by his son Philipp Emanuel,
describes Veit Bach as the founder of the family, a baker and a miller,
"whose zither must have sounded very pretty among the clattering of the
mill-wheels." His son, Hans Bach, "_der Spielmann_," is the first
professional musician of the family. Of Hans's large family the second son,
Christoph, was the grandfather of Sebastian Bach. Another son, Heinrich, of
Arnstadt, had two sons, Johann Michael and Johann Christoph, who are among
the greatest of J. S. Bach's forerunners, Johann Christoph being now
supposed (although this is still disputed) to be the author of the splendid
motet, _Ich lasse dich nicht_ ("I wrestle and pray"), formerly ascribed to
Sebastian Bach. Another descendant of Veit Bach, Johann Ludwig, was admired
more than any other ancestor by Sebastian, who copied twelve of his church
cantatas and sometimes added work of his own to them.

The Bach family never left Thuringia until the sons of Sebastian went into
a more modern world. Through all the misery of the peasantry at the period
of the Thirty Years' War this clan maintained its position and produced
musicians who, however local their fame, were among the greatest in Europe.
So numerous and so eminent were they that in Erfurt musicians were known as
"Bachs," even when there were no longer any members of the family in the
town. Sebastian Bach thus inherited the artistic tradition of a united
family whose circumstances had deprived them of the distractions of the
century of musical fermentation which in the rest of Europe had destroyed
polyphonic music.

[Sidenote: Biography.]

Johann Sebastian Bach was baptized at Eisenach on the 23rd of March 1685.
His parents died in his tenth year, and his elder brother, Johann
Christoph, organist at Ohrdruf, took charge of him and taught him music.
The elder brother is said to have been jealous of Sebastian's talent, and
to have forbidden him access to a manuscript volume of works by Froberger,
Buxtehude and other great organists. Every night for six months Sebastian
got up, put his hand through the lattice of the bookcase, and copied the
volume out by moonlight, to the permanent ruin of his eyesight (as is shown
by all the extant portraits of him at a later age and by the blindness of
his last years). When he had finished, his brother discovered the copy and
took it away from him. In 1700 Sebastian, now fifteen and thrown on his own
resources by the death of his brother, went to Luenebu