Chapter IV: Part 4

What Shakespeare is to literature, Michelangelo to sculpture, and Rembrandt to portrait-painting, Johann Sebastian Bach is to organ-music. He was the greatest organist of his time, and his equal has not yet been produced, though nearly three hundred years have passed since his death. "The organ reached perfection at the hands of Bach," says Haweis. As a composer for the organ, Bach stands secure--his position is at the head, and is absolutely unassailable.

In point of temperament and disposition Bach bears a closer resemblance to Michelangelo than to either of the others whose names I have mentioned. He was stern, strong, self-contained, and so deeply religious that he was not only a Christian but a good deal of a pagan as well. A homely man was Bach--quiet, simple in tastes and blunt in speech.

The earnest way in which this plain, unpretentious man focused upon his life-work and raised organ-music to the highest point of art must command the sincere admiration of every lover of honest endeavor.

Bach was so great that he had no artistic jealousy, no whim, and when harshly and unjustly criticized he did not concern himself enough with the quibblers to reply. He made neither apologies nor explanations. The man who thus allows his life to justify itself, and lets his work speak, and who, when reviled, reviles not again, must be a very great and lofty soul.

Bach was a villager and a rustic, and, like Jean Francois Millet, used to hoe in his garden, trim the vines, play with his children, putting them to bed at night, or in the day cease from his work to cut slices of brown bread which he spread with honey for the heedless little importuner, who had interrupted him in the making of a chorale that was to charm the centuries. At times he would leave his composing to help his wife with her household duties--to wash dishes, sweep the room or care for a peevish, fretful child. After the evening prayer, like Millet, again, when his household were all abed, he would often walk out into the night alone, and traverse his solitary way along a wintry road, through the woods or by the winding river, a dim, misty, shadowy figure, spectral as the "Sower," lonely as the "Fagot-Gatherer," talking to himself, mayhap, and communing with his Maker.

In his later years, when he traveled from one village or city to another to attend musical gatherings, he was always accompanied by one or more of his sons. His ambition was centered on his children, and his hope was in them. Yet nothing has been added to either organ-building, organ-playing or composition for the organ since his time.

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 nobody 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 passed 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 lass 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 bass 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 shiftless 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 shift 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 antithesis 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 shiftless, 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. An occasional bowl of soup and piece of rye-bread, and the privilege of sleeping in the organ-loft, all combined with freedom, made his paradise complete. He played on the harpsichord in the pastor's study sometimes; and occasionally the organist, who could not help loving such a music-loving boy, would allow him to try the big organ, and at every service he was present to play his violin, or if any of the other players were absent he would just fill in and play any instrument desired.

Then we hear of him trudging off to Hamburg, a hundred miles away, with only a few coppers in his pocket, to hear the great organist Reinke. He slept in cattle-sheds by the way, played his violin at taverns for something to eat, or plainly stated his case to sympathetic cooks at backdoors. One instance he has recorded when all the world seemed to frown. He had trudged all day, with nothing to eat, and at evening had sat down near the open window of an inn, from which came savory smells of supper. As he sat there, suddenly there were thrown out a couple of small dried herrings. The hungry boy eagerly seized upon them, just as a dog would. But what was his surprise to find, as he gnawed, in the mouth of each fish a piece of silver! Some one had read the story of Saint Peter to a purpose. Young Bach looked in vain for a person to thank, but perceiving no one he took it as the act of God and an omen that his pilgrimage to hear the great organist should not be in vain.

The wonders of Reinke's playing and the marvel of the mighty music filled his soul with awe, and fired his ambition to do a like performance.

Did the great Reinke know as he played that bright Sabbath morning, filling the cathedral with thunders of echoing bass, or sounds of sweet, subtle melody--did he know that away back in the throng stood a dusty, tawny-haired boy who had tramped a hundred miles just for this event? And did the organist guess as he played that he was inspiring a human soul to do a grand and wondrous work, and live a life whose influence should be deathless? Probably not--few men indeed know when virtue has gone out of them.

