JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (German) (1685 – 1750)
Composer.
It is one of the quirks of music history that Bach who was passed off as a reactionary, should seem to the successive generations as ‘arch-progressive’. Of course to the modern generation familiar with the syncopated beats of jazz and popular music Bach seems to strike a special bond. Whereas artists of the past judged Bach to be nothing more than ‘jiggling monotony-‘ ‘a sublime sewing machine’ Colette once called him -he is considered a phenomenon of our time. In technique alone Bach was probably the most accomplished composer on the history of music. Bach was born in 1685 at Eisenach. He had his earliest lessons in music from his father and from his older brother. Orphaned at the age of nine he set out on a career as a journeyman musician. He was 15. Later he joined the court of Weimar as violinist. Passed over for the job of court conductor Bach obtained a similar position with Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Cöthen where his fortunes declined. In a monumental miscalculation Bach accepted the post of choir master at Leipzig’s St. Thomas School. His family obligations were increasing too. After the death of his first wife he married second time who besides being a stepmother to his four surviving children bore him another thirteen herself. For the next 15 years he turned out masses, passions, oratorios and cantatas. The bulk of his works were composed in such dreary conditions. In his later years Bach turned away from church composition and developed an even more austere and adventurous secular idiom more for his own pleasure.
A single worldly triumph crowned Bach’s old age, when King Frederich the Great, a gifted amateur musician himself, invited him to the court at Potsdam.
His eyes were failing and finally at 65, just before dying, he lay in bed almost totally blind and dictated his last composition, the Chorale, ‘Before Thy Throne I stand’. Bach was the last great voice of the polyphonic style that had lasted since the early 15th century. Albert Schweitzer’s study of Bach did much to credit Bach his rightful place in the field of music. Now the music history is divided into two basic periods – pré Bach and post Bach era.
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