Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach (B. 1685-1750) During

the seventeenth century, many families passed their

trades down to the next generation so that future gen-

erations may continue to succeed in a vocation. This

practice also held true for Johann Sebastian Bach.

Bach was born into one of the largest musical families

in Eisenach of the central Germany region known as

Thuringia. He was orphaned at the young age of ten

and raised by an older brother in Ohrdruf, Germany.

Bach’s older brother was a church organist who pre-

pared the young Johann for the family vocation. The

Bach family, though great in number, were mostly of

the lower musical stature of town’s musicians and/

or Lutheran Church organist. Only a few of the Bachs

had achieved the accomplished stature of court musi-

Figure 4.16 | Portrait of

Johann Sebastian Bach

Author | Elias Gottlob Haussmann

Source | Wikimedia Commons

License | Public Domain

cians, but the Bach family members were known and

respected in the region. Bach also in turn taught four of his sons who later became

leading composers for the next generation.

Bach received his first professional position at the age of eighteen in Arnstadt,

Germany as a church organist. Bach’s first appointment was not a good philo-

sophical match for the young aspiring musician. He felt his musical creativity and

growth was being hindered and his innovation and originality unappreciated. The

congregation seemed sometimes confused and felt the melody lost in Bach’s writ-

ings. He met and married his first wife while in Arnstadt, marrying Maria Barbara

(possibly his cousin) in 1707. They had seven children together; two of their sons,

Wilhelm Friedemann and Carl Phillipp Emmanuel, as noted above, became major

composers for the next generation. Bach later was offered and accepted another

position in Műhlhausen.

He continued to be offered positions that he accepted and so advanced in his

years from 1708-1717. This position had a great number of responsibilities. Bach

professional position/title up to a court position in Weimer where he served nine

was required to write church music for the ducal church (the church for the duke

that hired Bach), to perform as church organist, and to write organ music and

sacred choral pieces for choir, in addition to writing sonatas and concertos (in-

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strumental music) for court performance for his duke’s events. While at this post,

Bach’s fame as an organist and the popularity of his organ works grew significantly.

Bach soon wanted to leave for another offered court musician position, and

his request to be released was not received well. This difficulty attests to the work

relations of court musicians and their employers. Dukes expected and demanded

loyalty from their court musician employees. Because musicians were looked up-

on somewhat as court property, the duke of the court often felt betrayed when a

court musician wanted to leave. Upon hearing of Bach’s desire to leave and work

for another court for the prince of Cöthen, the Duke at Weimer refused to accept

Bach’s resignation and threw Bach into jail for almost a month for submitting his

dismissal request before relenting and letting Bach go to the Cöthen court.

The Prince at Cöthen was very interested in instrumental music. The Prince

was a developing amateur musician who did not appreciate the elaborate church

music of Bach’s past; instead, the Prince desired instrumental court music, so Bach

focused on composing instrumental music. In his five year (1717-1723) tenure at

Cöthen, Bach produced an abundance of clavier music, six concerti grossi honor-

ing the Margrave of Brandenburg, suites, concertos and sonatas. While at Cöthen

(1720), Bach’s first wife Maria Barbara died. He later married a young singer, Anna

Magdalena and they had thirteen children together. Half of these children did not

survive infancy. Two of Bach’s sons birthed by Anna, Johann Christoph and Johann

Christian, also went on to become two of the next generation’s foremost composers.

At the age of thirty-eight, Bach assumed the position as cantor of the St. Thom-

as Lutheran Church in Leipzig, Germany. Several other candidates were consid-

ered for the Leipzig post, including the famous composer Telemann who refused

the offer. Some on the town council felt that, since the most qualified candidates

did not accept the offer, the less talented applicant would have to be hired. It was

in this negative working atmosphere that Leipzig hired its greatest cantor and mu-

sician. Bach worked in Leipzig for twenty-seven years (1723-1750).

