Johann Sebastian Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach (31 March [O.S. 21 March] 1685 – 28 July 1750) was a German composer and musician of the late Baroque period. He is known for his prolific output across a variety of instruments and forms, including the orchestral Brandenburg Concertos; solo instrumental works such as the cello suites and sonatas and partitas for solo violin; keyboard works such as the Goldberg Variations and The Well-Tempered Clavier; organ works such as the Schübler Chorales and the Toccata and Fugue in D minor; and choral works such as the St Matthew Passion and the Mass in B minor. Since the 19th-century Bach Revival, he has been widely regarded as one of the greatest composers in the history of Western music.

The Bach family had already produced several composers when Johann Sebastian was born as the last child of a city musician, Johann Ambrosius, in Eisenach. After being orphaned at age 10, he lived for five years with his eldest brother, Johann Christoph, then continued his musical education in Lüneburg. In 1703 he returned to Thuringia, working as a musician for Protestant churches in Arnstadt and Mühlhausen. Around that time he also visited for longer periods the courts in Weimar, where he expanded his organ repertory, and the reformed court at Köthen, where he was mostly engaged with chamber music. By 1723 he was hired as Thomaskantor (cantor with related duties at St Thomas School) in Leipzig. There he composed music for the principal Lutheran churches of the city and Leipzig University's student ensemble, Collegium Musicum. In 1726 he began publishing his organ and other keyboard music. In Leipzig, as had happened during some of his earlier positions, he had difficult relations with his employer. This situation was somewhat remedied when his sovereign, Augustus III of Poland, granted him the title of court composer of the Elector of Saxony in 1736. In the last decades of his life, Bach reworked and extended many of his earlier compositions. He died due to complications following eye surgery in 1750 at the age of 65. Four of his twenty children, Wilhelm Friedemann, Carl Philipp Emanuel, Johann Christoph Friedrich, and Johann Christian, became composers.

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 Italy and France. His compositions include hundreds of cantatas, both sacred and secular. He composed Latin church music, Passions, oratorios, and motets. He adopted Lutheran hymns, not only in his larger vocal works but also in such works as his four-part chorales and his sacred songs. Bach wrote extensively for organ and 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 use contrapuntal techniques like canon and fugue.

Several decades after the end of his life, in the 18th century, Bach was still primarily known as an organist. By 2013, more than 150 recordings had been made of his The Well-Tempered Clavier. Several biographies of Bach were published in the 19th century, and by the end of that century all of his known music had been printed. Dissemination of Bach scholarship continued through periodicals (and later also websites) devoted to him, 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 by a multitude of arrangements, including the "Air on the G String" and "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring", and recordings, among them three different box sets of performances of his complete oeuvre marking the 250th anniversary of his death.

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. He was the eighth and youngest child of Johann Ambrosius Bach, the director of the town musicians, and Maria Elisabeth née Lämmerhirt, daughter of a town councillor. The Bach family, traditionally traced to the patriarch Vitus "Veit" Bach (d. 1619), produced three to four generations of musicians in the Thuringia region, whose insular cultural climate fostered conservative musicianship, with external influences arriving mainly via the courts. Nothing is definitively known about Bach's early years before 1693; his musical education in particular is highly conjectural. His family, particularly the uncles, were all professional musicians who worked as church organists, court chamber musicians, and composers. Bach's father presumably taught him the violin, Ambrosius' own primary instrument, along with basic music theory principles. One uncle, Johann Christoph Bach (1645–1693) may have introduced him to the organ, though this is debated since the uncle may not have been close to the immediate family.

Bach's mother died in 1694, and his father eight months later in February 1695. 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. There he studied, performed, and copied music, including his brother's, despite being forbidden to do so because scores were so valuable and private and ledger paper was costly. From his brother he also received instruction on the clavichord. Johann Christoph exposed him to the works of composers of the day, including South Germans such as Johann Caspar Kerll, Johann Jakob Froberger, and Johann Pachelbel (under whom Johann Christoph had studied); North Germans such as Georg Böhm, Johann Reincken and Friedrich Nicolaus Bruhns from Hamburg, and Dieterich Buxtehude; Frenchmen such as Jean-Baptiste Lully, Louis Marchand, and Marin Marais; and the Italian Girolamo Frescobaldi. He learned theology, Latin, and Greek at the local gymnasium.

