oath, embodied in the document, to observe its stipulations. | second card, according to his judgment. In case of his refusal Each took a copy and one was held by the scribe to be stored in the archives.

are right, it would appear that Pindar regarded the younger of “On the Sources of Elevation in Style"; a work ambiguously the two Cean poets as a jealous rival, who disparaged him to ascribed to Cassius Longinus (circ. A.D. 260), but more probably their common patron (schol. Pyth. ii. 52 f.), and as one whose due to some writer of the first century of our era. In chapter poetical skill was due to study rather than to genius (Ol. ii. 91- xxxiii. of that treatise, the author asks whether we ought to 110). In Olymp. ii. 96 the dual yapvetov, if it does not refer prefer "greatness" in literature, with some attendant laulls, to the uncle and nephew, remains mysterious; nor does it admit to flawless merit on a lower level, and of course replies in the of probable emendation. One would gladly reject this tradition, affirmative. In tragedy, he asks, who would be lon of Chios to which the scholia so frequently reser; yet it would be rash rather than Sophocles; or in lyric poetry, Bacchylides rather than to assume that it rested merely on surmisc. The Alexandrians Pindar? Yet Bacchylides and lon are "fauluess, with a style may have possessed evidence on the subject which is now lost. of perfect elegance and finish.". In short, the essayist regards It is tolerably certain that the three poets were visitors at Hiero's Bacchylides as a thoroughly finished poet of the second class, who court at about the same time: Pindar and Bacchylides wrote never commits glaring saulis, but never reaches the loftier heights. odes of the same kind in his honour; and there was a tradition The first and most general quality of style in Bacchylides is that he preferred the younger poet. There is thus no intrinsic his perfect simplicity and clearness. Where the text is not improbability in the hypothesis that Pindar's haughty spirit corrupt, there are few sentences which are not lucid in meaning had suffered, or imagined, some mortification. It is noteworthy and simple in structure. This lucidity is partly due, no doubt, that, whereas in 476 and 470 both he and Bacchylides celebrated to the fact that he seldom attempts imagery of the bolder kind, Hiero's victories, in 468 (the most important occasion of all) and never has thoughts of a subtle or complex order. Yet it Bacchylides alone was commissioned to do so; although in that would be very unjust to regard such clearness as merely a comyear Pindar composed an ode (Olymp. vi.) for another Syracusan pensatory merit of lyric mediocrity, or to ignore its intimate victor at the same festival. Nor is it difficult to conceive that a connexion with the man's native grace of mind, with the artist's despot such as Hiero, whose constitutional position was ill feeling for expression, with the poet's delicate skill. How many defined, and who was perhaps all the more exigent of deference readers, who could enjoy and appreciate Pindar if he were less on that account, may have found the genial Ionian a more difficult, are stopped on the threshold by the aspect of his style, agreeable courtier than Pindar, an aristocrat of the Bocoto- and are fain to save their self-esteem by concluding that he is Acolic type, not unmindful of " his fathers the Aegidae," and at once turgid and shallow! A pellucid style must always have rather prone to link the praises of his patron with a lofty intima- been a source of wide, though modest, popularity for Bacchylides. tion of his own claims (see, c.g., Olymp. i. ad fin.). ` But, what- If it be true that Hiero preferred him to Pindar, and that he was ever may have been the true bearing of Pindar's occasional a favourite with Julian, those instances suggest the charm which innuendoes, it is at any rate pleasant to find that in the extant he must always have had for cultivated readers to whom affairs work of Bacchylides there is not the faintest semblance of hostile did not leave much leisure for study, and who rejoiced in a poet allusion to any rival. Nay, one might almost imagine a compli- with whom they could live on such easy terms. ment to Pindar, when, in mentioning Hesiod, he calls him BOWTÓS Another prominent trait in the style of Bacchylides is his love ανήρ.

