The Bach Family

1071 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Bach's most influential works

Light, playful but soft baroque music, this is what the Bach family name is famous for today. But J.S. Bach wasn’t the only composer in the family, and his uncle, all his brothers, and his father shared his exact first and last name. It’s only the middle name that made J.S Bach unique in his family, but today, he is extraordinary in his music composition talent.

The Bach family was known for their musical positions in Thuringia. In the family there were organists, town instrumentalists, and Cantors. Cantors are “(In formal Christian worship) a person who sings solo verses or passages to which the choir or congregation responds.” (Google 2017). But Johann Sebastian Bach would make the Bach name live on for centuries.

Bach was born on March …show more content…

Christoph played the organ in the finest most modern of music. Not only this, but he was an excellent teacher so all 5 of his sons were destined to become great in music.

J.S. Bach fit right in, he learned under the apprenticeship of his brother the organ and harpsichord. He quickly became an excellent player. Mastering every piece that was thrown at him. He now took on a new challenge in his life, which was to be the writing of music.

His brother would give him pieces to copy and write down. He would often be given music by German composers like Jakob Froberger, Johann Caspar Kerll and Pachelbel. He became very good at this. This is where he started composing music.

With his previous choral experience, J.S. Bach decided to join a choir. The choir was run by the wealthy Michaelis monastery at Lüneburg. He was known to give positions to poor children for free, and Bach’s excellent soprano voice earned him a nice spot in the choir. He set out on the journey to Lüneburg with his school friend Georg Erdmann. This was a very long 180 mile journey that he took on foot in the spring of …show more content…

He wrote a fairly large amount of pieces and Cantatas while working for the Duke, and one of his most famous pieces he wrote here was “Toccata and Fugue in D Minor.” He wrote other pieces here too, such as the cantata, "Herz und Mund und Tat," or Heart and Mouth and Deed.

In 1717 Bach was offered a position with with Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Cöthen, in which he accepted. But the Duke didn’t want him to go quite yet. The Duke Arrested Bach and imprisoned him for weeks before Bach was released to go to Cöthen.

Here, in Cöthen, Bach composed many pieces for full orchestras and groups of instruments. The Brandenburg Concertos were composed here. These pieces are considered to be some of Bach’s greatest work. These are still played in orchestras worldwide, which makes Bach famous still today. Bach then decided to play the viola as he liked it because he considered it “in the middle of the harmony.” But his time here soon ended when the prince married. The princess didn’t like her husband’s musical interests, and so, Bach was neglected and sent off on his

Show More
Related

  • Beethoven and Bach

    893 Words  | 2 Pages

    Johann Sebastian Bach and Ludwig van Beethoven both flourished in their compositions of classical music; however, their genre of music differed considerably. Bach was a German composer during the Baroque time era of western music which is estimated to have taken place during 1600 to 1750. It was during this time that he composed prolific church organ music which included such works as the Mass in B Minor, much scared choral music, and the St. Matthew Passion, as well as composing over a thousand works in nearly every musical genre except opera. On the other hand, Beethoven was a German composer whom began to emerge during the classical era of western music twenty years after Bach. This era took place throughout the years1750 and 1830. The large quantity of arrangements, over two hundred works in numerous musical genres composed by Beethoven was significantly influenced by his predecessors, onset of deafness, and his highly personal expression of intellectual depth. Such works include the first an...

    Read More

  • Johannes Brahms

    1737 Words  | 4 Pages

    As a boy Johannes worked and studied with his father and learnt lessons from books with his mother, with whom he would play ?four-hands? at the piano, ?just for fun.? There were never any doubts as to his becoming a musician. From early childhood he learn everything his father could teach him, read everything he could lay hands on, practiced with undeviating enthusiasm, and filled reams of paper with exercises and variations. The soul of the child went out in music. He played scales long before he knew the notes, and great was his joy when at the age of six he discovered the possibility of making a melody visible by placing black dots on lines at different intervals, inventing a system of notation of his own before he had been made acquainted with the method which the musical world had been using for some centuries.

