Johann sebastian bach biography musical contributions

New York: Basic Books. Forkel, Johann Nikolaus Translated by Charles Sanford Terry. Gardiner, John Eliot London: Allen Lane. Geck, Martin Translated by Anthea Bell. London: Haus Publishing. Johann Sebastian Bach: Life and Work. Orlando: Harcourt. Geiringer, Karl New York: Oxford University Press. Schweitzer, Albert Translated by Ernest Newman. Spitta, Philipp a.

Translated by Clara Bell ; J. Fuller Maitland. Spitta, Philipp b. Translated by Clara Bell; J. Spitta, Philipp c. Terry, Charles Sanford Bach: A Biography. Williams, Peter a. The Life of Bach. Williams, Peter Bach: A Life in Music. Bach: A Musical Biography. Wolff, Christoph Bach: Essays on his Life and Music. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.

Second edition,W. Wolff, Christoph; Emery, Walter 20 January Grove Music Online 8th ed. Oxford University Press. Applegate, Celia Matthew Passion. Boyd, Malcolm, ed. Oxford Composer Companions. Butt, Johned. The Cambridge Companion to Bach. Cambridge University Press. Chiapusso, Jan Bach's World. Scarborough, Ontario: Indiana University Press.

Crist, Stephen A. Oxford Bibliographies : Music. R A Kessinger Publishing. Donington, Robert Deutscher Taschenbuchverlag. Herz, Gerhard Essays on J. Jones, Richard Kerst, Friedrich Beethoven im eigenen Wort in German. Kupferberg, Herbert Basically Bach: A th Birthday Celebration. New York: McGraw-Hill. Leaver, Robin A. Luther's Liturgical Music.

Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. Lester, Joel Miles, Russell H. Morris, Edmund Beethoven: the Universal Composer. New York: HarperCollins. Rich, Alan Johann Sebastian Bach: Play by Play. San Francisco: HarperCollins. Mozart and His Times. New York: Alfred A. Schneider, Max VII 3. Neue Bachgesellschaft : 84— Schulenberg, David The Keyboard Music of J.

New York: Routledge. Spaeth, Sigmund Stories Behind the World's Great Music. New York: Whittlesey House. Stauffer, George B. In Butler, Gregory G. About Bach. University of Illinois Press. Van Til, Marian Bach 2nd ed. The New Grove Bach Family. London: Macmillan. Wolff, Christoph, ed. Grove Music Online. Johann Sebastian Bach at Wikipedia's sister projects.

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Thomas Church, Leipzig Cantors Composers for pipe organ Composers for harpsichord Deaths from surgical complications German Baroque composers German blind people German classical composers of church music German classical johann sebastians bach biography musical contributions German Lutherans German male classical composers German male classical organists Musicians from Leipzig Oratorio composers Organ improvisers Organists and composers in the North German tradition People celebrated in the Lutheran liturgical calendar People from Eisenach People from Saxe-Eisenach Thomaskantors.

Toggle the table of contents. List of compositions. Liturgical compositions in Latin. Passions and oratorios. Four-part chorales. Small vocal works. Organ compositions. Other keyboard works. During his lifetime, Bach was better known as an organist than a composer. Few of his works were even published during his lifetime. Still Bach's musical compositions were admired by those who followed in his footsteps, including Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven.

His reputation received a substantial boost in when German composer Felix Mendelssohn reintroduced Bach's "Passion According to St. Musically, Bach was a master at invoking and maintaining different emotions. He was an expert storyteller as well, often using melody to suggest actions or events. In his works, Bach drew from different music styles from across Europe, including French and Italian.

He used counterpoint, the playing of multiple melodies simultaneously, and fugue, the repetition of a melody with slight variations, to create richly detailed compositions. He is considered to be the best composer of the Baroque era, and one of the most important figures in classical music in general. Little personal correspondence has survived to provide a full picture of Bach as a person.

But the records do shed some light on his character. Bach was devoted to his family. Inhe married his cousin Maria Barbara Bach. The couple had seven children together, some of whom died as infants. Maria died in while Bach was traveling with Prince Leopold. They had thirteen children, more than half of them died as children. Bach clearly shared his love of music with his children.

Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach and Johann Christian Bach, sons from his second marriage, also enjoyed musical success. We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us! Maria Callas. Ludwig van Beethoven. Strong family connections and a musically enthusiastic employer failed to prevent tension between the headstrong, precocious young organist and the authorities after several years in the post.

He was apparently dissatisfied with the standard of singers in the choir. Despite his comfortable position in Arnstadt, by Bach appears to have realized that he needed to escape the family milieu and move on to further his career. He was then offered a more lucrative post as organist at St. The following year, he took up this senior post with significantly improved pay and conditions, including a good choir.

The munificent salary on offer at the court and the prospect of working entirely with a large, well-funded contingent of professional musicians may have prompted the move. It was in Weimar that two sons were born—Wilhelm Friedemann Bach and Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach —who both went on to become important composers themselves in the ornate rococo style that superseded the baroque.