of picturesque detail. This characteristic marks the fragment by Plutarch (de Exilio, p. 605 c) names Bacchylides in a list of which, before the discovery of the 1896 MS., he was best known writers, who after they had been banished from their native --a passage, from one of his paeans, on the blessings of peace cities, were active and successful in literature. It was Pelopon- (fr. 13, Bergk, 3, Jebb); and it frequently appears in the Odes, nesus that afforded a new home to the exiled poet. The passage especially in the mythical narratives. Greater poets can make gives no clue to date or circumstance; but it implies that an image flash upon the mind, as Pindar sometimes does, by Peloponnesus was the region where the poet's genius ripened a magic phrase, or by throwing one or two salient points into and where he did the work which established his fame. This strong relief. The method of Bacchylides is usually quieter; points to a residence of considerable length; and it may be noted he paints cabinet pictures. Observation and elegance do more that some of the poems illustrate their author's intimate know- for him than grasp or piercing insight; but his work is often of ledge of Peloponnesus. Thus in Ode viii., for Automedes of Phlius, very high excellence in its own kind. His treatment of simile he draws on the legends connected with the Phliasian river is only a special phase of this general tendency. It is exemplified Asopus. In Ode x., starting from the Argive legend of Proctus by the touches with which he elaborates the simile of the eagle and Acrisius, he tells how the Arcadian cult of Artemis 'II uipa was in Ode v., and that of the storm-tossed mariners in Ode xii. founded. In one of his dithyrambs (xix.) he treated the legend This full development of simile is Homeric in manner, but not of Idas (a Messenian hero) and Marpessa in the form of a Homeric in motive: Homer's aim is vividness; Bacchylides hymenaeus sung by maidens of Sparta.

is rather intent on the decorative value of the details themselves. The Alexandrian scholars, who drew up select lists of the There are occasional flashes of brilliancy in his imagery, when it best writers in each kind, included Bacchylides in their “canon” is lit up by his keen sense of beauty or splendour in external of the nine lyric poets, along with Alcman, Sappho, Alcaeus, nature. A radiance," as of fire," streams from the forms of the Stesichorus, Ibycus, Anacreon, Simonides and Pindar. The Nereids (xvi. 103 ff.). An athlete shines out among his fellows Alexandrian grammarian Didymus (circ. 30 B.C.) wrote a com- like" the bright moon of the mid-month night " among the stars mentary on the epinikian odes of Bacchylides. Horace, a poet (viii. 27 ff.). The sudden gleam of hope which comes to the in some respects of kindred genius, was a student of his works, Trojans by the withdrawal of Achilles is like a ray of sunshine and imitated him (according to Porphyrion) in Odes, i. 15, where" from beneath the edge of a storm-cloud” (xii. 105 ff.). The Nereus predicts the destruction of Troy. Quotations from shades of the departed, as seen by Heracles on the banks of the Bacchylides, or references to him, occur in Dionysius of Hali- Cocytus, are compared to the countless leaves Auttering in the carnassus, Strabo, Plutarch, Stobaeus, Athenaeus, Aulus Gellius, wind on " the gleaming headlands of lda" (v. 65 ff.)--an image Zenobius, Hephaestion, Clement of Alexandria, and various not unworthy of Dante or of Milton. grammarians or scholiasts. Ammianus Marcellinus (xxv. 4) says Among the minor features of this poet's style the most that the emperor Julian enjoyed reading Bacchylides. It is clear, remarkable is his use of epithets. A god or goddess nearly then, that this poet continued to be popular during at least the always receives some ornamental epithet; sometimes, indeed, first four centuries of our era. No inference adverse to his repute two or even three (e.g. KaAUKOOTEDÁVov oeuvâs ... 'Apteuidos can fairly be drawn from the fact that no mention of him occurs Aevrw levou, v. 98 f.). Such a trait is in unison with the epic in the extant work of any Attic writer. The only definite esti- manner, the straightforward narrative, which we find in some mate of him by an ancient critic occurs in the treatise lepl Tvous of the larger poems (as in V., X., and xvi.). On the other hand, commonly translated “On the Sublime," but meaning rather, the copious use of such ornament has the disadvantage that it

. For other explanations suggested, see Jebb's edition, Introd. sometimes gives a tinge of conventionality to his work. This p. 18.

impression is somewhat strengthened by the fact that many

of the epitnets are long compound words, not found elsewhere | with all his fortunes: then its scope became still larger; it might and (in some cases at least) probably invented by the poet; words which suggest a deliberate effort to vary the stock repertory.

Biography,

intent only on the letters. The MS. has received corrections or | Heinrich, of Arnstadt, had two sons, Johann Michael and Johann small supplements from at least two different persons. One of Christoph, who are among the greatest of J. S. Bach's foreThe other (A"), was considerably later; he wrote a Roman cursive runners, Johann Christoph being now supposed (although this is which might belong to the end of the 1st century A.D., or to the early still disputed) to be the author of the splendid motet, Ich lasse part of the 2nd. The correctors seem to be generally trustworthy; dich nicht (“I wrestle and pray "), formerly ascribed to Sebastian though, like the scribe, they were inattentive to metre, passing over Bach. Another descendant of Veit Bach, Johann Ludwig, was appear to have compared their Ms. with another, or others; but admired more than any other ancestor by Sebastian, who copied they sometimes made a bad use of such aid, intruding a false reading twelve of his church cantatas and sometimes added work of his where their text had the true one.

