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Johann Sebastian Bach, one of the greatest
composers in Western musical history, created masterpieces
of choral and instrumental music, both sacred and secular.
More than 1,000 of his compositions survive, including works
in virtually every musical form and genre in use in 18th century
Germany. During his lifetime he enjoyed greater renown as
an organist than as a composer, and although such later composers
as Mozart and Beethoven held his work in great esteem, it
was not until nearly a century after his death that the broader
musical public came to appreciate the level of craftsmanship
his works embody. Bach's music is now regarded as the high
point of the baroque era, which lasted from 1600 to 1750,
the year of his death.
Life
Bach was born in Eisenach, in central Germany, on Mar. 21,
1685, into a family of musicians. His parents died when he
was nine years old, and in 1695 he went to live with his brother
Johann Christoph, who was an organist at Ohrdruf. He remained
there until 1700, learning the fundamentals of the keyboard
from his brother and studying composition on his own, using
works of older composers as models.
In 1703 he took an orchestral post in Weimar and after six
months was appointed organist at the Neukirche in Arnstadt,
where he composed his earliest surviving organ works. In 1705
he went to Lubeck (he traveled the 320 km/200 mi, reportedly,
on foot) to hear Dietrich Buxtehude, one of the great northern
German organist-composers. His Arnstadt tenure lasted two
more years and was marked by clashes with the authorities
about the scope of his duties. Such difficulties with his
employers were constantly to mar his career.
In 1707, Bach married his first cousin Maria Barbara and was
appointed organist in Muhlhausen. Almost immediately, the
congregation objected to the innovative harmonized music he
was introducing, and by the end of the year he moved back
to Weimar, where he served as court organist for nine years.
There he began composing a cycle of weekly cantatas, and his
duties expanded, but he was not granted the position of music
director (KAPELLMEISTER) he had hoped for, and he sought a
post elsewhere. When he found one, at Kothen, in 1717, he
asked for release from his duties at Weimar in a manner so
antagonistic that he was imprisoned for a month.
Bach remained at Kothen until 1723. After the death of his
first wife, he married (1721) Anna Magdalena Wilchen. In all
he fathered 20 children, of whom several--including Wilhelm
Freidemann, Carl Philipp Emanuel and Johann Christian--became
well-known composers. Because his patron at Kothen, Prince
Leopold, enjoyed music, Bach composed both secular and sacred
works. After the prince married, however, music played a less
important role in court life, and again Bach sought employment
elsewhere.
He found it in Leipzig, where in 1723 he was appointed choir
leader and KAPELLMEISTER of Saint Thomas Church--a prestigious
post that made Bach, in effect, the director of music for
the entire city. He remained in Leipzig for the rest of his
life and wrote many of his greatest works there. Bach died
in Leipzig on July 28, 1750.
Music
Bach's duties required his writing compositions of varying
kinds--organ and choral music for the church, chamber music
for court use, and fairly straightforward harpsichord works
for teaching the instrument. In addition, there are difficult
solo works composed either for his own use or for that of
friends, and there are also works that are clearly theoretical
exercises, such as the Mass in B-minor and the Art of Fugue.
These were, in a sense, Bach's private explorations. They
were not performed during his lifetime. Today, however, they
stand as some of the most glorious of baroque works.
One considerable body of Bach's music is his cantata series,
of which more than 200 survive. (It is believed that over
half of his secular cantatas and more than a third of his
sacred ones have been lost.) The secular cantatas, by far
the smaller group, were composed for public and private festivities
and use allegorical or mythological texts. Most of the sacred
cantatas were composed as parts of cycles, with a specific
work intended for each Sunday in the year. Their texts are
either biblical or based on church hymns, although some also
include poetry. In the greatest of these, the chorale melody
often serves as an underlying theme that unifies the complete
cantata. Besides the cantata, Bach is believed to have composed
five Passion settings, although only the St. John and St.
Matthew Passions survive. Other sacred works include the Easter
and Christmas oratorios, the motets, and the Mass in B-minor.
The sacred works show one side of Bach--that of a composer
working in, and responding to the Lutheran tradition. Another
side, that of the keyboard virtuoso, is seen in his organ
and harpsichord works. The organ works run the gamut from
fairly simple chorale settings to ornate fantasies, toccatas,
fugues, and sonatas. Among the harpsichord works, the Goldberg
Variations and the two books of The Well-Tempered Clavier
remain at the peak of music for the keyboard.
Bach's command of other instruments and their resources is
evident in the six cello suites, the six violin sonatas and
partitas, the four lute suites, and the accompanied sonatas
for flute, violin, viola, and viola de gamba (now usually
played on the cello). For chamber orchestra, he composed four
extended suites, as well as the six Brandenburg Concertos,
and concertos for harpsichord, violin, and oboe.
Bach performance style has varied greatly over the years.
As scholars have unearthed new evidence and offered new theories
about how the music was performed in Bach's time, approaches
have changed radically. Thus the massive chorale presentations
of the St. John and St. Matthew Passions and the Mass in B-Minor
that were common through the 1960s have given way to performances
by much smaller ensembles. One theory that gained prominence
in the early 1980s suggested that the choral and many of the
instrumental works were performed with one singer and one
player to a part. Since the 1950s the practice of using instruments
constructed as they were during Bach's time has become an
increasingly important aspect of Bach performance.
Significance
At the start of his career, Bach built on the foundations
laid by Buxtehude and others of the north German school, but
he quickly developed not only a distinctive compositional
voice, but an unparalleled sense of structure. These qualities
did not always serve him well politically. As an employee
of a German church establishment, he was required to provide
music of the kind to which the congregation had become accustomed.
There were, therefore, those who in the early years found
Bach's counterpoint too florid and his harmonization too bold.
Later in his life, as musical styles moved toward the elegant
simplicity of the "stil galant" (the basis of the
classical style, of which his son, Johann Christian, was a
pioneer), Bach came to be regarded as a musical arch-conservative,
an adherent to an antiquated style.
He was keenly aware of these changes, however, and in the
last decade of his life he composed works of great complexity
using the musical techniques that most interested him. An
example is his final work, the Art of Fugue. Begun during
the 1740s but left incomplete at his death, this compilation
is a thorough examination of a sublime musical form by a master
who knew that the form was falling out of fashion.
Counterpoint, or the interplay of independent musical strands,
is certainly one of the salient features of Bach's work, and
his brilliant use of this technique is something on which
both professional musicians and general listeners can focus
easily. Yet Bach's appeal lies in the more human qualities
the music embodies. Combined with its cerebral aspects are
exquisite melodies and complex figuration, and a sense of
passion that comes through both in his text settings and in
his instrumental works.
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