In this article you will learn:

Any lover of real music will truly admire this name.

Birth and childhood

The greatest composer was born in 1685, (March 21) into the large family of Johann Ambrosius Bach and his wife Elisabeth. The birthplace of little Johann was the small town of Eisenach (at that time the Holy Roman Empire). Sebastian was the eighth child and also the youngest.

Bach's passion for music was inherent in nature and this is not surprising, because most of his ancestors were professional musicians. Bach's father was also a musician, and at the time of the birth of his eighth son, he organized concerts in Eisenach.

At the age of 9, Sebastian’s mother died, and a year later his father left the world. The elder Bach, Johann Christoph, took on raising his younger brother.

Music lessons

Living with Christophe, Sebastian entered the gymnasium, simultaneously learning music from his brother. Christophe gave him lessons in playing various musical instruments, mainly the organ and clavier.

At the age of 15, the future genius began studying at a vocal school. It bore the name of St. Michael and was located in the city of Luneburg. Bach turned out to be an amazingly capable student. He eagerly learned the basics of musical art, studied the work of other musicians, and developed himself comprehensively. In Lüneburg, Johann wrote his first organ pieces.

First job

After graduating in 1703, the young genius went to serve Duke Ernst in Weimar. He served as a court musician. This responsibility weighed heavily on Bach, and with great relief he changed jobs, receiving the position of organist in the Church of St. Boniface in the city of Arndstadt.

The composer's musical talent began to bring him well-deserved fame.

In 1707, Johann decided to move to the city of Mülhusen, continuing to serve as a church musician in the Church of St. Blaise. The city authorities were very pleased with his work.

Weimar

That same year, Bach married for the first time. The girl's name was Maria Barbara, she was the musician's cousin.

In 1708 the family moved to Weimar. There Johann again began to serve as court organist. In Weimar, a young couple had 6 children, but unfortunately only three survived. All of them later became talented musicians.

It was in Weimar that Bach became famous as a skilled organist and harpsichord master. He absorbed the music of other countries and composed something unimaginable. Even the then famous Louis Marchand, a French organist, refused to compete with him. At this time, Bach created real masterpieces.

Köthen

Tired of Weimar, Bach decided to leave the service. For such a desire, he was even arrested, since the Duke did not want to let the musician go. But, soon, released, Johann went to give his music to the city of Köthen to the Duke of Anthalt-Köthen. This happened in 1717. During this period, the “Well-Tempered Clavier” and the famous “Brandenburg Concertos” were written, the Brandenburg Concertos, English and French suites were composed.

In 1720, while Bach was away, his wife Barbara died.

Bach married a singing star for the second time in 1721. The singer's name was Anna Magdalene Wilhelm. The marriage should be considered happy. The couple had 13 children.

The creative journey continues

In 1723, Bach performed the St. John Passion in the Church of St. Thomas. In the same year, he received the position of choir cantor there, and soon became the “musical director” of all the churches in the city.

The periods of Bach's life in Leipzig are considered the most productive.

The last years of the composer

At the end of his life, Johann Bach was rapidly losing his sight. The capricious public believed that his time had passed, and now he was writing boring and outdated music. And the musician continued to create, despite everything. Thus were born the plays called “Music of the Offering.”

Johann Sebastian Bach died on July 28, 1750. This happened in Leipzig. He was buried here. Grateful descendants did not erect a monument to the composer, and soon the grave was lost among other burials.

The composer's remains were found in 1894. They were solemnly reburied.

The composer’s ashes were disturbed for the third time in 1949. The fact is that the bombing damaged Bach's refuge. Again, a reburial ceremony had to be held. Now Bach's ashes rest in the altar of the Church of St. Thomas.

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The Tragedy of the Blind Musician Johann Sebastian Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach. March 21, 1685 - July 28, 1750
German composer and musician.

During his life, Bach wrote more than 1000 works. His work represented all the significant genres of that time, except opera... However, the composer was prolific not only in musical works. Over the years of his family life, he had twenty children.
Unfortunately, of this number of offspring of the great dynasty, exactly half remained alive...

