggled to get to his feet. But a hand at his coat-tails held him fast.
He looked helplessly at his father, who sat smiling into his empty beer-mug, and at the fat Bach on the other side, who was gaping with open mouth at the great Heinrich. Sebastian looked back to the platform. Heinrich's finger was uplifted at them sternly.... "It was Reinken who said it.
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