Johann SebastianBach

Bach grew up in a house full of working musicians. His father, Johann Ambrosius, served the town of Eisenach; apprentices lived with the family, and relatives held church and civic posts across Thuringia. Johann Sebastian was born in 1685. His mother died when he was nine, his father the following year, and he moved to Ohrdruf to live with his elder brother Johann Christoph, an organist taught by Pachelbel. He sang in the school choir and learnt the organ at home. At fifteen he went to St Michael’s School in Lüneburg, where his voice helped pay for his education. In 2006 some of his schoolboy copies of north German organ works, including two of the hardest pieces of the day, were found in the Anna Amalia Library in Weimar.

In 1702 he won the organist’s post at Sangerhausen, until the duke intervened and gave it to someone else. The next year Arnstadt hired him to examine its new organ and then to play it. Two years later he set off on foot to hear Dieterich Buxtehude in Lübeck. He stayed for months, far beyond his authorised leave, and came back to a reprimand. In 1707 he moved to Mühlhausen and on 17 October married his second cousin Maria Barbara at Dornheim. The cantata for the inauguration of Mühlhausen’s town council in February 1708, Gott ist mein König, BWV 71, was one of the few works printed in his lifetime. In his cantata Aus der Tiefen, BWV 131, one voice sings the psalmist’s plea while another sings a hymn in long notes above it.

1708–⁠17Weimar

In 1708 Bach became court organist at Weimar, and from 1714 he also held the rank of concertmaster, with a new cantata due every month. Telemann, with whom he exchanged scores, became godfather to his son Carl Philipp Emanuel that year. Bach copied and arranged Italian concertos, especially Vivaldi’s. In the organ arrangements, the orchestra’s replies to a solo violin could be divided between the keyboards, and the bass was given to the pedals. Vivaldi’s recurring refrains and his sequences through changing keys were taken into Bach’s own concertos, which added inner voices between the melody and the bass.

The short chorale preludes of the Orgelbüchlein were as demanding. A hymn tune may sit in long notes above a short figure that runs with few breaks, and the pedal has a part of its own. Bach’s title page offered a beginning organist guidance in developing a chorale “in all sorts of ways” and in gaining skill at the pedals, “since the pedal is treated entirely obbligato”. He completed forty-six pieces in a book planned for many more. In each the organist has to keep the congregation’s tune audible while playing the other lines clearly.

When Bach accepted a new post at Köthen in 1717, the Duke of Weimar refused to release him. Bach insisted on leaving. The duke had him imprisoned for nearly a month, then dismissed him. Prince Leopold of Anhalt-⁠Köthen, his next employer, was a keen musician with a good ensemble; the Calvinist court had little use for elaborate church cantatas, and Bach could spend his time on instrumental music.

KöthenConcertos, solo violin and keyboard works

In 1721 he sent six concertos to the Margrave of Brandenburg. Each uses a different group of solo instruments. The Second has trumpet, recorder, oboe and violin as soloists; the Sixth has no violins. In the Fifth, the harpsichord starts as part of the accompaniment and later plays a long solo while the orchestra is silent.

The manuscript of his unaccompanied violin sonatas and partitas is dated 1720. In these works a single bow plays bass notes, chords and separate voices that would otherwise be given to an ensemble. The D minor Chaconne takes its recurring harmonies through broken chords and large groups of stopped strings. The cello suites put similar demands into dance forms. Their allemandes and sarabandes keep the rhythm of the dance audible even where the player has only one note sounding.

In 1720 Bach returned from travelling with Leopold and learned that Maria Barbara had died and been buried. He married the court singer Anna Magdalena Wilcke the following year. Their music books contain both lessons and household entertainment. Writing to his old schoolfriend Georg Erdmann on 28 October 1730, he boasted of the children: “They are all born musicians.” He added that his household could already form a vocal and instrumental ensemble, since Anna Magdalena sang a clear soprano and his eldest daughter was good too.

1723–⁠50Thomaskantor in Leipzig

Leipzig appointed him Thomaskantor in 1723, after Telemann and Graupner proved unavailable. He had schoolboys to teach and church music to direct, and in the early years he wrote cantatas in close succession. Parts had to be copied and rehearsed before Sunday. The cycle begun in 1724 often builds each cantata round one hymn. The first stanza becomes a large chorus, inner stanzas are recast as arias and recitatives, and the congregation’s melody returns at the close.

The St John Passion was first heard in 1724, the St Matthew Passion in 1727. In both, a tenor Evangelist narrates the Gospel text. The arias pause the narrative to reflect on what has happened, and the chorales bring familiar hymn tunes into the drama. The St Matthew uses two choirs and two orchestras, which answer each other. Sustained strings accompany the words of Jesus until his cry of abandonment, where they stop. After Peter’s denial, a solo violin begins Erbarme dich before the alto enters.

From 1729 Bach also directed the Collegium Musicum at Zimmermann’s coffeehouse. There he could play concertos and present secular cantatas outside the control of the church authorities; for one of its special concerts he wrote the Coffee Cantata, BWV 211, a joke about the venue. Music passed between the two establishments. In the Christmas Oratorio, performed over six feast days in 1734–⁠35, movements written for secular celebrations were given new words and a place in the Nativity story.

The later collectionsGoldberg Variations and The Musical Offering

In May 1747 he visited Frederick II at Potsdam, where his son Carl Philipp Emanuel worked. A Berlin newspaper reported his evening arrival on its front page. He played “on the so-called forte and piano”, and the king challenged him to improvise a fugue on a theme he supplied. Bach took the theme home and made The Musical Offering: canons, two ricercars and a trio sonata with a flute part for the king’s instrument. He was also assembling the B minor Mass from music reaching back decades. Its Kyrie and Gloria had gone to the new Elector of Saxony in Dresden in 1733, partly in the hope of a court title. The Crucifixus reworks a chorus from the 1714 cantata Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen, and its descending bass repeats beneath the voices.

His eyesight failed. The ophthalmologist Sir John Taylor, who was in Leipzig from 4 to 7 April 1750, operated on him, and a second operation followed. Bach saw again for a short time, then suffered a stroke and died on 28 July. The Art of Fugue left related D minor subjects inverted, augmented and combined; its unfinished fugue introduces the notes B♭–A–C–B♮, which spell his surname in German notation. His children and pupils preserved scores, though many were lost. Mozart and Beethoven studied the music before Mendelssohn performed an abridged St Matthew Passion in Berlin in 1829. Later, Brahms arranged the Chaconne for piano left hand, and Webern orchestrated the six-part ricercar, dividing its lines among the instruments a few notes at a time.