The 10-year-old Bach moved in with his eldest brother, Johann Christoph Bach, the organist at St. Michael's Church in Ohrdruf, Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg. īach's mother died in 1694, and his father died eight months later. One uncle, Johann Christoph Bach, introduced him to the organ, and an older second cousin, Johann Ludwig Bach, was a well-known composer and violinist. His uncles were all professional musicians, whose posts included church organists, court chamber musicians, and composers. His father likely taught him violin and basic music theory. He was the eighth and youngest child of Johann Ambrosius Bach, the director of the town musicians, and Maria Elisabeth Lämmerhirt. Johann Sebastian Bach was born in Eisenach, the capital of the duchy of Saxe-Eisenach, in present-day Germany, on 21 March 1685 O.S. His music was further popularised through a multitude of arrangements, including the Air on the G String and " Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring", and of recordings, such as three different box sets with complete performances of the composer's oeuvre marking the 250th anniversary of his death. Dissemination of scholarship on the composer continued through periodicals (and later also websites) exclusively devoted to him, and other publications such as the Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis (BWV, a numbered catalogue of his works) and new critical editions of his compositions. The 19th century saw the publication of some major Bach biographies, and by the end of that century all of his known music had been printed. Throughout the 18th century, Bach was primarily valued as an organist, while his keyboard music, such as The Well-Tempered Clavier, was appreciated for its didactic qualities. Many of his works employ the genres of canon and fugue. He composed concertos, for instance for violin and for harpsichord, and suites, as chamber music as well as for orchestra. He wrote extensively for organ and for other keyboard instruments. He often adopted Lutheran hymns, not only in his larger vocal works, but for instance also in his four-part chorales and his sacred songs. He composed Latin church music, Passions, oratorios, and motets. Bach's compositions include hundreds of cantatas, both sacred and secular. He died of complications after eye surgery in 1750 at the age of 65.īach enriched established German styles through his mastery of counterpoint, harmonic, and motivic organisation, and his adaptation of rhythms, forms, and textures from abroad, particularly from Italy and France. In the last decades of his life, he reworked and extended many of his earlier compositions. In Leipzig, as had happened during some of his earlier positions, he had difficult relations with his employer, a situation that was little remedied when he was granted the title of court composer by his sovereign, Augustus III of Poland, in 1736. From 1726, he published some of his keyboard and organ music. There he composed music for the principal Lutheran churches of the city, and for its university's student ensemble Collegium Musicum. From 1723, he was employed as Thomaskantor ( cantor at St Thomas's) in Leipzig. From 1703 he was back in Thuringia, working as a musician for Protestant churches in Arnstadt and Mühlhausen and, for longer stretches of time, at courts in Weimar, where he expanded his organ repertory, and Köthen, where he was mostly engaged with chamber music. After being orphaned at the age of 10, he lived for five years with his eldest brother Johann Christoph, after which he continued his musical education in Lüneburg. The Bach family already counted several composers when Johann Sebastian was born as the last child of a city musician, Johann Ambrosius, in Eisenach. Since the 19th-century Bach revival, he has been generally regarded as one of the greatest composers in the history of Western music. He is known for his orchestral music such as the Brandenburg Concertos instrumental compositions such as the Cello Suites keyboard works such as the Goldberg Variations and The Well-Tempered Clavier organ works such as the Schubler Chorales and the Toccata and Fugue in D minor and vocal music such as the St Matthew Passion and the Mass in B minor. Johann Sebastian Bach (31 March 1685 – 28 July 1750) was a German composer and musician of the late Baroque period.
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