Bach's versatility, facility, and physical endurance were as remarkable in their way as was the quality of his creations. He wrote for organ, piano, violin, for voices unaccompanied and with organ or orchestra, and asserted his mastery in each and all of these fields. His preserved writings would busy a copyist ten hours per day for fourteen years, and still Bach, in the absence of other outlets, found time to engrave much of his own music. It is to be hoped that the tardy appreciation of his character and works, which have at last filled the world with adoration, may penetrate the Beyond and warm his heart towards mankind, who during his life so little fathomed the depths of his emotions and failed to see the loftiness of his ideals. Händel was also great, unless compared with his greater contemporary. His best work was the oratorio "Israel in Egypt." His style was a mixture of Italian grace and German vigor. He was a master of vocal resources, and his works are therefore strong in sonority, and grateful to both singers and hearers. Händel wrote fluently, but with a less sustained earnestness than Bach, and his compositions have done more to foster chorus singing than have all other agencies combined; for which reason the musical world is but discharging a just debt in assigning to him the place of honor on its vocal repertoires. Of these two masters, Händel wrote less involvedly. Bach depended upon the legitimate development of his themes, whereas Händel often resorted to tone masses,--was more harmonic than contrapuntal. Soon after the middle of the eighteenth century the ever-rising flood of musical culture became highest in Vienna. This resulted quite as much from the city's contiguity to Italy, whose lyric springs had by no means run dry, as from the stream of northern influence. Musical intelligence had by this time become so diffused that bright lights showed themselves at many points on the horizon, but Vienna was made resplendent by a galaxy that illumined her musical life and prepared her for our third and fourth high-priests, Beethoven and Schubert. The most brilliant of this galaxy were Haydn, Mozart, and Gluck, each and all of whom bequeathed treasures to the world surpassed in value only by those with which our priestly line endowed us. "Papa Haydn" gave expression to his pure aspirations and childlike simplicity in symphonies, stringed quartets, and other ensemble works, and in large vocal compositions. The "Creation" and "Seasons" are his most ambitious writings. Few of Haydn's works have great intellectual power, but they are as refreshing as rural scenes or well-told tales. Mozart and Gluck will be necessarily discussed in Chapter V., so I will pass them now.