Perhaps Reinke was playing just to suit himself, and had purposely put the unappreciative, lazy, sleepy occupants of the pews out of his thought, all unmindful that there was one among a thousand, back behind a pillar, dusty and worn, but now unconsciously refreshed and oblivious to all save the playing of the great organ. There stood the boy bathed in sweet sounds, with streaming eyes and responsive heart.

His inward emotions supplemented the outward melody, for music demands a listener, and at the last is a matter of soul, not sound: its appeal being a harmony that dwells within. So played Reinke, and back by the door, peering from behind a pillar, stood the boy.

* * * * *

Sebastian Bach was such a useful member of the choir at Luneburg that the town musician from Weimar, who happened to be going that way, induced him to go home with him as assistant organist.

This was a definite move in the direction of fame and fortune. Men who can make themselves useful are needed--there is ever a search for such. They wanted Bach at Weimar. Johann Sebastian Bach, aged eighteen, was wanted because he did his work well.

After three or four months at Weimar he made a visit to Arnstadt, where his uncle had so long been organist. His name at Arnstadt was a name to conjure with, and in fact throughout all that part of the country, whenever a man proved to be a musician of worth and power the people out of compliment called him a "Bach."

Johann Sebastian was invited to play for the people, and all were so delighted that they insisted he should come and fill the place made vacant by the death of the "Great Bach."

So he came and was duly installed.

And the young man drilled his chorus, wrote cantatas, and arranged chants and hymns. But he was far from contented. He was being pushed on by a noble unrest. It was not so very long before we find him packing off to Denmark, with little ceremony, to listen to the playing of Buxtehude, the greatest player of his age.

Bach had been quite content to tiptoe into the church when Reinke played, grateful for the privilege of listening, half-expecting to be thrust out as an interloper. He had gained confidence since then, and now introduced himself to Buxtehude and was greeted by the octogenarian as a brother and an equal, although sixty years divided them. His visit extended itself from one week to two, and then to a month or more, and a message came from his employers that if he expected to hold his place he had better return.

Bach's visit to Buxtehude formed another white milestone in his career. He came back filled with enthusiasm and overflowing with ideas and plans that a single lifetime could not materialize. Those who have analyzed the work of Buxtehude and Bach tell us that there is a richness of counterpoint, a vigor of style, a fulness of harmony, and a strong, glowing, daring quality that in some pieces is identical with both composers. In other words, Bach admired Buxtehude so much that for a time he wrote and played just like him, very much as Turner began by painting as near like Claude Lorraine as he possibly could. Genius has its prototype, and in all art there is to be found this apostolic succession. Bach first built on Reinke; next he transferred his allegiance to Buxtehude; from this he gradually developed courage and self-reliance until he fearlessly trusted himself in deep water, heedless of danger. And it is this fearless, self-reliant and self-sufficient quality that marks the work of every exceptional man in every line of art. "Here's to the man who dares," said Disraeli. All strong men begin by worshiping at a shrine, and if they continue to grow they shift their allegiance until they know only one altar and that is the Ideal which dwells in their own heart.

* * * * *

And now behold how Heinrich Bach had educated his people into the belief that there was only one way to play, and that was as he did it. It is not at all probable that Heinrich put forward any claims of perfection, but the people regarded his playing as high-water mark, and any variation from his standards was considered fantastic and absurd.

In all of the old German Protestant churches are records kept giving the exact history of the church. You can tell for two hundred years back just when an organist was hired or dismissed; when a preacher came and when he went away, with minute mention as to reasons.

And so we find in the records of the Church at Arnstadt that the organist, Johann Sebastian Bach, took a vacation without leave in the year Seventeen Hundred Five, and further, when he returned his playing was "fantastical."

With the young man's compositions the Consistory expressed echoing groans of dissatisfaction. A list of charges was drawn up against him, one of which runs as follows: "We charge him with a habit of making surprising variations in the chorales, and intermixing divers strange sounds, so that thereby the congregation was confounded."

Bach's answers are filed with the original charges, and are all very brief and submissive. In some instances he pleads guilty, not thinking it worth his while, strong man that he was, to either apologize or explain.

