Johann Sebastian Bach: biography, video, interesting facts, creativity.

Johann Sebastian Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach is a German baroque composer and musician who brought together and combined the traditions and most significant achievements of European musical art in his work, as well as enriched it with a masterly use of counterpoint and a fine sense of perfect harmony. Bach is the greatest classic who left a great legacy, which became the golden fund of world culture. This is a universal musician, in his work encompassing almost all known genres. Creating immortal masterpieces, he turned every stroke of his compositions into small pieces, then combining them into perfect in form priceless creations of exceptional beauty and expressiveness, which vividly reflected the diverse spiritual world of man.

A brief biography of Johann Sebastian Bach and many interesting facts about the composer can be found on our page.

A Brief Biography of Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach was born in the German town of Eisenach in the fifth generation of the family of musicians on March 21, 1685. It should be noted that musical dynasties were quite common at that time in Germany, and talented parents sought to develop appropriate talents in children. The boy's father, Johann Ambrosius, was an organist at the Church of Eisenach and a court accompanist. Obviously, it was he who gave the first lessons of the game on the violin and harpsichord little son.

From the biography of Bach, we learn that in 10 years the boy lost his parents, but did not remain without shelter, because he was the eighth and youngest child in the family. Respected organist Ordruf Johann Christoph Bach, elder brother Johann Sebastian took care of a little orphan. Among his other students, Johann Christophe taught his brother to play the clavier, but the strict teacher hid his manuscripts of modern composers under lock and key so as not to spoil the taste of young performers. However, the castle did not prevent little Bach from getting acquainted with forbidden works.

Luneburg

At the age of 15, Bach enrolled in the prestigious Lüneburg School of Church Singers, which was located at the church of Sts. Michael, and at the same time, thanks to his beautiful voice, young Bach was able to earn some money in the church choir. In addition, in Lüneburg, the young man met Georg Böhm, a famous organist, contact with whom had an impact on the composer’s early work. He also traveled to Hamburg several times to listen to the play of A. Reinken, the largest representative of the German organ school. The same works by Bach for clavier and organ belong to this period. After a successful graduation from school, Johann Sebastian obtained the right to enter the university, but due to the lack of funds he was not able to continue his education.

Weimar and Arnstadt

Johann began his career in Weimar, where he was accepted into the court chapel of Duke Johann Ernst of Saxony as a violinist. However, this did not last long, since such work did not satisfy the creative impulses of the young musician. Bach in 1703, without hesitation, agrees to move to Arnstadt, where he is in the temple of St. Boniface was initially offered the post of organ supervisor, and then the post of organist. A decent salary, work only three days a week, a good modernized instrument, tuned to the newest system, all this created the conditions for expanding the creative possibilities of the musician not only as a performer, but also a composer.

During this period, he creates a large number of organ works, as well as capriccio, cantatas and suites. Here Johann becomes a real expert of the organs and a brilliant virtuoso, whose game caused unrestrained enthusiasm among the listeners. It was in Arnstadt that his gift of improvisation was revealed, which the church leadership did not like very much. Bach was always striving for perfection and never missed an opportunity to get acquainted with famous musicians, for example, with organist Dietrich Buxtehude, who served in Lübeck. After receiving a four-week vacation, Bach went to listen to the great musician, whose game impressed Johann so much that he, having forgotten about his duties, stayed in Lübeck for four months. Upon returning to Arndstadt, the indignant leadership arranged a humiliating trial for Bach, after which he had to leave the city and look for a new job.

Mühlhausen

The next city in the life of Bach was Mühlhausen. Here in 1706 he won the competition for the place of the organist in the church of St. Blasia. He was received with a good salary, but also with a certain condition: the musical accompaniment of the chants should be strict, without any kind of "ornaments." The city authorities subsequently respected the new organist with respect: they approved a plan for the reconstruction of the church organ, and also paid a good reward for the cantata composed by Bach “Lord is my king”, which was dedicated to the inauguration ceremony of the new consul. His stay in Mühlhausen was marked by a happy event: he married his beloved cousin Maria Barbara, who later presented him with seven children.

