origin of the Capriccio if its evident ‘dependence’ on Kuhnau did not solve the mystery.”  Then, again, in a Sonata in D by Bach, published in the Bach Gesellschaft edition, Spitta calls attention to the opening subject in D, and does not hesitate to declare that “it is constructed on the pattern of a particular part of the story of Jacob’s marriage” (the 3rd of the “Bible” Sonatas).  His description of the Bach sonata would, doubtless, have attracted more notice but for the fact that copies of the Kuhnau sonatas were extremely rare; they were, we believe, never reprinted since the commencement of the eighteenth century.  The first two have now been published by Messrs Novello & Co.  The Kuhnau influence on Bach seems, however, to have been of short duration; for, after these juvenile attempts, as Spitta observes, “he never again returned to this branch of music in the whole course of a long artistic career extending over nearly fifty years.”  The fugue form absorbed nearly the whole attention of that master; and the idea of programme-music remained in abeyance until Beethoven revived it a century later.[16] Emanuel Bach inherited some of his father’s genius, and he may instinctively have felt the utter hopelessness of following directly in his footsteps.  J.S.  Bach had exhausted the possibilities of the fugue form.  It was perhaps fortunate for Emanuel Bach that, while still young, he left his father’s house.  After residing for a few years at Frankfort-on-the-Oder, he entered the service of Frederick the Great; and at the court of that monarch he came, at any rate, directly under Italian influence.

An interesting link between Kuhnau and E. Bach is Mattheson, who published at Hamburg in 1713 a sonata dedicated to the one who can best play it (derjenigen Persohn gewidmet, die sie am besten spielen wird).  The work itself not being available, the following description of it by J. Faisst (Caecilia, vol. 25, p. 157) may prove interesting:—­“It (i.e. the sonata) consists of only one movement, which, considering its evidently intentional wealth of technique, might be named a Toccata.  But in form this one movement clearly belongs to the sonata order, and, in fact, holds a middle place between the tendencies towards sonata-form (the term taken in the narrower sense of form of one single movement) noticeable in Kuhnau, and the more developed shape which this form has assumed within recent times.  We have here three sections.  In the opening one, the theme, after its first exposition in the key of G, forms the basis of various passages, and then appears in the key of the dominant, followed again by passages of larger extent and richer contents; finally, in abbreviated form, it reappears in the tonic.  The second section commences in the parallel key, E minor, with passages which recall those of the first section, and continues with the theme in the same key; afterwards theme and passages are developed through the keys of