But the most damning count brought against him was this: "We further charge him with introducing into the choir-loft a Stranger Maiden, who made music." To this, young Bach makes no reply. Brave boy!

The sequel is shown that in a few weeks he was married to this "Stranger Maiden," who was his cousin. She was a Bach, too, a descendant of the merry Hans, and she, also, played the organ. But great was the horror of the Arnstadites that a woman should play a church organ. Mein Gott im Himmel--a woman might be occupying the pulpit next!

Johann Sebastian's indifference to criticism is partially explained by the fact that he was in correspondence with the Consistory at Mulhausen, and also with the Duke Wilhelm Ernest, of Saxe-Weimar. Both Mulhausen and Weimar wanted his services. Under such conditions men have ever been known to invite a rupture--let us hope that Johann Sebastian Bach was not quite so human.

* * * * *

Michelangelo never married, but Bach held the average good by marrying twice.

He was the father of just twenty children. His first wife was a woman with well-defined musical tastes, as was meet in one with such an illustrious musical pedigree. It wasn't fashion then to educate women, and one biographer expresses a doubt as to whether Bach's first wife was able to read and write. To read and write are rather cheap accomplishments, though. Last year I met several excellent specimens of manhood in the Tennessee Mountains who could do neither, yet these men had a goodly hold on the eternal verities.

We know that Bach's wife had a thorough sympathy with his work, and that he used to sing or play his compositions to her, and when the children got big enough, they tried the new-made hymn tunes, too. These children sang before they could talk plain, and the result was that the two elder sons, Wilhelm Friedemann and Phillip Emmanuel, became musicians of marked ability. Half a dozen other sons became musicians also, but the two named above made some valuable additions to the music fund of the world. Haydn has paid personal tribute to Emmanuel Bach, acknowledging his obligation, and expressing to him the belief that he was a greater man than his father.

The nine years Bach spent at Weimar, under the patronage of the Duke Wilhelm Ernest, were years rich in results. His office was that of Concert Master, and Leader of the Choir at Ducal Chapel. The duties not being very exacting, he had plenty of time to foster his bent. Freed from all apprehension along the line of the bread-and-butter question he devoted himself untiringly to his work. It was here he developed that style of fingering that was to be followed by the players on the harpsichord, and which further serves as the basis for our present manner of piano-playing. Bach was the first man to make use of the thumb in organ-playing, and I believe it was James Huneker who once said that "Bach discovered the human hand."

Bach made a complete study of the mechanism of the organ, invented various arrangements for the better use of the pedals, and gave his ideas without stint to the makers, who, it seems, were glad to profit by them. Even then Weimar was a place of pilgrimage, although Goethe had not yet come to illumine it with his presence. But the traditions of Weimar have been musical and artistic for four hundred years, and this had its weight with Goethe when he decided to make it his home.

In Bach's day, pilgrims from afar used to come to attend the musical festivals given by the Duke of Saxe-Weimar; and these pilgrims would go home and spread the name of Johann Sebastian Bach. Many invitations used to come for him to go and play at the installation of a new organ, or to superintend the construction of an organ, or to lead a chorus. Gradually his fame grew, and although he might have lived his life and ended his days there in the rural and peaceful quiet of Weimar, yet he harkened to the voice and arose and went forth with his family into a place that afforded a wider scope for his powers.

As Kapellmeister to the Court at Kothen he had the direction of a large orchestra, and it seems also supervised a school of music.

When the Court moved about from place to place it was the custom to take the orchestra, too, in order to reveal to the natives along the way what good music really was. This was all quite on the order of the Duke of Mantua, who used to travel with a retinue of two hundred servants and attendants.

On one such occasion the Kothen Court went to Carlsbad. The visit extended itself to six months, when Bach became impatient to return to his family, and was allowed to go in advance of the rest of the company. On reaching home he found his wife had died and been buried several weeks before.

