The
1748 Haussmann portrait of the composer.
Born March 21 (O.S.), 1685
Eisenach, Thuringia, Germany
Died July 28 (N.S.), 1750
Leipzig, Saxony, Germany .
Johann Sebastian
Bach (21 March 1685 O.S. – 28 July 1750 N.S.) was a prolific German
composer and organist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra
and solo instruments drew together almost all of the strands of the
baroque style and brought it to its ultimate maturity. Although he introduced
no new musical forms, he enriched the prevailing German style with a
robust and dazzling contrapuntal technique, a seemingly effortless control
of harmonic and motivic organisation from the smallest to the largest
scales, and the adaptation of rhythms and textures from abroad, particularly
Italy and France.
Bach's forceful
suavity and vast output have earned him wide acknowledgment as one of
the greatest composers in the Western tonal tradition. Revered for their
intellectual depth, technical command and artistic beauty, his works
include the Brandenburg concertos, the keyboard suites and partitas,
the Mass in B Minor, the St. Matthew Passion, The Musical Offering,
The Art of Fugue and a large number of cantatas, of which about 220
survive. An example of some of these stylistic traits appears below,
in the chorus Ehre sei Gott in der Höhe from the Christmas Oratorio,
written in 1734 during his mature period.
Early years
Johann Sebastian Bach was a member of one of the most extraordinary
musical families of all time. For more than 200 years, the Bach family
had produced dozens of worthy performers and composers during a period
in which the church, local government and the aristocracy provided significant
support for professional music making in the German-speaking world,
particularly in the eastern electorates of Thuringia and Saxony. Sebastian's
father, Johann Ambrosius Bach, was a talented violinist and trumpeter
in Eisenach, a town of some 6,000 residents in Thuringia/Germany. The
post involved the organisation of secular music and participation in
church music. Sebastian's uncles were all professional musicians, ranging
from church organists and court chamber musicians to composers. Contemporary
documents indicate that just the name Bach had come to be used as a
synonym for "musician".
Places in which
Bach resided throughout his lifeBach's mother died in 1694, and his
father the following year. The 10-year-old orphan moved in with his
eldest brother, Johann Christoph Bach, the organist at Ohrdruf, a nearby
town. There, he copied, studied and performed music, and apparently
received valuable tuition from his brother. This exposed him to the
work of the great South German composers of the day—such as Pachelbel
and Froberger—and possibly the music of North Germans and of the
French composers such as Lully, Louis Marchand and Marin Marais. The
boy probably witnessed and assisted the maintenance of the organ, a
precursor to his lifelong professional activity as a consultant in the
building and restoration of organs. Bach's obituary indicates that Johann
Sebastian would copy music out of Johann Christoph's scores, but because
scores were valuable and private commodities at the time, Johann Christoph
forbade Johann Sebastian to do so.
At the age of 14,
Johann Sebastian was awarded a choral scholarship, with his older school
friend, Georg Erdmann, to study at the prestigious St Michael’s
School in Lüneburg, not far from Hamburg, the largest city in Germany.
This involved a long journey with his friend, probably partly on foot
and partly by coach. His two years there appear to have been critical
in exposing him to a wider palette of European culture than he would
have experienced in Thuringia. In addition to singing in the a cappella
choir, it is likely that he played the School’s three-manual organ
and harpsichords. He probably learned French and Italian, and received
a thorough grounding in theology, Latin, history, geography and physics.
He would have come into contact with sons of noblemen from northern
Germany sent to the highly selective school to prepare for careers in
diplomacy, government and the military. It is likely that he had significant
contact with organists in Lüneburg, in particular Georg Böhm,
and visited several of those in Hamburg, such as Reincken and Bruhns.
Through these musicians, he probably gained access to the largest instruments
he had played. It is also likely that he became acquainted with the
music of the North German tradition, especially the work of Dieterich
Buxtehude, with music manuscripts from further afield, and with treatises
on music theory that were in the possession of these men.
