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JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (1685–1750)

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Originally appearing in Volume V03, Page 129 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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JOHANN See also:

SEBASTIAN See also:BACH (1685–1750)  , See also:German musical composer . The See also:Bach See also:family was of importance in the See also:history of See also:music for nearly two See also:hundred years . Four branches of it were known at the beginning of the 16th See also:century, and in 1561 we hear of Hans Bach of Wechmar who is believed to be the See also:father of Wit Bach (See also:born about 1555) . The family See also:genealogy, See also:drawn Family. up by J . See also:Sebastian Bach himself and completed by his son Philipp Emanuel, describes See also:Veit Bach as the founder of the family, a See also:baker and a See also:miller, " whose See also:zither must have sounded very See also:pretty among the clattering of the See also:mill-wheels." His son, Hans Bach, " der Spielmann," is the first professional musician of the family . Of Hans's large family the second son, Christoph, was the grandfather of Sebastian Bach . Another son, Heinrich, of See also:Arnstadt, had two sons, Johann See also:Michael and Johann Christoph, who are among the greatest of J . S . Bach's fore-runners, Johann Christoph being now supposed (although this is still disputed) to be the author of the splendid See also:motet, Ich lasse See also:dick nicht (" I wrestle and pray "), formerly ascribed to Sebastian Bach . Another descendant of Veit Bach, Johann See also:Ludwig, was admired more than any other ancestor by Sebastian, who copied twelve of his See also:church cantatas and sometimes added See also:work of his own to them . The Bach family never See also:left Thuringia until the sons of Sebastian went into a more See also:modern See also:world . Through all the misery of the peasantry at the See also:period of the See also:Thirty Years' See also:War this See also:clan maintained its position and produced musicians who, however See also:local their fame, were among the greatest in See also:Europe .

So numerous and so eminent were they that in See also:

Erfurt musicians were known as " Bachs," even when there were no longer any members of the family in the See also:town . Sebastian Bach thus inherited the See also:artistic tradition of a See also:united family whose circumstances had deprived them of the distractions of the century of musical See also:fermentation which in the See also:rest of Europe had destroyed polyphonic music . Johann Sebastian Bach was baptized at See also:Eisenach on the 23rd of See also:March 1685 . His parents died in his tenth See also:year, and his See also:elder See also:brother, Johann Christoph, organist at See also:Ohrdruf, took See also:charge of him and taught him music . The elder brother B;ography . is said to have been jealous of Sebastian's See also:talent, and to have forbidden him See also:access to a See also:manuscript See also:volume of See also:works by Froberger, Buxtehude and other See also:great organists . Every See also:night for six months Sebastian got up, put his See also:hand through the lattice of the See also:bookcase, and copied the volume out by moonlight, to the permanent ruin of his eyesight (as is shown by all the extant portraits of him at a later See also:age and by the See also:blindness of his last years) . When he had finished, his brother discovered the copy and took it away from him . In 1700 Sebastian, now fifteen and thrown on his own resources by the See also:death of his brother, went to See also:Luneburg, where his beautiful See also:soprano See also:voice obtained him an See also:appointment at the school of St Michael as chorister . He seems, however, to have worked more at instrumental than at vocal music . Apart from the choristers' routine, his position provided only for his See also:general See also:education, and we know little about his definite musical instructors . In any See also:case he owed his musical development mainly to his own incessant study of classical and contemporary composers, such as See also:Frescobaldi (c .

