Johann Sebastian Bach; the story of the development of a great personality

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1909 edition. Excerpt: ... the particular type of worshipper's mind to which it was addressed, as well as the material surroundings, are gone forever from the world--it suggests the sublimation of all the finest traits of those conditions and surroundings in every page. It is probably the most beautiful expression of a beautiful phase of religion. It need not be supposed that a devotional attitude so supremely ideal could have ever had a general practical existence. Even in Bach's time the majority of the congregation would have been quite unworthy of the work as a scheme of religious art. It can at least be said of them that they put themselves in a position to afford Bach the opportunity of knocking at the door of their hearts and offering his view of the manner in which the story of the Passion might be profitably taken. And there can be no manner of doubt that most people who have ever heard the work with any attention, were they ever so little in touch with the devotional attitude at the outset, would be touched with some glimmer of the divine light of love before the work is over. For truly the keynote of the whole, as has been said in connection with the "Johannes-Passion," is the divine manifested in man. The beautiful conception of the supreme sacrifice of self willingly undertaken by the Supreme Being in taking the form of man and voluntarily submitting to suffer every indignity and cruelty, and even death at the hands of man in order to redeem him, puts the ideal of absolute self-sacrifice at the very highest point the human mind is capable of conceiving. Bach's "Matthaus-Passion" presents the recognition of this conception by Teutonic religion in very marked guise, inasmuch as the Godhead of Christ is scarcely anywhere apparent. The...