It was a severe shock to the poor man, but fortunately there was more philosophy to his nature than romance, which is a marked trait in the German character. All this is plainly evidenced by the fact that in many German churches when a good wife dies, the pastor, at the funeral, as the best friend of the stricken husband, casts his eyes over the congregation for a suitable successor to the deceased. And very often the funeral baked meats do coldly furnish forth the marriage feast. Man is made to mourn, but most widowers say but a year.

The prompt second marriage of Bach was certainly a compliment to the memory of his first wife, who was a most amiable helpmeet and friend. No soft sentiment disturbed the deep immersement of this man in his work. He was as businesslike a man as Ralph Waldo Emerson, who arranged his second marriage by correspondence, and then drove over in a buggy one afternoon to bring home the promised bride, making notes by the way on the Over-Soul and man's place in the Universal Cosmos.

Events proved the wisdom of Johann Sebastian Bach's choice. His first wife filled his heart, but this one was not only to do as much, but often to guide his hand and brain. He was thirty-eight with a brood of nine. Anna Magdalena was twenty-three, strong, fancy-free, and by a dozen, lacking one, was to increase the limit.

As the years went by, Bach occasionally would arise in public places, and with uncovered head thank God for the blessings He had bestowed upon him, especially in sending him such a wife.

Anna Magdalena Wulken was a singer of merit, a player on the harp, and a person of education. She certainly had no seraglio notions of wanting to be petted and pampered and taken care of, or she would not have assumed the office of stepmother to that big family and married a poor man. Bach never had time to make money. Very soon after their marriage Bach began to dictate music to his wife. A great many pieces can be seen in Leipzig and Berlin copied out in her fine, painstaking hand, with an occasional interlining by the Master. Other pieces written by him are amended by her, showing plainly that they worked together.

As proof that this was no honeymoon whim, the collaboration continued for over a score of years, in spite of increasing domestic responsibilities.

From Kothen, Bach was called to Leipzig and elected by the municipal authorities the Musical Director and Cantor of the Thomas School. For twenty-seven years he labored here, doing the work he liked best, and doing it in his own way. He escaped the pitfalls of petty jealousies, into which most men of artistic natures fall, by rising above them all. He accepted no insults; he had no grievances against either man or fate; earnest, religious, simple--he filled the days with useful effort.

He was so well poised that when summoned by Frederick the Great to come and play before him, he took a year to finish certain work he had on hand before he went. Then he would have forgotten the engagement, had not his son, who was Chamber Musician to the King, insisted that he come. In the presence of Frederick it was the King who was abashed, not he. He knew his kinship to Divinity so well that he did not even think to assert it. And surely he was one fit to stand in the presence of kings. For number, variety and excellence, only two men can be named as his competitors: these are Mozart and Handel. But in point of performance, simplicity and sterling manhood, Bach stands alone.

FELIX MENDELSSOHN

The correspondence of Goethe and Zelter displeases me. I always
feel out of sorts when I have been reading it. Do you know that I
am making great strides in water-colors? Schirmer comes to me every
Saturday at eleven, and paints for two hours at a landscape, which
he is going to make me a present of, because the subject occurred
to him whilst I was playing the little "Rivulet" (which you know).
It represents a fellow who saunters out of a dark forest into a
sunny little nook; trees all about, with stems thick and thin; one
has fallen across the rivulet; the ground is carpeted with soft,
deep moss, full of ferns; there are stones garlanded with
blackberry-bushes; it is fine warm weather; the whole will be
charming.

--_Mendelssohn to Devrient_

FELIX MENDELSSOHN

Thirty-eight years is not a long life, but still it is long enough to do great things. Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy was born in the year Eighteen Hundred Nine, at Hamburg, and died at Leipzig in the year Eighteen Hundred Forty-seven. His career was a triumphal march. The road to success with him was no zigzag journey--from the first he went straight to the front. Whether as a baby he crowed in key, and cried to a one-two-three melody, as his old nurse used to aver, is a little doubtful, possibly. But all agree that he was the most precocious musical genius that ever lived, excepting Mozart; and Goethe, who knew them both, declared that Mendelssohn's music bore the same relationship to Mozart's as the talk of a grown-up cultured person to the prattle of a child.

