Excerpt from Johann Sebastian Bach, Vol. 1: The Organist and His Works for the Organ
"If Beethoven appears to our generation as a Greek statue, Bach, on the contrary, impresses us as one of those Sphinxes of Egypt whose towering head commands the wide expanse of the desert."
The comparison is imaginative, but seems to me only partially just.
Sphinx in vastness of proportions, I admit; but the image is destroyed when character is taken into consideration. Bach is indisputably the mightiest of musicians; one is seized with awe in perusing the extraordinary catalogue of his works, so seemingly impossible are its dimensions; in casually looking over those forty and more folio volumes; in pausing for an instant to examine more closely any one of the pages, where the smallest detail seems to have been long considered and predetermined, while over all soars the essential thought, always profound and original. But was there ever a thinker less enigmatical?
Surely this majestic figure dominates his surroundings; but that frank look, those luminous, kindly eyes, are hardly those of a Sphinx. It is rather the heroic statue of Common Sense.
An eminent virtuoso recently declared to me that he should be more or less uncomfortable in dining alone with Beethoven; "but with 'Father Bach,' how different! With him I see myself perfectly at home, pipe in mouth, elbows upon the table; chatting informally about a thousand and one interesting things, over a big stein of beer, as in the good old days." How true!
Bach was a good citizen, an admirable father, as M. Prudhomme would say, a devoted friend; socially affable, and possessed of a rare artistic modesty.
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