From the music of Italians such as Antonio VivaldiArcangelo Corelli and Giuseppe Torelli, he learned how to johann sebastian bach biography musical contributions dramatic openings and adopted their sunny dispositions, dynamic motor-rhythms and decisive harmonic schemes. Bach inducted himself into these stylistic aspects largely by transcribing for harpsichord and organ the ensemble concertos of Vivaldi; these works are still concert favorites.

He may have picked up the idea of transcribing the latest fashionable Italian music from Prince Johann Ernst, one of his employers, who was a musician of professional caliber. Inthe duke returned from a tour of the Low Countries with a sizable collection of scores, some of them possibly transcriptions of the latest fashionable Italian music by the blind organist Jan Jacob de Graaf.

He was particularly attracted to the Italian solo-tutti structure, in which one or more solo instruments alternate section-by-section with the full orchestra throughout a movement. The solo-tutti alternation is achieved when the player deftly changes between the lower keyboard of a fuller, slightly louder tone and the upper keyboard of a more delicate tone.

In Weimar, he had the opportunity to play and compose for the organ, and to perform a varied repertoire of concert music with the duke's ensemble. The largest single body of his fugal writing is The Well-Tempered Clavier. It consists of 48 preludes and fugues, one pair for each major key and relative minor key. This is a monumental work for its masterful use of counterpoint and its exploration, for the first time, of the full range of keys—and the means of expression made possible by their slight differences from each other—available to keyboardists when their instruments are tuned according to systems such as that of Andreas Werckmeister.

This contains traditional Lutheran chorales hymn tunesset in complex textures to assist the training of organists. Sensing increasing political tensions in the ducal court of Weimar, Bach began once again to search out a more stable job that was conducive to his musical interests. InBach was appointed cantor and musical director of the Thomaskirche, Leipzig.

This post required him to instruct the students of the St. Thomas School Thomasschule in singing and to provide weekly music at the two main churches in Leipzig. For the first few years of his tenure at Leipzig, Bach composed a new cantata every week through much of the year. In fact, he wrote five full cantata cycles during his first six years in Leipzig.

This challenging schedule, in addition to his more menial duties at the school, produced some of his most exquisite music, most of which has been preserved. Most of the cantatas from this period expound on the Sunday readings from the Bible for the week in which they were originally performed; some were written using traditional church hymns, such as Wachet auf!

Ruft uns die Stimme and Nun komm, der Heiden Heilandas inspiration for the music.

Johann sebastian bach biography musical contributions

Matthew Passion for Good Friday. The composer himself considered the monumental St. Matthew Passion among his greatest masterpieces. In his correspondence, he referred to it as his "Great Passion" and carefully prepared a calligraphic manuscript of the work, which required almost every available musician in Leipzig for its performance.

Bach's representation of the essence and message of Christianity in his religious music is considered by many to be so powerful and beautiful that in Germany he is sometimes referred to as the Fifth Evangelist. Bach's dedication to teaching is especially remarkable. It was typical for him to supervise a full-time apprentice, and there were often numerous private students studying in Bach's house, including such notables as Johann Friedrich Agricola.

Bach married his second cousin, Maria Barbara Bach, on October 17, in Dornheim after receiving an inheritance of 50 gulden. They had seven children, four of whom survived to adulthood. Despite the age difference—she was 17 years his junior—the couple seem to have had a happy marriage. Together they had 13 children, which made for a total of 23 children for Bach.

Five of his sons became accomplished musicians and three—Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, Johann Christian Bachand Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach —were important composers in the rococo style that followed the baroque. At Leipzig, Sebastian seems to have maintained active relationships with several members of the faculty of the university. He enjoyed a particularly fruitful relationship with the poet, Picander.

Sebastian and Anna Magdalena welcomed friends, family, and fellow musicians from all over Germany into their home. Interestingly, George Frideric Handelwho was born in the same year as Bach in Halle, only 30 miles from Leipzig, made several trips to Germany, but Bach was unable to meet him, a fact that he appears to have deeply regretted.

Having spent much of the s composing cantatas, Bach had assembled a sizable repertoire of church music that allowed him to continue performing impressive Sunday music programs while pursuing other musical genres. Many of these later works were collaborations with Leipzig's Collegium Musicum. IIand the Goldberg variations Vol. During this period, he completed the Mass in B Minorwhich incorporated newly composed movements with parts of earlier works.

Inhe presented the manuscript to the elector of Saxony in a successful bid to persuade the monarch to appoint him as royal court composer. The young Bach was offered a choral scholarship to the prestigious St Michael's School in The Brandenburg Concertos were composed in as a sort-of musical job application for the Margrave Ludwig of Brandenburg - it was unsuccessful.

In his later years Bach faced harsh criticism. During the s and s when he was composing his most important works - the Passions and the Goldberg Variations among them - a new Italian style invaded Germany, making his work appear outdated. The Well Tempered Clavier, a quintessential student text, was finished in and comprised two volumes of piano music in every musical key.

With the notable exception of opera, Bach composed towering masterpieces in every major Baroque genre: sonatas, concertos, suites and cantatas, as well as innumerable keyboard, organ and choral works. Bach died on July 28th in Leipzig.