At this juncture, the further development of polyphony, and, in fact, the further development of all great music, found in Bach that peculiar genius which it wholly needed. He became the masterly unifier of the harmonic and the polyphonic systems. With a correct idea of key relationship, he grouped the family of chords around the tonic and the dominant after the manner of to-day. At the same time, his unparalleled use of anticipations, suspensions and passing notes, produced an effect wonderfully rich in the stately sweep of his measures. Thus he prepared the way for the classical music of Beethoven, who, turning from strict polyphony to a style wherein his endowed emotional nature found wider and freer scope, became in turn an innovator in that he gave greater variety to the harmonic tissue by means of bold and before-unattempted modulations. Beethoven in turn prepared the way for Wagner who essayed to enlarge the number of related keys, besides carrying the art of modulation to before-unknown lengths, even to the limit of good taste: also by an exhaustive use of anticipations, suspensions, and passing notes, this latest master revealed the fullest development of the Bachian polyphony. How little of true foresight comes to the eyes of the sage! How incommensurable that foresight with his great and far looking back! How much of riddle his prophesying touches not and his dying leaves unsolved! Bach knew nothing of the Classicism of Beethoven, who, in turn, knew nothing of the Romanticism of Schumann and Chopin; and what knew these of the latest art-interblendings of Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss? Can there be other musical riddles worth the solving? If so, what are they; and who their solver? For answer, ask the average musician of to-morrow; but not the authorities of to-day. The career of Bach, the composer, covered a period of about forty-five years, in fact, a period longer by thirteen years than the entire life of Schubert; a period longer by nine years than the life of Mozart; longer by six years than the life of Mendelssohn; and longer by five years than the lives of Chopin and Von Weber. And yet Handel and Haydn exceeded by something like ten years, and Verdi by nearly twenty years, the extended term of Bach's productivity. Notwithstanding the fatal catastrophe which terminated the promise of the poet Shelley; notwithstanding the hard conditions which cramped and well-nigh thwarted the divinely-endowed Mozart, misplaced as a bird of Paradise caged in an Arctic clime, it can with truth be said that however short the earthly years allotted to men of genius, they, in most instances, have, as by Divine ordering, given to the world their best.