The Bachs not only displayed a happy contentedness, indispensable for the cheery enjoyment of life, but exhibited a clannish attachment to each other. They could not all live in the same locality. But it was their habit to meet once a year at a time and place arranged beforehand. These gatherings generally took place at Erfurt, Eisenach, and sometimes at Arnstadt. Even after the family had grown very large, and many of its members had left Thuringia to settle in Upper and Lower Saxony and Franconia, the Bachs continued their annual meetings. On these occasions music was their sole recreation. As those present were either Cantors, Organists, or Town Musicians, employed in the service of the Church and accustomed to preface the day’s work with prayer, their first act was to sing a Hymn. Having fulfilled their religious duty, they spent the rest of the time in frivolous recreations. Best of all they liked to extemporise a chorus out of popular songs, comic or jocular, weaving them into a harmonious whole while declaiming the words of each. They called this hotch-potch a “Quodlibet,” laughed uproariously at it, and roused equally hearty and irrepressible laughter in their audience.(41) It is suggested that German Comic Opera has its origin in these trifles. But the “Quodlibet” was a familiar institution in Germany at a much earlier period. I possess a collection of them printed and published at Vienna in 1542.(42)
But these light-hearted Thuringians, and even those of their family who treated their art more seriously and worthily, would not have escaped oblivion had there not emerged in the fulness of time one whose genius and renown reflected their splendour and brilliancy on his forbears. This man, the glory of his family, pride of his countrymen, most gifted favourite of the Muse of Music, was Johann Sebastian Bach.
Johann Sebastian Bach was born on March 21, 1685,(43) at Eisenach, where his father, Johann Ambrosius Bach, was Court and Town Musician.(44) Johann Ambrosius had a twin brother, Johann Christoph, Musician to the Court and Town of Arnstadt,(45) who so exactly resembled him that even their wives could distinguish them only by their dress. The twins appear to have been quite remarkable. They were deeply attached, alike in disposition, in voice, and in the style of their music. If one was ill, so was the other. They died within a short time of each other, and were objects of wondering interest to all who knew them.(46)