The Life of Johann Sebastian Bach and his major works

An extended essay by Alex Lu for Mr J Thorogood

JOHANN Sebastian Bach was a composer of extreme mathematical genius. He and he alone perfected the system of keys and harmony that we have today after the Italian masters Arcangelo Corelli and Antonio Vivaldi first moved away from the system of modes that was employed before. He had great sense of form & structure, and saw music with insight from a broad perspective. A devoted Christian, he spent most of his life composing sacred music, and he believed that it was God who gave him the inspiration and his talent, and it was his duty to serve him.

The last of six children, Johann Sebastian Bach was born in Eisenach, a small town near Lepizig in Germany, on the 21st of March, 1685, and christened locally at the historic Georgenkirche. His father Johann Ambrosius had married Maria Elisabetha Lammerhirt in 1668 and three years later they settled in Eisenach. At this time, Johann Christoph, who was later to become Johann Sebastian\'s guardian once their father had died in 1695, was born. Very little is known now about the first 8 years of Bach\'s life, except that he did not attend school until the age of 8, when he was admitted to the local Lateinschule in level 5 (Quinta). Not much music was taught at school, the primary curriculum being Latin grammar and Religious instructions. At school Johann Sebastian\'s Greek and logic would probably had been taught, but he did not have a strong interest in those subjects, and was showing a preference towards theology. Most of his early musical education probably came from home, where all of Johann Ambrosius\'s children learnt music - he was a town-musician, and he taught Johann Sebastian to play the violin. The Bach family had always been musicians, and the first Bach can be traced back to Johann Bach of 1604, so they were by no means the first, but in Johann Sebastian\'s childhood he was a prodigy who showed interest and promise. Most of his achievements was probably due to his genius; but without this environment his works would not have been half as influential.

Elsewhere in Germany, Georg Friedrich Handel was born in Halle on the 23rd of the February, just 26 days before. Also in the same year Dominico Scarlatti was born, though they are not to meet until very much later. At this time a lot of the music was still in the early Baroque style, crisp and simple. The leading composers at the time was Claudio Monteverdi, Henry Purcell and the Italian masters. In Theuringia, the region Bach was living in, there were not much in the way of opera-buffs, for this brings in the fashionable Italian influence. They were rightly proud of being the true "German" baroque - instrumental music and sacred vocal music of a thicker texture, serious tone. The advent of the chorale (German Hymn) had certainly contributed to this trend of conservative musicians. From the very beginning Johann Sebastian was not exposed to opera, and had never studied abroad. It is possibly for this reason he did not write a single opera for performance at a court, nor did he ever work for the theatre during his relatively long lifespan.

After his days at the Lateinschule, he was educated at the Eisenach Grammar School, and did well at school, showing a strong inclination toward theology. In the early 1690s, Bach\'s family had suffered heavy losses: first of all the loss of 2 of his brothers, and shortly followed by his mother. His father remarried with Barbara Margaretha Bartholomaei, but he was only to pass away 3 months later. At this time Bach was already a competent violinist who had taken up the viola that was to be his main string instrument for the rest of his life, and he had a fair knowledge of music theory. When he was sent to Johann Christopher in Ohrdruf, he was given keyboard instructions. On his arrival, he was enrolled in the third class at the old Klosterschule, with the reformed timetable where geography, music and natural sciences were also taught. Several moves were to follow, possibly due to a lack of money on Johann Christoph\'s part. He contemplated university education, but decided against it. It was not until 1702 when he was 17 he began to look for a more permanent position and started to develop his career as a phallic musician. In 1703 he found employment at the court of Weimar as a minor violinist, but was often called to substitute the organist which reflects his exceptional abilities.

At the time of Bach, the society was very much based on the "Lord of the Manor" concept, even in Germany. Musicians were a special sort of servant, who also had to be faithful to their masters and had to wear uniform at work. If one was born in a particular province, and the land happened to belong to the local Duke, one was to be his servant. Although the servants are generally fairly well looked after, there was still little freedom, and one could not change trade easily.