Dynasty

Johann Sebastian Bach was the sixth child in the family of the violinist Johann Ambrose Bach, and his future was predetermined. All Bachs who lived in the Thuringian mountains from the beginning of the 16th century were flutists, trumpeters, organists, and violinists. Their musical talent was passed down from generation to generation. When Johann Sebastian was five years old, his father gave him a violin. The boy quickly learned to play it, and music filled his entire future life.
But the happy childhood ended early, when the future composer turned 9 years old. First his mother died, and a year later his father died. The boy was taken in by his older brother, who served as an organist in a neighboring town. Johann Sebastian entered the gymnasium - his brother taught him to play the organ and clavier. But performance alone was not enough for the boy - he was drawn to creativity. One day he managed to extract from a always locked closet a treasured music notebook, where his brother had written down the works of famous composers of that time. At night he secretly rewrote it. When the six-month work was already nearing its end, his brother caught him doing this and took away everything that had already been done... It is these sleepless hours in the moonlight that will have a detrimental effect on J. S. Bach’s vision in the future.

By the will of fate

At the age of 15, Bach moved to Lüneberg, where he continued his schooling at a church choir school. In 1707, Bach entered the service in Mühlhausen as an organist in the church of St. Vlasiya. Here he began to write his first cantatas. In 1708, Johann Sebastian married his cousin, also an orphan, Maria Barbara. She bore him seven children, four of whom survived. Many researchers attribute this circumstance to their close relationship. However, after the sudden death of his first wife in 1720 and his new marriage to the daughter of a court musician, Anna Magdalene Wilken, hard rock continued to haunt the musician’s family. This marriage produced 13 children, but only six survived.

Painting by E. Rosenthal. J. S. Bach with his family.

Perhaps this was a kind of payment for success in professional activity. Back in 1708, when Bach moved to Weimar with his first wife, luck smiled on him, and he became a court organist and composer. This time is considered to be the beginning of Bach’s creative path as a composer of music and the time of his intense creativity. In Weimar, Bach had sons, future famous composers Wilhelm Friedemann and Carl Philipp Emmanuel
.

Balthazar Denner. J. S. Bach with his sons.

Wandering Grave

In 1723, the first performance of his “Passion according to John” took place in the Church of St. Thomas in Leipzig, and soon Bach received the position of cantor of this church while simultaneously fulfilling the duties of a teacher at the church school. In Leipzig, Bach became the “musical director” of all the churches in the city, overseeing the personnel of musicians and singers and overseeing their training.

Monument to J. S. Bach at the Church of St. Thomas in Leipzig .

In the last years of his life, Bach was seriously ill, due to eye strain suffered in his youth. Shortly before his death, he decided to undergo cataract surgery, but after it he became completely blind. However, this did not stop the composer - he continued to compose, dictating works to his son-in-law Altnikkol. After the second operation on July 18, 1750, he regained his sight for a short time, but in the evening he suffered a stroke. Ten days later Bach died. The composer was buried near the Church of St. Thomas, where he served for 27 years.

However, later a road was built through the territory of the cemetery, and the grave of the genius was lost. But in 1984, a miracle happened: Bach’s remains were accidentally found during construction work, and then their ceremonial burial took place.

Johann Sebastian Bach is a great German composer, organ virtuoso, representative of the Baroque, and a talented music teacher.

Biography

Childhood

Johann Sebastian Bach was born into a fairly prosperous German family, in which he was the youngest of eight children. The father, Ambrosius Bach, was a musician and was responsible for the secular and sacred musical events of the city. The mother, Elisabeth Lemmerhirt, was the daughter of a wealthy official who gave her daughter a considerable dowry, thanks to which the family could exist comfortably. When Johann was 9 years old, Elisabeth died, and a year later Ambrosius died after her. The boy was taken in by his older brother, Johann Christoph, who lived next door in Ohrdruf.

Education

In Ohrdruf, Bach studied at the gymnasium and was passionate about music: he learned to play the organ and clavier. In 1700, the future composer moved to Lüneburg, where he studied at a vocal school.

Creative path

After graduating from vocal school, Bach received a court position and entered the disposal of Johann Ernst, Duke of Weimar. In just a few months of work in this city, the whole of Weimar knew about Bach as an excellent performer. He was invited to work as an organist at the Arnstadt Church of St. Boniface. During this period, Bach created major organ works.

