The King clapped his hands, exclaiming over and over, "Only one Bach!
Only one Bach!" It was a great evening for the master, and one he
never forgot.

Just after completing his great work, The Art of Fugue, Bach became
totally blind, due no doubt, to the great strain he had always put
upon his eyes, in not only writing his own music, but in copying out
large works of the older masters. Notwithstanding this handicap he
continued at work up to the very last. On the morning of the day on
which he passed away, July 28, 1750, he suddenly regained his sight. A
few hours later he became unconscious and passed in sleep.

Bach was laid to rest in the churchyard of St. John's at Leipsic, but
no stone marks his resting place. Only the town library register tells
that Johann Sebastian Bach, Musical Director and Singing Master of the
St. Thomas School, was carried to his grave July 30, 1750.

But the memory of Bach is enduring, his fame immortal and the love his
beautiful music inspires increases from year to year, wherever that
music is known, all over the world.




III

GEORGE FREDERICK HANDEL


While little Sebastian Bach was laboriously copying out music by pale