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Johann Sebastian Bach: Music
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Johann Sebastian Bach was a member of one of the most extraordinary musical families of all time. 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. The post involved 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"[1].
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Johann Sebastian Bach was a great composer who was born in the small town of Eisenach, Germany on March 21, 1685 and died in Leipzig, Germany on July 28, 1750 at the age of 65. Bach came from a huge line of composers that lasted for about 200 years. The Bachs would have family gatherings and play music together. The Bachs were such a long lasting family, that Bach even made a family tree.
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German composer Johann Sebastian Bach traveled throughout Europe during the 18th century, working as an organist and composer in service to both churches and royalty. Though Bach wrote a number of masterful works during his travels, he did not receive full recognition from his contemporaries for his compositional ideas. Instead he gained his reputation principally through his musicianship as an organist. Since the mid-19th century... Bach's works have been celebrated for their remarkable use of counterpoint, a technique in which two or more melodies are simultaneously combined.
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Johann Sebastian Bach held three major jobs in his life: first he worked for a duke, then for a prince, and finally, he became director of music at the St. Thomas Church and School in Leipzig, Germany. Even though his job in Leipzig kept him very busy, in his spare time, Bach conducted a group of musicians who liked to get together to perform at a local coffee house.
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Johann Sebastian Bach was born on March 21, 1685, in Eisenach, Germany, the youngest child of Johann Ambrosius Bach, a church organist, and Elizabeth Lämmerhirt Bach. There were musicians in the Bach family going back seven generations. The family was ... devoutly Lutheran (a religion based on the faith of its believers that God has forgiven their sins). Bach received violin lessons from his father. He also had a beautiful voice and sang in the church choir. In 1694 his mother and father died within two months of each other.
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Now revered as the greatest composer of the Baroque Era, Johann Sebastian Bach was known during his own lifetime primarily as a great organist, since most of his compositions were neither widely known nor published during his life. Bach's musical genius manifested itself in many ways, but most particularly in his perfection of the fugue as both an instrumental and choral form, producing sublime music that was imbued with a balance of technical mastery and intellectual control. Bach's output includes works in every musical genre of his time except for opera. He used preexisting instrumental forms, adding new dimensions of quality, complexity, and technical demands unmatched elsewhere in music. By the end of the 18th Century, Bach's compositions had earned him an almost legendary fame and a unique historical position. Many regard Bach as the greatest of all Baroque composers, but undoubtedly, his compositions are acknowledged by all as the culmination of Baroque musical art.
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