Bach did not have a good relationship with the authorities, and he was forced to change his high-paying job. However, in his new position he did not lose any of his salary. In 1707, the composer took up the position of organist in Mühlhausen, in the Church of St. Blaise. Here the authorities value him highly, satisfy his every whim (for example, subjecting the temple organ system to a very expensive reconstruction) and pay him a high salary.

However, a year later he again leaves for Weimar to take the place of court organist and organizer of palace concerts. The Weimar period in Bach's life (1708–1717) is considered the heyday of his work. Here he has open access to a wonderful organ and never tires of composing his musical masterpieces. He borrows a lot from Italian music (dynamic rhythms and harmonic patterns), and writes most of his famous fugues.

In 1717, Bach left Weimar to work as a bandmaster for the Prince of Anhalt-Köthen, who was himself a musician and knew how to appreciate the composer’s talent. Here Bach, taking advantage of absolute freedom and practically unlimited funds, composed 6 suites for solo cello, suites for orchestra, English and French suites for clavier, 3 sonatas and 3 partitas for solo violin, Brandenburg Concertos.

After Bach's St. John's Passion was performed in one of the main churches in Leipzig, the composer was appointed chief musical director of all churches in Leipzig: he selected choirs, trained them and selected music. In Leipzig he composed mainly cantatas. Since 1729, Bach has headed the College of Music, which organized concerts in the famous Zimmermann coffee house.

By the end of the 30s, Bach's eyesight began to deteriorate sharply, but this did not stop the great composer from writing works: he dictated them to the recording, unable to see the notes himself. In 1750, John Taylor, an English ophthalmologist, operated on Bach twice, but both times were unsuccessful: Bach became blind.

Personal life

In 1707, the wife of the great composer Bach became his own cousin, Maria Barbara, whom he met in Arnstadt. Of the six children born to them during their marriage, three died in infancy, and the three surviving brothers strengthened their father’s musical fame and became composers. In 1720, family happiness was unexpectedly ended by the death of Mary.

But the following year, Bach married the young court singer Anna Magdalena Wilke.

Death

In 1750, after two unsuccessful eye surgeries, Bach died. His remains rest in the Church of St. Thomas in Leipzig, where he once worked.

Bach's major achievements

• The entire history of music is divided into two periods: pre-Bach and post-Bach.
• He wrote more than 1000 works of all existing musical genres with the exception of opera.
• Summarized all the music of the Baroque era.
• Bach is considered an unsurpassed master of polyphony.
• He had a huge influence on composers of all subsequent generations: many musicians of the 20th and 21st centuries are guided by the master in the world of music - Bach.

Important dates in Bach's biography

• 1685 - birth
• 1694 - death of mother
• 1695 - death of father, moving to Ohrdruf to live with his older brother
• 1700–1703 - Lüneburg vocal school
• 1703–1707 - position of organist in the church of Arnstadt
• 1707 - marriage to Maria Barbara, work as organist in the Mühlhausen church
• 1708 - position of court organist in Weimar
• 1717 - court bandmaster in Köthen
• 1720 - death of the first wife
• 1721 - marriage to Anna Magdalena Wilke
• 1722 - Volume I of “The Well-Tempered Clavier”
• 1723 - position of church music director in Leipzig
• 1724 - “St. John Passion”
• 1727 - “Matthew Passion”
• 1729 - head of the Musical College
• 1734 - “Christmas Oratorio”
• 1741 - “Goldberg Variations”
• 1744 - Volume II of “The Well-Tempered Clavier”
• 1749 - Mass in B minor
• 1750 - death

