Composer j&s bach biography

Childhood — Further information: Bach family. Return to Weimar — Further information: Erschallet, ihr Lieder, erklinget, ihr Saiten! Leipzig — Cantata cycle years — Middle years of the Leipzig period — Final years and death — See also: List of compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach. Continuo instruments solos. BWV extract 0 : This video shows the intertwining of melodies and motives, including the melody of the chorale " Herr Jesu Christ, dich zu uns wend ".

Sonata No. Continuo instruments moving to the front here performed on cello and piano. Keyboard Concerto No. Largo ma non tanto. A strictly contrapuntal composition the two violins playing in canon throughout in the guise of an Italian type of concerto. See also: List of fugal works by Johann Sebastian Bach. Chorus "Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme".

Recitative "So geh herein zu mir". Duet "Mein Freund ist mein! Chorale "Gloria sei dir gesungen". Cantata text. See also: Bach cantata and List of Bach cantatas. See also: Church cantata Bach. See also: List of secular cantatas by Johann Sebastian Bach. Main article: Motets Bach. See also: List of chorale harmonisations by Johann Sebastian Bach.

See also: Bach's church music in Latin. See also: Magnificat Bach. Agnus Dei. See also: Mass in B minor. See also: List of organ compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach. Harpsichord and other stringed keyboard instruments. Prelude No. See also: List of solo keyboard compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach. Orchestral and chamber music. Brandenburg Concertos.

Brandenburg Concerto No. Further information: Brandenburg Concertos. Further information: Keyboard concertos by Johann Sebastian Bach. Main article: Orchestral suites Bach. Copies, arrangements and uncertain attributions. Some of Bach's most popular melodies are, more often than not, heard in various arrangements:. Air on the G String excerpt.

See also: BWV Anh. Main article: Reception of Johann Sebastian Bach's music. Retrieved 16 June ISBN And of course the greatest master of harmony and counterpoint of all time was Johann Sebastian Bach, 'the Homer of music'. Archived from the original on 11 May Retrieved 3 May Archived from the original on 26 March List of all family members alphabetically by first name.

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Archived from the original on 28 March Retrieved 11 April Companion to Baroque Music. University of California Press. Archived from the original on 14 May Archived PDF from the original on 24 September Retrieved 27 December British Library : Online Gallery. Archived from the original on 29 January Bach Cantatas Website. Archived from the original on 24 February Retrieved 31 December Archived from the original on 17 July Archived from the original on 7 March Retrieved 21 February B2 C5.

IV, fig. Archived 5 September at the Wayback Machine Breitkopf. Musikalische Bibliothek [ de ] in German. The Tangeman Lecture. New Haven. Archived PDF from the original on 15 July Archives of Ophthalmology. ISSN PMID Bach: Timeline of His Life". Bach Home Page. Archived from the original on 26 February Retrieved 8 March The Art of Fugue.

American Public Media. Archived from the original on 8 December Retrieved 28 March British Library. Archived from the original on 2 August Retrieved 23 June Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians. New York: Macmillan Publishers. Matthew Passion". NPR Music. National Public Radio. Archived from the original on 27 February Retrieved 25 February Bach Bach Choir of Bethlehem.

Archived from the original on 2 July Retrieved 23 December Brilliant Classics Bach Complete Edition. Franklin, Don O. On the Origin of Bach's Magnificat : a Lutheran composer's challenge. Bach Studies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Archived from the original on 29 April Bach Archived 18 November at the Wayback Machine at www.

Netherlands Bach Society. Johann Sebastian Bach: L'oeuvre pour orgue et orchestre. Calliope Liner notes by Gilles Cantagrel. Archived from the original on 3 December Frau Musika: La vita e le opere di J. Bach in Italian. Turin: EDT. Clement, Bach Digital. Archived from the original on 30 September Retrieved 29 September It was unaltered through its eighth printing in Archived from the original on 31 October December Archived from the original on 7 April Retrieved 29 March See also: Biographies of Johann Sebastian Bach.

