Sebastian johann bach biography

German composer (1685–1750)

"Bach" redirects here. For other uses, see Bach (disambiguation) and Johann Sebastian Bach (disambiguation).

Johann Sebastian Bach (31 March [O.S. 21 March] 1685 – 28 July 1750) was a German composer and musician of the late Baroque period. He is known for his prolific output across a variety of instruments and forms, including the orchestral Brandenburg Concertos; solo instrumental works such as the cello suites and sonatas and partitas for solo violin; keyboard works such as the Goldberg Variations and The Well-Tempered Clavier; organ works such as the Schübler Chorales and the Toccata and Fugue in D minor; and choral works such as the St Matthew Passion and the Mass in B minor. Since the 19th-century Bach Revival, he has been widely regarded as one of the greatest composers in the history of Western music.

The Bach family already had several composers when Johann Sebastian was born as the last child of a city musician, Johann Ambrosius, in Eisenach. After being orphaned at age 10, he lived for five years with his eldest brother, Johann Christoph, then continued his musical education in Lüneburg. In 1703 he returned to Thuringia, working as a musician for Protestant churches in Arnstadt and Mühlhausen, and for longer periods at courts in Weimar, where he expanded his organ repertory, and Köthen, where he was mostly engaged with chamber music. In 1723 he was hired as Thomaskantor (cantor at St Thomas's) in Leipzig. There he composed music for the principal Lutheran churches of the city and its university's student ensemble Collegium Musicum. In 1726 he began publishing his keyboard and organ music. In Leipzig, as had happened during some of his earlier positions, he had difficult relations with his employer. This situation was somewhat remedied when his sovereign, Augustus III of Poland, granted him the title of court composer in 1736. In the last

Johann Sebastian Bach was born March 21, 1685, in what is now Germany. He came from a family of musicians and was taught to play the organ by his eldest brother. Soon after this, in his teenage years, he began to focus on composing and performing keyboard and sacred music. Hundreds of his compositions, such as his church cantatas, were created for a religious context; he also composed an enormous amount of secular music, much of it purely instrumental.

The Baroque Era

Baroque refers to a style of architecture, music, and art that developed in Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries and can be broadly characterized as exuberant, ornate, and lavish. As with any artistic period, it has no official beginning or end (further complicated by the fact that the dates differ in the realms of music and visual arts), but the year of Bach’s death—1750— is often cited as a rough estimate for the end of the Baroque musical period.

Notable Works

The Brandenburg Concertos (1720) 

The Brandenburg Concertos are a collection of six works that show Bach at his most colorful, covering nearly the entire gamut of what was possible in Baroque concertos and allowing for improvisation, as is often the case in Baroque music.

The Well-Tempered Clavier (1722 & 1742)

This two-book collection of 48 preludes and fugues for keyboard was written to showcase the possibilities of a system that allowed for all keys to be played in tune. Prior to this, keyboards were typically tuned to favor certain keys, making it difficult to play in all tonalities. That said, these compositions aren’t merely exercises. While spotlighting all 24 major and minor keys, these pieces also explore an astonishing array of musical ideas.

The Art of the Fugue (published posthumously in 1751)

As this sequence progresses, it increases in intricacy, ensuring that a student would learn the forms of various types of fugues. Throughout The Art of the