But then Goethe was not a musician, and sixty years had passed from the time Goethe saw Mozart before he met Mendelssohn. Goethe loved the brown-curled Jewish boy at sight; and whether on meeting Mozart he ever recovered from the taint of prejudice that most people feel when a prodigy is introduced, is a question.

But who can wonder that the old poet's heart went out to the youthful Mendelssohn as soon as he saw him!

He was a being to fill a poet's dream--such a youth as the Old Masters used to picture as the Christ when He confounded the wise men. And then the painters posed this same type of boy as Daniel in the lions' den; and back in the days of Pericles, the Greeks were fond of showing the beautiful youth, just approaching adolescence, in the nude, as the god of Love. When the face has all the soft beauty of a woman, and the figure, slight, slender, lithe and graceful, carries only a suggestion of the masculine strength to come--then beauty is at perihelion. The "Eros" of Phidias was not the helpless, dumpy cherub "Cupid"--he was a slender-limbed boy of twelve years who showed collar-bone and revealed every rib.

Beauty and strength of the highest type are never complete--their lure lies in a certain reserve, and behind all is a suggestion of unfoldment. Maturity is not the acme of beauty, because in maturity there is nothing more to hope for--only the uncompleted fills the heart, for from it we construct the Ideal.

Goethe looked out of his window and seeing Felix Mendelssohn playing with the children, exclaimed to Zelter, "He is a Greek god in the germ, and I here solemnly protest against his wearing clothes."

The words sound singularly like the remark of Doctor Schneider, made ten years later, when Herr Doctor removed the sheet that covered the dead body of Goethe, and gazing upon the full-rounded limbs, the mighty chest, the columnar neck and the Jovelike head, exclaimed, "It is the body of a Greek god!" And the surgeons stood there in silent awe, forgetful of their task.

Zelter, who introduced Mendelssohn to Goethe, was a fine old character, nearly as fine a type as Goethe himself. Heine once said, "Musicians constitute a third sex." And that there have been some unsexed, or at least unmanly men, who were great musicians, need not be denied. The art of music borders more closely upon the dim and mystic realms of the inspirational than any of the other arts. Music refuses to give up its secrets in a formula and at last eludes the sciolist with his ever-ready theorem. But still, all musicians are not dreamers. Zelter, for instance, was a most hard-headed, practical man: a positivist and mathematician with a turn for economics, and a Gradgrind for facts. He was a stone-mason, and worked at his trade at odd times all through his life, just because he felt it was every man's duty to work with his hands. Imagine Tolstoy playing the piano and composing instead of making shoes, and you have Zelter.

This curious character was bound to the Mendelssohn family by his love for Moses Mendelssohn, the grandfather of Felix. Moses Mendel added the "sohn" in loving recognition of his father, just as "Bartholdy" was added by the father of Felix in loving token to his wife. It was the grandfather of Felix who first gave glory to the name. We sometimes forget that Moses Mendelssohn was one of the greatest thinkers Germany has produced--the man who summed up in his own head all the philosophy of the time and gave Spinoza to the world. This was the man to whom the erratic Zelter was bound in admiration, and when it was suggested that he teach musical composition to the grandchild of his idol, he accepted the post with zest.

But there came a shade of disappointment to the grim and bearded Zelter when he failed to find a trace of resemblance between the child and the child's grandfather. The boy was sprightly, emotional, loving; and could play the piano from his tenth year better than Zelter himself. When Goethe teasingly suggested this fact, Zelter replied, "You mean he plays different, not better." Goethe apologized.

Yet the boy was not a philosopher, and this grieved Zelter, who wanted him to be the grandson of his grandfather, and a musician besides.

The lad's skill in composition, however, soon turned the old teacher's fears into joy. Such a pupil he had never had before! And he did not reason it out that no one else had ever had, either. The child, like Chopin, read music before he read print, and improvised, merging one tune with another, bringing harmony out of hopeless chaos. Zelter followed, fearing success would turn the boy's head--berating, scolding, chiding, encouraging--and all the time admiring and loving. The pretty boy was not much frightened by the old man's rough ways, but seized upon such of the instruction as he needed and filled in the rest with his own peerless soul.

