Johann Sebastian Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach was born on 21 March 1685 (Julian calendar; 31 March Gregorian) in Eisenach, the youngest of eight children of town musician Johann Ambrosius Bach and Maria Elisabeth Lämmerhirt. The Bach family produced generations of musicians in Thuringia: town pipers, organists and court musicians. Little is known with certainty about his earliest childhood.

His mother died in 1694 and his father in February 1695. The ten-year-old Johann Sebastian moved in with his elder brother Johann Christoph, organist at Ohrdruf, who taught him keyboard. In 1700 he went to St Michael's School in Lüneburg as a choir singer, where he received a general education and probably became acquainted with the North German organ tradition.

After returning to Thuringia, Bach was organist at Arnstadt (1703–1707) and Mühlhausen (1707–1708). In 1708 he became court organist at Weimar, and from 1714 also concertmaster. He wrote much organ music there and began his cantatas. In 1717 Duke Wilhelm Ernst had him imprisoned for four weeks because he persisted in demanding his dismissal.

At Köthen (1717–1723) he was Kapellmeister at a Reformed court that mainly wanted instrumental music. Works from this period include the solo pieces for violin, probably the cello suites, and the first book of The Well-Tempered Clavier (1722). In 1721 he sent six concertos to Margrave Christian Ludwig of Brandenburg-Schwedt, later known as the Brandenburg Concertos.

As Thomaskantor in Leipzig (from 1723) he directed the choir of the St Thomas School and provided music for the city's main churches. He wrote cycles of cantatas, the St John Passion (1724) and the St Matthew Passion, probably first performed in 1727. Later he worked on the Mass in B minor, The Art of Fugue and The Musical Offering (1747), among other works.

Bach lived in the Holy Roman Empire, which consisted of dozens of duchies, principalities and city-states, each with its own court, church and government; Thuringia and Saxony were predominantly Lutheran. Musicians were servants of such institutions. In Leipzig the city council and church custom determined what he had to write and perform, and his relations with his employers were repeatedly difficult.

Musically, it was an age of transition. The Baroque polyphony in which Bach excelled gradually gave way after 1730 to the lighter galant style. He adopted Italian and French forms, such as the concerto and the suite, and worked them into contrapuntal compositions. The Lutheran chorale remained the foundation of much of his vocal music.

During his lifetime Bach was known mainly as a virtuoso organist, organ consultant and teacher; only part of his music was printed, including the Clavier-Übung, which he began publishing himself in 1726. In two marriages he had twenty children. Four sons became composers: Wilhelm Friedemann, Carl Philipp Emanuel, Johann Christoph Friedrich and Johann Christian.

After his death part of his music disappeared from the repertoire, but connoisseurs and composers kept studying his keyboard works. As a boy Beethoven played from The Well-Tempered Clavier, and Mozart studied his fugues in Vienna. His sons, above all Carl Philipp Emanuel and Johann Christian, helped to shape the galant and early Classical styles.

Bach died in Leipzig on 28 July 1750, after two unsuccessful eye operations by the English oculist John Taylor and a stroke followed by fever. He was buried in the Johannisfriedhof. In 1894 skeletal remains found during alterations to the Johanniskirche were identified as probably his; since 1950 they have lain in the Thomaskirche.

Felix Mendelssohn's performance of the St Matthew Passion in Berlin on 11 March 1829 is regarded as the start of the Bach revival. The Bach-Gesellschaft was founded in 1850 and published his works until 1899. Historians still debate details of his biography and the attribution of some works, such as the Toccata and Fugue in D minor (BWV 565).