Arnstadt and Mühlhausen
(1703–08)
Bach as a young manIn January 1703, shortly after graduating, Bach took
up a post as a court musician in the chapel of Duke Johann Ernst in
Weimar, a large town in Thuringia. His role there is unclear, but appears
to have included menial, non-musical duties. During his seven-month
tenure at Weimar, his reputation as a keyboardist spread. He was invited
to inspect and give the inaugural recital on the new organ at St Boniface’s
Church in Arnstadt. The Bach family had close connections with this
oldest town in Thuringia, about 180 km to the southwest of Weimar at
the edge of the great forest. In August 1703, he accepted the post of
organist at that church, with light duties, a relatively generous salary,
and a new organ free of technical defects and tuned to a modern system
that allowed a wide range of keys to be used.
It was around the
time of his Arnstadt appointment that Bach was embarking on the serious
composition of organ preludes. These works, in the North German tradition
of virtuosic, improvisatory preludes, already show remarkably tight
motivic control (where a single, short music idea is explored cogently
throughout a movement). However, in these works the composer was still
grappling with issues of large-scale structure, and had yet to fully
develop his powers of contrapuntal writing (where two or more melodies
interact simultaneously).
Strong family connections
and a musically enthusiastic employer failed to prevent tension between
the headstrong, precocious young organist and the authorities after
several years in the post. He was apparently dissatisfied with the standard
of singers in the choir. More seriously, there was his unauthorised
absence from Arnstadt for several months in 1705–06, when he visited
the great master Buxtehude and his Abendmusik in the northern city of
Lübeck. This well-known incident in Bach’s life involved
his walking some 400 km each way to spend time with the man he probably
regarded as the father-figure of German organists. The trip reinforced
Buxtehude’s style as a foundation for Bach’s earlier works,
and the fact that he overstayed his planned visit by several months
suggests that his time with the old man was immensely valuable to his
art.
Despite his comfortable
position in Arnstadt, by 1706 Bach appears to have realised that he
needed to escape from the family milieu and move on to further his career.
He was then offered a more lucrative post as organist at St Blasius’
in Mühlhausen, a large and important city to the north. The following
year, he took up this senior post with significantly improved pay and
conditions, including a good choir. Four months after arriving at Mühlhausen,
he married his second cousin from Arnstadt, Maria Barbara Bach.[1] They
had seven children, four of whom survived to adulthood. Two of them—Wilhelm
Friedemann Bach and Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach—became important
composers in the ornate rococo style that followed the baroque.
The church and city
government at Mühlhausen must have been proud of their new musical
director. They readily agreed to his plan for an expensive renovation
of the organ at St Blasius’s, and were so delighted at the elaborate,
festive cantata he wrote for the inauguration of the new council in
1708—God is my king BWV 71, which is clearly in the style of Buxtehude—that
they paid handsomely for its publication, and twice in later years had
the composer return to conduct it.
Cöthen (1717–23)
The palace and gardens at Cöthen in an engraving from Matthäus
Merian's Topographia (1650)
Violin Sonata No. 1 in G minor (BWV 1001) in Bach’s handwritingSensing
increasing political tensions in the ducal court of Weimar, Bach began
once again to search out a more stable job that was conducive to his
musical interests. Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Cöthen hired Bach to
serve as his Kapellmeister (director of music). Prince Leopold, himself
a musician, appreciated Bach’s talents, paid him well, and gave
him considerable latitude in composing and performing. However, the
prince was Calvinist and did not use elaborate music in his worship;
thus, most of Bach’s work from this period was secular, including
the Orchestral suites, the Six suites for solo cello and the Sonatas
and Partitas for solo violin. This photograph of the opening page of
the first violin sonata shows the composer’s handwriting—fast
and efficient, but just as visually ornate as the music it encoded.
The well-known Brandenburg concertos date from this period. The sound
clip is from the opening of the Presto from the fourth Brandenburg concerto,
for solo violin, two solo flutes, strings and harpsichord continuo.
This shows the cumulative power of the composer's fugal writing; supported
by the harpsichord, each instrument enters in succession with a jaunty
melody, sounding against a complex web of counterpoint played by those
that have already entered.
On 7 July 1720
while Bach was abroad with Prince Leopold, tragedy struck: his wife,
Maria Barbara, died suddenly. The following year, the widower met Anna
Magdalena Wilcke, a young, highly gifted soprano who performed at the
court in Cöthen; they married on 3 December 1721. Despite the age
difference—she was 17 years his junior—they appear to have
had a happy marriage. Together, they had 13 children.
