In round figures the years between 1700 and 1750 are the Golden Age of harpsichord music. In that half century not only did the technique, both of writing for and performing on the harpsichord, expand to its uttermost possibilities, but there was written for it music of such beauty and such emotional warmth as to challenge the best efforts of the modern pianist and to call forth the finest and deepest qualities of the modern pianoforte. It was an age primarily of opera, of the Italian opera with its senseless, threadbare plots, its artificial singers idolized in every court, its incredible, extravagant splendor. The number of operas written is astonishing, the wild enthusiasm of their reception hardly paralleled elsewhere in the history of music. Yet of these many works but an air or two has lived in the public ear down to the present day; whereas the harpsichord music still is heard, though the instrument for which it was written has long since vanished from our general musical life. Practically the whole seventeenth century has been required to lay down a firm foundation for the development of instrumental music in all its branches. This being well done, the music of the next epoch is not unaccountably surprising. As soon as principles of form had become established, composers trod, so to speak, upon solid ground; and, sure of their foothold, were free to make rapid progress in all directions. In harpsichord music few new forms appeared. The toccata, prelude, fugue, and suite offered room enough for all the expansion which even great genius might need. Within these limits the growth was twofold: in the way of virtuosity and refinement of style, and in the way of emotional expression. That music which expands at once in both directions, or in which, rather, the two growths are one and the same, is truly great music. Such we shall now find written for the harpsichord. Each of the three men whose work is the chief subject of this chapter is conspicuous in the history of music by a particular feature. Domenico Scarlatti is first and foremost a great virtuoso, Couperin an artist unequalled in a very special refinement of style, Sebastian Bach the instrument of profound emotion. In these features they stand sharply differentiated one from the other. These are the essential marks of their genius. None, of course, can be comprehended in such a simple characterization. Many of Scarlatti’s short pieces have the warmth of genuine emotion, and Couperin’s little works are almost invariably the repository of tender and naïve sentiment. Bach is perhaps the supreme master in music and should not be characterized at all except to remind that his vast skill is but the tool of his deeply-feeling poetic soul. I