terwards
became distinguished men. The one was Christoph Graupner (1683-1760),
who in 1710 became capellmeister at Darmstadt. In 1722, on the death
of Kuhnau, Graupner,[39] who had been prize scholar under him,
presented his testimonials, was examined, and seemed likely to become
cantor as his teacher's successor. Meanwhile, however, John Sebastian
Bach offered himself as candidate, and as Dr. Pepusch before Handel at
Cannons in 1710, so did Graupner retire before his great rival.
Mattheson, in his _Ehren-Pforte_ (p. 410), tells us that "as a
composer for the clavier, Graupner may rank as one of the best of his
time." He wrote suites and sonatas for clavier. Johann Friedrich Fasch
(1688-1758 or 9), the second pupil, soon after leaving Leipzig, where
he had enjoyed Kuhnau's instruction from 1701-7, went to Italy, and on
his return studied for a short time with Graupner. Fasch then filled
various posts, until in 1722 (the very year indeed of Kuhnau's death)
he became capellmeister at Anhalt Zerbst, where he remained until his
death. His son, Carl Friedrich Christian, was the founder of the
Berlin _Singakademie_. In 1756 Emanuel Bach had something to do with
Fasch's appointment as clavecinist to Frederick the Great. The father,
who was then seventy years of age, and who, like old Sebastian Bach,
lived with the fear of God before his eyes, opposed the wish of his
son to enter the service of the infidel king. Emanuel, who wished the
younger Fasch to come to Berlin, wrote to the father to say "that in
the land over which Frederick the Great ruled, one could believe what
one liked; that the king himself was certainly not religious, but on
that very account esteemed everyone alike." Bach offered to take young
Fasch into his house, and to preserve him as much as possible from
temptation. With regard to Graupner, it would be interesting to know
whether in any of his sonatas (the autographs of which are, we
believe, at Darmstadt) he worked at all on Kuhnau's lines. And with
regard to Fasch, one would like to know whether he ever conversed with
Emanuel Bach about his father, who taught him theory, and about Johann
Kuhnau, his father's renowned teacher. It is from such by-paths of
history that one sometimes learns more than from statements showing
how son descended from sire, and how pupils were directly influenced
by their teachers.

But it is as a musician that we are now concerned with Kuhnau, and, in
the first place, as the com