In 1703, after testing the new organ in the church of St Boniface of Arnstadt, 20 miles south-west of Weimar, he was invited to become the organist and choirmaster there with a good salary. He was allowed to test the organ as he had family connexion in Arnstadt - a few distant relatives as well as his stepmother Barbara Margaretha. They were so impressed by his mastery that an appointment was made on the spot. After that he often had contracts as an organ consultant. For only an organ-master would know how to adjust precisely the wind pressure and such components for the newly-built organ to sound best with the acoustics. In 1705 he obtained a month\'s leave to hear Buxtehude play and direct the famous Abendmusiken at Lubeck, returning only some months later. He was interested in succeeding Buxtehude as the organist there, but refused when he found out that he had to marry Buxtehude\'s daughter, Anna Margaretha! Handel was known to have refused the post for exactly the same reason. In any case, the church council was not pleased with his late return, and the congregation disliked the innovation he introduced into the services, and he soon made a move to Mahlhausen, a free-city 36 miles north-west of Arnstadt, in 1707 as an organist at the church of St Blasius.

At Mulhausen he married Maria Barbara Bach, a second cousin, and hence carried out his duties with energy of a prolific composer in his early twenties. She was the source of much of his happiness. During the year there, he wrote a festive cantata Gott ist mein Konig, (God is my shepherd, BWV 71) for the inauguration of city council in 1708 and also various cantatas of moderate interest. He also wrote a great number of solo keyboard works, among them Partitas, Prelude & Fugues, and Fantasias. He acquired his fame largely through his virtuoso organ playing in secular contexts. However, the opportunities for composition and performance is still somewhat limited. He left in June 1708 after a dispute between the factions of orthodox Luterans and the more puritan Pietists threatened to restrict what music could be performed there - although some say that Bach did not necessarily involve himself in the dispute. He accepted an invitation to be the organist and court musician to Duke Wilhelm Ernst of Weimar. Despite the problems at Mulhausen, he remained on good terms with the employer, and in 1709 returned to perform Ein\' feste Burg (BWV 720) on the newly restored organ, the building of which he had supervised.

At Weimer he had access to a small organ with a 32\' pedal, and he was able to widen his styles by studying the Italian concerti by Vivaldi, by this time published editions were available. He made keyboard arrangements of many of Vivaldi\'s concerti grossi and called them \'Organ Concerti\' but they were in fact Concerti for Solo Organ. His relative Johann Gottfried Walther was also living in Weimer, who was the principal organist at the local Herderkirche (also known as Stadtkirche) at that time. They were in close collaboration for the musical education of the young and talented Prince Johann Ernst, for which Johann Sebastian was responsible. They maintained a good relation throughout his stay at Weimer. The famous "Toccata and Fugue, in D minor" (BWV 565) and the "Fantasia in G minor" belongs to this period. His technique on the organ, particularity on the pedals became well known. Pedals had only recently been introduced into German organs at this point, and he was sought after as an advisor for upgrading existing organ or building new organs. He adopted a new cantata style, using the Neumeister type of text, in which recitatives and arias were employed.

It is during his stay at Weimer the six children born to Maria Barbara were christened at the Stadtkirche. Catharina Dorothea was the first girl, born in 1708; Wilhelm Friedmann was the first boy, born in 1710, and continued the Bach family tradition of music-making exceedingly successfully. Carl Phillip Emanual, however, came much later, in 1714, and became an important composer in his own right. This fruitful period did not last very long, and 1716 he was not promoted to Kapellmeister when the vacancy arose. There were also several rows regarding his salary, in one case even required a letter from a lawyer to settle the matter with his employer. He also requested a promotion to Kapellmeister, and when it was declined, he decided it was worthwhile looking elsewhere. He was offered the post of director of music to Prince Leopold of Cothen (the Duke of Weimar\'s brother-in-law), but his employer would not release him, and he was sent to prison for a month before he was discharged.

At Cothen, sacred music was unnecessary, and Bach put his energy into teaching. During the Cothen period, he composed many pieces intended for teaching, which includes the 48 Well-tempered clavier (Book I) and the two-part inventions, which was intended for his children. He also wrote the 6 Brandenburg Concerti in the latest Italian style, and the four Orchestral Suites in the French Manner. The former was dedicated to the Margrave of Brandenburg, and the latter for performances at Cothen. The orchestra at Cothen was a small and efficient unit, and he was able to purchase the instruments he wanted, so he was able to experiment a little with new styles. A few fun-things happened while he was at Cothen: a contest was laid on for him and Louis Marchand, the French Organist from Dresden. On the day of the duel, it was discovered that Marchand had left the town with the morning mail express, presumably found his ability unequal to the powerful assaults of his opponent.

