Johann Sebastian Bach - booksnow.scholarsportal.info

268 JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH.with him four children of his first marriage (see Vol. II.,p. 8). By his second wife he had seven daughters andsix sons, but only three daughters and three sons survivedhim. Of the rest three lived only a few days, the otherstheir father laid in the grave at ages when they werebeginning to understand something of life. Legendary lorehas been busy with his family as well as with himself. Hewas said to have had an idiot son, David, who "havinglearnt music well, by his wild but most expressive andmelancholy improvisations on the clavier, often drew tearsfrom his hearers " ; it was added that he died at the age offourteen or fifteen.^^^ This David never existed, nor didany child of Bach's die at that age;^^'^ it is possible thatGottfried Heinrich, the eldest of the second family, may havegiven rise to this fable. In Emanuel's opinion he had agreat genius but it never developed. In the papers relatingto Bach's property after his death he is spoken of asimbecile, and legally incapable of acting. He died February,1763, at Naumburg, where he had been taken, it would seem,even before his father's death, by his brother-in-law,Altnikol.Bach himself has told us of his happy home life, and ofthe little concerts he delighted in conducting with his sons,his wife, and his eldest daughter (see Vol. II., p. 254). He tookconscientious care of the education of his children, and onemain reason which decided his removal from Cöthen toLeipzig was the prospect of the better means of educationoffered by the University ofthat town. Wilhelm Friedemann,his favourite, was entered for matriculation as early asDecember 22, 1723, and he, as well as his younger brotherEmanuel, had, according to the good custom of the time,the benefit of a complete course of academical education.It was not originally their father's intention that Emanuelshould take up music as a profession, but when his greattalent led to his doing so Bach was very well content, and"5 Rochlitz, Für Freunde der Tonkunst. IV., p. 182 (3rd ed.). It has beencopied from him even quite lately.6"^'See App. B., XV. The Necrology also mentions thirteen children of thesecond marriage.The genealogies never mention a son named David,