Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750); DEU

It has been observed that Bach's melodies are harmonically conceived and his harmonies melodically conceived. This is a pithy way of saying that the music of Johann Sebastian Bach is the culmination of not only the Baroque era, but the Renaissance as well. The Baroque era began as a reaction against the highly refined and intellectual Flemish contrapuntal style that is the essence of the high Renaissance. Early Baroque opera led to our modern concept of harmony by declaring the primacy of a single melodic line supported by chords designated by a figured bass. The concept of melody with harmonic accompaniment was the beginning of thinking about harmony and harmonic progressions as an important entity and not just the by-product of intersecting lines. Two hundred and fifty years later, Schumann, great student of Bach that he was, would declare that in the chess game of music melody is the queen but the game depends on harmony, the king.

Bach's music reconciles these two aspects; the horizontal (melodic) and the vertical (harmonic) in complete balance. While his music often has the linear complexity of Renaissance polyphony, it also has a sure and inevitable harmonic architecture that always gives the music a sense of solid form and direction. For instance, in the great Preludium of the Partita for Solo Violin, the constant stream of sixteenth notes reach important arrival and departure points on E, c#, A, f#, B, and back to E. The descending thirds give us a large structural I, ii, V, I cadential progression that girds the entire piece.

Bach's music also synthesizes the prevailing French and Italian styles that dominated the Baroque era. The Italian style, with its emphasis on operatic singing and string playing, tends to be more rhythmically straight forward, emotionally extroverted, and prone to the use of repeating harmonic sequences. French music, on the other hand, grows out of a love for wind instruments and dancing, and the emotional quality is often subtle and less overt. One need look no further than any of the Bach keyboard suites - the so-called French Suites (such as the French Suite No.4 in Eb, BMV.815), English Suites (for example, the English Suite No.3 in G: 1.Prélude; 2.Allemande; 3.Courante; 4.Sarabande; 5.Gavottes I and II; 6.Gigue), and the Partitas (No.1 in Bb; No.2 in C; No.3 in A; No.4 in D; No.5 in g; and the No.6 in E) to see the comfortable juxtaposition of a French Allemande with an Italian Corrente, followed by a French Saraband overlaid with flamboyant, Italian operatic ornamentation.

Bach's cosmopolitan style belies the fact that he travelled so little, although in his youth he did famously walk 200 miles to hear Buxtehude play the organ. Unlike Handel, who studied in Italy, Bach absorbed much of his Italian influence by copying out large amounts of Vivaldi. From Froberger, a German harpsichordist who lived in France, he assimilated the French keyboard style. The latter was in turn influenced by the "broken style" of the French lutenists who found a way to suggest more than one part within a single line. This is an important feature of Bach's melodic style and even the single subject of a fugue will contain contrapuntal elements within it. This ability is also what allowed Bach to write his solo violin and cello sonatas, partitas and suites where a single voiced instrument weaves a tapestry of contrapuntal implications.

Most of Bach's working life was spent as a Kapellmeister of various important churches, where he was responsible for the music performed at weekly Sunday services, in addition to such onerous activities as teaching Latin (which he regularly complained about). In his own life Bach was known more as a virtuoso organist and improviser and he was considered learned but eccentrically old fashioned as a composer what with his obsessions with arcania such as fugue and ricercar. His sons (J.C., W.F. and C.P.E. Bach) were much more up to date. It should be mentioned that in addition to his large and uniformly high level musical output, he had twenty children by two wives.

Bach's devout Lutheran faith pervades all his works, be they instrumental or vocal, and one cannot fully understand him without knowing many of the over two hundred sacred cantatas he wrote for Sunday services (such as Christ Lag in Todesbanden; Mer hahn en neue Oberkeet; and Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring from "Herz Und Mund Und Tat Und Leben"), or the great masses and passions, such as the Mass in b (excerpts include 1.Kyrie eleison; 11.Cum sancto spiritu; 23.Dona nobis pacem) and the St. Matthew Passion (excerpts include Herzliebster Jesu; Erbarm' dich Mein Gott, and O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden), written for Easter and other high holy days. Here one can discover the elaborate use of musical figures employed to express text, which also pervade the purely instrumental music.