The parents were astounded at such progress. At first they had wished merely to round out the boy's education with a proper amount of musical instruction, and now they reluctantly allowed the old teacher to have his way--the lad must make his career a musical one. The boy composed a cantata, which was given in the parlors of his parents' home, with an orchestra secured for the occasion. Felix stood on a chair and led his band of musicians with that solemn dignity which was his through life. Zelter grumbled, ridiculed and criticized--that was the way he showed his interest. The old musician declared they were making a "Miss Nancy" of his pupil--saturating him with flattery, and he threatened to resign his office--most certainly not intending to do so.

It was about this time that Zelter threw out the hint that he was going down to Weimar to see his friend Goethe--would Felix like to go? Felix would be delighted, and when the boy's father and mother were interviewed, they were pleased, too, at the prospect of their boy's making the acquaintance of the greatest poet of Germany. Felix was duly cautioned about how he should conduct himself. He promised, of course, and also agreed to write a letter home every day, recording the exact language that the author of "Werther" used in his presence.

Goethe and the Carlylian Zelter had been cronies for many years. The poet delighted in the company of the gruff old stone-mason musician, and together they laughed at the world over their pipes and mugs. And sometimes, alas, they hotly argued and raised their voices in donner-und-blitzen style, as Germans have been known to do. Yet they were friends, and the honest Zelter's yearly visits were as a godsend to the old poet, who was often pestered to distraction by visitors who only voiced the conventional, the inconsequential and absurd. Here was a man who tried his steel.

Now, Zelter had his theories about teaching harmony--theories too finely spun for any one but himself to grasp. Possibly he himself did not seize them very firmly, but only argued them in a vain attempt to clear the matter up in his own mind. The things we are not quite sure of are those upon which we insist.

Goethe had pooh-poohed and smitten the table with his "stein" in denial.

And now Zelter, the frank and bold, stealthily and by concocted plot and plan took his pupil, Felix Mendelssohn, with him on a visit to Weimar. He wanted to confound his antagonist and to reveal by actual proof the success that could be achieved where correct methods of instruction were followed.

Jean Jacques had written a novel showing what right theories, properly followed up, could do for his hero. Zelter had done better--he exhibited the youth.

"A girl in boy's clothes, I do believe," said Goethe, with his usual banter, in the evening when a little company had gathered in the parlors. Felix sat on his teacher's knee, with his arms around the old man's neck, girl-like. "Does he play?" continued Goethe, going over and opening the piano.

"Oh, a little!" answered Zelter indifferently.

The ladies insisted--they always had music when Zelter made them a visit.

"Come, make some noise and awaken the spirits that have so long lain slumbering!" ordered the old poet.

Zelter advanced to the piano and played a stiff, formal little tune of his own.

He arose and motioned to Felix.

"Play that!" said the teacher.

The child sat down, and with an impatient little gesture and half-smile at the audience, played the piece exactly as Zelter had played it, with a certain drawling style that was all Zelter's own. It was so funny that the listeners burst into shouts of laughter. But the boy instantly restored order by striking the bass a strong stroke with both hands, running the scale, and weaving that simple little air into the most curious variations.

For ten minutes he played, bringing in Zelter's little tune again and again, and then Zelter in a voice of pretended wrath cried, "Cease that tin-pan drumming and play something worth while."

Goethe arose, stroked the boy's pretty brown curls, kissed him on the forehead and said: "Yes, play something worth while. I know you two rogues--you have been practising on that piece for a year or more, and now you pretend to be improvising--I'll see whether you can play!"

And going to a portfolio he took out a manuscript piece of music written out in the fine, delicate hand of Mozart, and placed it on the music-rack of the piano. Felix played the piece as if it were his own; and then laying it aside, went back and played it through from memory.

Then piece after piece was brought out for him to play, and Zelter leaned back and by his manner said, "Oh, it is nothing!"

