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Johann Sebastian Bach

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Performers and composers

              Johann Sebastian Bach
   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 ( pronounced [ˈjoːhan zəˈbastjan ˈbax]) ( 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 the strands of the Baroque period and brought
   it to its ultimate maturity. Although he introduced no new forms, he
   enriched the prevailing German style with a robust contrapuntal
   technique, a 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. He is regarded as
   one of the great composers of all time.

   Revered for their intellectual depth, technical command and artistic
   beauty, J.S. Bach's works include the Brandenburg concertos, the
   Goldberg Variations, the keyboard suites and partitas, the Mass in B
   Minor, the St Matthew Passion, The Musical Offering, The Art of Fugue,
   Sonatas and partitas for solo violin, the Six Suites for Unaccompanied
   Cello, 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.
     * Chorus from Christmas Oratorio —
     * Problems playing the files? See media help.

Biography

Early years (1685–1702)

   Johann Sebastian Bach was born in 1685 in Eisenach, Germany to an
   extraordinary musical family--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, and held a post involving 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, in some circles, the name Bach had come to be used as a synonym
   for "musician".
   House in Eisenach where Bach was born
   Enlarge
   House in Eisenach where Bach was born

   Sebastian was proud of his family's musical achievements, and around
   1735 Bach drafted a geneaology, "Origin of the Musical Bach Family"
   (Ursprung der musicalisch-Bachischen Familie), tracing the history of
   generations of successful musical Bachs. Bach's roots can be traced
   back to Hungary and his ancestor Veit (Vitus) Bach was a Hungarian who
   was expatriated from the country by the Habsburgs, because he was a
   Lutheran; he was also, not surprisingly, a musician.
   Places in which Bach resided throughout his life
   Enlarge
   Places in which Bach resided throughout his life

   Bach's mother died in 1694, and his father died 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 teaching from his
   brother, who instructed him on the clavichord. He exposed him to the
   work of the great South German composers of the day—such as Pachelbel
   and Johann Jakob Froberger—and possibly to the music of North German
   composers, and of Frenchmen such as Lully, Louis Marchand, Marin
   Marais, and the Italian clavierist Girolamo Frescobaldi. The boy
   probably witnessed and assisted in the maintenance of the organ. Bach's
   obituary indicates that he copied music out of Johann Christoph's
   scores, but his brother had apparenty forbidden him to do so, possibly
   because scores were valuable and private commodities at the time.

   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 the largest
   city in Germany, the northern seaport of Hamburg. 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 its 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
   them in Hamburg, such as Reincken and Bruhns. Through these musicians,
   he probably gained access to the largest instruments he had thus far
   played. It is likely that during this stage, he became acquainted with
   the music of the North German tradition, especially the work of
   Dieterich Buxtehude, and with music manuscripts and treatises on music
   theory that were in the possession of these musicians.

Arnstadt to Weimar (1703–08)

   Bach as a young man
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   Bach as a young man

   In 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 fine new organ tuned to a modern system that
   allowed a wide range of keys to be used. At this time, Bach was
   embarking on the serious composition of organ preludes; these works, in
   the North German tradition of virtuosic, improvisatory preludes,
   already showed tight motivic control (where a single, short music idea
   is explored cogently throughout a movement). However, in these works
   the composer had yet to fully develop his powers large-scale
   organisation and his contrapuntal technique (where two or more melodies
   interact simultaneously). Strong family connections and a musically
   enthusiastic employer failed to prevent tension between the 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 that he overstayed his planned visit by
   several months suggests that his time with the old man was of great
   value to his art.
   St Boniface's Church in Arnstadt
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   St Boniface's Church in Arnstadt

   Despite his comfortable position in Arnstadt, by 1706 Bach appeared to
   have realised that he needed to escape from the family milieu and move
   on to further his career. He was offered a more lucrative post as
   organist at St Blasius’s 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. 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, 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. However, that same year, Bach was offered a better position
   in Weimar.

Weimar (1708–17)

   After barely a year at Mühlhausen, Bach left to become the court
   organist and concert master at the ducal court in Weimar, a far cry
   from his earlier position there as ‘lackey’. The munificent salary on
   offer at the court and the prospect of working entirely with a large,
   well-funded contingent of professional musicians may have prompted the
   move. The family moved into an apartment just five minutes’ walk from
   the ducal palace. In the following year, their first child was born and
   they were joined by Maria Barbara’s elder, unmarried sister, who
   remained with them to assist in the running of the household until her
   death in 1729. It was in Weimar that two musically significant sons
   were born—WF and CPE Bach.

