Johann Sebastian Bach
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Johann Sebastian Bach created works that are revered for their intellectual depth and technical and artistic beauty. Although he introduced no new forms, he enriched the prevailing German style with a robust contrapuntal technique, an unrivaled control of harmonic and motivic organization in composition for diverse musical forces, and the adaptation of rhythms and textures from abroad, particularly Italy and France. A revival of interest and performances of his music began early in the 19th century, and he is now widely considered to be one of the greatest composers in the Western tradition.
Johann Sebastian Bach was the youngest child born into a musical family. When he was ten years old his parents died and he moved in with his brother. His brother instructed him on the clavichord and influenced his musical education greatly. At age fourteen he received a choral scholarship and upon graduation became organist at St. Boniface's Church in Arnstadt. He was offered a more lucrative post as organist at St. Blasius's in Mühlhausen, a large and important city to the north. The following year, he took up this senior post with significantly improved pay and conditions, including a good choir. Four months after arriving at Mühlhausen, he married his second cousin from Arnstadt, Maria Barbara Bach. They had seven children, four of whom survived to adulthood. After Muhlhausen, Bach became the court organist and concertmaster at the ducal court in Weimar. This marked the start of a sustained period of composing keyboard and orchestral works, in which he had attained the technical proficiency and confidence to extend the prevailing large-scale structures and to synthesize influences from abroad. From the music of Italians such as Vivaldi, Corelli and Torelli, he learnt how to write 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. Bach died on 28 July 1750 at the age of 65 from the consequences of an unsuccessful eye operation. During his life he composed more than 1,000 works. Bach's musical style arose from his extraordinary fluency in contrapuntal invention and motivic control, his flair for improvisation at the keyboard, his exposure to South German, North German, Italian and French music, and his apparent devotion to the Lutheran liturgy. His access to musicians, scores and instruments as a child and a young man, combined with his emerging talent for writing tightly woven music of powerful sonority, appear to have set him on course to develop an eclectic, energetic musical style in which foreign influences were injected into an intensified version of the pre-existing German musical language.
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