One who has investigated the psychology of Bach’s fugue in the Toccatas, will no longer fail to recognise it in his pure and absolute fugues. A fugue of Bach--this sounds to the _lay_ musical ear as the very sum of all that is academic. But in reality never were fugues written which were developed less academically, or which flow so entirely from the soul. Only take the fugal form not as the end in itself, and not as a mere example of musical architecture--only take pains to discover the spirit of its unfolding--and we shall be astounded at the endless variety of the inward musical life which is profusely showered into this form. The essence of a fugue of Bach is just this freedom from all architecture, this suppression of all calculation in favour of the spiritual development. The fugal form, that well-known series of enlargements and arrangements of the pure canon, is to him a prime _datum_, from which, nevertheless, he has formed no unbending principle. But he works with this material in such a way that he keeps the development of a piece always subordinate to the character which the fugal theme imposes on him. The theme is the title, the piece the contents. His genius reveals itself in perception of the thousand possibilities of unfolding which lie in his themes--some advancing diatonically, some studded over with pauses, some with sudden stops on sevenths, some marching on in massive choral style, some humorously staccato, especially those with startling false accents, others drawn in large outlines which excite curiosity and scarcely stand forth in their clear rhythm till the ninth or tenth bar, and which he was so fond of because they gave the strongest stimulus to the coming development. [Illustration: J. S. Bach. Bust by Carl Seffner. Modelled on the actual skull. After His, J. S. Bach (Vogel, Leipsic).]