Johann Sebastian Bach

Life and legacy

Johann Sebastian Bach was born on 21 March 1685 in Eisenach, Thuringia, into the most extraordinary musical dynasty in European history. The Bach family had produced professional musicians for generations, and Johann Sebastian was the youngest of eight children of Johann Ambrosius Bach, the director of the town musicians. Orphaned at the age of ten - his mother died in 1694 and his father eight months later - he was raised by his eldest brother Johann Christoph, an organist, who gave him his first formal keyboard instruction.

Bach held several positions as organist and Kapellmeister across central Germany before settling in Leipzig in 1723 as Cantor of the Thomasschule, a post he would hold for the remaining twenty-seven years of his life. In Leipzig he was responsible for the music at four churches, the training of choirboys, and a staggering output of composition. Over his career, Bach composed more than a thousand works: cantatas for every Sunday and feast day of the church year, the monumental Passions according to St. John and St. Matthew, the Mass in B Minor, the Christmas Oratorio, hundreds of chorales, organ works, and instrumental pieces of every description.

Bach's instrumental works are no less towering. The Brandenburg Concertos (1721), dedicated to the Margrave of Brandenburg, are perhaps the finest orchestral works of the Baroque era. The Well-Tempered Clavier (two books, 1722 and 1742), consisting of preludes and fugues in all twenty-four major and minor keys, demonstrated the musical possibilities of equal temperament and became the foundational work of keyboard pedagogy. The Art of Fugue, left incomplete at his death, is a systematic exploration of contrapuntal technique that remains one of the most intellectually demanding and musically rewarding works ever composed.

Bach's mastery of counterpoint - the art of combining independent melodic lines into a coherent, beautiful whole - was unmatched. He could improvise fugues on any given subject, and his ability to weave together multiple voices while maintaining both structural rigor and emotional depth astonished contemporaries and has humbled musicians ever since. His chorale harmonizations set the standard for tonal harmony that governed Western music for the next two centuries.

Bach's eyesight failed in his final years, and he underwent two unsuccessful eye surgeries performed by the itinerant British oculist John Taylor (the same man who had operated on Handel). Bach died on 28 July 1750 in Leipzig. Although highly respected as an organist during his lifetime, his compositions were largely neglected after his death until Felix Mendelssohn's landmark revival performance of the St. Matthew Passion in Berlin in 1829. Since then, Bach has been recognized as one of the greatest composers in the history of Western music, and his works remain central to the repertoire of musicians worldwide.

Key accomplishments

• Composed the Brandenburg Concertos (1721), among the greatest orchestral works of the Baroque era
• Created The Well-Tempered Clavier (1722, 1742), the foundational work of keyboard music pedagogy
• Composed the Mass in B Minor and the St. Matthew Passion, towering achievements of sacred music
• Mastered and elevated the art of counterpoint and fugue to unparalleled heights
• Left a catalog of over 1,000 compositions spanning every genre of his era

Quotes

The aim and final end of all music should be none other than the glory of God and the refreshment of the soul.

Annotation in Bach's personal copy of the Calov Bible, c. 1733

Related figures