   Bach’s position in Weimar marked the start of a sustained period of
   composing keyboard and orchestral works, in which he had attained the
   technical proficiency and confidence to extend the prevailing
   large-scale structures and to synthesize influences from abroad. From
   the music of Italians such as Vivaldi, Corelli and Torelli, he learnt
   how to write dramatic openings and adopted their sunny dispositions,
   dynamic motor-rhythms and decisive harmonic schemes. Bach inducted
   himself into these stylistic aspects largely by transcribing for
   harpsichord and organ the ensemble concertos of Vivaldi; these works
   are still concert favourites. He may have picked up the idea of
   transcribing the latest fashionable Italian music from Prince Johann
   Ernst, one of his employers, who was a musician of professional
   calibre. In 1713, the Duke returned from a tour of the Low Countries
   with a large collection of scores, some of them possibly transcriptions
   of the latest fashionable Italian music by the blind organist Jan Jacob
   de Graaf. He was particularly attracted to the Italian solo-tutti
   structure, in which one or more solo instruments alternate
   section-by-section with the full orchestra throughout a movement. These
   Italianate features can be heard in the excerpt below of the Prelude to
   English Suite No. 3 for harpsichord (1714). The solo–tutti alternation
   is achieved when the player deftly changes between the lower keyboard
   (of a fuller, slightly louder tone) and the upper keyboard (of a more
   delicate tone).

   In Weimar, he had the opportunity to play and compose for the organ,
   and to perform a varied repertoire of concert music with the duke’s
   ensemble. A master of contrapuntal technique, Bach’s steady output of
   fugues began in Weimar. The largest single body of his fugal writing is
   Das wohltemperierte Clavier ("The well-tempered keyboard" - "Clavier"
   meaning keyboard instrument). It consists of 48 preludes and fugues,
   one pair for each major and relative minor key. This is a monumental
   work for its masterful use of counterpoint and its exploration, for the
   first time, of the full range of keys—and the means of expression made
   possible by their slight differences from each other—available to
   keyboardists when their instruments are tuned according to systems such
   as that of Andreas Werckmeister.

   During his tenure at Weimar, Bach started work on The little organ book
   for his eldest son, Wilhelm Friedemann; this contains traditional
   Lutheran chorales (hymn tunes), set in complex textures to assist the
   training of organists. The book illustrates two major themes in Bach’s
   life: his dedication to teaching and his love of the chorale as a
   musical form.
     * Prelude, 3rd English Suite —
     * Problems playing the files? See media help.

Cöthen (1717–23)

   The palace and gardens at Cöthen in an engraving from Matthäus Merian's
   Topographia (1650)
   Enlarge
   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 handwriting
   Enlarge
   Violin Sonata No. 1 in G minor (BWV 1001) in Bach’s handwriting

   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 recorders, 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.
     * The last movement of Brandenburg Concerto No. 4 in G (audio clip) —
     * Problems playing the files? See media help.

   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 left
   Enlarge
   A 1723 engraving by JG Krügner of St Thomas’s Church, the St Thomas
   School at a right angle to it at the left

   In 1723, Bach was appointed Cantor of the Thomasschule, adjacent to the
   Thomaskirche (St Thomas’s Lutheran Church) in Leipzig, as well as
   Director of Music in the principal churches in the town. This was 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. Although it appears that no one on the Council
   doubted Bach’s musical 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 Thomasschule in
   singing, and to provide weekly music at the two main churches in
   Leipzig, St Thomas's and St Nicholas's. His post also obliged him to
   teach Latin, but he was allowed to employ a deputy to do this instead.
   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
   Gospel 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.
   Enlarge
   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.
     * Opening of Singet dem Herrn (audio clip) —
     * Problems playing the files? See media help.

