On the first day of spring, in 1685 in Eisenach, Germany, one of the greatest composers in musical history was born. Johann Sebastian Bach would live on, and distinguish himself in music history and would one day be among the most remarkable musicians who ever lived. Some would designate him as the greatest of them all (Pogue and Speck 24). He was born into one of the most extraordinary musical families the world has ever known. Bach was a devoutly religious man and was acquainted with tragedy. His first wife had died suddenly while he was away, and 12 of his 20 children died in infancy. However, he married again and three of his sons became significant composers (Johann Sebastian Bach). The features of Bach’s life, his styles, and his motivation contribute to part of Bach’s exceptional history.
At the young age of ten, Bach’s parents died, and he was sent to live with is brother, who was an organist. During his stay with his brother, he studied composition and learned how to play the keyboard on his own (Johann Sebastian Bach). After the death of his brother, Bach went to school in Luneberg and came into interaction with intense musical culture. It was there that he characterized himself as a viola player and a violinist. Moreover, before he was eighteen years old, he left Luneberg and was renowned as a master organist, clavichordist, and also a promising composer. Bach began his professional career playing the viola and violin in the court orchestra in Weimar. However, although he was not unhappy, the organ was his true passion. Subsequently, he was employed in Arnstadt where he wrote virtually all organ music (Carlson and Smith 32).
Bach’s musical style is baroque, and set apart from other music by simple motoric rhythms, st...
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...ted it is entitled “Before thy throne I now appear”. Amazingly, when the notes on the three staves of the final cadence are mapped and counted onto the Roman alphabet, the initials "JSB" are discovered (Hanford). His final work incorporates with the rest of Bach’s incredible past. The life of Bach, his musical styles, and his motivation are all part of the story and history of one of the greatest music composers the world has ever known.
Works Cited
Carlson, Betty, and Jan Stuart Smith. The Gift of Music. Illinois: Crossway, 1995. Print.
Hanford, Jan. http://urbansite.org/websamples/jsBach/style.html. Urban Site. Web. 23 Jan. 2014.
“Johann Sebastian Bach”. http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/onlineex/musicmanu/bach/. The
British Library, 2009. Web. 23 Jan. 2014.
Pogue, David, and Scott Speck. Classical Music for Dummies. New Jersey: Wiley Publishing, 1997. Print.
Johann Sebastian Bach was a composer, a musician, teacher, and organist who later became a specialist in construction of organs. Bach learnt to play the violin, the orchestra, and the organ from his father and his famous uncle and twin brother to the father, Johann Christoph at a young age. The organ was his chosen instrument. He also achieved success in the art of Fugue, choral polyphone, instrumental music and dance forms. In Eisenach he attended Old Latin Grammar School, the same school that Martin Luther had attended. He sang in the schools choir. His parents died before Bach was 10 years old. His mother died when Bach was nine years old, his father’s death followed nine months later (Sherrane, 2011). After the parents death Bach was taken in by his older brother Johann Christoph who had already established himself as an organist in Ohrdruf. Johann Christoph had a great influence in Bach’s success in music as he taught him and encouraged him to study music composition. At the same time Bach was attending the Gymnasium grammar school in Ohrdruf where he studied theology, Latin...
During the Baroque Age, many changes took place in the instrumental music area. This type of music became very popular and just as important as vocal music, with many new mechanical and technological developments taking place. The keyboard, strings, winds, and percussion were used to produce instrumental music. Among these instruments, the keyboard was a major one used for solo music and “basso continuo” (a musical notation used to signal chords, non-chords, and intervals in connection to bass notes) parts. The keyboard also was involved in an abundance of instrumental literature during this time. The three types of keyboards that existed were the organ (mainly used with church music and solo accompaniment), the clavichord (produces sound by the striking of a medal wedge against a string when a key is pressed), and the harpsichord (contains two keyboards and a sound that produces “quills” when the strings are plucked due to a key being pressed). G.F. Telemann, J.S. Bach, and G.F. Handel were three men that had a major impact on the development of keyboard music in the Baroque Age. With their superior musician skills, they left behind many pieces of music that we play and listen to today.
In the early 1740’s, Bach began work on what many consider to be his most monumental project ever, Art of the Fugue. Bach intended this piece to be an extensive study of “the art of fugal counterpoint,” exploring the possibilities and various outcomes that can be produced by manipulating a single theme (“The Art of the Fugue”). Bach was not commissioned to compose this piece, nor was the idea inspired or suggested to him by anyone else; in creating Art of the Fugue, Bach was “alone in his genius” (Herz, 4-5). The result of Bach’s endeavors was a collection of eighteen fugues, all in the same key, and all based on the same principle theme. This principle theme was modified and transformed into an astonishing number of over twenty different major variations and one hundred minor variations (“The Art of the Fugue”).
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).
