That Forkel is remembered at all is due solely to his monograph on Bach. Written at a time when Bach’s greatness was realised in hardly any quarter, the book claimed for him pre-eminence which a tardily enlightened world since has conceded him. By his generation Forkel was esteemed chiefly for his literary activity, critical ability, and merit as a composer. His principal work, _Allgemeine Geschichte der Musik,_ was published in two volumes at Leipzig in 1788 and 1801. Carl Friedrich Zelter, Goethe’s friend and correspondent, dismissed the book contemptuously as that of an author who had “set out to write a history of music, but came to an end just where the history of music begins.” Forkel’s work, in fact, breaks off at the sixteenth century. But the curtailed _ History_ cleared the way for the monograph on Bach, a more valuable contribution to the literature of music. Forkel already had published, in three volumes, at Gotha in 1778, his _Musikalisch-kritische Bibliothek,_ and in 1792 completed his critical studies by publishing at Leipzig his _Allgemeine Literatur der Musik._ Forkel was also a student of the music of the polyphonic school. He prepared for the press the scores of a number of sixteenth century Masses, Motets, etc., and fortunately received proofs of them from the engraver. For, in 1806, after the Battle of Jena, the French impounded the plates and melted them down. Forkel’s proofs are still preserved in the Berlin Royal Library. He was diligent in quest of Bach’s scattered MSS., and his friendship with Bach’s elder sons, Carl Philipp Emmanuel and Wilhelm Friedemann, enabled him to secure precious relics which otherwise might have shared the fate of too many of Bach’s manuscripts. He took an active interest in the proposal of Messrs. Hoffmeister and Kühnel, predecessors of C. F. Peters at Leipzig, to print a “kritisch-korrecte” edition of Bach’s Organ and Clavier works. Through his friend, Johann Gottfried Schicht, afterwards Cantor at St. Thomas’s, Leipzig, he was also associated with Breitkopf and Haertel’s publication of five of Bach’s six extant Motets in 1802-3. As a composer Forkel has long ceased to be remembered. His works include two Oratorios, _ Hiskias_ (1789) and _Die Hirten bey der Krippe_; four Cantatas for chorus and orchestra; Clavier Concertos, and many Sonatas and Variations for the Harpsichord.