Bach was a master of composition for the organ, for the clavichord, for the orchestra, for the solo voice, and for chorus. It is not possible in a book like this to give detailed consideration to his works. His famous settings of "The Passion" will be noticed in their proper place, and so will the influence of his orchestral compositions. At present we are to review briefly his piano compositions, which were written for the clavichord. This, perhaps, is one of the most remarkable features of these great works. Played on a modern piano, with all its power and brilliancy, they seem to be perfectly suited to it. The clavier compositions of Bach consist of "inventions," suites, preludes, fugues, sonatas, concertos, and fantasias. In his "Well-Tempered Clavichord," already mentioned, Bach left us a set of preludes and fugues which have never been surpassed. He also left us a treatise, "The Art of Fugue," in which the laws of the form are illustrated by sixteen fugues and four canons for one piano, and two fugues for two pianos all on the same theme. Bach's organ toccatas and fugues grew directly out of the old style introduced by Merulo and the Venetian masters. They sought to bring out the power and variety of their instrument by contrasting chord passages of breadth and majesty with scale passages of brilliant character. Bach systematized this style of composition by showing how to produce contrast and variety while developing logically by the devices of counterpoint a definite subject and working up to a climax of great eloquence. In his works for the clavichord he demonstrated the same principle of subject and development, but in a style adapted to the nature of the instrument. His preludes and fugues are amazing not only in the extent of their mastery of the technics of composition, but also in their almost prophetic insight into the possibilities of the piano as a means of expression. All these preludes and fugues have a note of personal intimacy. Some are playful, some are bold, some are sad, some are full of celestial calm, some are passionately pathetic. The higher qualities of these compositions are their consistency, their sense of fitness, their apparent inevitableness. The subject of a Bach piano fugue not only suggests the answer and the logical development, but it fixes the character of the musical mood of the composition. The harmonies, the changes of key, the action and reaction of the imitative passages in double counterpoint, all are not only marvellous in their exhibition of technical skill, but all are of such a nature that they sustain and expound the feeling contained in the subject. It is this mastership of artistic organization that places the music of Sebastian Bach above that of all his contemporaries, all of his predecessors, and most of his successors. He moulded the rigid materials of canonic art, which held earlier composers in its grasp, to his own ends and left us