Overview
For many, Johann Sebastian Bach is the most important of all classical composers. His laborious work and systematic research make him the pillar of Western music, unchallenged by the great men who came after him.
We all know some of his works — the Brandenburg Concertos, the Christmas Oratorio, the St Matthew Passion — but how is it that we know so little about his life? Unlike Mozart, Bach is not surrounded by myths or anecdotes. That Hollywood has not yet produced The Secret Life of Johann Sebastian or Bach the Wonderchild is an indication that Bach is a musician’s musician and a man of his times. His character is expressed in his music. Bach would have been pleased about this: as a committed Protestant he did not put his persona above others — he considered himself a servant of God.
Johann Sebastian was born in 1685 in Eisenach, the eighth child of Johann Ambrosius, who himself descended from a long line of musicians. For Thuringians the name Bach was synonymous with music. Some even argue the name references the musical sequence B–A–C–H (using German notation).
Johann Sebastian’s mother died when he was nine. His father remarried but died shortly afterwards. His stepmother abandoned him, and he was taken in by his brother Johann Christoph, organist in Ohrdruf. During this period he secretly copied musical manuscripts by moonlight. Despite punishment when discovered, he remained fond of his brother and dedicated his first major composition to him.
By age fifteen Johann Christoph could no longer support him, and Bach left to work as a chorister in Lüneburg — his first professional step.
Musical Career Paths
In 17th- and 18th-century Germany, a musician had two possible career routes:
- Work for a court, rising to Kapellmeister — financially rewarding but dependent on the employer’s moods and tastes.
- Serve a Lutheran community as choirmaster and organist — intellectually challenging but less financially secure.
After two years in Lüneburg, Bach returned to Thuringia. After a short period in Weimar he was appointed organist in Arnstadt. The organ there was brand new and built under his supervision. It was in Arnstadt that he fell in love with his cousin Maria Barbara Bach.
Four years later, in 1708, the Church Council fired him for being “too ornamental” in his organ accompaniments and for allowing a young woman (Maria Barbara) to sing in a male-only choir. He left Arnstadt and took up work at the court of the Duke of Saxony-Weimar as violinist, cembalo player, and organist. His salary allowed him to marry and support his growing family (seven children by 1718).
Italy was the cultural obsession of the era, and Bach embraced its trends, mixing them with his own musical experiments. He pushed the organ — newly transformed by technical innovations — to its limits, functioning almost like a 17th-century synthesizer.
Köthen and the Brandenburg Concertos
Bach fell out with Duke Wilhelm Ernst of Weimar, who refused him the Kapellmeister position he deserved. Bach left in anger and took a new job with Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Köthen, a devoted musician who paid Bach well and placed him in charge of an excellent orchestra.
Here Bach composed his greatest secular works — notably the Brandenburg Concertos and the Well-Tempered Clavier.
Maria Barbara’s sudden death in 1720 devastated him. He considered a post in Hamburg but rejected it after learning the “customary payment” (a bribe) required of newly appointed organists.
Eighteen months later he remarried — Anna Magdalena Wilcke, a soprano. She became not only wife and mother but an exceptional copyist and artistic adviser.
Leipzig and the Cantatas
In 1723 Bach applied for the prestigious post of Kantor at St Thomas School in Leipzig. The school preferred Telemann, then Christoph Graupner, but both declined. Bach was appointed with the remark: “If the best cannot be had, one must choose from the middling.”
Leipzig soon discovered how wrong that remark was. From 1723 to 1727 Bach composed a cantata for every Sunday of the liturgical year — roughly 300 in total — along with the St Matthew and St John Passions.
His method was astonishingly disciplined: manuscripts show almost no corrections, with even, regular ink pauses where he dipped his quill. Paper was expensive, so he sometimes began a new composition on the same sheet as the previous one.
His official job, however, was teaching. While Bach’s own children became exceptional musicians, his choirs of poor, unruly boys often drove him to despair. He also tried to avoid teaching Latin whenever possible.
In 1729 he found relief in leading Telemann’s Collegium Musicum — the ensemble that performed at Zimmermann’s famous coffee house.
Late Years and Legacy
In his later years Bach catalogued his works and wrote monumental compositions including the B Minor Mass. A highlight was his visit to Potsdam, where Frederick II of Prussia invited him to try out the newly developed piano.
Bach went blind in 1750 and died soon afterwards. His widow, Anna Magdalena, received no pension and died in poverty. Her name became famous through the 1925 bestseller The Little Chronicle of Magdalena Bach.
By the late 18th century Bach was considered old-fashioned — known as “The Old Wig.” His sons, especially C.P.E. and J.C. Bach, were more fashionable. Only in the 19th century was his genius rediscovered.
Bach’s works represent the culmination of the Baroque tradition. Mozart, born just six years after Bach’s death, belonged to an entirely new musical age.
As Yehudi Menuhin wrote: “If the great achievement of European music is the combination of many voices into a unity, we have found in Bach its universal spokesman.”
Bach’s technical brilliance allowed him to invert, reverse, and manipulate themes in extraordinary ways. He elevated simple dance tunes into dazzling variations. His embrace of the newly developed tempered tuning system changed Western music forever, enabling compositions in all keys.
His music expresses not “I feel, I suffer” but “we feel, we suffer” — a collective humanity rooted in the religious worldview of his age.