Weimar

In 1708, Duke Ernst of Saxe-Weimar heard the magnificent game of the Mulhausen organist. Impressed by what he heard, the noble grandee immediately proposed to Bach the posts of court musician and city organist with a salary far in excess of the former. Johann Sebastian began the Weimar period, which is characterized as one of the most fruitful in the creative life of the composer. At this time, he creates a large number of compositions for clavier and organ, including a collection of choral preludes, "Passacaglia c-moll," the famous "Toccata and Fugue d-moll"," Fantasy and Fugue C-dur "and many other great works. It should also be noted that this period includes the composition of more than two dozen spiritual cantatas. Such efficiency in Bach's composer's work was associated with his appointment in 1714 as Vice-Kapellmeister Whose duties included regular monthly updates of church music.

At the same time, contemporaries of Johann Sebastian were more admired by his performing art, and he constantly heard remarks of admiration for his game. The fame of Bach as a virtuoso musician quickly spread not only in Weimar, but also beyond. Once the royal conductor of the Dresden invited him, will face off with the famous French musician L. Marshan. However, the musical contest did not work, because the Frenchman, hearing Bach’s play at the preliminary audition, secretly left Dresden without warning. In 1717, the Weimar period in the life of Bach came to an end. Johann Sebastian dreamed of getting a conductor’s place, but when this place was vacated, the duke offered it to another, very young and inexperienced musician. Bach, considering it an insult, asked for his immediate resignation and for this he was under arrest for four weeks.

Kothen

According to the biography of Bach in 1717, he leaves Weimar to settle in Köthen with the court conductor with Prince Anhalt of Köthen. In Köthen, Bahu was to write worldly music, because, as a result of reforms, they did not perform music in the church, except for singing psalms. Here Bach occupied an exceptional position: as a court conductor, he was well paid, the prince treated him like a friend, and the composer repaid him with wonderful compositions. In Kothen, the musician had many students, and for their learning he composed The Well-Tempered Clavier. These are 48 preludes and fugues, which glorified Bach as the master of clavier music. When the prince got married, the young princess showed hostility towards both Bach and his music. Johann Sebastian had to look for another job.

Leipzig

In Leipzig, where Bach moved in 1723, he reached the top of his career ladder: he was appointed cantor in the church of Sts. Thomas and music director of all churches of the city. Bach was engaged in teaching and preparing church choir performers, selecting music, organizing and holding concerts in the main churches of the city. Leading from 1729 to the Musical Collegium, Bach began to organize 8 two-hour secular music concerts a month in the coffee house of a certain Zimmermann, adapted to the orchestra. Having been appointed to the position of court composer, Bach handed over the leadership of the Musical Board to his former pupil Karl Gerlach in 1737. In recent years, Bach often reworked his early works. In 1749, he ends the High Mass in B-minor, some parts of which were written by him 25 years ago. The composer died in 1750, working on The Art of the Fugue.

Interesting facts about Bach

• Bach was a recognized organ expert. He was invited to check and adjust tools in various temples of Weimar, where he lived for a long time. Each time he amazes his clients with the amazing improvisations that he played to hear how an instrument in need of work sounds.
• It was boring for Johann to perform monotonous chorals during his service, and he did not hold back the creative impulse, impromptu inserted his small adorning variations into the established church music, which caused great discontent of the authorities.
• More famous for his religious works, Bach succeeded in composing secular music, as evidenced by his Coffee Cantata. Bach introduced this humorous work as a small comic opera. Originally called "Schweigt stille, plaudert nicht" ("Shut up, stop talking"), she describes the lyrical hero's addiction to coffee, and, not by chance, this cantata was first performed in a Leipzig coffee house.
• At 18, Bach really wanted to get a place of an organist in the city of Lübeck, which at that time belonged to the famous Dietrich Buxtehude. Another contender for this place was G. Handel. The main condition for the occupation of this position was the marriage of one of the daughters of Buxtehude, but neither Bach nor Handel decided to sacrifice themselves.
• Johann Sebastian Bach was very fond of dressing as a poor teacher and visiting small churches in such a way, where he asked a local organist to play a little organ. Some parishioners, hearing an unusually beautiful performance for them, frightenedly left the service, thinking that the devil himself appeared in the temple as a strange man.

• The Russian envoy in Saxony, Hermann von Keyserling, asked Bach to write a work for which he could quickly fall asleep with a sound sleep. Thus, the "Goldberg Variations" appeared, for which the composer received a golden cube filled with hundreds of louisers. These variations are still one of the best "sleeping pills".
• Johann Sebastian was known to his contemporaries not only as an outstanding composer and virtuoso performer, but also a man with a very heavy character, intolerant of the mistakes of others. There is a case in which the basilist publicly offended by Bach for an imperfect performance, attacked Johann. There was a real duel, since both were armed with daggers.
• Bach, fond of numerology, liked to weave the numbers 14 and 41 into his musical works, because the first letters of the composer's name corresponded to these numbers. By the way, Bach also liked to beat his surname in his compositions: the musical decoding of the word "Bach" forms the pattern of the cross. This symbol is the most important for Bach, who considers such coincidences to be non-random.