1587), Caspar Kerl (1628–1693), Buxtehude, Froberger, lbiuffat the elder, Pachelbel and probably Johann See also:

Joseph See also:Fux (166o–1741), the author of the See also:Gradus ad Parnassum on which all later classical composers were trained . A prettier and no less See also:authentic See also:story than that of his brother's forbidden See also:organ-volume tells how, on his return from one of the many See also:holiday expeditions which Bach made to See also:Hamburg on See also:foot to hear the great Dutch organist Reinken, he sat outside an See also:inn longing for the See also:dinner he could not afford, when two See also:herring-heads were flung out of the window, and he found in each of them a See also:ducat with which he promptly paid his way, not See also:home, but back to Hamburg . At Hamburg, also, Keiser was laying the See also:foundations of German See also:opera on a splendid See also:scale which must have fired Bach's See also:imagination though it never directly influenced his See also:style . On the other hand Keiser's church music was of immense importance in his development . In See also:Celle the famous Hofkapelle brought the See also:influence of See also:French music to See also:bear upon Bach's See also:art, an influence which inspired nearly all, his works in See also:suite-See also:form and to which his many autograph copies of Couperin's music bear testimony . Indeed, there is no See also:branch of music, from See also:Palestrina onwards, conceivably accessible in Bach's See also:time, of which we do not find specimens carefully copied in his own See also:handwriting . On the other hand, when Bach, at the age of nineteen, became organist at Arnstadt, he found See also:Lubeck within easy distance, and there, in See also:October 1705, he went to hear Buxtehude, whose organ works show so See also:close an See also:affinity to Bach's style that only their lack of coherence as wholes reveals to the attentive listener that with all their See also:nobility they are not by Bach himself . Bach's See also:enthusiasm for Buxtehude caused him to outstay his leave by three months, and this, together with his See also:habit of astonishing the See also:congregation by the way he harmonized the chorales got him into trouble . But he was already too great an See also:ornament to be lightly dismissed; and though his answers to the complaints of the authorities (every word of which makes amusing See also:reading in the archives of the church) were spirited rather than satisfactory, and the consistorium had to add to their complaints the See also:grave See also:scandal of his allowing a " See also:strange See also:maiden " to sing in the church,' Bach was able to maintain his position at Arnstadt until he obtained the organistship of St See also:Blasius in Mfihlhausen in 1707 . Here he married his See also:cousin, easily identified with the " strange maiden " of Arnstadt; and here he wrote his first great church cantatas, Aus der Tiefe, Gott ist mein See also:Konig and Gottes Zeit . Bach's mastery of the See also:keyboard attracted universal See also:attention, and prevented his ever being unemployed . In 1708 he went to See also:Weimar where his successes were crowned by his appointment, in 1714, at the age of twenty-nine, as Hofkonzertmeister to the See also:duke of Weimar .

Here the See also:

composition of sacred music was one of his most congenial duties, and the great See also:cantata, Ids hatte viel Bekummerniss, was probably the first work of his new See also:office . In 1717 Bach visited See also:Dresden in the course of a See also:concert tour, and was induced to See also:challenge the arrogant French organist, J . See also:Louis Marchand, who was making himself thoroughly disliked by the German musicians who could not deny his See also:powers . Bach was first given an opportunity of listening secretly to Marchand's playing, then a competition on the organ was proposed, and a See also:day was fixed for the See also:tournament at which all the See also:court and all the musical celebrities' of the town were to be See also:present, to see nothing less than the issue between French and German music . Marchand took up the challenge contemptuously; but it would appear that he also was allowed to listen secretly to Bach's playing, for on the day of the tournament the only See also:news of him was that he had left Dresden by the earliest See also:coach . This See also:triumph was followed by Bach's appointment as Kapellmeister to the duke of See also:Cothen, a See also:post which he held from 1717 to 1723 . The Cothen period is that of Bach's central instrumental works, such as the first See also:book of the Wohltemperirtes Klavier, the See also:solo See also:violin and See also:violoncello sonatas, the See also:Brandenburg concertos, and the French and See also:English suites . In 1723, finding his position at Cothen. uninspiring for choral music, he removed to See also:Leipzig, where he became cantor of the Thomasschule, being still able to retain his post as visiting Kapellmeister at Cothen, besides a similar position at See also:Weissenfels . His wife had died in 1720, leaving seven See also:children, of whom Friedermann and Philipp Emanuel had a great future before them . (For his sons see Bison, K . P . E., below.) In See also:December 1721 Bach married again, and for the beautiful soprano voice of his second wife he wrote many of his most inspired arias .

