ude
for deriving the most complete gratification from the work. In a
cultivated realization of the beauty of a great musical masterwork,
these perceptions of technical skill on the part of the composer no
doubt enter to some degree, but they are always more or less in the
background, and form a part of the actual pleasure of hearing the
symphony or the sonata scarcely more than the capital initials and
punctuation marks enter into the enjoyment of a poem. All the
incidents of punctuation and typography we take instinctively, and are
conscious of them only when some one of them is missing and an error
exists in the work. This is the case with music. Symmetry and flow of
imagination are presupposed. Hence, whatever analyses may be made in
the class as a part of the operation of studying these different
master-works, the end to be sought by the student is the enjoyment of
the work as music; to take an active and lively pleasure in the melody;
to feel the harmony and the rhythm; to enjoy the contrast of the
different moods, and so on. Every piece in the entire list is a voice
in which the composer speaks to us, and the question is not the How,
but the What.

CHAPTER II.

BACH AND HAeNDEL.

JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH.

Born March 21, 1685, at Eisenach.
Died July 28, 1750, in Leipsic.

Johann Sebastian Bach was the son of the city musician of Eisenach, and
a descendant of about ten generations of musical Bachs. His father
having died when the boy was young, the latter's brother, Johann
Christoph, gave him lessons for some time, after which he studied with
other masters of considerable celebrity, and at the age of seventeen he
was engaged as violinist in the private orchestra of Prince John Ernst,
of Saxe-Weimar. He held this place, however, for but a few months,
leaving it to accept a more desirable one as organist in the new church
at Arnstadt. During the time he held this position he made several
journeys on foot to Luebeck to hear the famous Buxtehude play, and later
paid the same compliment to another eminent organist. The most
important of the early positions which Bach held was that of director
of chamber music, and organist to the Duke of Saxe-Weimar, and here,
after seven years' service, he was made chief concertmeister. In 1717
he left Weimar to accept a position as musical director at Koethen,
where he had a better opportunity to express himself with orchestra.
In 1723 be became cantor of t