• When Bach was court organist in Weimar, the famous French musician Louis Marchand came to the city. The composers agreed to arrange a kind of musical duel. However, on the night before the announced concert at which this unusual duel was to take place, Marchand secretly left the city, not wanting to compete with such a great musician as Bach.
• Bach fell asleep only to music. When the sons learned to play the harpsichord, they took turns lulling their father to sleep every day with chords on this instrument.
• Bach was a deeply religious man and was a faithful husband and a wonderful family man to both wives.
• It was thanks to Bach that women’s voices began to be heard in churches: before him, only men were allowed to sing in the choirs. The first woman to sing in the church choir was his wife, Maria Barbara.
• The great composer knew how to earn good money and was not wasteful. However, there was one thing that Bach always did for free: he never charged money for private lessons.
• Bach's contemporary was Handel, who lived 50 km from Weimar. Both composers dreamed of meeting each other, but every time something prevented them. The meeting never took place, however, both of them were operated on by John Taylor, whom many considered a simple charlatan and not a doctor, shortly before his death.
• There is a legend, not documented, but mentioned by the composer’s first biographer: in order to hear the famous Dietrich Buxtehude, Bach walked on foot from Arnstadt to Lübeck, the distance between them is 300 km.

Johann Sebastian Bach is the greatest figure of world culture. The work of the universal musician who lived in the 18th century is all-encompassing in genre: the German composer combined and generalized the traditions of Protestant chorale with the traditions of music schools in Austria, Italy and France.

200 years after the death of the musician and composer, interest in his work and biography has not cooled, and contemporaries use Bach’s works in the twentieth century, finding relevance and depth in them. The composer's chorale prelude is heard in Solaris. The music of Johann Bach, as the best creation of mankind, was recorded on the Voyager Golden Record, attached to the spacecraft launched from Earth in 1977. According to the New York Times, Johann Sebastian Bach is the first of the ten world composers who created masterpieces that stand above time.

Childhood and youth

Johann Sebastian Bach was born on March 31, 1685 in the Thuringian city of Eisenach, located between the hills of the Hainig National Park and the Thuringian Forest. The boy became the youngest and eighth child in the family of professional musician Johann Ambrosius Bach.

There are five generations of musicians in the Bach family. Researchers counted fifty relatives of Johann Sebastian who connected their lives with music. Among them is the composer's great-great-grandfather, Faith Bach, a baker who carried a zither everywhere, a box-shaped plucked musical instrument.

The head of the family, Ambrosius Bach, played the violin in churches and organized social concerts, so he taught his youngest son his first music lessons. Johann Bach sang in the choir from an early age and delighted his father with his abilities and greed for musical knowledge.

At the age of 9, Johann Sebastian’s mother, Elisabeth Lemmerhirt, died, and a year later the boy became an orphan. The younger brother was taken into the care of the elder, Johann Christoph, a church organist and music teacher in the neighboring town of Ohrdruf. Christophe sent Sebastian to the gymnasium, where he studied theology, Latin, and history.

The older brother taught the younger brother to play the clavier and organ, but these lessons were not enough for the inquisitive boy: secretly from Christophe, he took out a notebook with works of famous composers from the closet and copied the notes on moonlit nights. But his brother discovered Sebastian doing something illegal and took away the notes.

At the age of 15, Johann Bach became independent: he got a job in Lüneburg and brilliantly graduated from the vocal gymnasium, opening his way to university. But poverty and the need to earn a living put an end to my studies.

In Lüneburg, curiosity pushed Bach to travel: he visited Hamburg, Celle and Lübeck, where he became acquainted with the work of famous musicians Reincken and Georg Böhm.

Music

In 1703, after graduating from high school in Lüneburg, Johann Bach got a job as a court musician in the chapel of the Weimar Duke Johann Ernst. Bach played the violin for six months and gained his first popularity as a performer. But soon Johann Sebastian got tired of pleasing the ears of gentlemen by playing the violin - he dreamed of developing and opening new horizons in art. Therefore, without hesitation, he agreed to take the vacant position of court organist in the Church of St. Boniface in Arnstadt, which is 200 kilometers from Weimar.

Johann Bach worked three days a week and received a high salary. The church organ, tuned according to the new system, expanded the capabilities of the young performer and composer: in Arnstadt, Bach wrote three dozen organ works, capriccios, cantatas and suites. But tense relations with the authorities pushed Johann Bach to leave the city after three years.

The last straw that outweighed the patience of the church authorities was the long excommunication of the musician from Arnstadt. The inert churchmen, who already disliked the musician for his innovative approach to the performance of cult sacred works, gave Bach a humiliating trial for his trip to Lubeck.