Throughout his life, Bach seemed to be driven to systematically explore all the possibilities of a given style or genre. In his organized and numerologically based way there are six Brandenburg Concerti - the essence of the Italian style as opposed to the four Orchestral Suites, (including the Allegro from the Brandeburg Concerto No.1; the Adagio from No.2, and the Allegro from No.5), six of each of the keyboard suites mentioned above, six cello suites, six solo violin works, etc. Each of the pieces in these collections explores or emphasizes another possibility within the type. A veritable bible for musicians, the two books of The Well-Tempered Klavier (includes the Prelude and Fugue No.1 in C and Prelude and Fugue No.17 in Ab from Book 1, and the Prelude and Fugue No.13 in F# from Book 2) twice present preludes and fugues of every imaginable type in every key. The miracle of these pieces is that the overwhelming intellectual mastery is always in the service of an even higher emotional character and spirit, explored with unending variety. At the end of his life Bach was still exploring the ultimate possibilities of counterpoint in The Art of the Fugue (contains Contrapunctus 12 rectus and Contrapunctus 12 inversus) and The Musical Offering.

Bach left supreme works in every genre of his age except opera. Ironically this great conservative who really did nothing new, but only better and more completely, is for many musicians the true beginning of modern music. In many works (e.g. the chromatic variations of the Goldberg Variations) we can see the harmonic possibilities of the future. Bach's materials are often made from the most basic stuff of music-scales and arpeggios-and this perhaps partly explains the health and solidity of his music. For musicians, it is the universal folk music in which we bathe to purify our souls.

Biography by Allen Krantz. Copyright © Classical Archives, LLC. All rights reserved.

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Bach, Johann Sebastian (b Eisenach, 1685; d Leipzig, 1750). Ger. composer and organist. Son of Johann Ambrosius Bach, organist and town musician, J. S. Bach was orphaned at the age of 10 and went to live with his elder brother Johann Christoph at Ohrdruf where he had klavier and org. lessons. In 1700 was a chorister at St Michael's Church, Lüneburg, staying for 3 years, learning much from the organist-composer Georg Böhm. Organist at Arnstadt, 1703, and then Mühlhausen, 1707, when he married his cousin Maria Barbara Bach. In 1708 became organist in the Kapelle of the Duke of Saxe-Weimar, where he remained for 9 years, leaving in disappointment at not being appointed Kapellmeister in 1717. By this time he had comp. some of his finest org. works and church cantatas.

In 1717 appointed Kapellmeister at the court of Anhalt-Cöthen where the prince's interest was not in religious works but in instr. comps. From this period date his vn. concs., sonatas, suites, and Brandenburg concs. Also comp. many of his best klavier works at Cöthen, probably for his children's instruction. In 1720 his wife died and in Dec. 1721 he married Anna Magdalena Wilcken, 20-year-old daughter of the court trumpeter. Now dissatisfied with life at Cöthen, where the ruler's new wife showed little interest in mus., Bach applied for the cantorship at St Thomas's, Leipzig, in Dec. 1722. He was not selected, but the chosen candidate, Graupner, withdrew and Bach was appointed in May 1723, having in the meantime cond. his St John Passion in St Thomas's as evidence of his fitness for the post. Remained at St Thomas's for the rest of his life, not without several disputes with the authorities. During time there, comp. more than 250 church cantatas, the St Matthew Passion, Mass in B minor, Christmas Oratorio, Goldberg Variations, and many other works incl. his last, the unfinished Die Kunst der Fuge (Art of Fugue). In 1740 began to have trouble with his eyesight and in the last year of his life was almost totally blind.