Throughout history many famous concerto pianists composed various types of music. One of those pianists was named Johann Sebastian Bach. J.S. Bach was arguably one of the best composers in Western music history. Born in Eisenach, Germany to a family of musicians, Bach grew up playing the organ and keyboard. J.S. Bach’s music was characterized as a classification of Baroque music. Baroque was an era of dominant European styled art and music in the 17th century. The term baroque is “applied to art of any time or place that shows the qualities of vigorous movement and emotional intensity associated with art in its primary meaning.” Bach’s famous Baroque style was a combination of many notes, simple motoric rhythms, and a steady shift of underlying harmony.
Johann Sebastian Bach was one of the most famous German composers of his time. All of his work was mostly during the baroque era. The baroque period was from 1600 to 1750 and it is known to be one of the most diverse musical periods as opposed to the other classical music eras. It was in this era that “included composer like Bach, Vivaldi and Handel, who pioneered new styles like the concerto and the sonata.”(Classic FM) Johann Sebastian was born in the midst of the Baroque era as he was born on March 31, 1685 in Thuringia, Germany. Johann came from a family of musicians, which is how he himself became one as well. It was his father who showed him how to play his first instrument, which was the violin. His father was also a well-known musician in his town as he “worked as the town musician in Eisenach.”(Johann Sebastian Bach) It is known that Johann Sebastian went to a school that taught him
Bach, who was also his cousin. His works were more notable during this period due to their
The Baroque Masters lecture performance by Dr. Yelena Grinberg showcased a selection of keyboard works composed during the Baroque Ear (1600-1750) by t Baroque Masters George Frederic Handel, Domenico Scarlatti, and Johann Sebastian Bach. The ideal of the Baroque period was that music should not only be pleasing, but it must also induce very strong, visceral emotions and stir the passions of the soul. Some important features of the Baroque ear are the precise and elevated rhythms, clear and defined meter, irregular or embellished melodies, and an enriched and unified texture which was he together by the ongoing ground bass known as basso continuo. Although each of these Baroque Masters composed music that was highly reflective of the Baroque
The Baroque Period thrived on the basis of composers coming together to create artwork of pure beauty, development, and a musical evolution cycle that would forever impact the grand future of music. The developments that occurred during this time laid a vivid path to the creation of the Classical Period. Key composers of the Baroque era include Johann Sebastian Bach, Georg Phillip Telemann, Jean-Philippe Rameau, George Frideric Handel, Johann Pachelbel, Henry Purcell, Antonio Vivaldi, Domenico Scarlatti, Allesandro Scarlatti, Claudio Monteverdi, Marc-Antoine Charpentier and Francois Couperin. Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 symbolizes the significant freedom composers were fortunate enough to experience during the period as Bach’s piece flows with such elegance and grandeur, typical of the Baroque Period. Handel’s Messiah “He Shall Feed His Flock” embraces the beauty of musical artwork during this era as the piece hints at the cultural changes of the era and offers the musical experimentation that thrived. While these composers played pivotal roles in the creation of an era of music, the people, cultural needs, and desire to create something great fueled the prosperous Baroque
15. "So what's so good about Bach then?." the Guardian. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Nov. 2015. .
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...
Getzinger, Donna. Johnann Sebastian Bach and the art of baroque music. 1st ed. Greensboro: Morgan Reynolds, 2004
Johann Sebastian Bach was born into a family of musicians. It was only natural for him to pick up an instrument and excel in it. His father taught him how to play the violin and harpsichord at a very young age. All of Bach’s uncles were professional musicians, one of them; Johann Christoph Bach introduced him to the organ. Bach hit a turning point in his life when both of his parents died at the age of ten years old. Bach’s older brother Johann Christoph Bach took him in and immediately expanded his knowledge in the world of music. He taught him how to play the clavichord and exposed him to great composers at the time. At the age of fourteen, Bach and his good friend George Erdmann were awarded a choral scholarship to the prestigious musical school St. Michael’s in Luneburg. From then on, Bach began to build his career in the music industry. His first two years at the school he sang in the school’s a cappella choir. Historical evidence has shown that Bach at a young age would visit Johanniskirche and would listen to the works of organ player Jasper Johannsen. This was thought to have been the inspiration to Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor. Studying at the prestigious musical school has help Bach network his way around and become acquaintances’ with some of the best organ players at the time such as Georg Böhm, and Johann Adam Reincken. Through his acquaintance with Böhm and Reincken Bach had access to some of the greatest and finest instruments.
Johann Sebastian Bach was known as a musical master wrote many amazing masterpieces. One of the lesser known pieces is Bach’s BWV 543, entitled “Prelude and Fugue in A minor” and otherwise nicknamed “The Great.” This music is said not to be a famous piece for organ but does itself justice when compared to his similar and more famous works. The tight structure of the piece intertwined with its highly virtuosic nature is a great example of the influence the Baroque era had on Bach and his musical thought process.
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