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Johann Sebastian Bach is a name that comes up among the first when it comes to naming the most important musicians in human history. Despite this, during his lifetime Bach was mostly regarded as a famous organist, not as a composer. He has worked with some of the established musical forms, and greatly perfected and expanded on them.
Johann Sebastian Bach was born in Eisenach, in the duchy of Saxe-Eisenach, on 31 March 1685. The youngest of the eight sons of Johann Ambrosius Bach, he has been exposed to music from the very childhood. His father was a director of the musicians of the town of Eisenach in Thuringia and a court trumpeter of Duke of Eisenach. The musical tradition was strong throughout Bach family, as many of his precursors held important positions in the region, and were widely recognized as talented musicians.
Almost all of the family members, including his many uncles and most of his brothers, were professional musicians or strove to become one. It is not known for certain who was responsible for giving him his starting skills in music, but it is almost a certainty that each member of his great musical family took part in it. He was probably taught to play the harpsichord and violin by his father, while his elder brother, Johann Christoph Bach, introduced him to the contemporary music and showed him the basics of the clavichord. One of his prominent uncles, Johann Christoph Bach, has taught him to play the organ.
Besides, his father was teaching music at their home, which had several rooms for musical apprentices, so the exposure to the variety and the quality of music was immense. At the age of eight he went to Latin Grammar School, where, alongside reading and writing, he was able to widen his musical education by participating in the school choir.
At the age of ten, Johann becomes an orphan, after losing his mother and father within a year. Johann Sebastian and Johann Jacob, two of the youngest in the family, are taken to Ohrdruf by their elder brother, Johann Christoph, who is already a recognized and successful organist of the town. J. C. Bach continues and expands his brothers musical education by introducing him to contemporary composers, both German and foreign: the French Jean-Baptiste Lully, Louis Marchand, and Marin Marais; and the Italian clavierist Girolamo Frescobaldi.
The exposure to other schools of music is considered among the major influences on J. S. Bachs music, as his own works later show elements characteristic of Italian and French schools. At this point, it is already apparent that music becomes his passion: according to one of his biographers, he is often seen copying the music despite being forbidden to do so due to the high cost of the music manuscript paper (Wolff, 2002).
In 1700, Bach, alongside his friend Georg Erdmann entered a prestigious school of St. Michael in Luneburg. While not much is known about his two-year studying there, it was undoubtedly important for two reasons: first, in addition to the obvious benefits of studying in the prestigious establishment, he has further widened his worldview and made new important friends with members of German aristocracy. Second, he came in contact with two prominent organists, Georg Bohm, who was also Bachs teacher, and Johann Adam Reincken. The recent discovery of the organ tablatures authored by Bach and written around that period are among the earliest reliable sources that indicate his commitment and level of skill and understanding of music (Stauffer, 2014).
At 1703, after graduation, Bach obtained his first post as the court musician of Duke Johann Ernst, but in that same year, he was invited to be an organist in the church of Arnstadt. Being 18 years of age, he was excited to have his own instrument at his disposal, as well as a dedicated congregation. However, in 1705 he has taken leave to visit Lubeck in order to hear Dietrich Buxtehude, one of the most famous organists of the time. The 200-mile journey was a lengthy endeavor in the eighteenth century, and the impact of music and subsequent discussions with Buxtehude have proven enough to delay his return to Arnstadt by three months.
Upon his return, his music was already considerably different from established church standards, featuring unusual variations and ornaments which made it hard for the choir to follow (Geck, 2006). This, along with his unplanned absence and subsequent conflicts with members of the choir has triggered his move to other church at Muhlhausen in 1707. Remarkably, by this time he has arguably already produced what is now regarded one of his finest works, and the one most readily recognized by the public Toccata and Fugue in D Minor.
Interestingly enough, the most famous of Bachs works is also one of the most uncertain ones, with its age varying from 1705 to 1750. Several researchers even point to the fact that the piece may not be of Bachs authorship, but the debate has never reached any conclusive point, and Toccata and Fugue in D Minor is still widely believed to be written by Bach.
The majority of pieces were written a decade later, when he was in a position of Kapellmeister at the court of Cothen, from 1717 onward. Most of his works were most likely influenced by his devout Christianity, as some of the scholars point to the quality of his works written for church chorales superseding all his other pieces. He has worked mostly within the conventions of the age, so most of his music falls into the late Baroque category.
However, he also widened some of the aspects of the previously established norms, like those of four-part harmony. In times of his life, the harmony was shifting from the modal to the tonal system. While not the only one working in this direction, Bach is considered responsible for popularizing it (Chafe, 2003). The use of modulation was also pushed beyond the established boundaries by Bach, as most of the musical instruments of the time were bound to their key of tuning. The organ, however, allowed to bypass this limitation, the fact that Bach, a skilled technician and organist, was exploiting this feature extensively (Richards, 2006).
While not regarded as a positive innovation at the time of his life, especially when applied to a more traditional church music, his experimentation helped to transcend the boundaries and trigger the shift to the Classical era of music. The ornamentation used by Bach also was considerably criticized and was probably influenced by the latest tendencies in Italian church music, which incorporated rich operatic variations in some types of masses. However, it was later included in the majority of the pieces by contemporary composers.
Despite being recognized only by a handful of music professionals during his life, insufficiently documented, or debated, Bachs work was rediscovered in the nineteenth century and since then regarded as one of the turning points in world music and culture. His pieces were both well-crafted and innovative to achieve limited popularity initially and remain valuable to this day.
References
Chafe, E. (2003). Analyzing Bach cantatas. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Geck, M. (2006). Johann Sebastian Bach: life and work. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Richards, A. (2006). C.P.E. Bach studies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Stauffer, G. (2014). Why Bach moves us. Web.
Wolff, C. (2002). Johann Sebastian Bach: the learned musician. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
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