• Thanks to Johann Sebastian Bach, not only men sing in church choirs today. The first woman to sing in the temple was the wife of the composer Anna Magdalena, who has a beautiful voice.
• In the middle of the 19th century, German musicologists founded the first Bach society, whose main task was to publish the works of the composer. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the society dissolved itself and the entire collection of Bach's works was published only in the second half of the twentieth century on the initiative of the Bach Institute, created in 1950. In the world today, in total there are two hundred and twenty-two Bach societies, Bach orchestra and Bach choirs.
• Researchers of the work of Bach put forward the suggestion that the great maestro composed 11,200 works, although the legacy known to descendants includes only 1,200 compositions.
• Today there are more than fifty-three thousand books and various publications about Bach in different languages, about seven thousand complete biographies of the composer have been published.
• In 1950, V. Schmieder compiled a numbered catalog of Bach's works (BWV- Bach Werke Verzeichnis). This catalog was updated several times as data on the authorship of certain works were clarified and, unlike traditional chronological principles for the classification of works by other famous composers, this catalog is structured according to a thematic principle. Works with similar numbers belong to the same genre, and are not written at all in some years.
• The works by Bach: Brandenburg Concerto No. 2, Gavotte in the form of rondo and HTK were recorded on the Golden Record and launched in 1977 from Earth attached to the Voyager spacecraft.

• Everyone knows that Beethoven suffered from hearing loss, but few know that Bach was blind in his declining years. Actually, the unsuccessful eye surgery performed by a quack surgeon John Taylor was the cause of the composer’s death in 1750.
• Johann Sebastian Bach was buried near the Church of St. Thomas. After some time, a road was laid through the cemetery and the grave was lost. At the end of the 19th century, during the reconstruction of the church, the remains of the composer were found and reburied. After the Second World War in 1949, the relics of Bach were transferred to the church building. However, due to the fact that the grave changed the place several times, skeptics cast doubt that the grave contains the ashes of Johann Sebastian.
• To date, 150 postage stamps dedicated to Johann Sebastian Bach have been issued worldwide, 90 of which have been published in Germany.
• Johann Sebastian Bach, a great musical genius, is treated with great respect all over the world, monuments have been erected in many countries, only in Germany there are 12 monuments. One of them is located in the town of Dornheim near Arnstadt and is dedicated to the wedding of Johann Sebastian and Maria Barbara.

The family of Johann Sebastian Bach

Johann Sebastian belonged to the largest German musical dynasty, whose pedigree is usually counted from Feith Bach, a simple baker, but very fond of music and perfectly performing folk melodies on his favorite instrument - zither. This passion from the founder of the clan was passed on to his descendants, many of them became professional musicians: composers, cantors, band masters, and also a variety of instrumentalists. They settled not only in Germany, some even went abroad. Over the course of two hundred years, Bach’s musicians became so numerous that their name was given to any person whose occupation was associated with music. The most famous ancestors of Johann Sebastian whose works reached us were Johannes, Heinrich, Johann Christoph, Johann Berngard, Johann Michael and Johann Nikolaus. Johann Sebastian's father, Johann Ambrosius Bach, was also a musician and served as an organist in Eisenach, in the city where Bach was born.

Johann Sebastian himself was the father of a large family: he had twenty children from two wives. The first time he married his beloved cousin Maria Barbara - the daughter of Johann Michael Bach in 1707. Mary gave birth to seven children to Johann Sebastian, three of whom died in infancy. Maria herself also lived a long life, she died at the age of 36 years, leaving four young children to Bach. Bach was very hard at losing his wife, but a year later he again fell in love with the young girl Anna Magdalena Wilken, whom he met at the court of the Duke of Anhalt-Ketensky and made her an offer. Despite the great difference in age, the girl agreed and it is obvious that this marriage was very successful, since Anna Magdalena presented thirteen children to Bach. The girl did an excellent job with the housekeeping, took care of the children, sincerely rejoiced at her husband’s successes and rendered great assistance in her work by rewriting his scores. The family for Bach was a great joy, he devoted a lot of time to raising children, doing music with them and writing special exercises. In the evenings, the family very often arranged improvised concerts that brought joy to everyone. Bach's children had by nature excellent data, but four of them had exceptional musical talent - these are Johann Christoph Friedrich, Carl Philipp Emanuel, Wilhelm Friedemann and Johann Christian. Они тоже стали композиторами и оставили свой след в истории музыки, но никто из них так и не смог превзойти отца ни в сочинительстве, ни в искусстве исполнения.