    Read More

  • Johann Sebastian Bach Research Paper

    1227 Words  | 3 Pages

    According to the article, “Johann Sebastian Bach”, “his Lutheran faith would influence his late musical works.” A tragic event occurred as both of his parents had passed away a few years later, which prompted him to live with his brother’s family. It was there that he continued learning about music. He continued to live there for five years as he left his brother when he was 15. He soon was enrolled in a school at a place called Luneburg. He was enrolled there due to him having “a beautiful soprano singing voice.”(Johann Sebastian Bach) However, as he got older, his voice didn’t sound the way it used to be, so he quickly transitioned back to playing the violin. His first job had also to do with music as he began to work in Weimar as a musician. According to the article, “Johann Sebastian Bach”, there were various jobs he did like serve as a violinist or occasionally fill in

    Read More

  • The Bach of Our Time

    948 Words  | 2 Pages

    The truth can sometimes depend on the circumstance and the person who states it. When confronted with conflicting accounts or questionable details, a judge within the court of law must decide the sentence of an individual with these obstacles in place. In this case, the defendant Dannie McGrew has been charged with the murder of Barney Quill, but claims that it was self-defense. The following contains a thorough explanation as to how the judge decided upon the verdict of acquittal.

    Read More

  • Johann Sebastian Bach

    1092 Words  | 3 Pages

    Between the 1600s and the 1700s, many would think more of Kings or Queens who ruled their vast kingdoms for years upon years rather than a great composer such as Johann Sebastian Bach, a man who greatly contributed to Germany and many other specific regions of Europe during his life. Born in 1685 Eisenach on March 21, Bach was a member of one of the most excellent musical families of all time as, for over 200 years, the Bach family had birthed some of the most superb composers and performers, many supported by churches, the government, and nobles for their extraordinary works ("Wikipedia"). However, having been orphaned so early on, Bach grew up in the home of his brother, Johann Christoph Bach, in Ohrdruf. During his early life, he attended schools of dance, acted as an organist on many occasions, particularly in Arnstadt, Mühlhausen, Weimar, as well as a court music director in Cöthen, and, later in his life, in 1723 to be precise, he became the grand choirmaster of St.Thomas in Leipzig for twenty-seven years and oversaw many events of the school, going so far as to divide the students into four individual choirs and recruiting the talents of the city‘s professional musicians and university students (pg 1 - 14, Eidam). He continued as a choirmaster until the end of his days, writing various and exquisite pieces that were preformed in front of many audiences, quite a few of which were preformed by those of the four individual choirs he created while he lead them through each piece (pg 1 - 14, Eidam). Though this may not seem as important as the rulings of Kings and Queens at the time, Bach's contribution to his homeland of Germany and its people was mostly certainly memorable and worth consideration. In fact, because of his contr...

    Read More

  • The Joy of Bach

    1668 Words  | 4 Pages

    Bach was born in 1685 in Germany amongst the turmoil of national reconstruction. He lived a quiet life with little musical influence, until the death of his parents at age ten. After their death, Bach’s older brother, who taught the very young Bach to play clavichord and harpsichord, raised Bach. Now, his life had the musical influence that is associated with Bach’s greatness. At the age of eighteen, he joined an orchestra where he learned to play the violin and organ. During this time the musical genius of Bach began to emerge (Jackson 15).

    Read More

  • The Life and Musical Influence of George Frideric Handel

    1849 Words  | 4 Pages

    While he was taking lessons with Zachau at the Halle Cathedral, Handel became his assistant organist. He followed his father’s wish for him to study law, however after his father died, Handel quit his unwanted pursuit of the career, and eventually moved to Hamburg, Germany which was a major music...

