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Johann Sebastian Bach

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"Bach" redirects here. For Bach's grandson, see Johann Sebastian Bach (painter). For other uses, see Bach (disambiguation).

Johann Sebastian Bach
Portrait of Bach, aged 61, by E. G. Haussmann, 1748
Born	21 March 1685 (O.S.) 31 March 1685 (N.S.) Eisenach
Died	28 July 1750(1750-07-28) (aged 65) Leipzig
Works	List of compositions
Signature

Johann Sebastian Bach^[a] (31 March [O.S. 21 March] 1685 – 28 July 1750) was a German composer and musician of the Baroque period. He is known for instrumental compositions such as the Brandenburg Concertos and the Goldberg Variations, and vocal music such as the St Matthew Passion and the Mass in B minor. Since the 19th-century Bach Revival he has been generally regarded as one of the greatest composers of all time.^[3]
The Bach family already counted several composers when Johann Sebastian was born as the last child of a city musician in Eisenach. Having become an orphan at age 10, he lived for five years with his eldest brother, after which he continued his musical formation in Lüneburg. From 1703 he was back in Thuringia, working as a musician for Protestant churches in Arnstadt and Mühlhausen and, for longer stretches of time, at courts in Weimar—where he expanded his repertoire for the organ—and Köthen—where he was mostly engaged with chamber music. From 1723 he was employed as Thomaskantor (cantor at St. Thomas) in Leipzig. He composed music for the principal Lutheran churches of the city, and for its university's student ensemble Collegium Musicum. From 1726 he published some of his keyboard and organ music. In Leipzig, as had happened in some of his earlier positions, he had a difficult relation with his employer, a situation that was little remedied when he was granted the title of court composer by the Elector of Saxony and King of Poland in 1736. In the last decades of his life he reworked and extended many of his earlier compositions. He died of complications after eye surgery in 1750.
Bach enriched established German styles through his mastery of counterpoint, harmonic and motivic organisation, and his adaptation of rhythms, forms, and textures from abroad, particularly from Italy and France. Bach's compositions include hundreds of cantatas, both sacred and secular.^[4] He composed Latin church music, Passions, oratorios and motets. He often adopted Lutheran hymns, not only in his larger vocal works, but for instance also in his four-part chorales and his sacred songs. He wrote extensively for organ and for other keyboard instruments. He composed concertos, for instance for violin and for harpsichord, and suites, as chamber music as well as for orchestra. Many of his works employ the genres of canon and fugue.
Throughout the 18th century Bach was primarily valued as an organist, while his keyboard music, such as The Well-Tempered Clavier, was appreciated for its didactic qualities. The 19th century saw the publication of some major Bach biographies, and by the end of that century all of his known music had been printed. Dissemination of scholarship on the composer continued through periodicals and websites exclusively devoted to him, and other publications such as the Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis (BWV, a numbered catalogue of his works) and new critical editions of his compositions. His music was further popularised through a multitude of arrangements, including for instance the Air on the G String, and of recordings, for instance three different box sets with complete performances of the composer's oeuvre marking the 250th anniversary of his death.

Contents

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• 1 Life
  • 1.1 Childhood (1685–1703)
  • 1.2 Weimar, Arnstadt, and Mühlhausen (1703–1708)
  • 1.3 Return to Weimar (1708–1717)
  • 1.4 Köthen (1717–1723)
  • 1.5 Leipzig (1723–1750)
    • 1.5.1 Appointment in Leipzig
    • 1.5.2 Cantata cycle years (1723–1729)
    • 1.5.3 Middle years of the Leipzig period (1730–1739)
    • 1.5.4 Last period (1740–1750)
• 2 Musical style
  • 2.1 Four-part harmony
  • 2.2 Modulations
  • 2.3 Ornamentation
  • 2.4 Giving soloist roles to continuo instruments
  • 2.5 Instrumentation
  • 2.6 Counterpoint
  • 2.7 Structure, lyrics
• 3 Compositions
  • 3.1 Passions and oratorios
    • 3.1.1 St Matthew Passion
    • 3.1.2 St John Passion
  • 3.2 Cantatas
    • 3.2.1 Church cantatas
    • 3.2.2 Secular cantatas
  • 3.3 A cappella music
    • 3.3.1 Motets
    • 3.3.2 Chorale harmonisations
  • 3.4 Church music in Latin
    • 3.4.1 Magnificat
    • 3.4.2 Mass in B minor
  • 3.5 Keyboard music
    • 3.5.1 Organ works
    • 3.5.2 Harpsichord and clavichord
  • 3.6 Orchestral and chamber music
    • 3.6.1 Violin concertos
    • 3.6.2 Brandenburg Concertos
    • 3.6.3 Keyboard concertos
    • 3.6.4 Orchestral suites
  • 3.7 Copies, arrangements and works with an uncertain attribution
• 4 Reception
  • 4.1 18th century
  • 4.2 19th century
  • 4.3 20th century
  • 4.4 21st century
  • 4.5 Burial site
  • 4.6 Recognition in Protestant churches
• 5 Notes
• 6 References
• 7 Bibliography
  • 7.1 Biographies
  • 7.2 Other
• 8 External links

