YOUNG BACH COPYING MUSIC BY MOONLIGHT.
In the old house John Sebastian well knew that there was a rare old book of manuscript music, and this he longed to copy. It was hidden, locked away in a cupboard; but the door had a lattice-work panel in it, and so the child watched his opportunity, climbed up, and pulled the book through the lattice. But even then it was hard to know how to copy the music, since candles or lights were refused him. So he waited for moonlight nights, and on every one worked hard in his window, finally succeeding in copying the entire book. I have often thought of the picture of the dear little German boy working away in his old-fashioned room, the moonlight tenderly bathing his head and eager fingers, and the manuscript page on which he worked. How little he knew that two hundred years later all music-loving nations would reverence his name.
How he worked on with many trials, the usual ups and downs of an earnest life, I can only tell you briefly, but employment and leisure in which to compose came to him quite young in life, and he had the happiest kind of a domestic circle.
Bach was twice married, and his children inherited enough of his musical ability to make it a pleasure for him to instruct them. The young Prince of Anhalt-Cothen loved him so dearly that he could scarcely bear to be separated from him, and later he was given an important position at Leipsic.
One grief clouded his later years. From overwork in copying and writing music he became quite blind—a calamity which all his dear friends felt deeply. In 1750 he died suddenly.
Now in Bach's lifetime great progress had been made in piano-forte music. Among other things, he invented a new style of fingering. In Bach's day the thumb and little finger were rarely used. This he changed entirely, and our present ideas are due to his influence.
When I spoke of him as the composer of famous gavottes it was only because that form of composition is one which is peculiarly adapted to young students, which is now newly popular, and which he wrote with wonderful grace. But Bach, as you may hear later, filled the world with many grander sounds. They come in solemn majesty in his famous Passion Music. They come, filling the air with sweetness, in his many preludes and symphonies. They are in concertos and sonatas. Bach worked with his heart full of exaltation. About him was the court of Frederick the Great, of George II. in England. Piano-making was beginning to be a studied question. People saw the need of good music at home as well as in public. Bach passed through those years when piano-forte music was, you might say, on trial, well knowing what it might one day be.
Peace and gentleness were always about him. He was a kindly, keen, busy man, full of generosity and goodness, and he lived and died believing in the future of his art.