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Scan 119
Cyclopedia of music and musicians, 1888
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1place, but this is wholly without authentic foundation. Be this as it may, the Jesuit troubles in Hungary, under Rudolph II, drove Veit, with other Lutherans, from the country (probably before 1597), and he returned to Wechmar. How many children he had is not known. The genealogy mentions a Lips Bach (died Oct. 10, 1620), three of whose sons are said to have been sent to Italy, by the reigning Count of Schwarzburg-Arnstadt, to study music. But it is merely conjectural that Lips was Veit's son, and a good deal of evidence points to the rest of the story being apocryphal. It is known, however, with tolerable certainty, that Veit had at least two sons: one was Hans (known as "der Spielmann"); the name of the other is not known; possibly it may have been Lips. But Hans and his unnamed brother were the heads of the two main branches of the Bach family, which branches unite in Veit. Both branches were rich in musicians, all of whom studied in Germany, a very notable fact at a period when it was the almost universal custom for musicians of any standing to go to Italy to finish their musical education. In course of time Arnstadt, Erfurt, Steinach, and Meiningen became the headquarters, so to speak, of the family, which was a singularly united one, very distant cousins (in younger generations) living on terms of the greatest intimacy, and mutually helping one another in their profession. The predominant family traits, apart from a genius for music, which grew apace until the fourth generation after Veit Bach, were a certain persistent honesty and kindliness of character, an almost childlike religious faith and adherence to the Lutheran Church, a great capacity for hard work, and an equally great incapacity for living unmarried.
3BACH, (CARL) PHILIPP EMANUEL [20], born at Weimar, March 14, 1714, died at Hamburg, Sept. (Dec.?) 14, 1788. The third son of Sebastian [15]. His father originally intended him to study philosophy, and sent him to the Thomas-schule at Leipsic; he afterwards studied law at the universities at Leipsic and Frankfort-on-the-Oder, but his passion for music was so strong that he studied the art more thoroughly than is generally the case with amateurs, and, when he went to Frankfort, was already a cultivated musician and a brilliant clavecinist. He conducted a singing society there, for which he composed some music, and at last gave up the law and chose music for his profession. In 1746 he went to Berlin, and was made chamber-musician and clavecinist to Frederick the Great. He had, however, to give up this position in 1757 at the first violent outbreak of the Seven Years' War. He went to Hamburg, where he took the direction of the music in a church, and in 1767 succeeded Telemann as Musikdirector of the principal church there, which post he continued to hold until his death. Emanuel Bach was one of the least musically gifted of Sebastian's sons, but his power of work, and especially his great intelligence and general culture, stood him in such good stead that he is certainly the most famous of them. The influence he exerted upon the subsequent development of the art of music can hardly be overrated; he is probably the most important figure in the transition period between Sebastian Bach and Handel on the one hand, and Haydn and Mozart on the other. In his works we find the germs (and something more) of the cyclical forms (sonata, symphony) and the homophonic style of composition which belong to the later period of modern music. He also anticipated, to some extent, the change in treatment of the orchestra which was completed by Haydn and his successors. He is especially important in the history of pianoforte playing. In his great theoretical
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