Bach was a stalwart man with fine deep eyes, broad forehead and a grave face, lit with kindly humor. He had dignity and calm, was always courteous, and criticised only his pupils whom he wanted to help. When asked one time, how he played so well, he remarked, “I always have had to work hard.” He could stand no one who was pretentious and conceited. He wanted his rights but never boasted. One year besides fulfilling his other duties he wrote a cantata every Sunday! He wrote them as a preacher writes sermons. They had to be done and he never neglected his duty. Bach was a devoted father and husband and his home was one of the happiest of any great genius. Many of his children were musical and he said that he had an orchestra in his own home! Even his little half-witted son had genius and during the last years of Bach’s life when the dear old man had become blind, the little boy sat at the clavier, Bach’s favorite instrument, and improvised to the joy of his father. BACH’S WORKS It is impossible to describe in words just what Bach accomplished, so surpassing in beauty are his best works. He brought the art of polyphonic writing to its highest and most sublime point. His value to the student cannot be exaggerated, for he is the musical Bible to all who would be musicians. The organ was the core of his musical thinking and it is in the things which center about the organ that his art is loftiest. Although he was most ingenious in writing counterpoint, he was never dry and tricky as were other writers. His subjects were always original and his melodic line always of rare beauty. His works are most varied: fugues, motets, cantatas, passions, oratorios, concertos, sonatas and suites. He was a radical in his day, for he threw over conventional notions of harmony as to proper keys and insisted upon a new system of tuning the clavier, so as to use the whole range of tones. The “Well-tempered Clavichord,” two groups of 24 Preludes and Fugues in 24 keys, was the outcome of this. It was so called because it was written to show the possibilities of a clavier (or clavichord) tuned according to an idea of his, enabling one to play in all keys. This was one of the greatest discoveries in the whole story of music, for it made possible all the music which has followed. The keyboard was divided into equal half-steps. This made twelve half-steps within each octave and thus all the intervals became fixed, and modulation from key to key was possible. Heretofore, if one went from one key to another, the instrument sounded out of tune, but now instruments were tuned, as we glibly say, “to scale.” He invented a new fingering in which the thumb and little finger were used for the first time. We wonder why the thumb had been snubbed! The pianoforte was just coming into prominence in Bach’s day but he preferred the clavier, on which he felt he could play with more expression.