Born
in Eisenach in eastern Germany, Johann Sebastian Bach was the most significant
member of a vast musical family. Both his parents died by the time he was ten,
whereupon he moved into his elder brother's Ohrdruf home and spent the next five
years attending the Lyceum. His brother, Johann Christoph, was an organist and
taught Bach both to play and to build the instrument. At age 15 he was sent to
the Michaelisschule at Liineburg, where he sang in the choir until his voice
broke. At 17 he applied for and received the post of organist in Sangerhausen;
but the Duke of Weissenfels overruled the decision in favour of an older
organist.
Instead,
Bach spent a few months as a court musician at Weimar before visiting Amstadt in
1703 to see the new organ at the Neuekirche. He so impressed the authorities
that he was offered the job of organist, already promised to Andreas Borner. His
playing was clearly astonishing but he was too young to be an effective teacher;
conflicts arose between Bach and the authorities over the teaching of
choristers. Matters deteriorated further in 1705 when Bach took extended leave
of absence to walk to Liibeck to hear the composer Buxtehude play the organ.
Two
years after this episode Bach resigned and took another post in Miihlhausen.
That same year he married and was settling into his post when in 1708 he was
required to play before the Duke of Weimar, who promptly offered him better
employment as organist and chamber musician and later as Konzertmeister.
At
Weimar Bach developed his com- posing. He studied and made arrangements for
organ or harpsichord of a number of Vivaldi's concertos, experience which was
later to influence his own two Violin
Concertos in E and A minor and the
Double Violin Concerto in D minor.
During
1716 Bach heard rumours that the Duke of Weimar intended to hire Telemann as his
Kapellmeister, a position he had expected himself. Bach responded by finding a
rival Kapellmeister's position in the court at C6then. In order to prevent him
taking up the post, the Duke had Bach arrested and imprisoned in November 1717.
A month later he was discharged and he and his family left the court in
disgrace.
Prince
Leopold at Cathen was a far more congenial patron; it was under his patronage
that Bach composed the six Brandenburg
Concertos, named after their dedication to Christian Ludwig, Margrave
ofbrandenburg, in 1721. The pieces were described as 'concertos for several
instruments' and feature a group of soloists contrasted against the bulk of the
orchestra. Unlike the Concerti grossi of
Corelh, the Brandenburg Concertos call
for unusual combinations of instruments: the fifth con- certo, for example, has
a solo group consisting of flute, violin and harpsichord; the second combines
trumpet, flute, violin and oboe. While at Corthen Bach also wrote prolifically
for the keyboard, including his Italian Concerto and Book I of the
Well-Tempered Clavier, consisting of preludes and fugues in every key.
Bach's
wife died in 1720, and the next year he married Anna Magdalena Wilcke. His
position at Cathen soured late in 1721 when Prince Leopold himself married. The
prince's wife did not enjoy music and disliked Bach's involvement at court.
Fortunately in 1722 the post of Kantor at the Thomasschule in Leipzig became
vacant. It was initially offered to Telemann, and then to Johann Graupner, but
neither was released by his current employer. Bach was eventually invited to
accept the position and in 1723 moved to Leipzig, where he was to remain the
rest of his life.
Bach
approached the new task with enthusiasm. His duties at the school included
teaching music and other subjects to the 50 or 60 pupils, and writing a cantata
for Sunday services and church feasts. The wealth of singers and
instrumentalists at the school allowed Bach to compose works on a grand scale:
one such piece was the St Matthew Passion.
This huge work is a setting of the Gospel text for soloists, a double choir
and 40 players and was first performed in the Thomas-kirche in Leipzig on Good
Friday 1727 or 1729. It combines chorales (hymn settings) with choruses and
arias, all woven together by a narrator, the Evangelist, who sings the Gospel
text to a simple organ accompaniment. Together with the St
John Passion, first heard in
1724, the work represents the pinnacle of devotional music up to that time.
In
a letter to the diplomat Georg Erdmann in 1730, however, Bach voiced his great
dissatisfaction with the remuneration and irksome duties of his employment and
expressed the desire for another opportunity elsewhere. He tried for a post at
Dresden, submitting the Gloria and Kyrie from his then unfinished B
Minor Mass, but was not successful. His teaching workload grew enormously
and council records register his frequent absence from some duties - presumably
because he was teaching or composing at home.
Bach
entered on a new phase of composition with the Goldberg Variations, published in 1741, which was commissioned by
the insomniac Count Heyserling for his harpsichordist, Johann Gottlieb Goldberg,
to play to him during his sleepless nights. Bach followed this with two works
that reflected his increasing preoccupation with the fugue - the
Musical Offering, and the Art of
Fugue, which remained unfinished at his death.
Towards the end of his life Bach was troubled with cataracts, which made work increasingly difficult. Two operations failed to cure the problem, and in the last few months of his life Bach was practically blind. In the summer of 1750, weakened by the operations, he died of a stroke, leaving his fellow musicians to mourn one of the greatest composers of the time.
Bach;Organ Works-Toccata & Fugue
Bach;Sonatas & Partitas Bwv100
Bach - Chamber Music for Flute
Violin Concertos in E & A minor
The Well-Tempered Clavier
Goldberg Variations
Bach-Cantatas 56 /82/158
Bach-St Matthew Passion
Bach-Art of Fugue
Brandenburg
Concertos