own to them. Breathings are generally added, especially rough breathings; the

The Bach family never left Thuringia until the sons of Sebastian are added, not to all words, but only, as a rule, to those which went into a more modern world. Through all the misery of the might cause doubt or difficulty to the reader. This was the Alex- peasantry at the period of the Thirty Years' War this clan andrian practice, accents being regarded as aids to correct reading, maintained its position and produced musicians who, however and more liberally used when the dialect was not Attic. In accord local their fame, were among the greatest in Europe. So syllable of a word; when the accent falls there, a grave accent is numerous and so eminent were they that in Erfurt musicians written on the preceding syllable, or on two such syllables (e.g. were known as “Bachs,” even when there were no longer any βλήχρας, πάνθάλης).

members of the family in the town. Sebastian Bach thus As Kenyon observes, no MS. of cqual antiquity is so well supplied inherited the artistic tradition of a united family whose circumthe Aleman fragment in the Louvre, which is of similar or slightly stances had deprived them of the distractions of the century of higher age, belonging perhaps to the early part of the 1st century musical fermentation which in the rest of Europe had destroyed A.D.; and in that MS. the comparatively frequent accents were polyphonic music. doubtless designed to aid readers unfamiliar with Alcman's Laconian Johann Sebastian Bach was baptized at Eisenach on the 23rd Doric. With regard to other grammatical or metrical signs (poowðlar) used in the Bacchylides Ms., there is not much that calls for special of March 1685. His parents died in his tenth year, and his elder remark. The punctuation, whether by the scribe or by correctors, brother, Johann Christoph, organist at Ohrdruf, took is very sparse, and certainly cannot always be regarded as authori-charge of him and taught him music. The elder brother tative. The signs denoting the end of a strophe or antistrophe is said to have been jealous of Sebastian's talent, and to (paragraphus),

of an epode (coronis), or of an ode (asterisk), are often have forbidden him access to a manuscript volume of works by omitted by the scribe, and, when employed, are sometimes placed Froberger, Buxtehude and other great organists. Every night

EDITIONS.-F. G. Kenyon, Ed. princeps (1897); F. Blass, 3rd ed. for six months Sebastian got up, put his hand through the lattice (1904): H. Jurenka (1898): N. Festa, text, translation and notes of the bookcase, and copied the volume out by moonlight, to the introduction, notes, translation, and bibliography: text only permanent ruin of his eyesight (as is shown by all the extant (1906). See also T. Zanghieri, Studi su Bacchilide, Bibliografía portraits of him at a later age and by the blindness of his last Bacchilidea, 1897-1905 (1905)).

(R. C. J.) years). When he had finished, his brother discovered the copy BACCIO D'AGNOLO (c. 1460–1543), Florentine wood-carver, and took it away from him. In 1700 Sebastian, now fifteen and sculptor and architect, had the family name of Baglioni, but was thrown on his own resources by the death of his brother, went to always known by the abbreviation of Bartolommeo into Baccio Lüneburg, where his beautiful soprano voice obtained him an and the use of d'Agnolo as meaning the son of Angelo, his father's appointment at the school of St Michael as chorister. He seems, name. He started as a wood-carver, and between 1491 and 1502 however, to have worked more at instrumental than at vocal did much of the decorative carving in the church of Santa Maria music. Apart from the choristers' routine, his position provided Novella and the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence. Having made his only for his general education, and we know little about his reputation as a sculptor he appears to have turned his attention definite musical instfuctors. In any case he owed his musical to architecture, and to have studied at Rome, though at what development mainly to his own incessant study of classical and precise date is uncertain; but quite at the beginning of the 16th contemporary composers, such as Frescobaldi (c. 1587), Caspar century he was engaged with Simon Pollajuolo in restoring the Kerl (1628-1693), Buxtehude, Froberger, Muffat the elder

, Palazzo Vecchio, and in 1506 he was commissioned to complete Pachelbel and probably Johann Joseph Fux (1660-1741), the the drum of the cupola of the metropolitan church of Santa author of the Gradus ad Parnassum on which all later classical Maria del Fiore. The latter work, however, was interrupted on composers were trained. A prettier and no less authentic story account of adverse criticisms from Michelangelo, and it remained than that of his brother's forbidden organ-volume tells how, on unexecuted. Baccio d'Agnolo also planned the Villa Borghese his return from one of the many holiday expeditions which Bach and the Bartolini palace, with other fine palaces and villas. The made to Hamburg on foot to hear the great Dutch organist Bartolini palace was the first house to be given frontispieces Reinken, he sat outside an inn longing for the dinner he could not of columns to the door and windows, previously confined to afford, when two herring-heads were flung out of the window, and churches; and he was ridiculed by the Florentines for his he found in each of them a ducat with which he promptly paid innovation. Another much-admired work by him was the his way, not home, but back to Hamburg. At Hamburg, also, campanile of the church of Santo Spirito. His studio was the Keiser was laying the foundations of German opera on a splendid resort of the most celebrated artists of the day, Michelangelo, scale which must have fired Bach's imagination though it never Sansovino, the brothers Sangallo and the young Raphael. He directly influenced his style. On the other hand Keiser's church died in 1543, leaving three sons, all architects, the best-known music was of immense importance in his development. In Celle being Giuliano.