Bach was famous as an org. virtuoso. As a composer his reputation in his lifetime was restricted to a fairly narrow circle and his mus. was regarded by many as old-fashioned. His fame in no way approached that of, e.g., Telemann. His pubd. works today fill many vols., but in his lifetime fewer than a dozen of his comps. were printed, and for half a century after his death this position was only slightly improved until in 1801 the Well-Tempered Klavier was issued. The revival of interest in Bach's mus. may be dated from the Berlin perf. of the St Matthew Passion on 11 Mar. 1829, cond. Mendelssohn. Systematic publication of his works by the Bach Gesellschaft began in 1850 to mark the centenary of his death. (See Bach Revival.)

Bach's supreme achievement was as a polyphonist. His N. Ger. Protestant religion was the root of all his art, allied to a tireless industry in the pursuit of every kind of refinement of his skill and technique. Sonata form was not yet developed enough for him to be interested in it, and he had no leaning towards the (to him) frivolities of opera. Although some of the forms in which he wrote—the church cantata, for example—were outdated before he died, he poured into them all the resources of his genius so that they have outlived most other examples. The dramatic and emotional force of his mus., as evidenced in the Passions, was remarkable in its day and has spoken to succeeding generations with increasing power. Suffice it to say that for many composers and for countless listeners, Bach's mus. is supreme—to quote Wagner: ‘the most stupendous miracle in all music’. Prin. works:

ORCH.: Brandenburg Concertos Nos. 1-6 (BWV1046-51); 7 Concertos for hpd. and str. (BWV1052-8), No.1 in D minor, No.2 in E, No.3 in D, No.4 in A, No.5 in F minor, No.6 in F, No.7 in G minor; 3 concs. for 2 hpd. and str. (BWV1060-2), No.1 in C minor, No.2 in C, No.3 in C minor; 2 concs. for 3 hpd. and str. (BWV1063-4), No.1 in D minor, No.2 in C (No.1 arr. for vn., fl., ob., No.2 for 3 vn. or fl., ob., vn.); conc. for 4 hpd. and str. in A minor (BWV1065, transcr. of Vivaldi conc. Op.3 No.10); conc. for fl., vn., hpd., str. (BWV1044), hpd., ob., str. (BWV1059), vn., str. in A minor (BWV1041, same work as BWV1058), vn., str. in E (BWV1042, same work as BWV1054), 2 vn., str. in D minor (BWV1043, same work as BWV1062), vn., ob., str., in D minor (BWV1060, reconstr. of hpd. conc.); 4 Suites (BWV1066-9), No.1 in C, No.2 in B minor, No.3 in D, No.4 in D.

CHAMBER MUSIC: Die Kunst der Fuge (The Art of Fugue) (BWV1080); Das Musikalische Opfer (The Musical Offering) (BWV1079); 3 Partitas, solo vn. (BWV1002, 1004, 1006), No.1 in B minor, No.2 in D minor, No.3 in E; 3 Sonatas, solo vn. (BWV1001, 1003, 1005), No.1 in G minor, No.2 in A minor, No.3 in C; 6 Sonatas, vn., klavier (BWV1014-9), No.1 in B minor, No.2 in A, No.3 in E, No.4 in C minor, No.5 in F minor, No.6 in G; 6 Sonatas, vn./fl., klavier (BWV1020-5), No.1 in G minor, No.2 in G, No.3 in F, No.4 in E minor, No.5 in C minor, No.6 in A; 4 Sonatas, 2 vn./2 fl./2 ob., hpd. (BWV1036-9), No.1 in D minor, No.2 in C, Nos.3 and 4 in G; 6 Sonatas, fl., hpd. (BWV1030-5), No.1 in B minor, No.2 in Eb, No.3 in A, No.4 in C, No.5 in E minor, No.6 in E; 3 Sonatas, viola da gamba (vc.), klavier (BWV1027-9), No.1 in G (same as BWV1039), No.2 in D, No.3 in G minor; sonata, fl. in A minor (BWV1013); 6 Suites, vc. (BWV1007-12), No.1 in G, No.2 in D minor, No.3 in C, No.4 in Eb, No.5 in C minor, No.6 in D.

