His playing is thus described by the poet Schubart:—“J. S. Bach was a genius of the highest order, his soul is so peculiar, so gigantic, that centuries will have to pass before he is reached by anyone. He played the clavier, the flügel, the cymbal with equal creative power, and the organ—who is like him? who will ever equal him? His fist was gigantic; he could, for example, stretch a 12th with the left hand, and perform running passages between with the three inner fingers; he made pedal runs with the greatest possible exactness, he drew the stops so silently that the hearer almost sank under the magic effect; his hand was never weary, and lasted out through a whole day’s organ playing.
“The comic style was just as familiar to him as the earnest; he was equally a virtuoso and composer. What Newton was as a philosopher Bach was as a musician. He had such a wealth of ideas, that no one except his own great son can come near him; and with all this he combined also the rarest talent for teaching.”
The Grace notes
With respect to the Manieren or grace-notes attacked in the “Kritische Musikus” by Scheibe, a friend of Bach’s answered the attack by saying that by means of these signs no performer would now be able to destroy the effect of a piece by applying his own method; those who went wrong would be put in the right way, and the honour of the master would be retained.
The four chief ornaments are—
The Vorschlag (appoggiatura)
The Trill (tr.) seems to have been put down rather recklessly, perhaps on account of fashion. Thus, the oboe sometimes has trills given it which are quite impossible to perform.
Each composer had his own method of writing the various signs and there was of course hopeless confusion. There is no doubt that the trill was used to mean three different things, at the choice of the performer: namely, the vibrato of the violin and tremulant of the organ, or a real trill, or simply a tenuto. The sign