st, but by two
of his earlier masterpieces--"Gott ist mein Koenig" and "Ich hatte viel
Bektlmmerniss." Under the influence of an atmosphere so artistic, Bach's
ardor for study increased with his success, and his rapid advancement in
musical power met with warm appreciation.

While Bach held the position of director of the chapel of Prince Leopold
of Anhalt-Kothen, which he assumed about the year 1720, he went to
Hamburg on a pilgrimage to see old Reinke, then nearly a centenarian,
whose fame as an organist was national, and had long been the object
of Bach's enthusiasm. The aged man listened while his youthful rival
improvised on the old choral, "Upon the Rivers of Babylon." He shed
tears of joy while he tenderly embraced Bach, and said: "I did think
that this art would die with me; but I see that you will keep it alive."

Our musician rapidly became known far and wide throughout the musical
centres of Germany as a learned and recondite composer, as a brilliant
improviser, and as an organist beyond rivalry. Yet it was in these last
two capacities that his reputation among his contemporaries was the most
marked. It was left to a succeeding generation to fully enlighten the
world in regard to his creative powers as a musical thinker.

II.

Though Bach's life was mostly spent at Weimar and Leipsic, he was at
successive periods chapel-master and concert-director at several of the
German courts, which aspired to shape public taste in matters of musical
culture and enthusiasm. But he was by nature singularly retiring and
unobtrusive, and he recoiled from several brilliant offers which would
have brought him too much in contact with the gay world of fashion,
apparently dreading any diversion from a severe and exclusive art-life;
for within these limits all his hopes, energies, and wishes were
focalized. Yet he was not without that keen spirit of rivalry, that love
of combat, which seems to be native to spirits of the more robust and
energetic type.

In the days of the old Minnesingers, tournaments of music shared the
public taste with tournaments of arms. In Bach's time these public
competitions were still in vogue. One of these was held by Augustus
II., Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, one of the most munificent
art-patrons of Europe, but best known to fame from his intimate part in
the wars of Charles XII. of Sweden and Peter the Great of Russia. Here
Bach's principal rival was a French _virtuoso_, Marchand, who,