Johann Sebastian Bach - booksnow.scholarsportal.info

244 JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH.Capellmeister to the king. He wrote both church andinstrumental music, but particularly operas; and his excellentgeneral culture also enabled him to be a successful author.The world owes to him and to Emanuel Bach the Necrologyof Sebastian Bach, which was published in 1754 by Mizler,in his Musikalische Bibliothek ; and in his notes toAdlung's Musica mechanica organcedi he has preserved for usmany valuable details concerning Bach. His translation ofTosi's " Introduction to the Art of Singing," with notes andexplanations, may still be considered a classical authority.He died in 1774.'^"In 1738 Johann Friedrich Doles also came to theUniversity ; he was born in 1716, at Steinbach, in Henneberg^and had been educated at Schmalkalden and at Schleusingen.^'^^He succeeded Bach as cantor in 1755, but hisbias was towards the sentimental, the operatic and thevacuously popular, and he was not the true son of hismaster. During his tenure of the place the use of Bach'sworks was gradually lost in Leipzig ; still, he attached someimportance to the fact of his having been Bach's pupil,^and even during his master's lifetime he won friends andadmirers by his pleasing talent. It was he, and not Bach,who had to write the occasional music, in 1744, for theanniversary of the newly founded Musical Union, and in thesame year he became cantor at Freiburg. I shall havemore to say presently of the events of his life.A man of more serious bent, and of far more fertile talent,was Gottfried August Homilius, born 1712, at Rosenthal,on the frontier of Bohemia. He had finished his studiesunder Bach by 1742, for he was then organist to the^" Marpurg, Historisch-Kritische Beyträge, I., p. 148.— Burney, Diary HI.,p. 58. There is a Hst of Agricola's works in Gerber, Lex. I., col 17.*'8 These data I have derived from his Latin autobiography, which I foundamong the documents of the Consistory at Leipzig. The amusing sceneswhich are said to have occurred between Friedemann Bach and Doles, wholodged in Bach's house (see Bitter, Bach's Söhne IL, p. 156), are founded inerror, since at that time Friedemann had left Leipzig. He had been livingn Dresden since 1733.^"'^See a prefatory note to his cantata, " Ich komme vor dein Angesicht."Leipzig, 1790.