   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’. 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 lifetime
   Enlarge
   The title page of the third part of the Clavier-Übung, one of the few
   works by Bach that was published during his lifetime

   During this period, he composed the Kyrie and Gloria of the Mass in B
   Minor, and in 1735, he presented the manuscript to the elector of
   Saxony in an ultimately successful bid to persuade the monarch to
   appoint him as Royal Court Composer. He later extended this work into a
   full Catholic Mass, by adding a Credo, Sanctus and Agnus Dei, the music
   for which was almost wholly taken from some of the best of his cantata
   movements. Bach's appointment as court composer appears to have been
   part of his long-term struggle to achieve greater bargaining power with
   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 probably never performed during the
   composer’s lifetime, it is considered to be among the greatest choral
   works of all time.
     * Gloria from Mass in B minor (audio clip) —
     * Problems playing the files? See media help.

   In 1747, Bach went to the court of Frederick II of Prussia 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
   hand
   Enlarge
   The opening of the six-part fugue from The Musical Offering, in Bach’s
   hand

   The Art of Fugue, published posthumously but probably written years
   before Bach's death, is 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 Georg Philipp Telemann (one of CPE’s
   godfathers) made frequent visits to Bach’s apartment and may have kept
   up frequent correspondence with him. Interestingly, George Frideric
   Handel, 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.

Style

   Bach’s musical style arose from his extraordinary fluency in
   contrapuntal invention and motivic control, his flair for improvisation
   at the keyboard, his exposure to South German, North German, Italian
   and French music, and his apparent devotion to the Lutheran liturgy.
   His access to musicians, scores and instruments as a child and a young
   man, combined with his emerging talent for writing tightly woven music
   of powerful sonority, appear to have set him on course to develop an
   eclectic, energetic musical style in which foreign influences were
   injected into an intensified version of the pre-existing German musical
   language. Throughout his teens and 20s, his output showed increasing
   skill in the large-scale organisation of musical ideas, and the
   enhancement of the Buxtehudian model of improvisatory preludes and
   counterpoint of limited complexity. The period 1713–14, when a large
   repertoire of Italian music became available to the Weimar court
   orchestra, was a turning point. From this time onwards, he appears to
   have absorbed into his style the Italians’ dramatic openings, clear
   melodic contours, the sharp outlines of their bass lines, greater
   motoric and rhythmic conciseness, more unified motivic treatment, and
   more clearly articulated schemes for modulation.

   There are several more specific features of Bach's style. The notation
   of baroque melodic lines tended to assume that composers would write
   out only the basic framework, and that performers would embellish this
   framework by inserting ornamental notes and otherwise elaborating on
   it. Although this practice varied considerably between the schools of
   European music, Bach was regarded at the time as being on one extreme
   end of the spectrum, notating most or all of the details of his melodic
   lines—particularly in his fast movements—thus leaving little for
   performers to interpolate. (An example of this ornate, inclusive
   notation is provided by the excerpt from his Violin Sonata No. 1 in G,
   in the previous section.) This may have assisted his control over the
   dense contrapuntal textures that he favoured, which allow less leeway
   for the spontaneous variation of musical lines. Bach's contrapuntal
   textures tend to be more cumulative than those of Händel and most other
   composers of the day, who would typically allow a line to drop out
   after it had been joined by two or three others. Bach's harmony is
   marked by a tendency to employ brief tonicizations—subtle references to
   another key, particularly of the supertonic, that last for only a a few
   beats at the longest—to add colour to his textures.

   At the same time, Bach, unlike later composers, left the
   instrumentation of major works including The Art of Fugue and A Musical
   Offering open. It is likely that his detailed notation was less an
   absolute demand on the performer and more a response to a 17th century
   culture in which the boundary, between what the performer could
   embellish and the composer's demands, was being negotiated.

   Bach’s apparently devout, personal relationship with the Christian God
   in the Lutheran tradition and the high demand for religious music of
   his times inevitably placed sacred music at the centre of his
   repertory; more specifically, the Lutheran chorale (hymn tune), the
   principal musical aspect of the Lutheran service, was the basis of much
   of his output. He invested the chorale prelude, already a standard set
   of Lutheran forms, with a more cogent, tightly integrated architecture,
   in which the intervallic patterns and melodic contours of the tune were
   typically treated in a dense, contrapuntal lattice against relatively
   slow-moving, overarching statements of the tune.