Leipzig served as a hub of Lutheran church music for Germany. Not only did

Bach have to compose and perform, he also had to administer and organize music

for all the churches in Leipzig. He was required to teach in choir school in addition

to all of his other responsibilities. Bach composed, copied needed parts, directed,

rehearsed, and performed a cantata on a near weekly basis. Cantatas are major

church choir works that involve soloist, choir, and orchestra. Cantatas have sev-

eral movements and last for fifteen to thirty minutes. Cantatas are still performed

today by church choirs, mostly on special occasions such as Easter, Christmas, and

other festive church events.

Bach felt that the rigors of his Leipzig position were too bureaucratic and re-

strictive due to town and church politics. Neither the town nor the church really

ever appreciated Bach. The church and town council refused to pay Bach for all

the extra demands/responsibilities of his position and thought basically that they

would merely tolerate their irate cantor, even though Bach was the best organist in

Germany. Several of Bach’s contemporary church musicians felt his music was not

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according to style and types considered current, a feeling which may have resulted

from professional jealousy. One contemporary critic felt Bach was “old Fashioned.”

Beyond this professional life, Bach had a personal life centered on his large fam-

ily. He had seven children by his first wife, one by a cousin, and thirteen by his

second wife, Anna Magdalena, who was also a singer. He wrote a little home school

music curriculum entitled The Notebook of Anna Magdalena Bach. At home, the

children were taught the fundamentals of music, music copying, performance skills,

and other musical content. Bach’s children utilized their learned music copying

skills in writing the parts from the required weekly cantatas that Sebastian was re-

quired to compose. Bach’s deep spirituality is evident and felt in the meticulous at-

tention to detail of Bach’s scared works, such as his cantatas. Indeed, the spirituality

of Bach’s Passions and his Mass are unequalled by other composers.

Bach did not travel much, with the exception of being hired as a consultant

with construction contracts to install organs in churches. He would be asked to

test the organs and to be part of their inauguration ceremony and festivities. The

fee for such a service ranged from a cord of wood or possibly to a barrel of wine. In

1747, Bach went on one of these professional expeditions to the Court of Freder-

ick the Great in Potsdam, an expedition that proved most memorable. Bach’s son,

Carl Philipp Emanuel, served as the accompanist for the monarch of the court who

played the flute. Upon Bach’s arrival, the monarch showed Bach a new collection of

pianos—pianos were beginning to replace harpsichords in homes of society. With

Bach’s permission, the king presented him with a theme/melody that Bach based

one of his incredible themes for the evening’s performance. Upon Bach’s return to

Leipzig, he further developed the king’s theme, adding a trio sonata, and entitled it

The Musical Offering attesting to his highest respect for the monarch and stating

that the King should be revered.

Bach later became blind but continued composing through dictating to his chil-

dren. He had also already begun to organize his compositions into orderly sets of

organ chorale preludes, preludes and fugues for harpsichord, and organ fugues. He

started to outline and recapitulate his conclusive thoughts about Baroque music,

forms, performance, composition, fugal techniques, and genres. This knowledge

and innovation appears in such works as The Art of Fugue—a collection of fugues

all utilizing the same subject left incomplete due to his death—the thirty-three

Goldberg Variations for harpsichord, and the Mass in B minor.

Bach was an intrinsically motivated composer who composed music for him-

self and a small group of student and close friends. This type of composition was

was ignored nor valued by the musical public. It was, however, appreciated and

a break from the previous norms of composers. Even after his death, Bach’s music

admired by great composers such as Mozart and Beethoven.

Over the course of his lifetime, Bach produced major works, including The

Well-Tempered Clavier (forty-eight preludes and fugues in all major and minor

keys), three sets of harpsichord suites (six movements in each set), the Goldberg

Variations, many organ fugues and chorale preludes (chorale preludes are organ

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solos based upon church hymns—several by Luther), the Brandenburg Concertos,

and composite works such as A Musical Offering and The Art of Fugue, an excess

of 200 secular and sacred cantatas, two Passions from the gospels of St. Matthew

and St. John, a Christmas Oratorio, a Mass in B minor, and several chorale/hymn

harmonizations, concertos, and other orchestral suites and sonatas.