Johann Sebastian Bach

During his lifetime, Johann Sebastian Bach earned greater renown for his exceptional skill at the organ than for any of his creative output. Although his sacred compositions, keyboard pieces, choral settings, and assorted instrumental works displayed an apparent spontaneity and vigor, these qualities masked an underlying structural discipline of extraordinary precision. His command of contrapuntal technique proved both inventive and masterful, while the dense layers of his writing—frequently incorporating religious and numerological references that interlock like an intricate cryptogram—continue to astonish performers and scholars. Numerous observers still regard him as the supreme figure in the history of music.

Born in Eisenach in 1685, Bach received his earliest instruction on the violin and harpsichord from his father, Johann Ambrosius, who served as a court trumpeter to the Duke of Eisenach. Before reaching the age of ten, he lost both parents and was taken into the household of his eldest brother, Johann Christoph, who had recently married and settled in Ohrdruf. Thanks to his fine singing voice, the boy secured a place at the Michaelis monastery in Lüneberg in 1700; when his voice broke shortly afterward, he remained there as an instrumentalist. In 1703 he accepted a brief appointment as violinist in Weimar before moving to Arnstadt to become organist at the Neue Kirche, a post he held from 1703 to 1707. His dealings with the church authorities grew strained because he frequently neglected assigned duties in favor of private practice. One record tells of a four-month leave he obtained to visit Lubeck and study the music of Dietrich Buxtehude; he overstayed this absence, much to the council’s displeasure. In June 1707 he took a short-term organist position at St. Blasius in Mühlhausen and, that autumn, married his cousin Maria Barbara Bach.

While in Mühlhausen, Bach completed the Toccata and Fugue in D minor (BWV 565) together with his earliest cantatas, yet he soon felt the town’s musical resources too limited. In 1708 he entered the service of the Duke of Sachsen-Weimar as court organist and orchestral member, rising to concertmaster in 1714. During these years he produced numerous organ works, among them the Orgel-Büchlein, and began the preludes and fugues later collected as Das wohltemperierte Klavier. Political tensions between the Duke and his ministers prompted Bach to leave Weimar; in December 1717 he assumed the post of Kapellmeister at Köthen. In 1720 his wife died suddenly, leaving him responsible for four surviving children—three others having perished in infancy. The following year he married the soprano Anna Magdalena Wilcke, who bore him thirteen children, of whom five reached adulthood. The six Brandenburg Concertos (BWV 1046–51) and many other secular pieces belong to his Köthen period.

In May 1723 Bach succeeded to the position of Kantor at the Thomas School in Leipzig, which Georg Philipp Telemann had declined, and he retained the post until his death. There he composed the greater part of his sacred and secular cantatas. Finding the salary inadequate, the obligations burdensome, and the facilities insufficient, he sought additional outlets, most notably assuming direction of the city’s Collegium Musicum in 1729. He also accepted an appointment as music director to the Dresden Court in 1736 under Frederick Augustus II; although the duties remained loosely defined, the role afforded him latitude to compose freely. During the 1740s he made several journeys to Berlin, partly to visit his son Carl Philipp Emanuel, who served as a court musician there. The Goldberg Variations, one of the few works published during Bach’s lifetime, appeared in 1741. In May 1747 he was received cordially by King Frederick II of Prussia and responded with the intricate Musical Offering (BWV 1079). Among his final compositions stands the Mass in B minor of 1749. Afflicted by diabetes, he died on July 28, 1750.