Johann Sebastian Bach: His Life, Art, and Work

“Bach liked to play the Viola, an instrument which put him, as it were, in the middle of the harmony in a position from which he could hear and enjoy it on both sides.””

— Johann Nikolaus Forkel

“A man of rigid uprightness, sincerely religious; steeped in his art, earnest and grave, yet not lacking naive humour; ever hospitable and generous, and yet shrewd and cautious; pugnacious when his art was slighted or his rights were infringed; generous in the extreme to his wife and children, and eager to give the latter advantages which he had never known himself; a lover of sound theology, and of a piety as deep as it was unpretentious”

— Johann Nikolaus Forkel

“The artist, in his judgment, is the dictator of public taste, not its slave.””

— Johann Nikolaus Forkel

“For Bach's works are a priceless national patrimony;””

— Johann Nikolaus Forkel

“the first and most important of the early notices of Bach was the obituary article, or “Nekrolog,” contributed by his son, Carl Philipp Emmanuel, and Johann Friedrich Agricola, one of Bach's most distinguished pupils, to the fourth volume of Mizler's Musikalische Bibliothek, published at Leipzig in 1754.””

— Johann Nikolaus Forkel

“Of the 295 Cantatas only 202 have come down to us, three of them in an incomplete state.””

— Johann Nikolaus Forkel

“the statement of Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach, 346 confirmed by Forkel, 347 Bach's earliest biographer, that his father composed five Cantatas for every Sunday and Festival of the ecclesiastical year.””

— Johann Nikolaus Forkel

“in 1747, Bach became a member of the “Society of the Musical Sciences,” founded by Mizler,””

— Johann Nikolaus Forkel

“Bach also composed a great number of Cantatas, chiefly for the choir of St. Thomas' School, Leipzig.””

— Johann Nikolaus Forkel