the famous Hofkapelle brought the influence of French music to BACH, JOHANN SEBASTIAN (1685-1750), German musical bear upon Bach's art, an influence which inspired nearly all his composer. The Bach family was of importance in the history of works in suite-form and to which his many autograph copies of music for nearly two hundred years. Four branches of it were Couperin's music bear testimony. Indeed, there is no branch known at the beginning of the 16th century, and in 1561 we of music, from Palestrina onwards, conceivably accessible in hear of Hans Bach of Wechmar who is believed to be the father Bach's time, of which we do not find specimens carefully copied of Veit Bach (born about 1555). The family genealogy, drawn in his own handwriting. On the other hand, when Bach, at the

up by J. Sebastian Bach himself and completed by his age of nineteen, became organist at Arnstadt, he found Lübeck

son Philipp Emanuel,describes Veit Bach as the founder within easy distance, and there, in October 1705, he went to hear of the family, a baker and a miller, "whose zither must have Buxtehude, whose organ works show so close an affinity to Bach's sounded very pretty among the clattering of the mill-wheels." style that only their lack of coherence as wholes reveals to the His son, Hans Bach,“ der Spielmann," is the first professional attentive listener that with all their nobility they are not by musician of the family. Of Hans's large family the second son, Bach himself. Bach's enthusiasm for Buxtehude caused him Christoph, was the grandfather of Sebastian Bach. Another son, I to outstay his leave by three months, and this, together with his

Family.

habit of astonishing the congregation by the way he harmonized | his death in 1750, he must have had quite as much experience as the chorales got him into trouble. But he was already too great can have been good for him. He was often ruffled by the town an ornament to be lightly dismissed; and though his answers to councillors of Leipzig, who (like his earlier employers at Arnstadt) the complaints of the authorities (every word of which makes were shocked by the "unecclesiastical style" of his composiamusing reading in the archives of the church) were spirited tions and by his independent bearing. But he had more serious rather than satisfactory, and the consistorium had to add to their troubles. Of his seven children by his first wife only three complaints the grave scandal of his allowing a "strange maiden" survived him. By his second wife he had thirteen children, of to sing in the church,' Bach was able to maintain his position at whom he lost four of the six sons. For the head of so large a Arnstadt until he obtained the organistship of St Blasius in family his post was dignified rather than lucrative, and few Mühlhausen in 1707. Here he married his cousin, casily identified documents tell a prouder tale of uncomplaining thrift than the with the "strange maiden " of Arnstadt; and here he wrote his inventory of his possessions made after his death. One can only first great church cantatas, Aus der Tiefe, Goll ist mein König be thankful that he did not live to see anything but the wonderand Goltes Zeil. ful promise of his son Friedermann, who, in the words of the brilliantly successful K. Philipp Emanuel Bach, was more nearly capable of replacing his father than all the rest of the family together. The prospect of complete loss of the tradition of his own polyphonic art he faced with equanimity, saying of the new style, which in the hands of his own son, Philipp Emanuel, was soon to eclipse it for the next hundred years, "The art has advanced to great heights: the old style of music no longer pleases our modern ears." But it would have broken his heart if he had forseen that Friedermann Bach was to attain a disreputable old age after a dissolute and unproductive life.

Bach's mastery of the keyboard attracted universal attention, and prevented his ever being unemployed. In 1708 he went to Weimar where his successes were crowned by his appointment, in 1714, at the age of twenty-nine, as Hofkonzertmeister to the duke of Weimar. Here the composition of sacred music was one of his most congenial duties, and the great cantata, Ich hatte viel Bekümmerniss, was probably the first work of his new office. In 1717 Bach visited Dresden in the course of a concert tour, and was induced to challenge the arrogant French organist, J. Louis Marchand, who was making himself thoroughly disliked by the German musicians who could not deny his powers. Bach was first given an opportunity of listening secretly to Marchand's playing, then a competition on the organ was proposed, and a day was fixed for the tournament at which all the court and all the musical celebrities of the town were to be present, to see nothing less than the issue between French and German music. Marchand took up the challenge contemptuously; but it would appear that he also was allowed to listen secretly to Bach's playing, for on the day of the tournament the only news of him was that he had left Dresden by the earliest coach.

