The most musical family known to history was that of the Bachs. In six generations (Sebastian belonging to the fifth) we find marked musical ability, which in a number of instances before Sebastian appeared amounted almost to genius. As many as thirty-seven of the name are known to have held important musical positions. A large number during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were members of the town bands and choruses, which sustained almost the entire musical culture among the common people of Germany during that period. These organizations, combining the public practice of religious and secular music, were effective in nourishing both the artistic and the religious spirit of the time. In Germany in the seventeenth century there was as yet no opera and concert system to concentrate musical activity in the theatre and public hall. The Church was the nursery of musical culture, and this culture was in no sense artificial or borrowed,—it was based on types long known and beloved by the common people as their peculiar national inheritance, and associated with much that was stirring and honorable in their history. Thuringia was one of the most musical districts in Germany in the seventeenth century, and was also a stronghold of the reformed religion. From this and its neighboring districts the Bachs never wandered. Eminent as they were in music, hardly one of them ever visited Italy or received instruction from a foreign master. They kept aloof from the courts, the hot-beds of foreign musical growths, and submitted themselves to the service of the Protestant Church. They were peasants and small farmers, well to do and everywhere respected. Their stern self-mastery held them uncontaminated by the wide-spread demoralization that followed the Thirty Years’ War. They appear as admirable types of that undemonstrative, patient, downright, and tenacious quality which has always saved Germany from social decline or disintegration in critical periods.