    Read More

  • Biography of Johannes Brahms

    608 Words  | 2 Pages

    Born to poor parents in Hamburg, Germany, Brahms’s first music lessons come from his father who played the double bass. Known as a prodigy of the piano at nine, he quickly started to study seriously and began to compose. Incredibly, at fifteen he gave a public concert and by the time he turned twenty, he had composed piano pieces that are still played today. Moreover, after he taught at Dusseldorf for some time, he became attached to the court of Lippe-Detmold in which he settled until 1860. Constantly composing, he again resided in Hamburg after 1860. For the first time, he visited Vienna in 1862 and remained there. He spent increasingly more of his time in composition during the last twenty years of his life. Furthermore, he went on tours to play and conduct his own compositions, and received increasing honors and popularity. Brahms never married and also never left the continent of Europe, refusing to even visit England when Cambridge University desired to grant him an honorary degree. He was a humorous, gruff and a rather disorderly man, and by the 1890’s, he had become one of the most distinguished citizens of Vienna. (Weinstock 457).

    Read More

  • Johann Sebastian Bach

    1458 Words  | 3 Pages

    Shortly after graduating form St. Michaels, Bach took upon a job as a court musician, though it had nothing to do with playing musical instruments. After working as a court musician for quite some time he was able to find a position playing the organ at the local church in St. Bonifa...

    Read More

  • Johann Sebastian Bach (1685- 1750)

    2289 Words  | 5 Pages

    Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, said to be one of the best organists of his time (Baroque Music). He was born in March 1685 in Eisenach, Thuringia as the youngest of eight children. His father Johann Ambrosius was also a musician and a court trumpeter for the Duke of Eisenach, and Director of the musicians in Eisenach (Baroque Music). Bach came from a family with a music talent, with his family members having held positions as organists, Cantors, instrumentalists in Thuringia.

    Read More

  • Johann Sebastian Bach Essay

    988 Words  | 2 Pages

    Johann Sebastian Bach was born at Eisenach, in the region of Thuringia, Germany, in 1685. He was a composer and musician of the Baroque period. Bach was born in a family of long musical tradition as his antecessors had been professional musicians for several generations. Johann Sebastian grew under a strictly musical environment. All of his closest relatives were musicians, and by being surrounded by these influences, the young Johann Sebastian developed his musical and instrumental skills. Bach 's mother died in 1694, and his father died eight months later. Thus, at age 10, he had to move in with his oldest brother, Johann Christoph Bach , who was an organist

    Read More

  • Analysis of Mendelssohn’s Italian Symphony

    1038 Words  | 3 Pages

    Besides composing, he also worked as a conductor in Düsseldorf (1833-35) and Leipzig (1835-40). And in 1843, he established a new conservatory in Leipzig. Up to this point, Mendelssohn was already a well-known pianist, composer and conductor.

    Read More

  • The Baroque Period: How Does Music Reflect Society?

    1211 Words  | 3 Pages

    During Bach’s time, people were writing mostly in a classical style, however Bach loved composing in the Baroque genre. This is why people said that when Bach died, so did the Baroque genre.

    Read More

  • Johann Sebastian Bach: BWV 543 “Prelude and Fugue in A Minor”

    906 Words  | 2 Pages

    The music he produced had a lot of control with a lot of flair. He liked improvisation, but did not leave that up to the performer. Instead, he wrote very virtuosic passages for his pieces, with which the performer did not have much room for imaginative playing. Then there is his knowledge on how to writ...

    Read More

  • Peter Tchaikovsky

    2551 Words  | 6 Pages

    As a youth he reluctantly studied law, as much bore by it as Schumann had been, and even became a petty clerk in the Ministry of Justice. But in his early twenties he rebelled, and against his family's wishes had the courage to throw himself into the study of music at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. He was a ready improviser, playing well for dancing and had a naturally rich sense of harmony, but was so little schooled as to be astonished when a cousin told him it was possible to modulate form any key to another. He went frequently to the Italian operas which at that time almost monopolized the Russian stage, and laid t...

    Read More

More about The Bach Family

Open Document