Hero Comes," in "Joshua," and in several of the short instrumental
movements in "Joshua," "Solomon," and his other oratorios.

Bach, on the other hand, was of a much more intensely organized musical
temperament. His genius was of the greatest possible character. As a
virtuoso he not only played upon the organ, the clavecin, and the
violin better than most of his contemporaries, and upon the organ
probably better than any; he also created works in these three
departments which held the attention of his own time to an astonishing
degree, considering the meager means of communication among men, works
which still remain, in our time, the indispensable corner-stones of the
literature of these three instruments. The violinist gets a large part
of his mastery through the sonatas of Bach for violin solo, the
organist learns his art from Bach, and the pianist finds "The
Well-tempered Clavier," and many other works of Bach written for the
clavecin of indispensable importance for the development of intelligent
playing.

The peculiar importance of Bach to modern music lies in the delicacy of
his sense upon the harmonic side and upon his intuition of the
emotional value of musical combinations. In the form of his work he
always more or less resembled his predecessors, the fugue underlying,
probably, something more than half of all the music he wrote. But he
also showed a strong tendency to impart to his work the vivacity of the
folk-song and the expressive melodic quality which he had already found
in the violin. Owing to his intensely sensitive harmonic perceptions,
he was never able to confine himself for long to the more obvious
chords of the key. The diatonic chords and combinations in which
Haendel found an ever complete satisfaction are not sufficient for Bach,
and we find continually new chords, evasive cadences, and a flowing
continuity of thought belonging to the master mind.

Hence to the ordinary student there are two difficulties in the way of
appreciating and enjoying Bach. The first one is the somewhat antique
flavor of much that he wrote, for it is now almost two hundred years
since many of Bach's compositions were completed; and the second is
this sensitive and evasive harmonic fancy, which surpasses the capacity
of untrained hearers. Hence, such works as the recitatives in the
"Chromatic Fantasia," the beautiful modulations and changes in the
organ Fantasia in G minor, and scores of other passages that m