By 3 April 1700 Bach and his school friend Georg Erdmann—who was two years older—began studies at St Michael's School in Lüneburg, two weeks' travel north of Ohrdruf. Their journey was probably undertaken mostly on foot. He sang in the choir and had opportunities to pursue his interest in instrumental music: recently, evidence has come to light that he received organ lessons. He also came into contact with sons of aristocrats from northern Germany who had been sent to the nearby Ritter-Academie to prepare for careers in other disciplines.

Four months after arriving at Mühlhausen in 1707, Bach married Maria Barbara Bach, his second cousin. Later that year their first child, Catharina Dorothea, was born, and Maria Barbara's elder, unmarried sister joined them. She remained to help run the household until she died in 1729. Three sons were also born: Wilhelm Friedemann, Carl Philipp Emanuel, and Johann Gottfried Bernhard. All became musicians, and the first two composers. Johann Sebastian and Maria Barbara had seven children. Their twins born in 1713 died within a year, and their last son, Leopold, also died within a year of his birth. On 7 July 1720, while Bach was away in Carlsbad with Prince Leopold, Maria Barbara suddenly died. The next year, he met Anna Magdalena Wilcke, a gifted soprano 16 years his junior, while she was performing at the court in Köthen; they married on 3 December 1721. Together they had 13 children, six of whom survived into adulthood: Gottfried Heinrich; Elisabeth Juliane Friederica (1726–1781); Johann Christoph Friedrich and Johann Christian, who both became musicians; Johanna Carolina (1737–1781); and Regina Susanna (1742–1809).

In January 1703, shortly after graduating from St. Michael's in 1702 and being turned down for the post of organist at Sangerhausen, Bach was appointed court musician in the chapel of Duke Johann Ernst III in Weimar. His role there is unclear, but it probably included menial, non-musical duties. During his seven-month tenure at Weimar, his reputation as a keyboardist spread so widely that he was invited to inspect the new organ and give the inaugural recital at the New Church (now Bach Church) in Arnstadt, about 30 kilometres (19 mi) southwest of Weimar. On 14 August 1703 he became the organist at the New Church, with light duties, a relatively generous salary, and a new organ tuned in a temperament that allowed music written in a wider range of keys to be played.

Despite a musically enthusiastic employer, tension built up between Bach and his employer after several years in the post. For example, Bach upset his employer with a prolonged absence from Arnstadt: after obtaining leave for four weeks, he was absent for around four months in 1705–1706 to take lessons from the organist and composer Johann Adam Reincken and to hear him and Dieterich Buxtehude play in the northern city of Lübeck. The visit to Buxtehude and Reincken involved a 450-kilometre (280 mi) journey each way, reportedly on foot. Buxtehude probably introduced Bach to his friend Reincken so that he could learn from his compositional technique (especially his mastery of fugue), his organ playing and his skills with improvisation. Bach knew Reincken's music very well; he copied Reincken's monumental An Wasserflüssen Babylon when he was 15 years old. Bach later wrote several other works on the same theme. When Bach revisited Reincken in 1720 and showed him his improvisatory skills on the organ, Reincken reportedly remarked: "I thought that this art was dead, but I see that it lives in you."

In 1706 Bach applied for a post as organist at the Blasius Church in Mühlhausen. As part of his application, he had a cantata performed at Easter, 24 April 1707, that resembles his later Christ lag in Todes Banden BMV 4. Bach's application was accepted a month later, and he took up the post in July. The position included higher remuneration, improved conditions, and a better choir. Bach persuaded the church and town government at Mühlhausen to fund an expensive renovation of the organ at the Blasius Church. In 1708 Bach wrote Gott ist mein König, a festive cantata for the inauguration of the new council, which was published at the council's expense. This was the only extant Bach cantata published in his lifetime.