While he was away in Carlsbad in 1720, his first wife died, and this seemed to have been a major shock to him, so he applied for the post of organist at St Jacob\'s, Hamburg. However, he was turned down and therefore he stayed at Cothen, and a year later he married Anna Magdalena Wilcken, the daughter of a court trumpeter there. The Prince also married two months later to a cousin of his, Princess Friederica Henrietta, who Johann Sebastian referred to as the \'amusa\' and has little interest in music. The wedding was followed by 6 weeks of festivities at Cothen and no doubt he would have provided music for the occasion. In many ways he saw this as his own celebration with Anna Magdalena. However, after the festival the Prince\'s interest in music also declined, though this is not a overriding factor in his decision to leave Cothen, for the \'amusa\' died soon after the wedding, in April 1722. He looked elsewhere for a job, and in 1723 he was appointed Kantor at St Thomas\'s Leipzig, only after Telemann and Graupner had refused the post because they failed to secure release from their former employers. This should not be taken to mean that he was considered inferior to the two; it was because his name did not appear on the initial list of possible candidates, and he had to later present himself to the church authority. After his test performance at which he performed his cantata Nrs. 47 & 48, the church council voted unanimously for him. Nevertheless he kept friendly relations with Cothen and he provided a funeral cantata in 1729 for the death of Prince Leopold.

Bach\'s duties as the Kantor were a mixture of schoolmaster, director of music at several churches, and composer for civic occasions. He and his pupils provided music at four churches, two of which had elaborate Sunday services including a cantata on alternate Sundays. He was generally restricted to inadequate forces for a back-breaking task. Though his appointment as Kantor was in fact at Thomaschule, the school associated with the nearby Thomaskirche, he was required to provide a great deal of music in another church, the Nikolaikirche. In the first year at Leipzig, he had to write (or sometimes reworked) a cantata for every Sunday and major festival, composing some 150 between 1723 and 1727. Many of these are extraordinarily difficult to perform, especially the solo parts, and they were probably given inadequately. He composed the Passion according to St John shortly before he left Cothen, and was one of the things that was first to be heard at Leipzig, on Good Friday 1724. He probably composed other works which had been lost, but his finest setting, the St Matthew\'s Passion was to elaborate for the taste of the congregation and the city elders.

His stay at Leipzig was not a smooth one: in 1726 he had a extended disagreement with the local university over the way in which the services should be conducted, and about his Accidenten, the extra salary laid-on for special occasions. The new service that the university proposed was based on lower payment of Accidenten, and Bach preferred the better-paid old service. Eventually he appealed to the King of Saxony, and the old service was reinstated with the correct amount of Accidenten. However, for some reason that we may never know, he did not take up the offer and from 1726 he only associated himself with the university on special occasions. In some ways these disputes are brought on by his own ability. Gorner, the university director of music, was extremely unhappy with the way Bach was often preferred on formal occasions, and had repeatedly attempted to deny him rights to perform for the university. If it had not been his honourary title Kapellmeister von Haus aus at Cothen, he could well have been eliminated long ago. The title ensured that the university council had a good excuse to rule in favour of him.

Bach\'s energy during this period was exceptional, and he was keen to expand his activities. By 1730 he was disenchanted with the with the conditions of St Thomas and wrote a stiff memorandum to the church authorities. They threatened to reduced his salary, so he began to look for a job elsewhere. His letter to Erdmann, an old schoolfriend from Ohrdruf, did not bring much success. But with his abilities he could have moved on fairly quickly. The only reason he had stayed was because he was appointed the director of the collegium musicum and he was able to meet intellectuals and students from the local university. He is now composing fewer cantatas, and instead he turned to keyboard music, and wrote numerous harpsichord concerti, some for more than two harpsichords. He also wrote or revised a vast amount of Organ works, including the Goldberg variations, which was published in four volumes.

He was made the Royal Court composer to the King of Saxony, which allowed him to visit Dresden quite frequently. In 1737 he resigned from the collegium musicum because of a dispute which went to the Courts at Dresden. However, in 1739 he was appointed again. His children, born to Anna Magdalena, was now doing him much credit, with Wilhelm Friedemann now working as organist at the Sophienkirche, and Carl Philipp Emanuel as court musician to Frederick the Great in Berlin.

