Johann Sebastian Bach (Eisenach, March 21st, 1685 - Leipzig, July 28th, 1750) was a noted German composer and an organist of the Baroque period. A master at the art of fugue, counterpoint and chorus, he is one of the most prolific composers in the history of Western music. He was a devout admirer of Dietrich Buxtehude.
Bach is considered the greatest composer of the Baroque and, for many, the greatest composer of the history of music, though little recognized at the time he lived. Many of his works reflect an intellectual depth, a deep emotional expression, and, especially, a great technical mastery that is largely responsible for the fascination that several generations of musicians held for Father Bach, especially after Felix Mendelssohn, one of those responsible for disseminating his work, which was quite forgotten hitherto.
Later, Hans von Bülow refers to Bach as one of the "three Bs of music,"(Bach, Beethoven, Brahms) considering the Well Tempered Clavier Book I the Old Testament and the Well-Tempered Clavier II the New Testament of Music.
Bach was born in Thuringia in a family of musicians. His mother died when he was nine years old. A year later, his father Johann Ambrosius Bach died; he was a musician in the city and had taught him the rudiments of music. He started to live and study with his brother, Johann Christoph Bach, sixteen years older than him and then organist of Ohrdruff. Alongside his brother, Bach learned how to play the organ and to compose. Christoph, however, was not a big fan of the young talent Sebastian.
The younger brother once asked Christoph to let him study some Pachelbel’s sheet music, who was Christoph’s godfather and professor, but he declined it.
Pictures on the right: Leipzig - 1720
Then, Sebastian proceeded to copy his brother’s sheet music every night, while he was sleeping, so that he could study them later. This effort was of no avail, since Christoph destroyed the copies when he found them. It is also speculated that the effort made by Sebastian in order to copy the sheet music in the dark was responsible for the blindness that plagued him late in life. When he was 15 years old, he found out he was an unmistakable talent. In 1703, at eighteen, Bach ascended to the post of organist in Arnstadt, thanks to an early mastery of the instrument.
In 1705, Bach walked all the way from Arnstadt to Lübeck only to hear Buxtehude, a famous organist whom young Bach greatly admired, present his work. That trip cost him his job and prompted him to seek another one, which came to be in Mühlhausen, where he met Maria Barbara, his cousin, to whom he married and had seven children.
Bach brought the girl to the youth choir of the local Lutheran church, which caused bureaucratic inconvenience, and they made him leave the post. When Maria Barbara became ill and suddenly died during her husband’s trip, Bach wrote some of his most noble pieces in her memory. At that time, he also wrote the first cantatas. Only a year later, in 1708, he was appointed as the organist of the Court, and, in 1714, as the director of the orchestra in the court of Duke Wilhelm Ernst in Weimar.
From 1717 to 1723, Bach was the chapel-master (Kapellmeister) in the court of Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Köthen. In 1720, his first wife died and a year later he married again, this time to singer Anna Magdalena Wülcken. From 1723 on and until his death, he was the Director of Music (Kantor) at St. Thomas Church in Leipzig.
Pictures on the left: organ of Saint Thomas Church (Thomas Kirche, Leipzig)
He was even invited to the court of Frederick II the Great at Sans Souci. He died in1750 after a bad surgery in his eyes. Bach started to become blind and lost his sight totally. Currently, it is believed that his blindness was caused by untreated diabetes and also by his effort to copy songs by candlelight.
Bach led a large family. He had seven children in the first marriage and thirteen in the second. Four of his sons from his second marriage became respected composers. Among them, Wilhelm Friedemann Bach (1710 – 1784), who, according to the patriarch, was the most gifted of his sons, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (1714 – 1788), who Mozart had an excellent opinion of, and who would be the most famous Bach of his time and Johann Christian Bach (1735 -1782) who became famous in England.
However, the trust Bach put in Wilhelm Friedemann brought sad consequences after his death. Friedemann had an evasive personality, never settling in jobs and often being in financial difficulties.
These difficulties often led him to sell several scores that belonged to the father. In this process, a lot of passions composed by Johann Sebastian Bach have been lost forever (maybe today they would be as appreciated as St. Matthew Passion and St John Passion are). If Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach had not cared to preserve his father’s manuscripts, the world could have been deprived of a good part of Bach’s masterpieces.
A striking aspect of Bach’s life is that the composer had little recognition during his lifetime. He was seen by all as an organ virtuoso, perhaps the best they had ever heard of. As a composer, however, he was considered outmoded and unimaginative. Other composers such as Handel and Telemann had their works much more appreciated in the period. After the death, Bach was forgotten. His son Carl Phillip Emanuel was then greatly recognized as one of the founders of classicism.
Photo on the right: Tomb of J. S. Bach in front of the altar - major of St. Thomas Church ( Thomaskirche, Leipzig ) Anne Schneider’s Personal archive – Brazilian (Gaúcha) organist
Johann Sebastian Bach Biography
Bach’s Family Tree: Click here
For more information and biography, see the links page here.