KEYBOARD: Capriccio in Bb (on the departure of a beloved brother) (BWV992); Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue in D minor (BWV903); 16 concs., solo hpd. (BWV972-87), Nos. 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, and 9 transcr. of Vivaldi, No.3 of Marcello, Nos. 14 and 15 of Telemann; 6 English Suites (BWV806-11), No.1 in A, No.2 in A minor, No.3 in G minor, No.4 in F, No.5 in E minor, No.6 in D minor; Fantasia in A minor (BWV922); Fantasia and Fugue in A minor (BWV904); 6 French Suites (BWV812-17), No.1 in D minor, No.2 in C minor, No.3 in B minor, No.4 in Eb, No.5 in G, No.6 in E; Fugue in C (BWV952); ‘Goldberg’ Variations (BWV988); 15 Inventions (2-part) (BWV772-86); 15 Inventions (3-part) (BWV787-801); Italian Concerto (BWV971); 6 Partitas (BWV825-30); 9 Preludes for W. F. Bach (BWV924-32); 6 Preludes (BWV933-8); 7 Toccatas (BWV910-16), No.1 in F# minor, No.2 in C minor, No.3 in D, No.4 in D minor, No.5 in E minor, No.6 in G minor, No.7 in G; Variations in the Italian Style (BWV989); Das Wohltemperierte Klavier (The Well-Tempered Klavier), 48 preludes and fugues (BWV846-93).

LUTE: Suites: in A (BWV1007), in E minor (BWV996), in E (BWV1006a, transcr. from BWV1006, vn. Partita No.3), in C minor (BWV997), in G minor (BWV995).

ORGAN: 6 concs. (BWV592-7), all transcr. from other composers, incl. Vivaldi); 4 Duets (BWV802-5); Fantasia and Fugue in C minor (BWV537), in G minor (BWV542); Fantasias, in C (BWV573), in C minor (BWV562), in G (BWV572); Fugues, in C minor (BWV574), in C minor (BWV575), in G (BWV577), in G minor (BWV578); Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor (BWV582); Prelude and Fugue: in A (BWV536), in A minor (BWV543), in A minor (BWV551), in B minor (BWV544), in C (BWV531), in C (BWV545), in C (BWV547), in C minor (BWV546), in C minor (BWV549), in D (BWV532), in D minor (BWV538), in D minor (BWV539), in E minor (BWV533), in E minor (‘Wedge’) (BWV548), in Eb (BWV552), in F minor (BWV534), in G (BWV541), in G (BWV550), in G minor (BWV535), in G minor (BWV542); 8 Preludes and Fugues (BWV553-60), No.1 in C, No.2 in D minor, No.3 in E minor, No.4 in F, No, 5 in G, No.6 in G minor, No.7 in A minor, No.8 in Bb; 6 Sonatas (BWV525-30), No.1 in Eb, No.2 in C minor, No.3 in D minor, No.4 in E minor, No.5 in C, No.6 in G; Toccata, Adagio, and Fugue in C (BWV564); Toccata and Fugue in D minor (Dorian) (BWV538), in D minor (BWV565), in E (BWV566), in F (BWV540); Trio in D minor (BWV583), in G (BWV586).

