(Vienna, April 29, 1782, to his sister Nannerl.)
95. "Johann Christian Bach has been here (Paris) for a fortnight. He is to write a French opera, and is come only to hear the singers, whereupon he will go to London, write the opera, and come back to put it on the stage. You can easily imagine his delight and mine when we met again. Perhaps his delight was not altogether sincere, but one must admit that he is an honorable man and does justice to all. I love him, as you know, with all my heart, and respect him; as for him, one thing is certain, that to my face and to others, he really praised me, not extravagantly, like some, but seriously and in earnest."
(St. Germain, August 27, 1778, to his father. Johann Christian Bach was the second son of Johann Sebastian, and born in 1735. He lived in London where little Wolfgang learned to know him in 1764. Bach took the precocious boy on his knee and the two played on the harpsichord. [Bach was Music Master to the Queen. "He liked to play with the boy," says Jahn; "took him upon his knee and went through a sonata with him, each in turn playing a measure with such precision that no one would have suspected two performers. He began a fugue, which Wolfgang took up and completed when Bach broke off." H.E.K.])
96. "Bach is the father, we are the youngsters. Those of us who can do a decent thing learned how from him; and whoever will not admit it is a…"
(A remark made at a gathering in Leipsic. The Bach referred to is
Phillip Emanuel Bach, who died in 1788.)
97. "Here, at last, is something from which one can learn!"
(Mozart's ejaculation when he heard Bach's motet for double chorus, "Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied," at Leipsic in 1789. Rochlitz relates: "Scarcely had the choir sung a couple of measures when Mozart started. After a few more measures he cried out: 'What is that?' and now his whole soul seemed to be in his ears.")
98. "Melt us two together, and we will fall far short of making a Haydn."
(Said to the pianist Leopold Kozeluch who had triumphantly pointed out a few slips due to carelessness in Haydn's compositions.)
99. "It was a duty that I owed to Haydn to dedicate my quartets to him; for it was from him that I learned how to write quartets."