Part 9 (1/2)

He never knew, any more than Shakespeare knew, that he had set a pace that would never be equaled. He would have stood aghast with incredulity had he been told that centuries would come and go and his name be acclaimed as Master.

Such was Sebastian Bach--simple, polite, modest, unaffected, generous, almost shy--doing his work and doing it as well as he could, living one day at a time, loving his friends, forgetting his enemies. His heart was filled with such melodies that their echo is a blessing and a benediction to us yet. Art lives!

Heredity is that law of our being which provides that a man shall resemble his grandfather--or not. The Bach family has supplied the believers in heredity more good raw material in way of argument than any dozen other families known to history, combined.

The Herschels with three eminent astronomers to their credit, or the Beechers with half a dozen great preachers, are scarcely worth mentioning when we remember the Bachs, who for two hundred fifty years sounded the ”A” for nearly all Germany.

The earliest known member of this musical family was Vert Bach, who was born about Fifteen Hundred Fifty. He was a miller and baker by trade, but devoted so much time to playing at dances, rehearsing at church festivals, and attending gipsy musical performances, that in his milling business he never prospered and n.o.body called him ”Pillsbury.”

This man had a son by the name of Hans, a weaver and a right merry wight, who traveled over the country attending weddings, christenings and such like festivals, playing upon a fiddle of his own construction.

So famous was Hans Bach that his name lives in legend and folklore, wherein it is related that often betimes when he arrived at a village, the word would be pa.s.sed and the whole population would quit work and caper on the green. So luring was his fiddle, and so potent his voice in song and story, that in a few instances preachers with long faces warned their flocks against him; and once we find a country Dogberry had his minions lay the innocent Hans by the heels and give him a taste of the stocks, simply because he seduced a party of haymakers into following him off to a dance at a tavern, and in the meantime a storm coming up, the hay got wet. Poor Hans protested that he had nothing to do with the storm, but his excuses were construed as proof of guilt and went for naught.

At last in his wanderings, Hans found a buxom la.s.s who was willing to take him for better or worse.

And they were married and lived happily ever after, or fairly so.

This marriage quite sobered the fun-loving fiddler, so that he settled down and worked at his weaving; and at odd hours made himself a ba.s.s viol that looked to be father of all the fiddles. In Eisenach I was told that this viol was ten feet high. Hans used to play this instrument at the village church, and his playing drew such crowds that the preacher had just cause for jealousy, and improved the opportunity, yet stifling his rage he ordered the verger to lock the doors and allow no one to depart until after the sermon and collection.

A goodly family was born to Hans and his worthy wife, and all were trained in music, so that an orchestra was formed, made up of the father, mother, and boys and girls. All the instruments used were made by Hans, and these included marvelous fiddles, some with one string and others with twenty; wooden wind-instruments like flutes, and drums to match the players, some of whom were wee toddlers. It is said that the music this orchestra made was more or less unique.

The best part of all this musical exploitation of Hans was that one of his boys, Heinrich by name, applied himself so diligently to the art that he became the organist in the village church, and then he was called to play the great organ at Arnstadt. Heinrich was not a roisterer like his father: he was a man of education and dignity. He composed many pieces, and trained his choruses so well that his fame went abroad as the chief musician of all Thuringia. He held his position at Arnstadt for fifty years, and died in Sixteen Hundred Ninety-two, at which time Johann Sebastian Bach, his nephew, was seven years old.

In his day Heinrich Bach was known as the ”Great Bach,” and he had two sons who were nearly as famous as himself, and would have been quite so, were it not for the fact that they had a cousin by the name of Johann Sebastian.

Johann Sebastian was a son of Johann Ambrosius, a brother of Heinrich, and Johann Ambrosius, of course, a son of the merry Hans. Johann Ambrosius was a musician, too, but did not distinguish himself especially in this line. His distinction lies in the fact that he was the father of Johann Sebastian, and this is quite enough for any one man, even if Gail Hamilton did once protest that the office of male parent was insignificant and devoid of honor.

Johann Ambrosius was a s.h.i.+ftless kind of fellow who drank much beer out of an earthen pot, and whittled out fiddles, sitting on a bench in the sun. He sort of let his family s.h.i.+ft for themselves. Heinrich Bach, his brother, used to speak of him as one of his ”poor relations,” but at the annual Bach family festival, when a full hundred Bachs gathered to sing and play, Johann Ambrosius would attend and play on a flute or fiddle and prove that he was worthy of the name.

On one such annual reunion he took his little boy, Johann Sebastian, eight years old. The boy's mother had died a year or so before, and after the mother's death the father seemed to think more of his children than ever before--which is often the case, I'm told.