The famous organist Dietrich Buxtehude lived and worked in the city, whose improvisations on the organ Bach dreamed of listening to since childhood. Without money for a carriage, Johann went to Lübeck on foot in the fall of 1705. The master's performance shocked the musician: instead of the allotted month, he stayed in the city for four.

After returning to Arnstadt and arguing with his superiors, Johann Bach left his “hometown” and went to the Thuringian city of Mühlhausen, where he found work as an organist in the Church of St. Blaise.

The city authorities and church authorities favored the talented musician; his earnings turned out to be higher than in Arnstadt. Johann Bach proposed an economical plan for the restoration of the old organ, approved by the authorities, and wrote a festive cantata, “The Lord is My King,” dedicated to the inauguration of the new consul.

But a year later, the wind of wanderings “removed” Johann Sebastian from his place and transferred him to the previously abandoned Weimar. In 1708, Bach took the place of court organist and settled in a house next to the ducal palace.

The “Weimar period” of Johann Bach’s biography turned out to be fruitful: the composer composed dozens of keyboard and orchestral works, became acquainted with the work of Corelli, and learned to use dynamic rhythms and harmonic patterns. Communication with his employer, Crown Duke Johann Ernst, a composer and musician, influenced Bach’s work. In 1713, the Duke brought from Italy sheet music of musical works by local composers, which opened new horizons in art for Johann Bach.

In Weimar, Johann Bach began work on the “Organ Book,” a collection of choral preludes for the organ, and composed the majestic organ “Toccata and Fugue in D minor,” “Passacaglia in C minor,” and 20 spiritual cantatas.

By the end of his service in Weimar, Johann Sebastian Bach had become a well-known harpsichordist and organist. In 1717, the famous French harpsichordist Louis Marchand arrived in Dresden. Concertmaster Volumier, having heard about Bach's talent, invited the musician to compete with Marchand. But on the day of the competition, Louis fled the city, afraid of failure.

The desire for change called Bach on the road in the fall of 1717. The Duke released his beloved musician “with disgrace.” The organist was hired as bandmaster by Prince Anhalt-Keten, who was well versed in music. But the prince’s commitment to Calvinism did not allow Bach to compose sophisticated music for worship, so Johann Sebastian wrote mainly secular works.

During the Köthen period, Johann Bach composed six suites for cello, the French and English keyboard suites, and three sonatas for violin solos. The famous “Brandenburg Concertos” and a cycle of works, including 48 preludes and fugues, called “The Well-Tempered Clavier” appeared in Köthen. At the same time, Bach wrote two- and three-voice inventions, which he called “symphonies.”

In 1723, Johann Bach took a job as cantor of the St. Thomas choir in the Leipzig church. In the same year, the public heard the composer’s work “St. John’s Passion.” Soon Bach took the position of “musical director” of all the city churches. During the 6 years of the “Leipzig period”, Johann Bach wrote 5 annual cycles of cantatas, two of which are lost.

The city council gave the composer 8 choral performers, but this number was extremely small, so Bach hired up to 20 musicians himself, which caused frequent clashes with the authorities.

In the 1720s, Johann Bach composed mainly cantatas for performance in the churches of Leipzig. Wanting to expand his repertoire, the composer wrote secular works. In the spring of 1729, the musician was appointed head of the College of Music, a secular ensemble founded by Bach's friend Georg Philipp Telemann. The ensemble performed two-hour concerts twice a week for a year at Zimmerman's Coffee House near the market square.

Most of the secular works composed by the composer from 1730 to 1750 were written by Johann Bach to be performed in coffee houses.

These include the humorous “Coffee Cantata”, the comic “Peasant Cantata”, keyboard pieces and concertos for cello and harpsichord. During these years, the famous “Mass in B minor” was written, which is called the best choral work of all time.

For spiritual performance, Bach created the High Mass in B minor and the St. Matthew Passion, receiving from the court the title of Royal Polish and Saxon court composer as a reward for his creativity.

