Baroque Composers

The Bach Family

The Bach family lived from early 16th century in the Thuringian duchies of the Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, Saxe-Coburg-Gothaand Saxe Mainingen and the principality of Schwarzburg-Arnstardt. (A whole lot of mind-boggling terms or is it name?)Their profession was music. There are records that 53 Bachs held posts as organists, cantors or town musicians over a span of 300 years.

JS Bach himself compiled a genealogy of him family, which began as far as his own mind was concerned with Veit Bach ( done in 1619 ), a miller with a passion for lute-playing.  Other principle members of the family up to JS Bach's time were:

Hans Bach ( 1580-1626 ), who was a violinist and carpet-weaver, was the son of Veit Bach.  He was known as Der Spielmann ( the player ).

Johann Bach ( 1604-1673 ), the eldest son of Hans, was an organist at Schweinfurt and Erfurt. Christoph Bach ( 1613-1661 ), the second son of Hans, was an organist and composer.  He also became the town musician at Eisenach.

Heinrich Bach ( 1615-1692 ), the third son of Hans, was a church organist for 51 years.

Johann Christian Bach ( 1640-1682 ), the eldest son of Johann

AND THE LIST GOES ON...........

NOW TO THE MOST IMPORTANT PERSON OF THE BACH FAMILY......

Johann Sebastian Bach ( 1685-1750 )

He was born in Eisenach.  He was a german composer and organist.  He was the son of Johann Ambrosius Bach, an organist and town musician.  JS Bach was orphaned at the age of 10, and went to live with his eldest brother at Ohrdruf, where he had clavier and organ lessons.  In 1700, he was a chorister at St. Micheal's church, staying for three years, learning musch from Georg Bohm.

In 1703, he was an organist at Arnstadt and then Muhlhausen in 1707.  He married his cousin, Maria Barbara Bach in the same year.  He became an organist for the Duke of Saxe-Weimar in 1708.  He remained for 9 years, but left in disappointment as he was not appointed as the Chapel-master in 1717. By this time, he had composed some of his greatest organ works and church cantatas.

In 1717, he was appointed Chapel-master at the court of Anhalt-Cothen, where the princes' interest was not in religious works, but instrumental compositions.  From this period date his violin concertos, sonatas, suites and Brandenburg concertos.  He also composed many of his best clavier works in Cothen, probably for his children.

His wife died in 1720, and he married Anna Magdelena the year after, who the 20 year old daughter of the court trumpeteer.  Bach applied for Cantorship at St. Thomas after being dissatisfied with the ruler's new wife, who abhorred music.  He was not selected, but the chosen candidate withdrew from his post and thus gave Bach the position.  Bach wrote St. John's Passion in St. Thomas as evidence of his fitness for the post.

 He remained in St. Thomas for the rest of his life, though not without several disputes with the authority.  During the time there, he composed more than 250 church cantatas, St. Matthew's Passion, Mass in B Minor, Christmas Oratorio, Goldberg Variations and many other works, including the last and unfinished Art of Fugue ( Der kunst der Fuge ).  In 1740, his eyesight was failing and he became blind in the last year of his life.

Bach was famous as an organ virtuoso.  As composer, his reputation in his lifetime was restricted to a fairly narrowed circle, and his music was regarded by many as old-fashioned.  His fame was in no way approached that of Telemann.  His published works today, fill many volumes, but in his lifetime, fewer than a dozen of his compositions were published.  Half a century after his death, this position was only slightly improved until in1801, the Well-Tempered Clavier was issued.  The revival of interest in Bach's music may be dated from the Berlin performance of St. Matthew's Passion in 1829, conducted by Mendelssohn.

Bach's supreme achievement was as a polyphonist. His Neo-German Protestant religion was the root of all his art, allied to a tireless industry in the pursuit of every kind of refinement of his skill and technique. Sonata form was not yet developed enough for him to be interested in it, and he had no leaning towards the frivolities of opera. Although some of the forms in which he wrote-the Church Cantata, for example-were outdated before he died, he poured into them all the resources of his genius so that they have outlived most of other example. The dramatic and emotional force of his music, as evidenced in the Passions, was remarkable in its day and has spoken to succeeding generations with increasing power. Sufficed it to say that for many composers and countless listeners, Bach's music is supreme-to quote Wagner : "The most stupendous miracle in all music".