In the «Well-tempered Clavichord,» a work which the celebrated theorist Richter has well said «should be in the hands of all who devote themselves to the higher branches of musical study,» we have, by the universal acknowledgment of authorities, the culminating perfection of the Contrapuntal School, that ample heritage from an era more and more behind the Classicism of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, and the Romanticism of Schumann, Chopin and Wagner. Severe with the legacies of the mediæval spirit, this comprehensive work of Bach, embracing the totality of the major and the minor keys, is, for breadth and strength, comparable with the chief religious frescoes of Michel Angelo. With reverence, and a sense of deep obligation, every sterling musician looks back to Johann Sebastian Bach, seeing in him the virile forebear of whatsoever is rich and euphonious and learned in modern instrumental music. Composers like Felix Mendelssohn and Robert Franz, have sat at the feet of Bach and hailed him their musical Messiah, and many, numbered not in the circle of such discipleship, have harkened to the voice of his teaching; and some there be, who, touching but the hem of his garments, were cured of weakness and infirmity. The grand, old German Chorals, those voicings of religious fervor steadfast and heart-deep, wherefrom every frivolity of the world was banished; those massive, stately hymns of a communion whose worshippers each mingled his individual offering with the outpour of congregational praise, are forever associated with the name of Bach, their amplifier and enricher, as with the name of him who introduced them into the service of the Lutheran Church. Bold and enduring, like monolithic hills, those rugged Chorals long had stood untouched by the meddlesome hand of Mediocrity. Surely their incorporation by Bach into his greatest works demanded a genius equal to that of their originators, and, in addition, the total of judgment and learning which our master summoned to his well-accomplished task.