The most prominent of the composers who succeeded Dittersdorf was Johann Friedrich Reichardt, whose interesting literary work, “Letters of an Observant Traveller,” is full of useful information. Born in 1752, he became orchestral conductor to Frederick the Great in 1775, and was salt-inspector in a town near Halle, at the time of his death in 1814. He was liberally educated, travelled much, and was acquainted with many of the prominent persons of his time. Few of his works have lived, and those which have survived are chiefly songs. He produced, however, an enormous amount of music. His imagination was not equal to his understanding or his artistic intentions, and, indeed, he was to a great extent a mere copyist. A single new form is due to him, the “Liederspiel,” the musical part of which, as the name suggests, consists only of songs. The development of the opera in Germany, during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, has now been traced, and next we will turn our attention to the progress of instrumental music after Sebastian Bach. No more remarkable instance of lack of appreciation of a great man’s genius has ever been known than that furnished by the history of Bach’s works. The reasons for this are perhaps twofold. Like Shakespeare, Bach must have been ignorant of the supreme excellence of his artistic creations. Hence, like many other great men, he occupied himself little with the dissemination of his works, except those used in teaching. Not only the musical world, but even Bach’s immediate family and pupils were unable to appreciate his significance and to use his compositions in a way most advantageous to the development of music. It would indeed be interesting to know what difference it might have made in the development of music in Germany if Haydn, and especially Mozart, had enjoyed opportunities of intimate acquaintance with Bach’s works.[24] [Illustration: JOHANN FRIEDRICH REICHARDT. ] Only a few of his organ compositions, the “Well-Tempered Clavichord” and some of his other clavier music, seem to have been generally known in Haydn’s and Mozart’s time. It was only indirectly through his sons and other pupils that his powerful influence on instrumental music was then felt.