Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach is a composer of the Baroque era, who was admired by his contemporaries as an outstanding harpsichordist and organist. However, Bach is now regarded as one of the greatest composers of all time. In western music history, Bach brought together the principal compositional styles, traditions, and forms that developed from generation to generation.
Life
Bach came from large German musicians who live in the northern part of Germany. Bach was the youngest child of Johann Ambrosius Bach and Elisabeth Lämmerhirt. Unfortunately, by 1695 both of his parents were dead, and he was looked after by his eldest brother, named Johann Christoph (1671–1721). Christoph is an organist at Ohrdruf and had been a pupil of Johann Pachelbel, and he apparently gave Johann Sebastian his first formal keyboard lessons.
Bach returned to Thuringia in the late summer of 1702. By this time he was already a reasonably proficient organist. His experience at Lüneburg. By March 4, 1703, Bach was a member of the orchestra employed by Johann Ernst, Duke of Weimar (and brother of Wilhelm Ernst). Bach inherited the musical culture of the Thuringian area such as traditional forms and hymns (chorales) of the orthodox Lutheran service. By 1708 he had probably learned and mastered all of northern and southern German styles. He had also studied, on his own and some French organ and instrumental music.
Bach was also a musical director, he was concerned with the chamber and orchestral music. Even though some of the works may have been composed earlier and revised later. When Bach lived in Köthen he composed a lot of the sonatas for violin and clavier and for viola da gamba and clavier and the works for unaccompanied.
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Bach’s illness that lasted for several months prevented him from finishing The Art of the Fugue. Bach died on July 28, 1750, at Leipzig because of two unsuccessful eye operations performed by John Taylor. And yes, 1750 is the end of the Baroque era.
Works
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“St. Matthew Passion, BWV 244”
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“Brandenburg Concertos”
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The Well-Tempered Clavier
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“Jesu Meine Freude”
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“Mass in B Minor”
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“Christmas Oratorio”
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“God Is My King”
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“Hunt Cantata”
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“St. John Passion”
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“Three-Part Inventions”
Reputations
About 50 years after Bach’s death, his music was neglected and forgotten. Because of changes in religious thought, in the days of Haydn and Mozart, no one did not have much interest in old-fashioned music such as Bach’s music, the church cantatas were becoming useless. But when German musician Eduard Devrient and the German composer Felix Mendelssohn revived Bach’s music and performed the St. Matthew Passion and the St. John Passion, Bach became famous again. The Leipzig publisher Peters began to collect Bach’s piano pieces and other instrumental works from 1844 to 1852.