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Esther Meynell
Published by Good Press, 2021
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As for me, I was dumb enough. I made him a courtesy and did not open my mouth till he put some music on the clavier, sat down himself at the instrument and asked me to sing the aria. Happily, when I sing I am not afraid, and when I had finished my father cried, “Good!” with real pleasure in his face. Master Bach just looked at me very steadily for a moment and said, “Thy voice is pure, and thou canst sing.” And I—I wanted to say “And how thou canst play!” but I did not dare. It was unbelievable what he made of that simple accompaniment, which I had played often myself. His way of holding his hands, of using his thumbs, his fingering, all were different. But I could not say anything at all, I was in such a stir. I longed to run away, as I had run from the church, but I stood rooted and dumb by the side of the clavier like a child. I felt absurdly childish before that man, and yet a big thing had happened to me which does not happen to children—happened all in a short space. God had given me a soul open to music, and that being so it was, of course, impossible that having heard Sebastian Bach play I should care for any other man in this world. And in his mind, too, had I but known it, he said to himself, “I shall marry that maiden.” It was as well that I was willing, for he always had an extraordinary way of getting that to which he set his mind. There were occasions, I confess, in later years when I almost thought him obstinate.
I would be exact in my description of him at this time when I first really saw and spoke with him, because the impression is still so very clear to me, undimmed by years of the closest intimacy and even by the memory of his dear face with closed eyes as I last saw it in this world. Now I will not claim that he was handsome—few of the Bachs are that—but he had a countenance that set forth the power of his mind. His most notable features were his massive forehead, and his eyes, with the marked eyebrows drawn into the half-frown of thought. His eyes, when I first knew him, were large (later, as he grew older, with suffering and overmuch use they narrowed and the lids drooped more over them), with an intense and concentrated inward gaze that was very notable. They were listening eyes, and had at times a veiled and mystic look. His mouth was big and mobile, generous, and with laughter at its corners; his jaw large and square, to balance his forehead. No one could look at him and not look again, for there was something about him that was remarkable and that made itself felt, unconscious as he was of it. One of the things that from the first so impressed me was the mixture of greatness and humility in him—he knew his own powers, he was too good a musician not to do so, but in so far as it was himself he thought little of it, the only thing he honoured was music, and he cherished the belief that application and hard work and devotion to music would bring anyone to where he stood himself. How often have I heard him say—sometimes when I peeped into the room where he would be standing by the clavier giving a lesson to one of his pupils, “If you work as hard as I do, you will be able to play as well as I do.” One of his Organ pupils, who loved him and knew how I liked to hear any of his sayings, came to me one day very pleased after a lesson at the Organ, and told me that when his lesson was finished Sebastian had himself taken his seat at the Organ-stool and played very gloriously, and when the pupil expressed his admiration turned upon him with almost an air of vexation, saying, “There is nothing wonderful about it. You merely strike the right note at the right moment and the Organ does the rest.” And we two had a happy laugh together over this, for I by that time knew enough of the Organ’s difficulties to appreciate that “merely striking the right note”—when you have to do it with your hands and feet together—for I persuaded Sebastian, after we were married, to give me some Organ lessons, though he said it was hardly an instrument for a woman. But I desired to know something about it, so that I could understand his Organ music and Organ-playing a little better.
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