Well we know that while the puny efforts of the ordinary individual ripple but for an instant some little surface of the vast ocean of mortal life, others there be, centers of mental and spiritual power at once wide-reaching, deep-sounding, and long-enduring. Always in touch with unseen angel hands, these are verily the world's immortals co-working with the Divine Law of human progress. Deathless are they in deed and name; the prophet of Truth, the priest of God, the patriot Warrior, the incorruptible Statesman, the wise Ruler, the inspired Artist and the uplifted Singer. Our immediate purpose bids us choose from this noble company; let us look somewhat into the dedicated life of Johann Sebastian Bach; let us inquire briefly into the musical mission of one of the chief promoters of human enlightenment. At cursory glance, the solid and abiding work of Bach may be called the bed-rock, the basic strata, whereon rests our musical world of this present. But, remembering the Flemish Fuguists and their predecessors, the Canon writers of the Gotho-Belgic school, and, earlier, the Parisian developers of the primitive counterpoint originating in French Flanders during the tenth century, we discover other strata underlying and upholding the Passion Music, the Sacred Cantatas, and the instrumental Preludes and Fugues. Nor need this discovery belittle our estimate of Bach; it but illustrates the dependence of the human mind, unstable without the foundation and buttress of other minds. Shakespeare himself was largely the product of exceptional conditions, the rich flower of the Elizabethan environment, the chief dramatic poet, the genius most gifted, among an unusually gifted group of notables. The Flemish school of composition, which, at the advent of Bach, had now flourished for at least a century and a half, was most fortunate in one of its earliest pupils, Palestrina, who, infusing into its abundant learning the spirit of Genius, forthwith evolved for his Italy a noble and devout school of sacred music. But, despite the unhampered labors of the Flemings, no native individualizer and summarizer of their efforts appeared during the one hundred and fifty years prior to the birth of Bach. No northern Palestrina yet fathered a national sacred music suited to the needs of Protestant Germany.