And certainly it was nothing to the boy--he played with such ease that his talent was quite unknown to himself. He had not yet discovered that every one could not produce music just as they could talk.

Goethe's admiration for the boy was unbounded. The two weeks of Mendelssohn's prescribed visit had expired and Goethe begged for an extension of two weeks more. Every evening there was the little impromptu concert. After that Felix paid various visits to Weimar. Goethe's house was his home, and the affection between the old poet and the young musician was very gentle and very firm. "All souls are of one age," says Swedenborg. Goethe was seventy-three and Mendelssohn thirteen when they first met, but very soon they were as equals--boys together.

Goethe was a learner to the day of his passing: he wanted to know. In the presence of those who had followed certain themes further than he had, he was as an eager, curious child. When Goethe was seventy-eight and Mendelssohn eighteen, they spent another month together; and a regular program of instruction was laid out. Each morning at precisely nine, they met for the poet's "music lesson," as Goethe called it, and the boy would play from some certain composer, showing the man's peculiar style, and the features that differentiated him from others. Goethe himself has recorded in his correspondence that it was Felix Mendelssohn who taught him of Hengstenberg and Spontini, introduced him to Hegel's "Æsthetics," and revealed to him for the first time the wonders of Beethoven.

Can you not close your eyes and see them--the mighty giant of fourscore, with his whitened locks, and the slight, slender, handsome boy?

The old man is seated in his armchair near the window that opens on the garden. The youth is at the piano and plays from time to time to illustrate his thought, then turns and talks, and the old man nods in recognition. The boy sings and the old man chords in with a deep, mellow bass which the years have not subdued.

When there are others present these two may romp, joke and talk much--masking their hearts by frivolity--but together they sit in silence, or speak only in lowered voices as all true lovers always do. Their conversation is sparse and to the point; each is mindful of the dignity and worth that the other possesses: each recognizes the respect that is due to the mind that knows and the heart that feels. "All souls are of one age."

* * * * *

With one exception, Felix Mendelssohn was unlike all the great composers who lived before him--he was born in affluence; during his life all the money he could use was his. No struggle for recognition marked his growth. He never knew the pang of being misunderstood by the public he sought to serve. Whether these things were to his lasting disadvantage, as many aver, will forever remain a question of opinion.

Felix Mendelssohn was the culminating flower of a long line of exquisite culture. He was an orchid that does not reproduce itself. With him died the race. All that beauty of soul, vivacity, candor and sparkling gaiety, with the nerved-up capacity for work, were but the flaring up of life ere it goes out in the night of death. Such men never found either a race or a school. They are the comets that dash across the plane of our vision, obeying no orbit, leaving behind only a memory of blinding light.

The character of Mendelssohn was distinctly feminine, and it follows that his music should be played by men and not by women, otherwise we get a suggestion of softness and tameness that is apt to pall. Man, like Deity, creates in his own image.

Sorrow had never pierced the heart of this prosperous and very respectable person.

He was never guilty of indiscretion or excess, and no demon of discontent haunted his dreams.

In Mendelssohn's music we get no sense of Titanic power such as we feel when "Wagner" is being played; no world problems vex us. The delicate, plaintive, spiritual seductions of Chopin, who swept the keys with an insinuating gossamer touch, are not there. The brilliant extravaganzas of Liszt--passages illumined by living lightning--are wholly wanting. But in it all you feel the deep, measured pulse of a religious conviction that never halts nor doubts. There are grace, ease, beauty, sweetness and exquisite harmony everywhere. In the "Saint Paul," as in his other oratorios, are such arias for the contralto as, "But the Lord is mindful of His own"; for the bass, "God have mercy upon us," and for the tenor, "Be thou faithful unto death." These reveal pure and exalted melody of highest type. It uplifts but does not intoxicate. Spontaneity is sacrificed to perfection, and the lack of self-assertion allows us to keep our wits and admire sanely.

