Seriously, I'm delighted the thread took this little detour onto old JS. His birthday is this month, so here's a tribute to him. He was not always the sober, religious Lutheran director musices that he appears to be, although his sons used to refer to him as "the old wig". He actually was fond of a good rollicking party, which was always held whenever he got together with his very extensive family of cousins and in-laws, besides all those kids. Actually, due to the usual rate of infant mortality in those days, quite a few died as children, so there were not always a platoon running around the house. His first wife, Barbara, died after giving birth to the first 6; the second, Anna Magdalena, was made of sterner stuff and bore 13, for a total of 19, not 18.
Being an organist myself, I can attest that his sense of humor extended to his music. You find little musical jokes hidden in the music from time to time. But his biggest joke was the way he wrote. I have spent countless hours over many years on the organ bench cussing the old wretch because I know very well that when he wrote a lot of those pieces, he said to himself, "Well let's see one of those other guys play this!"
