changes are limitless;
elsewhere change is inconceivable. No amount of "Umarbeitung" could, for
instance, turn the aria of Hercules into the Virgin's cradle-song, or
Wollust's aria into the exhortation of Zion to prepare for the Bridegroom.
In short, Bach's melodies are characteristic, not like a mask with a set
expression, but like a living face that is the more individual for the
mobility of its features.

[v.03 p.0129] Within these limits, that is, short of dramatic expression in
just so far as "the end of drama is not character but action," there is
nothing good that Bach's art does not express. He has plenty of humour, if
the term may be applied to art which is, so to speak, always literal,--art
in which a jest is a jest and serious things are treated with familiar
directness, and all, whether in jest or earnest, is primarily beautiful. In
_Der Streit zwischen Phoebus und Pan_ Bach answers the critics who censured
him for his pedantry and provincial ignorance of the grand Italian operatic
style, by making effective use of that style in Pan's prize-aria ("Zum
Tanze, zum Sprunge, so wack-ack-ack-ackelt das Herz"), nobly representing
his own style in Phoebus's aria, and promptly caricaturing it in the second
part of Pan's ("Wenn der Ton zu muehsam klingt"). Midas votes for
Pan--"denn nach meinen beiden Ohren singt er unvergleichlich schoen." At
the word "Ohren" the violins give a pianissimo "hee-haw" which is fully as
witty in its musical aptness as Mendelssohn's clown-theme in the Overture
to the _Midsummer Night's Dream_; and in the ensuing dialogue their
prophecy is verified. As with many other great artists, Bach's playfulness
occasionally showed itself inconveniently where little things shock little
minds. The hilarious aria, "Ermuntre dich," in the church cantata,
_Schmuecke dich, o liebe Seele_, is one instance, and the quaint
representation of the words "dimisit inanes" in the _Magnificat_ is
another. This great work, one of the most terse and profound things Bach
ever wrote, contains, among many other subtle inspirations, one conception
with which we may fitly end our survey, for it strongly suggests Bach
himself and the destiny of all that work which he finished so lovingly,
with no prospect of its becoming more than a family heirloom and a salutary
tradition in his Leipzig choir-school. In the _Magnificat_ he sets the
words "quia respexit humilitatem ancillae suae" to a touchingly appropriate
soprano solo ac