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Johann Sebastian Bach: Composers
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Johann Sebastian Bach (March 21, 1685 - July 28, 1750) was a German Baroque composer. He is generally ranked among history's greatest and most influential composers. His compositions often embody profound intellectual depth, emotional power, and technical command.
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The works of the German composer and organist Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) are the ultimate expression of polyphony. He is probably the only composer ever able to make full use of the possibilities of art available in his time.
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Bach was born in Eisenach, Saxony 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 a post in the court orchestra at Weimar as a violinist, 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, considered at the time to be the greatest of the northern German organist-composers. Permission for the trip to Lubeck was given to him by his bishop, but he was only allowed to be gone for a week.
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Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) 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.
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Bach is best known for his use of counterpoint. His fame as a composer gradually spread more widely when, from 1726 onwards, he began to bring out published editions of some of his keyboard and organ music. He is known for his 300 Sacred Cantatas of which 200 are known. For the harpsichord he wrote the 48 Preludes and Fugues of the "Well-Tempered Clavier," the six each "French" and "English" suites and "Partitas", the Goldberg Variations and dozens of smaller preludes, fugues, and toccatas. He wrote numerous instrumental music concerti for violin and orchestra, harpsichord and orchestra, including the famous "Brandenburg" set. Bach wrote two works for no particular instrument the "Art of (the) Fugue" and the "Musical Offering," both intended to illustrate certain compositional techniques "in action."
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The rediscovery of Bach is closely connected with the name of Felix Mendelssohn, who was among the first to proclaim by word and deed the powers of a genius too gigantic to be grasped by three generations. By the enthusiastic endeavors of Mendelssohn, Robert Schumann and others, and in England still earlier by the performances and publications of Wesley and Crotch, the circle of Bach's worshippers rapidly increased. In 1850, a century after his death, a society was started for the correct publication of all Bach's remaining works. Robert Franz, the great songwriter, did good service in arranging some of Bach's finest works for modern performance, until the experience of a purer scholarship could prove not only the possibility but the incomparably greater beauty of a strict adherence to Bach's own scoring. The Porson of Bach-scholarship... is Wilhelm Rust (grandson of the interesting composer of that name who wrote polyphonic suites and fantasias early in the 19th century). During the fourteen years of his editorship of the Bach-Gesellschaft he displayed a steadily increasing insight into Bach's style which has never since been rivalled.
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