Leipzig (1723–50)
A 1723 engraving by JG Krügner of St Thomas’s Church, the
St Thomas School at a right angle to it at the leftIn 1723, Bach was
appointed Cantor and Musical Director of Thomaskirche (St Thomas’s
Lutheran Church) in Leipzig, a prestigious post in the leading mercantile
city in Saxony, a neighbouring electorate to Thuringia. Apart from his
brief tenures in Arnstadt and Mülhausen, this was Bach’s
first government position in a career that had mainly involved service
to the aristocracy. This final post, which he held for 27 years until
his death, brought him into contact with the political machinations
of his employer, the Leipzig Council. The Council comprised two factions:
the Absolutists, loyal to the Saxon monarch in Dresden, Augustus the
Strong; and the City-Estate faction, representing the interests of the
mercantile class, the guilds and minor aristocrats. Bach was the nominee
of the monarchists, in particular of the Mayor at the time, Gottlieb
Lange, a lawyer who had earlier served in the Dresden court. In return
for agreeing to Bach’s appointment, the City-Estate faction was
granted control of the School, and Bach was required to make a number
of compromises with respect to his working conditions.[2] Although it
appears that no one on the Council doubted Bach’s genius, there
was continual tension between the Cantor, who regarded himself as the
leader of church music in the city, and the City-Estate faction, which
saw him as a schoolmaster and wanted to reduce the emphasis on elaborate
music in both the School and the Churches. The Council never honoured
Lange’s promise at interview of a handsome salary of 1,000 talers
a year, although it did provide Bach and his family with a smaller income
and a good apartment at one end of the school building, which was renovated
at great expense in 1732.
Bach’s job
required him to instruct the students of the St Thomas School in singing
and Latin, and to provide weekly music at the two main churches in Leipzig,
St Thomas's and St Nicholas's. In an astonishing burst of creativity,
he wrote up to five annual cantata cycles during his first six years
in Leipzig (two of which have apparently been lost). Most of these concerted
works expound on the Bible readings for every Sunday and feast day in
the Lutheran year; many were written using traditional church hymns,
such as Wachet auf! Ruft uns die Stimme and Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland,
as inspiration.
A photograph of
the outside of Bach’s apartment at the end of the St Thomas School,
taken before its demolition in 1902. Three steps can be seen leading
to the front door.To rehearse and perform these works at St Thomas’s
Church, Bach probably sat at the harpsichord or stood in front of the
choir on the lower gallery at the west end, his back to the congregation
and the altar at the east end. He would have looked upwards to the organ
that rose from a loft about four metres above. To the right of the organ
in a side gallery would have been the winds, brass and timpani; to the
left were the strings. The Council provided only about eight permanent
instrumentalists, a source of continual friction with the Cantor, who
had to recruit the rest of the 20 or so players required for medium-to-large
scores from the University, the School and the public. The organ or
harpsichord were probably played by the composer (when not standing
to conduct), the in-house organist, or one of Bach’s elder sons,
Friederich or Emmanuel.
Bach drew the soprano
and alto choristers from the School, and the tenors and basses from
the School and elsewhere in Leipzig. Performing at weddings and funerals
provided extra income for these groups; it was probably for this purpose,
and for in-school training, that he wrote at least six motets, mostly
for double-choir. As part of his regular church work, he performed motets
of the Venetian school and Germans such as Heinrich Schütz, which
would have served as formal models for his own motets. The audio excerpt
is from the opening of Singet dem Herrn (Sing to the Lord), showing
the rich, energetic textures that Bach could produce with two choirs,
each in four parts. In this recording, there are three singers to each
part.