Творчество Иоганна Себастьяна Баха

Иога́нн Себастья́н Бах был одним из самых плодовитых композиторов, его наследие в сокровищнице мировой музыкальной культуры насчитывает около 1200 бессмертных шедевров. В творчестве Баха был один единственный вдохновитель - это Создатель. Иоганн Себастьян посвящал ему почти все свои произведения и в конце партитур всегда подписывал буквы, которые являлись аббревиатурой слов: "Во имя Иисуса", "Иисус помоги", "Одному богу слава". To create for God was the main goal in the composer’s life, and therefore his musical works absorbed all the wisdom of the “Holy Writ”. Bach was very faithful to his religious worldview and never betrayed him. According to the composer, even the smallest instrumental piece should point to the wisdom of the Creator.

Johann Sebastian Bach wrote his works in virtually all but the opera, known at that time musical genres. The compiled catalog of his works includes: 247 works for organ, 526 vocal works, 271 works for harpsichord, 19 solo works for various instruments, 31 concertos and orchestral suite, 24 duets for harpsichord with any other instrument, 7 canons and others works.

Musicians all over the world play Bach's music and they start to get acquainted with many of his works from childhood. For example, every little pianist who studies at a music school necessarily has in his repertoire pieces from "Notebook of Anna Magdalena Bach". Then, small preludes and fugues are studied, followed by inventions, and eventually "Well-Tempered Clavier"but this is already a high school.

Johann Sebastian’s famous works also include Matthew Passion, Mass in B Minor, Christmas Oratorio, John Passion, and, of course, Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. And the cantata "Lord is my King" is still heard at festive services in temples in different parts of the world.

Films about Bach

The great composer, being the largest figure in world music culture, has always attracted close attention, so many books have been written on Bach’s biography and his work, and feature films and documentaries have been shot. There are a lot of them, but the most significant of them are:

• "Johann Sebastian Bach's vain journey to fame" (1980, GDR) - a biopic film tells about the difficult fate of the composer, who traveled all his life in search of "his" place in the sun.
• "Bach: Fight for Freedom" (1995, Czech Republic, Canada) is a feature film about intrigues in the palace of the old duke, which began around Bach's rivalry with the best organist of the orchestra.
• “Four Hands Dinner” (1999, Russia) is an art motion picture that shows the meeting of two composers, Handel and Bach, which was not held in reality, but so welcome.
• "My name is Bach" (2003) - the film takes the audience in 1747, at a time when Johann Sebastian Bach arrived at the court of Prussian King Frederick II.
• "The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach" (1968) and "Johann Bach and Anna Magdalena" (2003) - the films show the relationship of Bach with his second wife, a capable student of her husband.
• "Anton Ivanovich is angry" - a musical comedy in which there is an episode: Bach is the main character in a dream and tells that he was terribly bored to write countless chorals, and he always dreamed of writing a funny operetta.
• “Silence before Bach” (2007) is a musical film that helps to plunge into the world of Bach's music, which turned the idea of ​​harmony to Europeans that existed before him.

From documentaries about the famous composer, it is necessary to mention such films as: "Johann Sebastian Bach: life and work, in two parts" (1985, USSR); "Johann Sebastian Bach" (German composers series 2004, Germany); "Johann Sebastian Bach" (series "Famous Composers" 2005, USA); "Johann Sebastian Bach - composer and theologian" (2016, Russia).

Bach Music in Movies

The music of Johann Sebastian, filled with philosophical content, as well as having a great emotional impact on a person, is often used by directors in the soundtracks of their films, for example:

Despite the troubles, Johann Sebastian Bach wrote a huge number of amazing essays. The composer’s work was continued by his famous sons, but none of them could have surpassed his father either in writing or in the performance of music. The name of the author of passionate and pure, incredibly talented and unforgettable works stands at the top of the world of music, and his recognition as a great composer continues to this day.