MUSIC, FUN, AND SONG

Evening Post, Volume CXVII, Issue 127, 31 May 1934, Page 15

MUSIC, FUN, AND SONG

BACN7S HAPPY HOME LIFE

Musieiaris, and especially composers, are. supposed- to be the least domesticated of men, tyrants in the home, or butterflies flitting from flower to flower. :Joh;ann Sebastian Bach, perhaps the greatest composer who, ever lived, refntestthese tales, at least where his own home was. concerned, writes a eorresptadfent. Gwen , Selva, who is joining with Lawrence Godfrey Smith in a series of Brahms-Bach recitals, tells some charming tales of the great man in hlsjlittle Leipzig home- a century and a halff ago^ ■'" ;' '■■' y' -■ "■•

His first wife, Barbara Bach, died yofung, leaving him, desolate, with four lifctle- children. A few months later a little • shy schoolgirl took shelter in a great church at dusk and heard music, sjueh as only the angels play. It was Bach. In December, 1721, visiting her father's home, Bach asked for her hand frn marriage, and there began a long, (happy partnership. For her he wrote a love song, to teach her to play, and, later, to train the thirteen little babies who came so rapidly, he wrote: the two and threepart inventions, which our students learn today.

Six of the babies died while still tiny, but the j seven survivoTs and the four children of the first marriago met every night, for music, fun, and song. Certainly Bach* once flung his wig at an unruly pupil, but. even the most ordinary and mild teachers are driven to these straits sometimes! But it was rarely that he wag angry with them, and he was sometimes seen calmly composing" and writing music amid all their childish babble as though he were quite alone..

And sometimes, if at midnight a crying baby awakened and needed to be rocked or fed, lie was never impatient, but would tell his wife to sing it a song of heavenly things, so that they all might profit by the lullaby. When he -was dying he gathered his children and grandchildren round him; "Sing'me some music," said he. "Sing me some good song, for it is now my hour for dying.", And his wife, too awed to weep, began one of his great chorales, "Hark, a Voice Saith, All Are Mortal," and one by one Ma children joined in tho four-part harmony. And so, on the wings of his own music, passed on the great composer.