Having spent much
of the 1720s composing cantatas, Bach had assembled a huge repertoire
of church music for Leipzig’s two main churches. He now wished
to broaden his composing and performing beyond the liturgy. In March
1729, he took over the directorship of the Collegium Musicum, a secular
performance ensemble that had been started in 1701 by his old friend,
the composer Georg Philipp Telemann. This was one of the dozens of private
societies in the major German-speaking cities that had been established
by musically active university students; these societies had come to
play an increasingly important role in public musical life and were
typically led by the most prominent professionals in a city. In the
words of Christoph Wolff, assuming the directorship was a shrewd move
that 'consolidated Bach’s firm grip on Leipzig’s principal
musical institutions’.[3] During much of the year, Leipzig’s
Collegium Musicum gave twice-weekly, two-hour performances in Zimmerman’s
Coffeehouse on Catherine Street, just off the main market square. For
this purpose, the proprietor provided a large hall and acquired several
musical instruments. Many of Bach’s works during the 1730s, 40s
and 50s were probably written for and performed by the Collegium Musicum;
among these were almost certainly parts of the Clavier-Übung (Keyboard
Practice), and many of the violin and harpsichord concertos.
The title page
of the third part of the Clavier-Übung, one of the few works by
Bach that was published during his lifetimeDuring this period, he completed
the Mass in B Minor, which incorporated newly composed movements with
parts of earlier works. In 1735, he presented the manuscript to the
elector of Saxony in a successful bid to persuade the monarch to appoint
him as Royal Court Composer. This appears to have been part of Bach's
long-term struggle to achieve greater bargaining power over the Leipzig
Council. The audio excerpt, from one of the movements that was presented
to the monarch, shows his use of festive trumpets and timpani. Although
the mass was never performed during the composer’s lifetime, it
is considered to be among the greatest choral works of all time.
In 1747, Bach went
to the court of Frederick the Great in Potsdam, where the king played
a theme for Bach and challenged him to improvise a fugue based on his
theme. Bach improvised a three-part fugue on Frederick’s pianoforte,
then a novelty, and later presented the king with a Musical Offering
which consists of fugues, canons and a trio based on the "royal
theme", nominated by the monarch. Its six-part fugue includes a
slightly altered subject more suitable for extensive elaboration.
The opening of
the six-part fugue from The Musical Offering, in Bach’s handThe
Art of Fugue was written months before his death, and was unfinished.
It consists of 18 complex fugues and canons based on a simple theme.
A magnum opus of thematic transformation and contrapuntal devices, this
work is often cited as the summation of polyphonic techniques.
The final work Bach
completed was a chorale prelude for organ, dictated to his son-in-law,
Altnikol, from his deathbed. Entitled Vor deinen Thron tret ich hiermit
(Before thy throne I now appear); when the notes of the final cadence
are counted and mapped onto the Roman alphabet, the word "BACH"
is again found. The chorale is often played after the unfinished 14th
fugue to conclude performances of The Art of Fugue.
Bach died in Leipzig
in 1750, at the age of 65. During his life he had composed more than
1,000 works.
At Leipzig, Bach
seems to have maintained active relationships with several members of
the faculty of the university. He enjoyed a particularly fruitful relationship
with the poet Picander. Sebastian and Anna Magdalena welcomed friends,
family, and fellow musicians from all over Germany into their home.
Court musicians at Dresden and Berlin, and musicians including George
Philipp Telemann (one of CPE’s godfathers) made frequent visits
to Bach’s apartment and may have kept up frequent correspondence
with him. Interestingly, Georg Friedrich Händel, who was born in
the same year as Bach in Halle, only 50 km from Leipzig, made several
trips to Germany, but Bach was unable to meet him, a fact that Bach
appears to have deeply regretted.
Bach's cross, composer's
signature with a single noteBach's compositional style is characterised
by contrapuntal textures, linear tonic/dominant harmonic progressions
and consistent motor rhythms, which combine to create a sense of forward
momentum. As with most other Baroque composers, Bach's music is motivically
dense; melodic and rhythmic patterns introduced at the beginning of
a work are continually transformed by contrapuntal and melodic inversion,
augmentation, diminution, and stretto.
Several notable
composers such as Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann and Mendelssohn began
writing in a more contrapuntal style after being introduced to Bach's
music; Beethoven labeled him the Urvater der Harmonie (roughly speaking,
the "Godfather of Harmony")[4].
Today the "Bach
style" continues to influence musical composition, from hymns and
religious works to pop and rock. Many of Bach’s themes—particularly
the theme from Toccata and Fugue in D minor—have been used in
rock songs repeatedly and have received notable popularity.