In 1747, Johann Bach visited the court of King Frederick II of Prussia. The nobleman offered the composer a musical theme and asked him to write an improvisation. Bach, a master of improvisation, immediately composed a three-part fugue. He soon supplemented it with a cycle of variations on this theme, called it a “Musical Offering” and sent it as a gift to Frederick II.

Another large cycle, called “The Art of Fugue,” was not completed by Johann Bach. The sons published the series after their father's death.

In the last decade, the composer's fame faded: classicism flourished, and contemporaries considered Bach's style old-fashioned. But young composers, brought up on the works of Johann Bach, revered him. The work of the great organist was also loved.

A surge of interest in the music of Johann Bach and a revival of the composer's fame began in 1829. In March, pianist and composer Felix Mendelssohn organized a concert in Berlin, where the work “St. Matthew Passion” was performed. An unexpectedly loud response followed, and the performance attracted thousands of spectators. Mendelssohn went with concerts to Dresden, Koenigsberg and Frankfurt.

Johann Bach’s work “A Musical Joke” is still one of the favorites of thousands of performers around the world. Playful, melodic, gentle music sounds in different variations, adapted for playing modern instruments.

Western and Russian musicians popularize Bach's music. The vocal ensemble The Swingle Singers released their debut album Jazz Sebastian Bach, which brought the group of eight vocalists world fame and a Grammy Award.

The music of Johann Bach was also arranged by jazz musicians Jacques Lussier and Joel Spiegelman. A Russian performer tried to pay tribute to the genius.

Personal life

In October 1707, Johann Sebastian Bach married his young cousin from Arnstadt, Maria Barbara. The couple had seven children, but three died in infancy. Three sons - Wilhelm Friedemann, Carl Philipp Emmanuel and Johann Christian - followed in their father's footsteps and became famous musicians and composers.

In the summer of 1720, when Johann Bach and the Prince of Anhalt-Köthen were abroad, Maria Barbara died, leaving four children.

The composer’s personal life improved a year later: at the Duke’s court, Bach met the young beauty and talented singer Anna Magdalena Wilke. Johann married Anna in December 1721. They had 13 children, but 9 outlived their father.

In his old age, family turned out to be the only consolation for the composer. For his wife and children, Johann Bach composed vocal ensembles and organized chamber concerts, enjoying the songs of his wife (Anna Bach had a beautiful soprano) and the playing of his grown-up sons.

The fate of Johann Bach's wife and youngest daughter was sad. Anna Magdalena died ten years later in a house of contempt for the poor, and the youngest daughter Regina eked out a semi-beggarly existence. In the last years of her life, Ludwig van Beethoven helped the woman.

Death

In the last 5 years, Johann Bach's vision rapidly deteriorated, but the composer composed music, dictating works to his son-in-law.

In 1750, British ophthalmologist John Taylor arrived in Leipzig. The doctor’s reputation can hardly be called impeccable, but Bach grasped at straws and took a chance. After the operation, the musician’s vision did not return. Taylor operated on the composer a second time, but after a short-term return of vision, deterioration occurred. On July 18, 1750, there was a stroke, and on July 28, 65-year-old Johann Bach died.

The composer was buried in Leipzig in a church cemetery. The lost grave and remains were found in 1894 and reburied in a stone sarcophagus in the Church of St. John, where the musician served for 27 years. The temple was destroyed by bombing during World War II, but the ashes of Johann Bach were found and transferred in 1949, buried at the altar of the Church of St. Thomas.

In 1907, a museum was opened in Eisenach, where the composer was born, and in 1985 a museum appeared in Leipzig.

• Johann Bach's favorite pastime was visiting provincial churches dressed as a poor teacher.
• Thanks to the composer, both men and women sing in church choirs. Johann Bach's wife became the first church choir member.
• Johann Bach did not take money for private lessons.
• The surname Bach is translated from German as “stream”.

• Johann Bach spent a month in prison for constantly asking for resignation.
• George Frideric Handel is a contemporary of Bach, but the composers did not meet. The fates of the two musicians are similar: both went blind as a result of an unsuccessful operation performed by the quack doctor Taylor.
• A complete catalog of Johann Bach's works was published 200 years after his death.
• A German nobleman ordered the composer to write a piece, after listening to which he would be able to fall into a deep sleep. Johann Bach fulfilled the request: the famous Goldberg Variations are still a good “sleeping pill”.

