vement, and attracted him to his own race. His second wife,
indeed, was not allied with him in blood, but that with the first he
found, in some respects, his more natural development may perhaps be
concluded from the fact that the most remarkable of his sons were all
the children of his first marriage."

Upton says that Bach loved Maria Barbara when he was only eighteen and
they agreed to wait till he got a better post. This was not till three
years had passed and then his salary was only eighty-five gulden (about
L7, or $35) besides a little corn and wood and some kindling-wood.

It was on October 17, 1707, that, according to the record, "the
respectable Herr J.S. Bach, the surviving lawful son of the late most
respectable Herr Ambrosius Bach, the famous town-organist and musician
of Eisenach, was married to the virtuous maiden Maria Barbara Bach, the
youngest surviving unmarried daughter of the late very respectable and
famous artist Herr Johann Michael Bach."

A little inheritance of fifty gulden (L4 or $20) aided the new couple.
But it is small wonder that we find Bach sighing later: "Modest as is my
way of life, with the payment of house-rent and other indispensable
articles of consumption, I can with difficulty live." A year after his
marriage, however, he was appointed court organist to the Grand Duke of
Weimar, a post he held nine years. Then he became musical director with
the Prince of Anhalt-Koethen. In 1720 he went to Carlsbad with his
prince. When he returned to the bosom of his family, he found that his
wife was not only dead, but buried. Spitta imagines his grief as he
stood over the grave of the woman who had followed him from humility to
success and had not been able to wish him a last Godspeed. She had borne
him seven children, three of whom died; of the sons were Wilhelm
Friedemann, the father's favourite, and Karl Philipp Emanuel, whom the
world long preferred to Sebastian himself, and whom later times
spitefully underrate.

The shock of coming home to his dead wife did not annul Bach's powers,
and his next cantata with the suggestive title, "He that exalteth
himself shall be abased," shows a larger grasp of resource and power. In
the same year he made a sensation by his playing in Hamburg, winning the
high praise of the eminent organist Reinken (whom by the way Mattheson
accused of being "a constant admirer of the fair sex, and much addicted
to the wine-cellar of the Council").

For all they ma