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,