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Book Size: 8 1/2 x 11 * * * * * * * From the BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH IT is impossible for the modern music lover to enter I thoroughly into the spirit of Johann Sebastian Bach without considering him in relation to the times in which he lived. The severely contrapuntal style in which he expressed himself sounds so austere to modern ears that one is apt to regard him as a prophet indeed -- but rather as a prophet who dwelt in seclusion than as one who lived amid the haunts of men. It is true that much of his music is Cast in an ecclesiastical mold, but what of the gavottes, the sarabandes, the bourr es innumerable in his instrumental music? The fact is that Bach was very human. He had the full-blooded German love for family life, having been married twice, and having reared a family of twenty children -- all of whom were consecrated to music. As a composer he was a pioneer who saw far ahead of the musicians of his day. In Bach's time Equal Temperament was almost unknown, though Willaert had suggested its possibility as early as 1550. An attempt to make all modern major scales scientifically accurate -- that is to say, so that C sharp, for example, could be distinguished from D flat -- would require eighty-one keys to each octave. Bach's musical ear found no fault with a scale divided into twelve equal semitones. Having opened up a virgin field, he proceeded to explore it with serene indifference to the adverse criticisma of the more pedantic among his contemporaries. A genius like Bach could hardly be produced in these hustling times. Materialism, with its concomitant evils, has taken such hold upon us that it seems as if all our activities aimed only at the outward circumstances of existence, and that if another genius such as Bach were born, he would soon be crushed by the onward tramp of our relentless age. Bach was content with the greatest simplicity. All he needed was a sufficient income to keep the wolf from the door, and sufficient leisure to work out the ideas with which his genius inspired him

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9781721919383

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