She was a great help to him with all his work, and her musical handwriting soon became so like his own that her copies are difficult to distinguish from his See also:

autographs . In 1729 Bach heard that See also:Handel was for a second time visiting See also:Halle on his way back to See also:London from See also:Italy . A former See also:attempt of Bach's to meet Handel had failed, and now he was too See also:ill to travel, so he sent his son to Halle to invite Handel to Leipzig; but the errand was not successful, and much to Bach's disappointment he never met his only See also:coma peer . Bach so admired Handel that he made a manuscript copy of his See also:Passion nach See also:Brockes . This work, though almost unknown in See also:England then as now, was, next to the oratorios of Keiser, in-comparably the finest Passion then accessible, as See also:Graun's beautiful masterpiece, Der See also:Tod Jesu, was not composed until four years after Bach's death . The disgusting poem of Brockes (which was set by every German composer of the time) was transformed by Bach with real See also:literary skill as the groundwork of the non-scriptural See also:numbers in his Passion according to St See also:John . All Bach's most See also:colossal achievements, such as the Passion according to St See also:Matthew and the B See also:Minor See also:Mass (for discussion of which see See also:ORATORIO and MASS), date from his cantorship at Leipzig . But, important and congenial as was his position there, and smooth as the course of his See also:life seems to have been until 1 See also:Spitta points out that this cannot mean singing in the See also:choir at a service, but making music in church privately.his death in 1750, he must have had quite as much experience as can have been See also:good for him . He was often ruffled by the town councillors of Leipzig, who (like his earlier employers at Arnstadt) were shocked by the " unecclesiastical style of his compositions and by his See also:independent bearing . But he had more serious troubles . Of his seven children by his first wife only three survived him . By his second wife he had thirteen children, of whom he lost four of the six sons .

For the See also:

head of so large a family his post was dignified rather than lucrative, and few documents tell a prouder See also:tale of uncomplaining See also:thrift than the See also:inventory of his possessions made after his death . One can only be thankful that he did not live to see anything but the wonderful promise of his son Friedermann, who, in the words of the brilliantly successful K . Philipp Emanuel Bach, was more nearly capable of replacing his father than all the rest of the family together . The prospect of See also:complete loss of the tradition of his own polyphonic art he faced with equanimity, saying of the new style, which in the hands of his own son, Philipp Emanuel, was soon to See also:eclipse it for the next hundred years, " The art has advanced to great heights : the old style of music no longer pleases our modern ears." But it would have broken his See also:heart if he had forseen that Friedermann Bach was to attain a disreputable old age after a dissolute and unproductive life . The brilliant successes of Philipp Emanuel led to his appointment as court-composer to the See also:king of See also:Prussia and hence, in 1747, to Sebastian's being summoned to visit See also:Frederick the Great at See also:Potsdam, an incident which Bach always regarded as the See also:culmination of his career, much as Dr See also:Johnson regarded his inter-view with See also:George III . Bach had to See also:play on the numerous newly invented pianofortes of Silbermann which the king had bought, and also to try the See also:organs of the churches of Potsdam . Frederick, whose musical reputation rested on a genuine if narrow basis, gave him a splendid theme on which to extemporize; and on that theme Bach afterwards wrote Das musikalische Opfer . Two years. after this event his sight began to fail, and before See also:long he shared the See also:fate of Handel in becoming perfectly See also:blind .2 Bach died of See also:apoplexy on the 28th of See also:July 1750 . His loss was deplored as that of one of the greatest organists and clavier players of his time . Of his compositions comparatively little was known . At his death his MS. works were divided amongst his sobs,. and many of them have been lost; only a small fraction of his greater works was recovered when, after the See also:lapse of nearly. a century, the See also:verdict of his neglectful posterity was reversed by the modern upholders of polyphonic art . Even now some important works are still apparently irrecoverable .