CHORALE PRELUDES: Orgelbüchlein (Little Organ Book) (BWV599-644), containing 46 items; also many others of which only a brief selection is given here: Ach, bleib bei uns (BWV649), Allein Gott in der Höh’ sei Ehr (BWV711), An Wasserflüssen Babylon (BWV653b), Christum wir sollen Loben schon (BWV696), Ein’ feste Burg (BWV720), Herr Jesu Christ, dich zu uns wend (BWV709), In dulci jubilo (BWV729), Jesu, meine Freude (BWV713), Jesus Christus, unser Heiland (BWV688), Komm, Gott Schöpfer (BWV667), Komm, heiliger Geist (BWV652), Kommst du nun, Jesu (BWV650), Liebster Jesu, wir sind hier (BWV706), Meine Seele erhebet den Herren (BWV648), Nun danket alle Gott (BWV657), Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland (BWV659), O Gott, du frommer Gott (BWV767), O Lamm Gottes unschuldig (BWV656), Schmücke dich, O liebe Seele (BWV654), Vater unser in Himmelreich (BWV682/3, 737), Vom Himmel hoch (BWV700, 701 fughetta, 738, 769 canonic variations), Wachet auf (BWV645), Wer nur den lieben Gott (BWV647, 690, 691), Wo soll ich fliehen hin (BWV646).

CANTATAS: Merely a selection of these is given here, with dates of comp. where known: No.4 Christ lag in Todesbanden (c.1707), No.6 Bleib bei uns (1725), No.10 Meine Seele’ erhebt den Herren (1724, rev. 1744-50), No.11 Lobet Gott (c.1735), No.12 Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen (1714), No.20 O Ewigkeit, du Donnerwort (1724), No.23 Du wahrer Gott und Davids Sohn (1723), No.28 Gottlob Nun geht das Jahr zu Ende (1725), No.29 Wir danken dir, Gott (1731), No.34 O ewiger Feuer (? after 1742), No.40 Dazu ist erschiene der Sohn Gottes (1723), No.45 Est ist dir gesagt (1726), No.51 Jauchzet Gott (1730), No.60 O Ewigkeit, du Donnerwort (1723), No.61 Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland (1714), No.68 Also hat Gott die Welt geliebt (1725), No.78 Jesu, der du meine Seele (1724), No.80 Ein’ feste Burg ist unser Gott (1724), No.82 Ich habe genug (1727), No.93 Wer nur den lieben Gott (1724), No.95 Christus der ist mein Leben (1723), No.106 Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit (c.1707), No.140 Wachet auf (1731), No.143 Lobe den herrn (1735), No.147 Herz und Mund (10th movement is Jesu, bleibet meine Freude, Jesu, joy of man's desiring) (1723), No.197 Gott ist unser Zuversicht (c.1728), No.201 Der Streit zwischen Phoebus und Pan (?1729), No.202 Weichet nur, betrübte Schatten (?1718-23), No.208 Was mir behagt (?1713), No.209 Non sa che sia dolore (after 1740), No.211 Schweigt stille, plaudert nicht (Coffee cantata, 1732), No.212 Mer hahn en neue Oberkeet (Peasant cantata, 1742). Canons for 2, 3, 4, and 7 voices (BWV1075, 1077, 1073, and 1078 respectively).

ORATORIOS, etc: Christmas Oratorio in 6 parts (Weihnachtsoratorium) (BWV248, 1734); Easter Oratorio (BWV249, 1736); Magnificat in Eb (BWV 243a, perf. Christmas Day 1723 incl. 4 Christmas texts), Magnificat in D (BWV243, rev. of Magnificat in Eb, c.1728-31, omitting Christmas texts); Mass in B minor (BWV232, 1724-49); Mass in G (BWV236, c.1738); Mass in G minor (BWV235, c.1737); 6 Motets (BWV225-230) 1. Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied, 2. Der Geist hilft, 3. Jesu meine Freude, 4. Fürchte dich nicht, 5. Komm, Jesu, komm, 6. Lobet den Herrn; St John Passion (Johannespassion) (BWV245, 1723); St Matthew Passion (Matthäus-passion) (BWV244, 1727).

SONGS AND ARIAS: Notebook (No.2) of Anna Magdalena Bach (BWV508-18), contains 11 songs, the first being Bist du bei mir (but not by Bach); Aria, Gott lebet noch (BWV461); Jesus ist das schönste Licht (BWV474); Aria, Komm, süsser Tod (BWV478); O Jesulein süss (BWV493); Song, Vergiss mein nicht, mein allerliebster Gott (BWV505).

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