JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. This content downloaded from 134.121.47.100 on Wed, 18 Nov 2015 22:38:59 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 642 642 THE MUSICAL TIMES.-NOVEMBER

more »

... I885. THE MUSICAL TIMES.-NOVEMBER I, I885. Finally, it is to be hoped that the demand for bright, healthy music, set to sensible words, may meet with a corresponding supply on the part of our song-writers. The modern drawing-room ditty-a miracle of ineptitude is incongruous on the lips of the working classes. The effusions of the music-hall are put out of court by their insipid vulgarity. Let us have songs that are good and new, but let us not forget that there are hundreds of excellent but forgotten ballads which answer the needs of the case and that quite as much good may be done by unearthing, republishing, or arranging these for popular use as can be effected by the composition of fresh music. The intention on the writer's part to be sensible is no guarantee that he will not prove dull. Here, for the present, we must take leave of the subject, in the hope that when next we have occasion to return to it, it may be in order to record the successful working and fruitful results of tllis nexand admirable scheme. THE GREAT COMPOSERti BY JOSEPH BENNETT. NO. XVII.-SE BASTIAN BAC H ( co1atilouled f7 0s1; page 584 ). WE resume our history of the great Leipzig contest between Rector and Cantor at the point where Bach having written and despatched his third appeal to the Town Council, waited for a reply. Town (Souncils, as a rule, are not averse from controlling the small matters within their jurisdiction, especially when they are of that attractive personal nature which usually Ells even a British House of Commons more certainly than a momentous debate. But the Town Council of Leipsig preferred, in Bach's case, a policy of " masterly inactivity." They would do nothing one way or the other. The court of ultimate appeal remained voiceless, and so the dispute svent on; Ernesti being just as obstinate as Bach and each f rmly standing on his supposed rights. What the Rector did in the matter beyond thus putting his foot down and keeping it there we are not told, but the Cantor anticipated Abraham Lincoln's policy of " pegging away." He was like a great gun. in one of the leisurely sieges of the eighteenth centurye flinginga shot at intervals into the town just to remind the inhabitants tllat there was a matter in dispute outside. Thus he waited from August zo till the following November, and, getting no answer, prepared to discharge another missile at the Council House. Just then, however, an event occurred which made him hold his hand. As far back as I733, the master had applied to the Elector of Saxony for an appointment as Court Composer, and would probably have received it at once but for the political troubles of the time and the absence of the monarch. Affairs having settled down somewhat in I736, Bach renewed his petition, thinking that a Court dignity would operate in his favour with the Town Council, and tend to a happy settlement of the dispute. His second appeal met with no immediate response, and the disgusted Cantor was about sending off his fourth letter to the local authority, when the following Royal decree reached him through the hands of the Russian ambassador:-" Decet. Vor Johann Sebastian Bach, as Composer to the King's Court Band. "Whereas his Kingly Majesty of Poland and Serene Highness the Electoral Prince of Saxony has beere graciously pleased to grant Johann Sebastian Bachat his humble petition presented to his Majesty, and by reason of his good skill the Predicate of Composer to the Court Band * this present decree is issued under his Kingly Majesty's most gracious personal signature