They walked the distance, about forty miles, in two days, to where the festival occurred. It was one of the white milestones in the boy's life--that trip with its revelation of sleeping in barns, singing, and playing on many instruments, dining by the wayside, all winding up with a solemn service at a great stone church, where the preacher gave them his benediction, and the great company separated with handshakings, embracings and tears, to meet again in a year. Johann Ambrosius did not attend the next reunion. Before the Spring had come and birds sang blithely, a band composed of twenty-five played funeral-dirges at his grave--and little Johann Sebastian was an orphan.

Johann Sebastian's elder brother, Christoph, who had married a few years before and moved away, attended the funeral, and when he went back home he took little Johann Sebastian with him--there was no other place to go. The lad was allowed to take one thing with him as a remembrance of the home that he was now leaving forever--his father's violin in a green bag, with a leathern drawstring. On the bag were his father's initials, woven into the cloth by the boy's mother--a present from sweetheart to lover before their marriage.

Christoph was a musician, too, and a prosperous fellow--quite the ant.i.thesis of his father. It takes a lot of love to bring up a child, and the miracle of mother-love is a constant wonder to every thinking person. Without mother-love how would the cross-grained, perverse little tyrant ever survive the buffets which the world is sure to give? It is love that makes existence possible.

Christoph wished to be kind to his little brother, but it was a kindness of the head and not of the heart. Only an hour a day was allowed the boy for playing on the violin he had brought in the green bag, because Christoph and his wife ”did not want to hear the noise.” Then when the boy stole off to the forest and played there, he was waylaid on the way home and well cuffed for disobeying orders. All this seems very much like the Goneril and Cordelia business, or the history of Cinderella, but as Johann Sebastian told it himself in the after-years, we have reason to believe it was not fiction.

Little Johann Sebastian had been his father's favorite, and this fact perhaps made Christoph fear the boy was going to tread in his father's lazy footsteps. So he set about to discipline the lad.

It must be admitted that Johann Ambrosius Bach, who whittled out fiddles in the sun, and who drank much beer out of an earthen pot, was s.h.i.+ftless, but it further seems that he was tender-hearted and kind and took much interest in teaching Sebastian to play the violin, even while the child wore dresses. And sometimes I think it is really better, if you have to choose, to drink beer out of an earthen pot and be kind and gentle, than to have a sharp nose for other folks' faults and be continually trying to pinch and prod the old world into the straight and narrow path of virtue. Yet there is wisdom in all folly, and I can see that the prohibition concerning little Sebastian's playing the violin only an hour a day--mind you! was not without its benefits. Surely it would often be a wise bit of diplomacy on the part of the teacher to order the pupil not to study his arithmetic lesson but an hour a day, on penalty. Of course it might happen occasionally that the pupil in an earnest desire to please, might not study at all, yet there are exceptions to all rules, and we must remember that when Tom Sawyer forbade the boys using his whitewash-brush, the scheme worked well.

One instance, however, might be cited where the law of compensation seems really to have stood no chance. Christoph had a goodly musical library and a collection of the best organ-music that had been produced up to that time. He kept this music in a case, and carried the key to the case in his pocket. On rare occasions he had shown bits of this music to Sebastian, who read music like print when it is easy. The boy devoured all the music he could lay his hands on, and hummed it over to himself until every note and accent was fixed in his memory. He dearly wanted to examine that music in the locked-up case, but his brother declared his ambition nonsense--he was too young. But the boy contrived a way to pick the lock--for a music-lover laughs at locksmiths--and at night when all the household were safely in bed, he would steal downstairs in his bare feet and get a sheet of the music and copy it off by moonlight, sitting in the deep ledge of the window. Thus did he work for six months, whenever the moon shone bright enough to read the lines and signs and marks. But alas! one day the elder brother was rummaging around the boy's room in search of things contraband and he pounced upon the portfolio of copied music. He summoned the offender into his presence. The facts were admitted, and Johann Sebastian had his bare legs well tingled with an apple-sprout. Then the portfolio was confiscated and carried away, despite pleadings, promises and tears. And the question still remains whether ”discipline” is not a matter of gratification to the person in power rather than a sincere and honest attempt to benefit the person disciplined.

Nevertheless, Johann Sebastian Bach was working out his own education: he belonged to the boys' chorus at Ohrdruf, as all boys in the vicinity did. Music in every German village was an important item, and the best singers and best behaved members of the village choir were set apart as a sort of select choir--a choir within a choir--and were often gathered together to sing on special occasions at weddings and festivals. Johann Sebastian had a sweet, well-modulated voice, and whenever he was to sing, he carried his violin in the green bag, so he could play, too, if needed. Thus he played and sang at serenades, just as did Martin Luther, many years before, in Johann Sebastian's own native town of Eisenach.

Johann Sebastian's fame grew until it reached to Luneburg, twelve miles away, and he was invited there to sing in the choir of Saint Michael's.

The pay he received was very slight, but that was not to be considered.