In his last years Bach composed little, but he sorted out many of his earlier pieces and made collections suitable for publication. He published the second edition of the well-tempered clavier, and the B minor mass was revised thoroughly. He started on the Art of Fugue after his trip to Berlin, where he was received with great enthusiasm, however, he did not live to finish the collection. Towards the end of his life he became blind, and John Taylor (Handel\'s oculist) was unable to revive his eyes. A first operation revived his eyesight a little, but a few days later a second operation was necessary followed by the complete loss of sight. One morning in the middle of July he found his eyesight suddenly restored, but a few hours later he was seized by a stroke, and died later that evening despite attention from two of the best doctors in Leizpig. He was buried honourably near the South door of St John\'s Church, but the precise location of the grave was soon forgotten. It was not until 1894 that his remains were exhumed and identified; in 1950 they were transferred to their present resting-place in the Thomaskirche. Anna Magdalena did not receive much from his will (she received one-third of all the properties, and the remaining two-thirds was equally shared among his nine sons.) She was rather meanly treated by the church authorities, and died of poverty in 1760.

The works of Johann Sebastian Bach

Unlike many composers of the Baroque era, J.S.Bach did not in fact write a single opera in his long and distinguished musical career - due to the local traditions of his birthplace. The obvious difficulty with analysing the works of such a major composer is that J.S.Bach has major works in almost every genre of music - unlike many of his contemporaries - for example, Corelli wrote exclusively instrumental music, and Gluck wrote almost entirely for the theatre. Also, some of the works published in his name may, in fact, have been written by his relatives, or added at a later date by enterprising publishers. Sometimes he uses old tunes and wrote new arrangements for a particular occasion. His works are generally divided into 2 main categories: sacred and secular. For the moment we shall only focus on the most outstanding of Bach\'s works.

Sacred music. While he was working as a director of music at Leizpig, he wrote for his choir a cantata for every Sunday of the year - and he was able to do this for a few years. As a result he had managed to write a grand total of 295 church cantatas, of which 202 survived until today. It is not uncommon that he could write 5 cycles of cantatas (5 x 59) - for Georg Phillip Telemann managed to produce 12 cycles! Some of the more famous cantata include Nr. 147 "Jesu, joy of man\'s desiring", and "Sheep may safely graze" of which many orchestral arrangements had been made. His cantatas tended to be variations on the \'standard\' type, employing a SATB choir with strings, woodwind and organ. Some of them have solo parts, and are known as \'solo cantatas\', others have extra trumpet, horns and one even employs an oboe d\'amore. There are of course also non-standard configurations, often with one or two part omitted from the SATB, however, these are something of a novelty. It is very possible that the orchestral and choral forces available to him was less than satisfactory, and he had often given the choir the wallop after an inadequate performance. He had also written some \'secular canatas\', a great number of which survive. It sounds like a contradictory term, but in fact it implies that the cantata was not written to celebrate a church occasion, but an academic ceremony such as a marriage or a birthday; the music that Purcell might have named \'ode\'. Because there are so many cantatas, it has made it a bit difficult to isolate the best ones - they are (presumably) all equally delightful music!

Apart from cantatas, Bach had also written numerous other choral works. The most well-known among them is perhaps the Passion according to St Matthew. Not as much in the repertoire but just as impressive is the Passion according to St John, in which he describes the suffering of Christ exceedingly well with chromatic creeping in both the orchestra and soloists. Sometimes with almost excessive word-painting, these \'passions\', though not titled \'oratorio\' or \'opera\', is probably the closest one would get to Bach\'s attempt at that genre of music. All of them contained recitatives, arias, choruses and airs - the standard ingredients of a Handel oratorio. Often syllables would be set to many notes, a phenomena known as melisma normally only found in opera. He also wrote a passion according to St Luke, and one according St Mark which is now lost. At the time of Bach, motets are very much going out of fashion. It is really a form of the medieval period, used by William Byrd and Palestrina. Nevertheless, Bach did write 4 motets, in 8 parts, during his Leizpig period. Maintaining the strong German tradition, he harmonised or wrote 263 chorales, most of which he left to C.P.E.Bach who published it very much later. In addition to the famous Mass in B minor and Magnificat, standard items for any Baroque composer working with the church, he had also written several works titled \'oratorios\', which are, in fact collection of yet more cantatas, the most famous of which is the Christmas Oratorio - a collection of 6 cantatas. Also attributed to Bach is a few settings of Psalms and Sanctus, but they were not of much significance.

