13 The anonymous article in the _Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek,_ to which Forkel alludes, deals with Bach’s Clavier and Organ works and upon them asserts Bach’s superiority over Handel. The judgment was unusual. Bach’s fame was gravely prejudiced by German Handel-worship, which the first performance of the _Messiah_ at Leipzig in 1786 stimulated. Johann Adam Hiller, Bach’s third successor in the Cantorate of St. Thomas’, was largely responsible. He neglected, and even belittled, the treasures of Bach’s art which the library of St. Thomas’ contained. See Schweitzer, i. 231.
15 Carl Philipp Emmanuel and Wilhelm Friedemann. The latter was born in 1710, and after holding Organistships at Halle and Dresden, died at Berlin in 1784, leaving his widow and daughter in great poverty. The former received a grant from the receipts of the _Messiah_ performance alluded to in note 1, supra. A man of brilliant musical attainments, Wilhelm Friedemann’s character was dissolute and unsteady. See Schweitzer, i. 146 ff.
16 Two letters written by C. P. E. Bach to Forkel in 1775, conveying a good deal of information reproduced by Forkel in this monograph, are printed in facsimile by Dr. Max Schneider in his _Bach-Urkunden_ (N.B.G., XVII. (3)).
17 Forkel’s statement is entitled to respect. On the other hand there is nothing in the recorded careers of either of Bach’s sons that bears him out on this point. Schweitzer (i. 229) endorses Elinor’s judgment: “Bach’s sons were the children of their epoch, and never understood their father; it was only from piety that they looked at him with childlike admiration.” Dr. Charles Burney spent several days with Carl Philipp Emmanuel at Hamburg in 1772, but during the whole time the son never played to him a note of his father’s music.
18 i.e. Hoffmeister and Kühnel’s project.
19 The accuracy of this statement is apparent from the Genealogy appended to this volume. Bach’s sons represented the sixth generation from Veit Bach, the sixteenth century ancestor of the family. Veit himself was not a professional musician; one of his sons was a Spielmann; thereafter for the next 150 years all but seven of his descendants, whose professions are known, were Organists or Cantors or Town Musicians. Many of them, moreover, were men of the highest attainments in their profession.