If Bach’s greatness is in the former works stupendous, in the latter it is loveable. Here we learn to know his other side. It is his “other manner.” Here, instead of the severe canonic development of a theme, attention is paid to the voices as parts of a harmonious whole; he steps down from the cothurnus, and moves familiarly in pleasant comedy. Still, the contrapuntal conception is the basis of the structure; but simply harmonised floriations of melody are interwoven, so that the clavier almost rivals the arioso of a violin. Between the extremes of the first movement of the “Chromatic Fantasia,” with its free rhythms, arpeggios, recitatives, and song-passages, and of the second movement, the regular fugue--extremes which mark the two limits of Bach’s style--there is an endless abundance of methods of treatment, in which now the contrapuntal element and now the arioso takes the lead. We see Bach in this second group of his clavier-works, the suites and concertos, pass over into the enchanting fields of Italian sensuous music. But it is remarkable how he never loses for a single moment his unique depth and his insatiable delight in form. There is a very abyss between a suite of Bach, founded on the Eternities, and one of Handel’s, owing its popularity to the transitory charms of dexterous trivialities. There are three great groups of Bach’s clavier-suites: the so-called Partiten, which appeared in print in his own life-time, the “English Suites,” and the “French Suites.” The Partiten, which were first published separately, must, as the earliest work of this author known to the public, have struck the whole world with bewilderment. It was the first bound of a unique genius, the elevation of a traditional form of art into quite unparalleled shapes, a storm of intellectual lightning in a region long regarded as exclusively owned by Frenchmen and Italians. Even to-day the Partiten belong to the most select class of clavier-literature; and I cannot for a moment conceive how they are not to be regarded as superior by many degrees to the English and French suites. In no book is the future of music more clearly foretold. To see in the B flat major corrente, Chopin; in the B flat major gigue, Schumann; in the C minor sinfonia, Beethoven; in the C minor Rondo and Capriccioso, Mendelssohn; in the A minor Scherzo, Mozart, is no mere enthusiastic fancy. [Illustration: The Fifteenth Sinfonia of John Sebastian Bach, from the Royal Musikbibliothek, Berlin.]