Organ works. Again Bach being a religious man his organ works are divided into so-called \'free\' organ works and chorale preludes. It is impossible to mention all the preludes here, we will just say that he had published a few books, titled \'notebooks\' for the organ, the most famous of which being the Anna Magdalena Notebook, dedicated to his third wife. His \'free\' organ works are the ones in which he was really able to experiment with the organ, and practise his mastery at fugal writing. Most of these acquired nicknames, often in connection with the experimental technique involved. For example, the B-A-C-H Toccata and Fugue has a theme based on his name, with the H in German being B natural. The "Dorian" Toccata and Fugue in D minor, so called because of its modal sound, and Dorian mode is the mode based on D. Others are famous for their descriptive powers, such as the Toccata and Fugue in D minor (again!) BWV 565, which is known for the mysterious atmosphere which it creates. Toccata literally means \'fast-moving fingers\', and generally contain long runs of semi-quavers; Fugue is a very strict form where a subject and a countersubject is used, entering one after the other in parts, whilst Prelude is like a little overture to a grand work, but in Bach\'s case they often serve as introduction to one of his Fugues. Some of his Fantasias have also been in the repetoire recently.

Bach also wrote for instruction purposes. His masterpieces in this field, still used today, is the 48 Preludes and Fugues - this time on the clavier. For teaching his son Wilhelm Friedmann Bach to play the keyboard he wrote the 15 two-part inventions. The "Goldberg" variations, the 6 Partitas, the 6 French Suites, the 6 English Suites, the clavier Fantasias, and many other short pieces were all written to prefect the keyboard skills. These pieces helped in making sure that the keyboard is not neglected as a solo instrument for recitals.

Instrumental music. Baroque composers were generally expected to write trio sonatas in sets of 12, often producing as many as 6 sets in a lifetime. But Bach, in fact, only wrote 5 trio sonatas in his entire life. The zenith of his instrumental writing skills is perhaps best represented by the 6 Brandenburg Concerti, which was dedicated to the Margrave of Brandenburg in 1721 (see separate essay on this topic by the same author.) In addition to the Brandenburgs, he also wrote 5 Orchestral Suites, one of which (in F major) is lost. The Orchestral Suite consists of an overture with additional dance movements scored for a standard string orchestra with additional woodwind or brass for effects. Being as economical as Handel, Bach often uses tunes from Telemann\'s music as well as recycling his own works. The Nr.4 from the Brandenburgs is also available for three harpsichords. In fact, most of the 14 concerti he write for more than one harpsichord are probably just transcription of lost works or works of his contemporaries such as Vivaldi. The reason for this arrangement is so that should a suitable soloist be unavailable Bach could direct from the harpsichord as well as playing the solo and the continuo parts in chamber performances that he used to have at the collegium musicum. He also produced two concerti for solo violin as well as one for two violins, all very well known for the perfect fugue and the thick texture that they contain. One must nevertheless bear in mind that most of Bach\'s creative energy are in his cantatas; they amount to half of all the Bach-Society edition published from 1880 onwards.

The most famous of his chamber works is perhaps the Partitas for solo violin, now still a part of the standard repetoire for all good violin players. These Partitas represent the best of Bach\'s harmonic thinking - with the minimal number of notes playable at the same time, Bach manages to bring out the harmonic background in these Partitas so well merely by the choice of notes in the tune. It must not be forgotten that he has also written six \'Cello Suites. Rather dissimilar to his harpsichord suites, they are not collection of dance movements, they are more like a \'cello sonata without the continuo part. This again relies on Bach\'s mastery to use the harmonic system which he had helped to develop, but sometimes the harmony is not as obvious, which is possibly because of the technical limitations of the \'cello.

The best way to experience Bach\'s magnificent works is not to read an essay about it, but to listen to it and play it. Some say that Baroque music is all the same, but the more one listens to Bach and Handel, the more difference one would see between the two distinctively different Baroque styles. Don\'t turn off the radio the next time Bach is on, but listen very carefully. One would soon realise that every bit of Bach is carefully crafted and calculated for the enjoyment of his patrons.