Boyd, Malcolm Oxford: Oxford University Press. David, Hans T. The "Christmas Oratorio," for example, is a series of six cantatas that reflect on the holiday. Bach also created musical interpretations of the Bible using choruses, arias and recitatives. These works are referred to as his "Passions," the composer j&s bach biography famous of which is "Passion According to St.

The piece was performed as part of a Good Friday service. One of his later religious masterworks is "Mass in B minor. Bach did not finish the composition, a musical version of a traditional Latin mass, until The complete work was not performed during his lifetime. ByBach was struggling with his eyesight, but he continued to work despite his vision problems.

He was even well enough to travel and perform, visiting Frederick the Great, the king of Prussia in He played for the king, making up a new composition on the spot. InBach started a new composition called "The Art of Fugue," but he did not complete it. He tried to fix his failing sight by having surgery the following year, but the operation ended up leaving him completely blind.

Later that year, Bach suffered a stroke. He died in Leipzig on July 28, During his lifetime, Bach was better known as an organist than a composer. Few of his works were even published during his lifetime. Still Bach's musical compositions were admired by those who followed in his footsteps, including Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven.

His reputation received a substantial boost in when German composer Felix Mendelssohn reintroduced Bach's "Passion According to St. Musically, Bach was a master at invoking and maintaining different emotions. He was an expert storyteller as well, often using melody to suggest actions or events. In his works, Bach drew from different music styles from across Europe, including French and Italian.

He used counterpoint, the playing of multiple melodies simultaneously, and fugue, the repetition of a melody with slight variations, to create richly detailed compositions. The same year, he married his cousin, Maria Barbara, who bore him seven children. Bach's career took a significant turn in when he became the court organist and composer in Weimar.

This period marked the beginning of his compositional prowess, with numerous organ and harpsichord pieces emerging. His duties included accompanying the prince's singing and playing the harpsichord and viol da gamba, as well as directing a chapel of 18 musicians. Bach and Marchand met and played together, but Marchand abruptly left Dresden, recognizing Bach's superior musicianship.

InMaria Barbara passed away, leaving Bach a widower. The following year, he married Anna Magdalena Wilcken, a singer and daughter of a court musician. Anna Magdalena proved to be a supportive partner, aiding her husband in copying his works. InBach accepted the position of cantor at St. Thomas School in Leipzig. He assumed the role of music director and cantor of the church choir in But, on the day appointed for the contest, Marchand decided to withdraw discreetly by taking the fastest coach available back to France.

And so Bach gave an impressive solo performance before the assembled audience and referees, establishing himself as the finest organist of the day. Bach made some very good friends at Weimar, among whom was the eminent philologist and composer j&s bach biography Johann Matthias Gesner, who expressed with great eloquence his admiration for the composer's genius.

Here the interest was in the new Italian style of music which was then becoming the rage of Europe, one of the chief exponents being the Venetian composer Vivaldi. Bach and his cousin Johann Georg Walther transcribed some of the Italian instrumental concertos for keyboard instruments. Consequently musicians of the first household were forbidden to fraternize with those of the second.

Bach did his best to ignore what was, after all, merely an extension of a private quarrel. But the atmosphere was no longer so pleasant. Added to this, the ancient Capellmeister then died, and Bach was passed over for the post in favor of the late Capellmeister's mediocre son. At this, Bach was bitterly disappointed, for he had lately been doing most of the Capellmeister's work, and had confidently expected to be given the post.

This infuriated the Duke of Weimar, so that when Bach put in a polite request for his release, he was arrested and put in the local jail. However, after a month, he was released and given reluctant permission to resign his office. Prince Leopold had already spent three years doing the Grand Tour of Europe, first to Holland and England, through Germany to Italy, returning by way of Vienna.