This triumph was followed by Bach's appointment as Kapellmeister to the duke of Cöthen, a post which he held from 1717 to 1723. The Cöthen period is that of Bach's central instrumental works, such as the first book of the Wohltemperirtes Klavier, the solo violin and violoncello sonatas, the Brandenburg concertos, and the French and English suites.

In 1723, finding his position at Cöthen uninspiring for choral music, he removed to Leipzig, where he became cantor of the Thomasschule, being still able to retain his post as visiting Kapellmeister at Cöthen, besides a similar position at Weissenfels. His wife had died in 1720, leaving seven children, of whom Friedermann and Philipp Emanuel had a great future before them. (For his sons see BACH, K. P. E., below.) In December 1721 Bach married again, and for the beautiful soprano voice of his second wife he wrote many of his most inspired arias. She was a great help to him with all his work, and her musical handwriting soon became so like his own that her copies are difficult to distinguish from his autographs. In 1729 Bach heard that Handel was for a second time visiting Halle on his way back to London from Italy. A former attempt of Bach's to meet Handel had failed, and now he was too ill to travel, so he sent his son to Halle to invite Handel to Leipzig; but the errand was not successful, and much to Bach's disappointment he never met his only compeer. Bach so admired Handel that he made a manuscript copy of his Passion nach Brockes. This work, though almost unknown in England then as now, was, next to the oratorios of Keiser, incomparably the finest Passion then accessible, as Graun's beautiful masterpiece, Der Tod Jesu, was not composed until four years after Bach's death. The disgusting poem of Brockes (which was set by every German composer of the time) was transformed by Bach with real literary skill as the groundwork of the nonscriptural numbers in his Passion according to St John.

All Bach's most colossal achievements, such as the Passion according to St Matthew and the B Minor Mass (for discussion of which see ORATORIO and MASS), date from his cantorship at Leipzig. But, important and congenial as was his position there, and smooth as the course of his life seems to have been until Spitta points out that this cannot mean singing in the choir at a service, but making music in church privately.

The brilliant successes of Philipp Emanuel led to his appointment as court-composer to the king of Prussia and hence, in 1747, to Sebastian's being summoned to visit Frederick the Great at Potsdam, an incident which Bach always regarded as the culmination of his career, much as Dr Johnson regarded his interview with George III. Bach had to play on the numerous newly invented pianofortes of Silbermann which the king had bought, and also to try the organs of the churches of Potsdam. Frederick, whose musical reputation rested on a genuine if narrow basis, gave him a splendid theme on which to extemporize; and on that theme Bach afterwards wrote Das musikalische Opfer. Two years after this event his sight began to fail, and before long he shared the fate of Handel in becoming perfectly blind.*

Bach died of apoplexy on the 28th of July 1750. His loss was deplored as that of one of the greatest organists and clavier players of his time. Of his compositions comparatively little was known. At his death his MS. works were divided amongst his sons, and many of them have been lost; only a small fraction of his greater works was recovered when, after the lapse of nearly a century, the verdict of his neglectful posterity was reversed by the modern upholders of polyphonic art. Even now some important works are still apparently irrecoverable.

Work and

The rediscovery of Bach is closely connected with the name of Mendelssohn, who was amongst the first to proclaim by word and deed the powers of a genius too gigantic to be grasped by three generations. By the enthusiastic influence. endeavours of Mendelssohn, Schumann and others, and in England still earlier by the performances and publications of Wesley and Crotch, the circle of Bach's worshippers rapidly increased. In 1850, a century after his death, a society was started for the correct publication of all Bach's remaining works. Robert Franz, the great song-writer, did good service in arranging some of Bach's finest works for modern performance, until the experience of a purer scholarship could prove not only the possibility but the incomparably greater beauty of a strict adherence to Bach's own scoring. The Porson of Bach-scholarship, however, is Wilhelm Rust (grandson of the interesting composer of that name who wrote polyphonic suites and fantasias early in the 19th century). During the fourteen years of his editorship of the Bach-Gesellschaft he displayed a steadily increasing insight into Bach's style which has never since been rivalled. In more than one case he has restored harmonies of priceless value from incomplete texts, by means of research and reasoning which he sums up in a modest footnote that reads as something self-evident. His prefaces to the Bach-Gesellschaft volumes are perhaps the most valuable contributions to the criticism of 18th-century music ever written, Spitta's great biography not excepted.

The same surgeon operated unsuccessfully on both composers.