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.