all his powers and created one of the most lofty works of German tonal art. At the time when Bach's playing excited the general admiration of the Hamburg public in 1720, he probably performed there his great G-minor fugue with prelude, one of his best known and most celebrated works. A musician of the eighteenth century pronounced this to be "the very best pedal piece of Herr Johann Sebastian Bach," and it is certainly safe to assert that he never wrote one which surpassed it. Play of imagination, inexhaustible invention, transparent clearness, unaffected simplicity, lofty earnestness and deep inward joy are here combined to form a whole of such unapproachable grandeur as to exclude every thought of a comparison with other composers. Among the works of the Leipsic period should be mentioned first of all the six sonatas for two manuals and pedal. These were completed between the years 1727 and 1733 and, according to tradition, were intended for the education of the musician's eldest son, Wilhelm Friedemann. The form of these pieces, as is well known, is borrowed from the Italian chamber music. Properly speaking, they are not intended for the organ, but for a pedal-clavier with two manuals, yet they do not lose in effect, when played upon the former instrument. They present the most difficult of tasks to the organ-performer, not only because the most perfect independence of movement is demanded of both hands, as well as the feet, but also on account of the crystalline transparency of the three-part movement which renders the smallest defect in execution extremely painful to the ear. The six so-called "great preludes and fugues" (Edition of the Bach Society, Vol. XV., p. 189-260) are also considered as belonging to the Leipsic time, although no positive external evidence in favor of the assumption can be produced. If we add to these the preludes and fugues in G major, the toccata and fugue in F major, the "Doric" toccata and fugue in D minor and the great prelude with fugue in E♭ major, we shall have nearly exhausted the list of works composed by Bach during the latest period of his life. Should this seem to any one a small amount for so great an artist to accomplish in twenty-seven years, he must remember that the principal object of Bach's activity throughout this period was the vocal church music, which, as cantor of St. Thomas's, it was his duty to provide each Sunday. The value of works of art, moreover, is not to be estimated by their number or extent. Haydn wrote over one hundred symphonies, Beethoven only nine, yet the composer of "Fidelio" certainly does not rank below Haydn in importance. These later organ pieces of Bach's are creations of a universal type. Into each one of them the artist infused the whole of his giant intellect, animating by the breath of his genius the masses of sound poured forth from the organ in prodigious volume, yet governed in the smallest details by the most rigorous rules of art.