Johann Sebastian Bach was better known as a consummate organist than as a composer in his day. His sacred music, organ and choral works, and other instrumental music had an enthusiasm and seem freedom that concealed huge severity. Bach ‘s use of counterpoint was brilliant and innovative, and the huge complexities of his compositional style — which often included religious and numerological symbols that seem to fit perfectly together in a profound perplex of special codes — still amaze musicians today. many consider him the greatest composer of all meter.
Bach was born in Eisenach in 1685. He was taught to play the violin and harpsichord by his founder, Johann Ambrosius, a woo trumpeter in the service of the Duke of Eisenach. Young Johann was not so far ten when his father died, leaving him orphaned. He was taken in by his recently married oldest brother, Johann Christoph, who lived in Ohrdruf. Because of his excellent sing voice, Bach attained a placement at the Michaelis monastery at Lüneberg in 1700. His voice changed a abruptly while late, but he stayed on as an musician. After taking a ephemeral mail in Weimar in 1703 as a violinist, Bach became organist at the Neue Kirche in Arnstadt ( 1703-1707 ). His kinship with the church council was tenuous as the young musician often shirked his responsibilities, preferring to practice the electric organ. One score describes a four-month forget granted Bach, to travel to Lubeck where he would familiarize himself with the music of Dietrich Buxtehude. He returned to Arnstadt long after he was expected and much to the dismay of the council. He then briefly served at St. Blasius in Mühlhausen as organist, beginning in June 1707, and married his cousin, Maria Barbara Bach, that fall. Bach composed his celebrated Toccata and Fugue in D minor ( BWV 565 ) and his first cantatas while in Mühlhausen, but cursorily outgrew the musical resources of the town. He following took a post for the Duke of Sachsen-Weimar in 1708, serving as court organist and bet in the orchestra, finally becoming its drawing card in 1714. He wrote many organ compositions during this time period, including his Orgel-Büchlein. Owing to politics between the Duke and his officials, Bach left Weimar and secured a position in December 1717 as Kapellmeister at Cöthen. In 1720, Bach ‘s wife suddenly died, leaving him with four children ( three others had died in infancy ). A brusque while by and by, he met his second wife, soprano Anna Magdalena Wilcke, whom he married in December 1721. She would bear 13 children, though only five would survive childhood. The six Brandenburg Concertos ( BWV 1046-51 ), among many other secular works, date from his Cöthen years. Bach became Kantor of the Thomas School in Leipzig in May 1723 and held the post until his death. It was in Leipzig that he composed the bulge of his religious and laic cantatas. Bach finally became dissatisfy with this post, not entirely because of its meager fiscal rewards, but besides because of burdensome duties and inadequate facilities. therefore, he took on early projects, headman among which was the directorship of the city ‘s Collegium Musicum, an ensemble of professional and amateurish musicians who gave hebdomadally concerts, in 1729. He besides became music director at the Dresden Court in 1736, in the servicing of Frederick Augustus II ; though his duties were obscure and obviously few, they allowed him exemption to compose what he wanted. Bach began making trips to Berlin in the 1740s, not least because his son Carl Philipp Emanuel served as a court musician there. In May 1747, the composer was warmly received by King Frederick II of Prussia, for whom he wrote the gloriously abstruse musical offer ( BWV 1079 ). Among Bach ‘s last exploit was his 1749 Mass in B minor. Besieged by diabetes, he died on July 28, 1750.
Read more: Willem Dafoe