Heinrich Heine, the pagan Jew, once taunted Mendelssohn with being a Jew and yet conducting a "Passion Play." The gibe was a home-thrust and a cruel one, since Mendelssohn had neither the wit nor the mental acuteness to avoid the pink of the man who was hated by Jew and Christian alike. Towards the exiled Heine, Mendelssohn had only a patronizing pity--"Why should any man offend the people in power?" he once asked.

Only the exiled can sympathize with the exile--only the downtrodden and the sore-oppressed understand the outcast. Golgotha never came to Mendelssohn, and this was at once his blessing and his misfortune.

And the grim fact still remains that world-poets have never been "respectable," and that the saviors of the world are usually crucified between thieves.

In life Mendelssohn received every token of approbation that men can pay to other men. For him wealth waited, kings uncovered, laurel bloomed and blossomed, and love crowned all. His popularity was greater than that of any other man of his time. He had no enemies, no detractors, no rivals--his pathway was literally and poetically strewn with roses. What more can any man desire? Lasting fame and a name that never dies? Avaunt! but first know this, that immortality is reserved alone for those who have been despised and rejected of men.

* * * * *

Saintship is the exclusive possession of those who have either worn out, or never had, the capacity to sin.

Fortunately for Felix Mendelssohn he never had it--he was ever the bright, joyous, gracious, beautiful being that all his friends describe, and every one who met him was his friend thereafter. The character of "Seraphael" in the novel of "Charles Auchester," by Miss Sheppard, portrays Mendelssohn in a glowing, seraphic light. The book reveals the emotional qualities of a woman given over to her idol, and yet the man is Mendelssohn--he was equal to the best that could be said of him.

The weakness of Miss Sheppard's book lies in the fact that she is so true to life that we tire of the goodness and beauty, and long for a rogue to keep us company and break the pall of a sweetness that cloys.

The bitterest thing Mendelssohn ever said of a public performer was to describe a certain prima donna as acting like an "arrogant cook." All the good orchestra leaders are supposed to have fine fits of frenzy when they tear their hair in wrath at the discordant braying of careless players. But Mendelssohn never lost his temper. When his men played well, as soon as the piece was done he went among them shaking hands, congratulating and thanking them. This would have been a great stroke of policy in the eyes of a groundling, for the action never failed to catch the audience, and then the applause was uproarious. At such times Mendelssohn seemed to fail in knowing the applause was for him, and appeared as one half-dazed or embarrassed, when suddenly remembering where he was, he would seize the nearest 'cello, violin or oboe, and drag the astonished man to the front to share the honors and bouquets. If this was artistry it was of a high order and should be ranked as art.

I once heard Henry Irving make a speech at Harvard University, and shall never forget the tremor in his voice and the half-embarrassment of his manner. What could have been more complimentary to college striplings? And then, as usual, he looked helplessly about for Ellen Terry, and having located her, held out his hand toward her and led her to the front to receive the homage.

Tears filled my eyes. Was Irving's action art? Ods-bodkins! I never thought of it: I was hypnotized and all swallowed up in loving admiration for Sir Henry and the beautiful Lady Ellen.

Felix Mendelssohn was beloved by his players. First, because he never wrote parts that only seraphs of light could play. In this he was unlike Wagner, who could think such music as no brass, no wood nor strings could perform, and so was ever in torments of doubt and disappointment. Second, he was always grateful when his players did the best they could. Third, he was graciously polite, even at rehearsals. The extent of his inclination to rebuke was shown once when he abruptly rapped for silence, and when quiet came said to his orchestra: "I am sure that any one of the gentlemen present could write a symphony. I think, too, that you can all improve on the music of the past--even that of Beethoven. But this afternoon we are playing Beethoven's music--will you oblige me?" And every man awoke to the necessity of putting the sweet, subtile, strong quality of the master into the work, instead of absent-mindedly sounding the note, fighting bluebottles, and taking care merely not to get off the key too much.

At the great Birmingham Festival several hundred ladies in the audience contrived at a given signal to shower the great conductor with bouquets. And Mendelssohn, entering into the spirit of the fun, dexterously caught the blossoms and tossed them to his players, not even forgetting the triangles and the boys who played the kettledrums.