   Bach's deep knowledge of and interest in the liturgy led to his
   developing intricate relationships between music and linguistic text.
   This was evident from the smallest to the largest levels of his
   compositional technique. On the smallest level, many of his sacred
   works contain short motifs that, by recurrent association, can be
   regarded as pictorial symbolism and articulations of liturgical
   concepts. For example, the octave leap, usually in a bass line,
   represents the relationship between heaven and earth (e.g., the sound
   clip from Singet dem Herrn, above); the slow, repeated notes of the
   bass line in the opening movement of Cantata 106 (Gottes Zeit ist die
   allerbeste Zeit) depict the laboured trudging of Jesus as he was forced
   to drag the cross from the city to the crucifixion site.

   On the largest level, the large-scale structure of some of his sacred
   vocal works is evidence of subtle, elaborate planning: for example, the
   overall form of the St Matthew Passion illustrates the liturgical and
   dramatic flow of the Easter story on a number of levels simultaneously;
   the text, keys and variations of instrumental and vocal forces used in
   the movements of Cantata 11 (Lobet Gott in alle Landen) may form a
   structure that resembles the cross.

   Beyond these specific musical features arising from Bach’s religious
   affiliation is the fact that he was able to produce music for an
   audience that was committed to serious, regular worship, for which a
   concentrated density and complexity was accepted. His natural
   inclination may have been to reinvigorate existing forms, rather than
   to discard them and pursue more dramatic musical innovations. Thus,
   Bach’s inventive genius was almost entirely directed towards working
   within the structures he inherited, according to most critics and
   historians.

   Bach’s inner personal drive to display his musical achievements was
   evident in a number of ways. The most obvious was his successful
   striving to become the leading virtuoso and improviser of the day on
   the organ. Keyboard music occupied a central position in his output
   throughout his life, and he pioneered the elevation of the keyboard
   from continuo to solo instrument in his numerous harpsichord concertos
   and chamber movements with keyboard obbligato, in which he himself
   probably played the solo part. Many of his keyboard preludes are
   vehicles for a free improvisatory virtuosity in the German tradition,
   although their internal organisation became increasingly more cogent as
   he matured. Virtuosity is a key element in other forms, such as the
   fugal movement from Brandenburg Concerto No. 4 (the opening of which is
   captured in an audio clip above), in which Bach himself may have been
   the first to play the rapid solo violin passages. Another example is in
   the organ fugue from BWV547, a late work from Leipzig, in which
   virtuosic passages are mapped onto Italian solo-tutti alternation
   within the fugal development.

   Related to his cherished role as teacher was his drive to encompass
   whole genres by producing collections of movements that thoroughly
   explore the range of artistic and technical possibilities inherent in
   those genres. The most famous examples are the two books of the Well
   Tempered Clavier, each of which presents a prelude and fugue in every
   major and minor key, in which all conceivable contrapuntal technique is
   displayed. The English and French Suites, and the Partitas, all
   keyboard works from the Cöthen period, systematically explore a range
   of metres and of sharp and flat keys. This urge to be encyclopedic, as
   it were, is evident throughout his life: the Goldberg Variations
   (1746?), present a sequence of canons that work through each available
   interval and distance, as though items on a list were being ticked off
   one by one. Similarly, the Art of Fugue (1749) is a manifesto of fugal
   techniques.

Works

   J.S. Bach’s works are indexed with BWV numbers, an initialism for Bach
   Werke Verzeichnis (Bach Works Catalogue). The catalogue, published in
   1950, was compiled by Wolfgang Schmieder. The catalogue is organised
   thematically, rather than chronologically: BWV 1–224 are cantatas, BWV
   225–249 the large-scale choral works, BWV 250–524 chorales and sacred
   songs, BWV 525–748 organ works, BWV 772–994 other keyboard works, BWV
   995–1000 lute music, BWV 1001–40 chamber music, BWV 1041–71 orchestral
   music, and BWV 1072–1126 canons and fugues. In compiling the catalogue,
   Schmieder largely followed the Bach Gesellschaft Ausgabe, a
   comprehensive edition of the composer's works that was produced between
   1850 and 1905. For a list of works catalogued by BWV number, see List
   of compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach.

Organ works

   A statue of Bach in Eisenach, Germany
   Enlarge
   A statue of Bach in Eisenach, Germany

   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.