Organ works
Bach was best known during his lifetime as an organist, organ consultant,
and composer of organ works both in the traditional German free genres
such as preludes, fantasias, and toccatas, and stricter forms such as
chorale preludes and fugues. He established a reputation at a young
age for his great creativity and ability to integrate aspects of several
different national styles into his organ works. A decidedly North German
influence was exerted by Georg Böhm, whom Bach came in contact
with in Lüneburg, and Dieterich Buxtehude in Lübeck, whom
the young organist visited in 1704 on an extended leave of absence from
his job in Arnstadt. Around this time Bach also copied the works of
numerous French and Italian composers in order to gain insights into
their compositional languages, and later even arranged several violin
concertos by Vivaldi and others for organ. His most productive period
(1708–14) saw not only the composition of several pairs of preludes
and fugues and toccatas and fugues, but also the writing of the Orgelbüchlein
("Little Organ Book"), an unfinished collection of forty-nine
short chorale preludes intended to demonstrate various compositional
techniques that could be used in setting chorale tunes. After he left
Weimar, Bach's output for organ fell off, although his most well-known
works (the six trio sonatas, the Clavierübung III of 1739, and
the "Great Eighteen" chorales, revised very late in his life)
were all composed after this time. Bach was also extensively engaged
later in his life in consulting on various organ projects, testing newly
built organs, and dedicating organs in afternoon recitals.
Orchestral and chamber
music
Bach wrote music for single instruments, duets and small ensembles.
Bach's works for solo instruments – the six sonatas and partitas
for violin (BWV1001–1006), the six cello suites (BWV 1007–1012)
and the Partita for solo flute (BWV1013) – may be listed among
the most profound works in the repertoire. Bach has also composed a
suite and several other works for solo lute. He wrote trio sonatas;
solo sonatas (accompanied by continuo) for the flute and for the viola
da gamba; and a large number of canons and ricercare, mostly for unspecified
instrumentation. The most significant examples of the latter are contained
in The Art of Fugue and The Musical Offering.
Bach's best-known
orchestral works are the Brandenburg concertos, so named because he
submitted them in the hope of gaining employment from the Margrave of
Brandenburg in 1721. (His application was unsuccessful.) These works
are examples of the concerto grosso genre. Other surviving works in
the concerto form include two violin concertos; a concerto for two violins,
often referred to as Bach’s "double" concerto; and concertos
for one, two, three and even four harpsichords. It is widely accepted
that many of the harpsichord concertos were not original works, but
arrangements of concertos for other instruments now lost. A number of
violin, oboe and flute concertos have been reconstructed from these.
In addition to concertos, Bach also wrote four orchestral suites, a
series of stylised dances for orchestra. The work now known as the Air
on the G string, for instance, is an arrangement for the violin made
in the nineteenth century from the second movement of the Orchestral
Suite No. 3.
Vocal and choral
works
Bach performed a cantata every Sunday at the Thomaskirche, on a theme
corresponding to the lectionary readings of the week. Although he performed
cantatas by other composers, he also composed at least three entire
sets of cantatas, one for each Sunday and holiday of the church year,
at Leipzig, in addition to those composed at Mühlhausen and Weimar.
In total he wrote more than 300 sacred cantatas, of which only about
195 survive.
His cantatas vary
greatly in form and instrumentation. Some of them are only for a solo
singer; some are single choruses; some are for grand orchestras, some
only a few instruments. A very common format, however, includes a large
opening chorus followed by one or more recitative-aria pairs for soloists
(or duets), and a concluding chorale. The recitative is part of the
corresponding Bible reading for the week and the aria is a contemporary
reflection on it. The concluding chorale often also appears as a chorale
prelude in a central movement, and occasionally as a cantus firmus in
the opening chorus as well. The best known of these cantatas are Cantata
No. 4 ("Christ lag in Todesbanden"), Cantata No. 80 ("Ein'
feste Burg"), Cantata No. 140 ("Wachet auf") and Cantata
No. 147 ("Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben").
In addition, Bach
wrote a number of secular cantatas, usually for civic events such as
weddings. The two Wedding Cantatas and the Coffee Cantata, which concerns
a girl whose father will not let her marry until she gives up her coffee
addiction, are among the best known of these.
