THE ANALYST. 



I 



SEBASTIAN BACH AND HIS WORKS. 



To make the English public better acquainted than it at pre- 

 sent is with the name of a gi-eat composer— to promote investiga- 

 tion, serious study, and frequent performance of his works, and thus 

 to improve the taste of both the connoisseur and amateur — arc the 

 objects cf the present article. That the name of Sebastian Bach is 

 scarcely, or at least by far too little, known in England — that his 

 works are never heard at the great festivals, and very seldom, if 

 ever, at the public concerts — are lamentable facts, we confess, and 

 facts which speak but ill for the state of musical cultivation in our 

 country. But the causes which have been, and still are, active in 

 producing such culpable indifference, are, we think, by no means 

 difficult of discovery. In the first place. Bach was never in Eng- 

 land. This alone, in the hitherto existing and present state of mu- 

 sical knowledge in this country, is sufficient to account for his 

 works not liaving received a much larger portion of tliat attention 

 and admiration which, if the trutli were known, they merit, to the 

 exclusion of almost all others. The reverence in which we English 

 liold the works of Handel is well known. And why this ? Be- 

 cause they surpass all others in grandeur, beauty, and ideality of 

 conception, in finish and elaborateness of execution ? Oh, no ! But 

 ,simi)ly because he had the good fortune to spend a great part of his 

 life in our favoured isle, and there to produce his great works. 

 This, without periphrasis, is one great constituent in the excessive 

 and often ridiculous veneration in which the name of Handel is 