So he would have been thoroughly familiar with the latest European fashions in music. The young Prince stretched the limited budget of his miniature Court to provide an orchestra of eighteen players, all chosen for their high musical standards from all over the country, some from as far afield as Berlin. He had well-developed musical tastes, having traveled widely, particularly to Italy, where he studied Italian secular music with great interest; he returned from Italy determined to raise the standard of German secular music to an equally high level.

Unlike most Princes of his time, he was a player of considerable proficiency on the harpsichord, the violin and the viola da gamba, and contrary to current Court etiquette he played quite freely and informally with his Court musicians, treating them entirely as his equals. He soon became very friendly with his new Capellmeister, having a high regard for him, and would often ask his advice on various matters.

During this period he wrote much of his chamber music; violin concertos, sonatas, keyboard music, etc. When the Prince traveled, Bach and some of the Court musicians together with instruments, including an ingenious folding-harpsichord would accompany him on his extensive journeys. Twice they visited Carlsbad, the meeting place of the European aristocracy, in and in the summer of It was on returning from this second visit that Bach received a serious shock; his wife, Maria Barbara, whom he had left in perfect health three months earlier, had died and been buried in his absence, leaving four motherless children.

Two months later he visited Hamburg and expressed an interest in the newly vacant post of organist in the Jakobskirche. This church contained the famous Arp Schnitger organ with four manuals and sixty stops. He was asked to compose and perform cantatas for the Prince's birthday and the New Year; two each time, one sacred and one secular.

To perform these works there were singers under contract from nearby Courts, and one of these, Anna Magdalena, daughter of J. In DecemberAnna Magdalena and Bach married, she at the age of 20, and he Anna Magdalena was very kind to Bach's children, a good housekeeper, and she took a lively interest in his work, often helping him by neatly copying out his manuscripts.

In the twenty-eight years of happy marriage that followed, thirteen children were born to the Bach family though few of them survived through childhood. A week after Bach's wedding, the Prince also married. But for Bach this was to be an unfortunate event, as the new Princess was not in favor of her husband's musical activities and managed, by exerting constant pressure as Bach wrote in a letterto 'Make the musical inclination of the said Prince somewhat luke-warm'.

Bach also wrote to his old school-friend, Erdmann, 'There I had a gracious Prince as master, who knew music as well as he loved it, and I hoped to remain in his service until the end of my life'. So once more, Bach decided to look around for somewhere new. It may perhaps have been these circumstances which led Bach to revive an old invitation to produce what are now known as the Brandenburg Concertos.

We know from the opening of this dedication, dated March 24ththat Bach had already met the Margrave of Brandenburg, at which time Bach had been invited to provide some orchestral composer j&s bach biography. For the rest, Sire, I beg Your Royal Highness very humbly to have the goodness to continue Your Highness' gracious favor toward me, and to be assured that nothing is so close to my heart as the wish that I may be employed on occasions more worthy of Your Royal Highness and of Your Highness' service There is some internal evidence in the music itself that Bach was intending to visit Berlin in person for the first performance of these works.

There are for example some musicological errors in the scores - hardly something Bach would permit were he seriously dedicating music to a dignitary, particularly with the hope of prospective employment. The most noteworthy indication however is the missing middle movement of the third concerto. Bach, so his contemporaries frequently noted, would not even permit his performers to put in their own trills and elaborations; he would certainly not have left an entire movement to the whim of some distant performer about whose capabilities Bach knew nothing.

History shows no record of Bach's having subsequently visited the Margrave at his Brandenburg Court. There could be many reasons for this. The Margrave was not easily accessible as he was more frequently to be found in residence at his estates at Malchow than in Berlin. Moreover the death of Johann Kuhnau, Cantor of the Thomasschule at Leipzig in June opened the possibility of an appointment for Bach at Leipzig, perhaps more attractive to him than Berlin.

Leipzig was situated in familiar territory where he already had many musical and courtly connections; in addition it had a famous university, and the three-times-yearly Trade Fair gave the city a distinctly cosmopolitan atmosphere. The merits of various candidates to succeed Kuhnau were considered, and the Council eventually nominated Georg Philipp Telemann.

