Kuhnau had many pupils; we know of two who afterwards became distinguished men.  The one was Christoph Graupner (1683-1760), who in 1710 became capellmeister at Darmstadt.  In 1722, on the death of Kuhnau, Graupner,[39] who had been prize scholar under him, presented his testimonials, was examined, and seemed likely to become cantor as his teacher’s successor.  Meanwhile, however, John Sebastian Bach offered himself as candidate, and as Dr. Pepusch before Handel at Cannons in 1710, so did Graupner retire before his great rival.  Mattheson, in his Ehren-Pforte (p. 410), tells us that “as a composer for the clavier, Graupner may rank as one of the best of his time.”  He wrote suites and sonatas for clavier.  Johann Friedrich Fasch (1688-1758 or 9), the second pupil, soon after leaving Leipzig, where he had enjoyed Kuhnau’s instruction from 1701-7, went to Italy, and on his return studied for a short time with Graupner.  Fasch then filled various posts, until in 1722 (the very year indeed of Kuhnau’s death) he became capellmeister at Anhalt Zerbst, where he remained until his death.  His son, Carl Friedrich Christian, was the founder of the Berlin Singakademie.  In 1756 Emanuel Bach had something to do with Fasch’s appointment as clavecinist to Frederick the Great.  The father, who was then seventy years of age, and who, like old Sebastian Bach, lived with the fear of God before his eyes, opposed the wish of his son to enter the service of the infidel king.  Emanuel, who wished the younger Fasch to come to Berlin, wrote to the father to say “that in the land over which Frederick the Great ruled, one could believe what one liked; that the king himself was certainly not religious, but on that very account esteemed everyone alike.”  Bach offered to take young Fasch into his house, and to preserve him as much as possible from temptation.  With regard to Graupner, it would be interesting to know whether in any of his sonatas (the autographs of which are, we believe, at Darmstadt) he worked at all on Kuhnau’s lines.  And with regard to Fasch, one would like to know whether he ever conversed with Emanuel Bach about his father, who taught him theory, and about Johann Kuhnau, his father’s renowned teacher.  It is from such by-paths of history that one sometimes learns more than from statements showing how son descended from sire, and how pupils were directly influenced by their teachers.

But it is as a musician that we are now concerned with Kuhnau, and, in the first place, as the composer of the earliest known sonata for the clavier.  In 1695 he published at Leipzig—­

“Sieben Partien aus dem Re, Mi, Fa, oder Terzia minore eines jedweden Toni, benebenst einer Sonata aus dem B. Denen Liebhabern dieses Instrumenten zu gar besondern Vergnuegen aufgesetzet.”  That is—­

Seven Partitas based on the Re, Mi, Fa, or minor third of each mode, together with a Sonata in B flat, for the especial gratification of lovers of this instrument.