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also, he married his cousin Maria, daughter of Michael Bach of Gehren. He began to reorganize the church music and to have the organ greatly improved, but in 1708 was called to be court-organist and violinist to the Duke of Weimar. His celebrity had already begun to attract pupils.

His new patron at Weimar was a model ruler, a strict Lutheran and a great lover of church music. The court organ was small, but excellent, and the Kapelle competent; in the town-church the organist was the contrapuntist J. G. Walther, for a time Bach's intimate friend. This period was one of the happiest and best of his life. Here he attained absolute command of organ technique, perfected his knowledge as an organ-expert, and wrote most of his finest organ-works. He studied Italian chamber music, both solo and concerted, and entered deeply into its developing sense of extended form. He derived much from the works of certain Italian masters, like Frescobaldi and Albinoni. He began writing fugues and clavier-suites, using both Italian and French styles, but with great independence. He also began producing church cantatas, combining some features of operatic style with his immense resources in thematic writing. Occasionally he made trips to a distance, especially to examine or exhibit important organs, as to Cassel, Leipsic and Halle, where in 1714 he was sought as town-organist, and to Meiningen and Dresden, where in 1717 he challenged the boastful French clavier-player Marchand to a trial of skill which the latter lost by default. In 1717, however, probably because not fully appreciated at Weimar, he accepted the place of court-choirmaster at Cöthen.

Johann Sebastian Bach

The Prince of Anhalt-Cöthen was highly cultivated and an enthusiastic musician; he favored the Reformed Church, for which church music was unimportant, but chamber music of various sorts was in constant demand. Bach now had no organ, but every incentive in other directions. Here he matured his views as to clavier technique and as to temperament, and composed most of his greater works for the clavichord and harpsichord, including part of the Well-Tempered Clavichord (1722). His mastery of stringed instruments became prominent, guiding him in works for violin, gamba and 'cello that only a practical player could have produced (besides leading him to invent the 'viola pomposa,' a form between the viola and the 'cello, but held like the former). He wrote somewhat for other instruments, like the flute. Here he proceeded to deal strikingly with ensemble music, including suites, concertos and similar extended forms, adopting traditional outlines in part, but transforming them by prodigious contrapuntal enrichment. He made trips away at intervals, as to Leipsic in 1717, to Halle in 1719, where he just missed seeing Handel, to Carlsbad several times with the Prince, and to Hamburg