Other keyboard works

   Bach wrote many works for the harpsichord, some of which may also have
   been played on the clavichord. Many of his keyboard works are
   anthologies that show an eagerness to encompass whole theoretical
   systems in an encyclopaedic fashion, as it were.
     * The Well-Tempered Clavier, Books 1 and 2 (BWV 846–893). Each book
       comprises a prelude and fugue in each of the 24 major and minor
       keys (thus, the whole collection is often referred to as ‘the 48’).
       “Well-tempered” in the title refers to the temperament (system of
       tuning); many temperaments before Bach’s time were not flexible
       enough to allow compositions to move through more than just a few
       keys.
     * The 15 Inventions and 15 Sinfonias (BWV 772–801). These are short
       two- and three-part contrapuntal works arranged in order of key
       signatures of increasing sharps and flats, omitting some of the
       less used ones. The pieces were intended by Bach for instructional
       purposes.
     * Three collections of dance suites: the English Suites (BWV
       806–811), the French Suites (BWV 812–817) and the Partitas for
       keyboard (BWV 825–830). Each collection contains six suites built
       on the standard model ( Allemande– Courante– Sarabande–(optional
       movement)– Gigue). The English Suites closely follow the
       traditional model, adding a prelude before the allemande and
       including a single movement between the sarabande and the gigue.
       The French Suites omit preludes, but have multiple movements
       between the sarabande and the gigue. The partitas expand the model
       further with elaborate introductory movements and miscellaneous
       movements between the basic elements of the model.
     * The Goldberg Variations (BWV 988), an aria with thirty variations.
       The collection has a complex and unconventional structure: the
       variations build on the bass line of the aria, rather than its
       melody, and musical canons are interpolated according to a grand
       plan. There are nine canons within the 30 variations, one placed
       every three variations between variations 3 and 27. These
       variations move in order from canon at the unison to canon at the
       ninth. The first eight are in pairs (unison and octave, second and
       seventh, third and sixth, fourth and fifth). The ninth canon stands
       on its own due to compositional dissimilarities.
     * Miscellaneous pieces such as the Overture in the French Style
       (French Overture, BWV 831) Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue (BWV 903),
       and the Italian Concerto (BWV 971).

   Among Bach’s lesser known keyboard works are seven toccatas (BWV
   910–916), four duets (BWV 802–805), sonatas for keyboard (BWV 963–967),
   the Six Little Preludes (BWV 933–938) and the Aria variata alla maniera
   italiana (BWV 989).

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
   Margrave Christian Ludwig of Brandenburg-Schwedt 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 his 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.

   Bach's other large work, the Mass in B minor, was assembled by Bach
   near the end of his life, mostly from pieces composed earlier (such as
   Cantata 191 and Cantata 12). It was never performed in Bach’s lifetime,
   or even after his death until the 19th century.

   All of these works, unlike the motets, have substantial solo parts as
   well as choruses.

Performances

   Present-day Bach performers largely divide into two camps: those who
   follow authentic performance practice, and those who use modern
   instruments and playing techniques and tend towards larger ensembles.
   In Bach’s time orchestras and choirs were usually smaller than those
   known to, for example, Brahms, and even Bach's most ambitious choral
   works, such as his Mass in B minor and Passions, are composed for
   relatively modest forces. Some of Bach's important chamber music does
   not indicate instrumentation, which gives even greater latitude for
   variety of ensemble.

   " Easy listening" realisations of Bach's music and its use in
   advertising also contributed greatly to Bach's popularisation in the
   second half of the twentieth century. Among these were the Swingle
   Singers' versions of Bach pieces that are now well-known (for instance,
   the Air on the G string, or the Wachet Auf chorale prelude) and Wendy
   Carlos' 1968 recording Switched-On Bach using the then
   recently-invented Moog synthesizer. Jazz musicians have also adopted
   Bach's music, with Jacques Loussier and Uri Caine among those creating
   jazz versions of Bach works.

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". 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. Several notable composers such as Mozart, Beethoven,
   Schumann and Mendelssohn began writing in a more contrapuntal style
   after being introduced to Bach's music.

   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.

   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". 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". 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."
   Bach's cross, composer's signature with a single note
   Enlarge
   Bach's cross, composer's signature with a single note

   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 (existing in versions
   both for organ and piano). 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.

   Some of the greatest composers since Bach have written works which
   explicitly pay homage to him. For example Beethoven's Diabelli
   Variations, Shostakovich's Preludes and Fugues and Brahms's Cello
   Sonata in E, which is based on themes from the Art of Fugue

Eponyms

     * The Bach Ice Shelf, on the Beethoven Peninsula of Alexander Island,
       in Antarctica.
     * Bach crater on Mercury.

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