Bach’s large
choral-orchestral works include the famous St Matthew Passion and St
John Passion, both written for Holy Week services at the St Thomas’s
Church, the Christmas Oratorio (a set of six cantatas for use in the
Liturgical season of Christmas). The Magnificat in two versions (one
in E-flat major, with extra movements interpolated among the movements
of the Magnificat text, and the later and better-known version in D
major) and the Easter Oratorio compare to large, elaborated cantatas,
of a lesser extent than the Passions and the Christmas Oratorio.
Legacy
In his later years and after his death, Bach's reputation as a composer
declined; his work was regarded as old-fashioned compared to the emerging
classical style. Initially he was remembered more as a player, teacher
and as the father of his children, most notably C.P.E. Bach. During
this time, his works for keyboard were those most appreciated and composers
ever since have acknowledged his mastery of the genre. Mozart, Beethoven
and Chopin were among his most prominent admirers. On a visit to the
Thomasschule in Leipzig, for example, Mozart heard a performance of
one of the motets (BWV 225) and exclaimed "Now, here is something
one can learn from!"; on being given the motets' parts, "Mozart
sat down, the parts all around him, held in both hands, on his knees,
on the nearest chairs. Forgetting everything else, he did not stand
up again until he had looked through all the music of Sebastian Bach"[citation
needed]. Beethoven was a devotee, learning the Well-Tempered Clavier
as a child and later calling Bach the "Urvater der Harmonie"
("Original father of Harmony") and, in a pun on the literal
meaning of Bach's name, "nicht Bach, sondern Meer" ("not
a brook, but a sea"). Before performing, Chopin used to lock himself
away before his concerts and play Bach's music.[5]
The revival in the
composer’s reputation among the wider public was prompted in part
by Johann Nikolaus Forkel’s 1802 biography, which was read by
Beethoven. Goethe became acquainted with Bach's works relatively late
in life, through a series of performances of keyboard and choral works
at Bad Berka in 1814 and 1815; in a letter of 1827 he compared the experience
of listening to Bach's music to "eternal harmony in dialogue with
itself"[6]. But it was Felix Mendelssohn who did the most to revive
Bach's reputation with his 1829 Berlin performance of the St Matthew
Passion. Hegel, who attended the performance, later called Bach a "grand,
truly Protestant, robust and, so to speak, erudite genius which we have
only recently learned again to appreciate at its full value"[7].
Mendelssohn's promotion of Bach, and the growth of the composer’s
stature, continued in subsequent years. The Bach Gesellschaft (Bach
Society) was founded in 1850 to promote the works, publishing a comprehensive
edition over the subsequent half century.
Thereafter Bach’s
reputation has remained consistently high. During the twentieth century,
the process of recognising the musical as well as the pedagogic value
of some of the works has continued, perhaps most notably in the promotion
of the Cello Suites by Pablo Casals. Another development has been the
growth of the "authentic" or period performance movement,
which as far as possible attempts to present the music as the composer
intended it. Examples include the playing of keyboard works on the harpsichord
rather than a modern grand piano and the use of small choirs or single
voices instead of the larger forces favoured by nineteenth- and early
twentieth-century performers.
Johann Sebastian
Bach’s contributions to music, or, to borrow a term popularised
by his student Lorenz Christoph Mizler, his "musical science",
are frequently bracketed with those by William Shakespeare in English
literature and Isaac Newton in physics. Bach’s music was selected
for inclusion on the Voyager Golden Records as an example of humanity's
best achievements. Scientist and author Lewis Thomas once suggested
how the people of Earth should communicate with the universe: "I
would vote for Bach, all of Bach, streamed out into space, over and
over again. We would be bragging of course, but it is surely excusable
to put the best possible face on at the beginning of such an acquaintance.
We can tell the harder truths later."
Some composers have
paid tribute to Bach by setting his name in musical notes (B-flat, A,
C, B-natural; B-natural is notated as "H" in German musical
texts) or using contrapuntal derivatives. Liszt, for example, wrote
a praeludium and fugue on this BACH motif. Bach himself set the precedent
for this musical acronym, most notably in Contrapunctus XIV from the
Art of Fugue. Whereas Bach conceived this cruciform melody as a compositional
form of devotion to Christ and his cross, later composers have employed
the BACH motif in homage to the composer himself.