He was also delighted that at last he was able to carry out his plans with regard to organ work. He had at his disposal the so-called “greater organ”[37] of St. Thomas’s Church, which had been there for two centuries and had been thoroughly repaired three years before this time. Bach was transported with delight as he awoke and set in motion the slumbering tone-forces of this magnificent instrument. It seemed to him there was nothing more to wish for in life.

The sorrow occasioned by the death of his faithful wife at last gave place to domestic happiness. For the sake of his children, who needed a mother’s care, he married again, and in Anna Magdalena Wülkens,[38] daughter of a court musician to the Duke of Weissenfeld, he found a beautiful compensation for his loss. She transformed the sad house into a happy home. She brought up her stepchildren faithfully and carefully. She appreciated the great musical schemes of her husband, assisted him in his work, not only with all her heart’s affection, but with much musical ability, took lessons from him, copied his manuscripts accurately, and sang in the choir,—for she possessed, greatly to Bach’s delight, a fresh, young, beautiful soprano voice.

In the meantime the older children by the first marriage grew up strong and full of promise. The first-born son, Wilhelm Friedemann, was wonderfully precocious in his early youth. His father naturally was very fond of him, and had taught him with the utmost care. He was ambitious to leave to posterity a worthy successor, qualified to continue his own life-work, perhaps to surpass him. He had reason to believe this. Even in boyhood Friedemann had virtually mastered the piano and organ, performed the most difficult exercises in counterpoint with as much ease as if they were mere play, and “lived and moved” in music.

In general education, also, Friedemann was not behind any of his associates. In St. Thomas’s School, which was very progressive, he advanced rapidly from one class to another, and also became an accomplished violin virtuoso under the instructions of concertmaster Graun, afterward chamber musician to Frederick the Great. He left the school at an early age, and studied at the University with the most famous teachers enthusiastically and successfully. From there he came home and entered the competition for the organist’s position at St. Sophia’s Church in Dresden. He was looked upon there as the favorite son and scholar of his great father. The dignity, grandeur, and power of his playing excited the astonishment even of the musical critics who heard him. His command of the instrument was so absolute, and his improvising so rich, new, and varied in style, that his hearers could hardly believe their ears, and many of them had trouble in following the flight of his genius.

After the trial, the judges unanimously agreed that Friedemann was by far the best and most skilful among the candidates, and so the youth of twenty-three was officially assigned the important place at Saint Sophia’s Church. What joy and satisfaction filled his father’s loving heart! It was one of the happiest days of his life! Alas! he little thought that a demon was menacing the genius of the youth, a demon that would attack it incessantly, and ultimately destroy it.[39]

Next to Friedemann, and equal with him in his educational acquirements, was the highly gifted second son, Carl Philipp Emanuel. He was ten years of age when the Bach family left for Leipsic, but even then manifested such unusual musical promise that his father’s fondest expectations were encouraged, and in this case they were fulfilled.

It is time to return to Bach, the father. It has already been said that his life and work were greatly influenced by his new residence and the change in his circumstances. It was in Leipsic he displayed those extraordinary achievements which were little understood by his contemporaries, but which have been admired for their beauty and regarded with astonishment for their scholarship by posterity. These great achievements were also accompanied by extraordinary wealth of production. Bach’s creative energy at this time was like a rushing stream. No musician before or since has accomplished such results in composition as Bach during the Leipsic period. Music of every kind poured forth rapidly and in rich abundance. Oratorios and Passion music, cantatas and motets, masses and concertos, piano and other instrumental works, and, greatest of all, that priceless treasure of profoundly conceived and perfectly constructed preludes and fugues, which the German people claim, and always will claim, as their own most beautiful and intellectual musical possession, are the outcome of the comparatively brief Leipsic period. How rich, deep, and varied were the creations of his intellect! How resistlessly he struggled on in spite of musical trademasters! How thoroughly he studied the works of the great masters of the past and of his time! He copied with his own hand a mass of music which was of use to him in his work, finished his masterpiece “The Well-Tempered Clavichord,” instructed half a hundred Alumni, beside numerous private scholars and his own children, kept up a constantly growing correspondence, and read with absorbing interest everything in print at that time which had important bearings upon his work. Posterity can only wonder how the great master, in addition to all this, found time to look after his private affairs and those of his large household.[40]

Chapter VII
“He shall stand before Kings”

Beside the burdens of his official position and the fatigue of his extraordinary musical activity, Bach realized the infirmities of old age at a comparatively early period. He had overtaxed his strength in his youth, and this now began to affect his physical powers. He was also threatened with the loss of sight—a possibility which greatly alarmed his family.

On account of this danger, he exerted himself as rapidly as was judicious in preparing his children for their future work and fitting them to act for themselves. As has already been said, Friedemann, his most gifted and best-beloved son, had been organist at Dresden since 1733. Bach had often visited him, and sought by paternal counsel and affectionate warning to dissuade him from the eccentricities and extravagances to which he was prone, and to keep him in the right path.