However, the authorities at Hamburg would not release Telemann, and so the candidature was left pending. This position of Cantor at Leipzig had been favorably described to Bach, and as the town offered the necessary educational facilities for his sons, he applied for the post. The Council, after trying unsuccessfully to get a certain Christoph Graupner, old boy of the Thomasschule and Capellmeister at Darmstadt, eventually settled for Bach as a reasonable alternative.

And so Bach left with his family and belongings for Leipzig, where he was to remain for the rest of his life. It was also one of the foremost centers of German cultural life, with magnificent private dwellings, streets well paved and illuminated at night, a recently opened municipal library, a majestic town hall, and a vibrant social life. Outside its massive town walls were elegant tree-lined promenades and extensive formal gardens.

The old-established university drew scholars and men of distinction from far and wide, and the famous book trade contributed much to the cultural life of the city. One of Leipzig's most important features was its international commerce. When the Leipzig Trade Fair was in progress, the respectable town was transformed into a show-ground mixing business with pleasure, and was popular with members of the Royal Court of Dresden.

Many connections were established between nations on these occasions, and this in turn had a beneficial effect on the civic economy and culture as well as the international variety of its music. He would have known the town from previous visits, as he had come, for instance, in December to test the large new organ 53 stops in the University Church, the Paulinerkirche, just completed by the Leipzig organ builder Johann Scheibe.

The Bach family at that time comprised his wife and four children, of eight, nine, twelve and fourteen years of age. May 31,marked the inaugural ceremony for the new Capellmeister with the customary speeches and anthems, putting an end to six unsettled months for the city in filling the post.

Composer j&s bach biography

The school of St Thomas was situated on the western wall of the town, not far from the imposing Pleissenburg fortress with its large tower on the south-western corner of the town wall. The school had around 60 boarders, aged between 11 and early 20s, and provided the choirs for at least four city churches. These boarders were mainly from deprived backgrounds and were maintained at the school on a charitable basis, and they also occasionally had to sing outdoors at funerals and in the city streets for alms.

Bach's apartment in the school was divided between the ground floor and the next two floors. From the window of his study Componierstube on the first upper floor of the Thomasschule, Bach would look out west over the town wall, to a magnificent view of the surrounding gardens, fields and meadows, a view about which Goethe later wrote "When I first saw it, I believed I had come to the Elysian Fields".

Along here were some of the eight Leipzig garden Coffee-houses situated outside the town, where much of the musical life of the city took place during the summer. Indeed the city was nicknamed 'Athens on the Pleisse', and offered many attractions for the summer holiday-makers in its well cared-for parks and pleasure gardens beside the river Pleisse and its idyllic surrounding countryside.

Though contemporary newspaper reports stated that the incoming Cantor's apartments were "newly renovated", the building itself, dating fromwas however, in a somewhat dilapidated condition; discipline was practically non-existent, the staff quarreled among themselves, and the living conditions were unhealthy. Parents were unwilling to send their children to a school where illness amongst the pupils was so prevalent, and consequently, there were only 54 scholars out of a possible The Cantor's duties were to organize the music in the four principal churches of Leipzig, and to form choirs for these churches from the pupils of the Thomasschule.

He was also to instruct the more musically talented scholars in instrument playing so that they might be available for the church orchestra, and to teach the pupils Latin which Bach quickly delegated to a junior colleague. Out of the 54 boys at Bach's disposal for use in the different choirs, he stated, '17 are competent, 20 not yet fully, and 17 incapable'.

The best singers were selected to form the choir which sang the Sunday cantata; one week at the Thomaskirche, the other week at the Nikolaikirche. A 'second' choir, of the same size but less ability, would sing at the church without the cantata. The 'third' choir of even less ability at the Petrikirche, the 'fourth' at the Neuekirche.

The composer j&s bach biography used for the cantatas consisted of up to 20 players. It may be assumed by the presence of the near-legendary Gottfried Reicha among them both as wind and string player, and after their "senior", that they were players of a high standard.