Life

Places where Bach lived

Bach was born in 1685 in Eisenach, in the duchy of Saxe-Eisenach, into a great musical family. His father, Johann Ambrosius Bach, was the director of the town musicians, and all of his uncles were professional musicians. His father probably taught him to play the violin and harpsichord, and his brother Johann Christoph Bach taught him the clavichord and exposed him to much contemporary music.^[5] Apparently at his own initiative, Bach attended St. Michael's School in Lüneburg for two years. After graduating he held several musical posts across Germany: he served as Kapellmeister (director of music) to Leopold, Prince of Anhalt-Köthen, and as Thomaskantor in Leipzig, a position of music director at the main Lutheran churches and educator at the Thomasschule. He received the title of "Royal Court Composer" from Augustus III in 1736.^[6][7] Bach's health and vision declined in 1749, and he died on 28 July 1750.

Childhood (1685–1703)

Johann Ambrosius Bach, Bach's father

Page from the Neues vollständiges Eisenachisches Gesangbuch, the Lutheran hymnal that was in use in the Eisenach of Bach's youth.^[8][9]

Lüneburg, some two decades before Bach's stay in that town: St Michael's pictured in lower right

See also: Bach family

Johann Sebastian Bach was born in Eisenach, the capital of the duchy of Saxe-Eisenach, in present-day Germany, on 21 March 1685 O.S. (31 March 1685 N.S.). He was the son of Johann Ambrosius Bach, the director of the town musicians, and Maria Elisabeth Lämmerhirt.^[10] He was the eighth and youngest child of Johann Ambrosius,^[11] who likely taught him violin and basic music theory.^[12] His uncles were all professional musicians, whose posts included church organists, court chamber musicians, and composers. One uncle, Johann Christoph Bach (1645–1693), introduced him to the organ, and an older second cousin, Johann Ludwig Bach (1677–1731), was a well-known composer and violinist.^[13]
Bach's mother died in 1694, and his father died eight months later.^[7] The 10-year-old Bach moved in with his eldest brother, Johann Christoph Bach (1671–1721), the organist at St. Michael's Church in Ohrdruf, Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg.^[14] There he studied, performed, and copied music, including his own brother's, despite being forbidden to do so because scores were so valuable and private and blank ledger paper of that type was costly.^[15][16] He received valuable teaching from his brother, who instructed him on the clavichord. J.C. Bach exposed him to the works of great composers of the day, including South German composers such as Johann Pachelbel (under whom Johann Christoph had studied) and Johann Jakob Froberger; North German composers;^[5] Frenchmen, such as Jean-Baptiste Lully, Louis Marchand, and Marin Marais; and the Italian clavierist Girolamo Frescobaldi. Also during this time, he was taught theology, Latin, Greek, French, and Italian at the local gymnasium.^[17]
By 3 April 1700, Bach and his schoolfriend Georg Erdmann—who was two years Bach's elder—were enrolled in the prestigious St. Michael's School in Lüneburg, some two weeks' travel north of Ohrdruf.^[18][19] Their journey was probably undertaken mostly on foot.^[17][19] His two years there were critical in exposing Bach to a wider range of European culture. In addition to singing in the choir, he played the School's three-manual organ and harpsichords.^[17] He came into contact with sons of aristocrats from northern Germany, sent to the highly selective school to prepare for careers in other disciplines.
While in Lüneburg, Bach had access to St. John's Church and possibly used the church's famous organ from 1553, since it was played by his organ teacher Georg Böhm.^[20] Because of his musical talent, Bach had significant contact with Böhm while a student in Lüneburg, and also took trips to nearby Hamburg where he observed "the great North German organist Johann Adam Reincken".^[20][21] Stauffer reports the discovery in 2005 of the organ tablatures that Bach wrote out when still in his teens of works by Reincken and Dieterich Buxtehude, showing "a disciplined, methodical, well-trained teenager deeply committed to learning his craft".^[20]