Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) was a major German composer and organist.
His work is the completion and the highest point of the polyphonic era in Western European music.
Biography Johann Sebastian Bach was born on March 21, 1685 in Eisenach (Thuringia).
He was the eighth child and belonged to the fifth generation of a family of professional musicians.
Johann Sebastian received his first music lessons from his father.
At the age of seven, Johann Sebastian began attending a Latin school in Eisenach.
He had an indelible impression of the organ art after meeting his father's cousin Johann Christoph, who was an organist and composer.
The boy's parents died when he was ten years old.
Johann Sebastian moved to live with his brother Johann Christoph, who was a music teacher at a church school in the city of Ohrdruf.
His brother was 14 years older and began to teach Johann Sebastian to play the organ, harpsichord, as well as composition.
Five years later, Johann Sebastian moved to Lüneburg and entered the boys ' school at the Michaelis Monastery as a chorister.
He sang soprano in the choir, and when his voice began to break, he became a violinist in the church orchestra.
Young Bach spent a lot of time in the school library, studying music on his own.
Bach received his first place after graduating from school in 1703.
He served as violinist, violist and organist in the private chapel of Duke Wilhelm Ernst in Weimar.
In the same year, he moved to Arnstadt to take the place of organist of the New Church and head of the school choir.
One day the church granted a vacation, and Bach, eager for knowledge, went on foot to a town two hundred miles away to listen to the great organist of that time, Dietrich Buxtehude.
In 1707, Bach got a job as an organist in Muhlhausen and married his cousin Maria Barbara Bach.
They had seven children, of whom four survived.
In 1708, Bach returned to Weimar and became a court organist and chamber musician, and in 1714 — a court concertmaster.
Due to disputes with the duke in 1717, Bach decided to resign.
The duke was so angry that he even put the composer in prison for one month.
Bach found a new job as a kapellmeister at the court of Prince Leopold of Keten.
During this period, Bach created instrumental works in which he appeared as the discoverer of the new age: "Brandenburg Concertos", solo concertos for various instruments, works for the clavier, including "Well tempered Clavier".
In December 1721, a year after the death of his wife, Bach married Anna Magdalena Wilken (a twenty year old singer), with whom he had six sons and seven daughters.
In 1723, at the age of 38, Bach moved to Leipzig, where he remained for the rest of his life.
He won a competition for the position of cantor teacher of the singing school of St. Thomas Church.
His duties also included creating music for church services and city celebrations.
In fact, Bach led the entire musical life of the city.
During this period, Bach wrote five annual cycles of cantatas for each Sunday service and all holidays of the church calendar, and such famous spiritual works as" The Passion for John"," The Passion for Matthew"," The Christmas Oratorio"," Magnificat "and"High Mass".
In 1729, Bach began to lead a circle called the "College of Musicians", consisting of students and professional musicians who gave concerts every Friday at Zimmerman's coffee shop.
This was an innovation, since concerts for the general public had not been arranged before.
Towards the end of his life, Bach's eyesight deteriorated due to cataracts, and in 1749 he became completely blind.
However, Bach continued to compose music, dictating his works.
Johann Sebastian Bach died on July 28, 1750 in Leipzig and was buried in the Johannis Cemetery.
On July 28, 1949, the coffin with the remains of Bach was moved to the choir of the church of St. Thomas.
During his lifetime, Bach's compositions were practically not published.
Only a few keyboard pieces were printed at personal expense.
Contemporaries admired him as an organist and harpsichordist, but considered his music old fashioned and boring.
Until his death, Bach was a "relic" of bygone days, children often called him "old wig".
Bach's life was very full of work, and he saw in his work the result of patient work and study.
When asked how he mastered such a high art, he replied: "I had to study hard; whoever is as hard will achieve the same."
Bach spent a lot of time on the musical education of his children and students: "...in due time you will try to pass on what little you have received from me to other good people."
Being a religious person, Bach adhered to the church canons in music and its performance.
In 1717, as a dedication to his "Organ Notebook", he wrote: "For the glory of God, for the teaching of our neighbor."
In 1747, Bach went to Potsdam to visit his son Karl Philipp Emanuel, who was a court musician for King Frederick the Great.
As soon as he arrived, the king happily announced: Gentlemen, old Bach has arrived!".
He invited the composer to a tournament of all harpsichordists, which was held at the palace that evening.
The king, who was a good musician himself, played a part on the flute and offered to improvise several keyboard variations on this melody.
The performance of Bach pleased the king.
Returning to Leipzig, Bach wrote on the basis of this so called "Musical Offering" and dedicated it to Frederick, sent it to the king as a gift.
The work consisted of a fugue, two ricercars, nine canons and a trio of sonatas.
Bach reworked the royal theme in each of the pieces.
Beethoven on Bach: "Not a stream (Vash (German) - a stream), but the sea should be called for its boundless, inexhaustible wealth of sound combinations and harmonies."
The last significant theoretical work that Bach worked on is called "The Art of Fugue".
Illness prevented the complete completion of the work.
With this work, Bach wanted to show how one simple musical theme can be expressed in various ways of writing a fugue or canon.
In the fragments of the preserved last fugue with three themes, the theme of the name V A With N. *** Bach — one of the greatest representatives of world culture appeared for the first time.
His work, characterized by the inclusiveness of genres (except opera), summarized the achievements of the musical art of several centuries on the verge of Baroque and classicism.
A vividly national artist, Bach combined the traditions of the Protestant chorale with the traditions of the Austrian, Italian, and French music schools.
Bach, an unsurpassed master of polyphony, is characterized by the unity of polyphonic and homophonic, vocal and instrumental thinking, which explains the deep interpenetration of various genres and styles in his work.
The performance of Bach's works after 1750 was considered exclusively the property of professionals.
Composers such as Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven held Bach in high esteem, but for many years he remained in oblivion.
This continued until the XIX century, until they appreciated the true scale of Bach's genius and began to consider him one of the greatest composers in the history of world culture.
The composer Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdi (1809-1847) made a great contribution to the revival of Bach;
On March 11, 1829, at the age of 20, he conducted a performance of the oratorio "The Passion according to Matthew" — for the first time 100 years after writing this work.
This performance served as an impulse for the revival of Bach's work in the XIX XX centuries.
In 1850, the Bach Society was formed in Leipzig, whose goal was to find manuscripts and publish a complete collection of works.
The last volume was published in 1900.
All of Bach's works cover more than a thousand works of various genres for different compositions of performers.
Only in 1950, 200 years after Bach's death, a complete catalog of his works was published.
Wolfgang Schmieder systematized them in the Vash Werke Verzeichnis (Catalog of Bach's Works).