Aphorisms of Bach

• “To get a good night's sleep, you should go to bed on a different day than you need to wake up.”
• “Playing the keyboard is easy: you just need to know which keys to press.”
• “The purpose of music is to touch hearts.”

Musical works

• "Ave Maria"
• "English Suite N3"
• "Brandenburg Concert N3"
• "Italian Influence"
• "Concert N5 F-Minor"
• "Concert N1"
• "Concerto for cello and orchestra D-Minor"
• "Concerto for flute, cello and harp"
• "Sonata N2"
• "Sonata N4"
• "Sonata N1"
• "Suite N2 B-Minor"
• "Suite N2"
• "Suite for Orchestra N3 D-Major"
• "Toccata and Fugue D-Minor"

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Childhood years

Johann Sebastian Bach(1685 – 1750) was born in the provincial town of Eisenach in Thuringia (Germany). His family gave the world several generations of musicians. The first music lessons were received from his father, a city violinist. His parents died early, and from the age of 9 he lived in the family of his brother, who was an organist, although as a teacher he was pedantic and could not satisfy the needs of his younger brother. Johann Sebastian not only studied music, playing the harpsichord, viola, and violin, but sought to get acquainted with the achievements of European music.

Life in the provinces

Germany at that time consisted of many small states. I.S. Bach had to come into close contact with a stagnant, inert environment, where his zeal, talent and creative imagination caused only discontent. This was the case in the princely chapel of Weimar, in the New Church of Arnstadt, in the Church of St. Blaise in Mühlhausen.

Secular service

Having gained experience and having several magnificent church works, Bach again moved in 1708 to Weimar to the local duke. This was the first secular service where he could develop his ideas not only in the field of church genres. Written here Toccata and Fugue in D minor, Passacaglia in C minor, Toccata in C major and famous "Organ book". Having become vice-kapellmeister (1714), Bach received more freedom for creativity. He composes cantatas based on biblical and choral texts, largely avoiding stereotypes.

A new life and creative stage begins in Köthen, where Bach receives the position of conductor. Written here “Notebook of Anna Magdalena Bach”, “English Suites”, “Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue”, vocal secular works, etc. Pedagogical works intended for students deserve special mention.

Leipzig period (1723-1750)

In Lepzig I.S. Bach runs a school of singers and works at the Music College. These years created “John Passion”, “Matthew Passion”, “High Mass”, “Christmas Oratorio” etc. Based on the improvisation performed for King Frederick II, Bach creates a grandiose cycle "Musical Offering". The composer performs weekly concerts, writes 150 cantatas and works for clavier and orchestra. In his last years of life, he was sick a lot, his eyesight especially suffered: the operation that Bach decided on did not help. He went blind, but continued to dictate new works.

Personal life

Bach's first wife Maria Barbara, died, leaving 4 small children. With my second wife Anna Magdalena Wilke, a gifted singer who became his faithful companion and assistant, Bach lived until his last day. Two sons, Wilhelm Friedemann and Carl Philipp Emmanuel, gained fame as composers.

Posthumous fame

Bach's work was not popular for a long time. His first biography appeared only 52 years after his death. In the 1850s, a systematic study of creativity began, work on collecting and publishing works, determining authorship and clarifying biographical facts. In the twentieth century, many performers began to use the harpsichord instead of the piano, trying to recreate the spirit of Bach's music. There is a “Bach Society”, festivals and competitions are held named after. I.S. Bach, several museums are open.

Major works

In total, Bach owns more than 1000 concertos, claviers, cantatas, oratorios, fugues, symphonies, masses, preludes and other works, including a rich organ heritage, a number of vocal and violin works:

• Well-tempered clavier- a cycle of works, which includes 48 preludes, fugues for clavier, combined into 2 volumes of 24 works
• Musical Offering- cycle of canons, fugues, trio sonatas and other works
• Cantata No. 211, Coffee shop
• Cantata No. 212, Peasant
• Mass in B minor
• Christmas Oratorio
• St. John's Passion
• St. Matthew Passion
• Organ book