The rediscovery of Bach is closely connected with the name of Mendelssohn, who was amongst the first to proclaim by word and See also:

deed the powers of a See also:genius too gigantic to work and be grasped by three generations . By the enthusiastic inraerice. endeavours of Mendelssohn, See also:Schumann and others, and in England still earlier by the performances and publications of, See also:Wesley and See also:Crotch, the circle of Bach's worshippers rapidly increased . In 185o, a century after his death, a society was started for the correct publication of all Bach's remaining works . See also:Robert See also:Franz, the great See also:song-writer, did good service in arranging some of Bach's finest works for modern performance, until the experience of a purer scholarship could prove not only the possibility but the incomparably greater beauty of a strict adherence to Bach's own scoring . The See also:Porson of Bach-scholarship, however, is Wilhelm See also:Rust (See also:grandson of the interesting composer of that name who wrote polyphonic suites and fantasias See also:early in the 19th century) . During the fourteen years of his editorship of the Bach-Gesellschaft he displayed a steadily increasing insight into Bach's style which has never since been rivalled . In more than one case he has restored harmonies of priceless value from incomplete texts, by means of See also:research and reasoning which he sums up in a modest footnote that reads as something self-evident . His prefaces to the Bach-Gesellschaft volumes are perhaps the most valuable contributions to the See also:criticism of 18th-century music ever written, Spitta's great See also:biography not excepted . 2 The same surgeon operated unsuccessfully on both composers .. Bach's importance in the history of music cannot be exaggerated . His art, neglected as old-fashioned and crabbed by his younger contemporaries, survived only in certain limited aspects as the subject of a desultory and unintelligent See also:academic study, until its re-See also:discovery by Mendelssohn . And yet, whatever disguise may have been foisted on it by corrupt traditions and See also:ignorance of its idioms, whenever any fragment of it gained the inner See also:ear of a true composer the effect on the history of music was immediate and profound .

Indeed his influence is by no means chiefly manifested in the time when his work became known in its larger aspects, though the Bach-revival is very obviously connected with certain tendencies in the " Romantic " See also:

movement in music . But, however clear we may consider Bach's claim to the See also:title of " the first of Romanticists," the full influence of his whole work has hardly yet begun to show itself . Schumann died before even such enthusiasts as the editors of the Bach-Gesellschaft began to find more beauty than extravagance in Bach's See also:ordinary musical See also:language (see, for example, See also:Hauptmann's letters passim, The Letters of a Leipzig Cantor, trans. by A . D . See also:Coleridge, London, See also:Novello, Ewer; 1892), or, indeed, to grasp the See also:main features of his designs.' The labours of the Bach-Gesellschaft have occupied more than fifty years, during which about four-fifths of Bach's choral works have been published for the first time; and it would be surprising if another fifty years sufficed to make these adequately known to the world at large . It is difficult to make an See also:anthology of such bulky works as church-cantatas, nor does an anthology meet the purpose where the whole work so constantly attains that excellence for which the anthologist seeks . Except for See also:practical difficulties (as when Bach writes for obsolete See also:instruments) the only See also:reason why some cantatas are better known than others is that a beginning must be made somewhere . Indeed, a cantata was recently selected, on the ground of its popularity, for a choral competition in a small English See also:country town the year before it was performed as a novelty in See also:Berlin ! It is clear, then, that the influence of Bach's art as an under-stood whole is still undeveloped . In the past history of music his See also:part was hardly suspected except by the great composers themselves; and, to any one contemplating the art of the See also:generation after him, it might have seemed that both he and Handel had worked in vain . Yet his was the most subtle and universal force in the development of music, even when his musical language seemed hopelessly forgotten . See also:Mozart, when rapidly advancing to the height of his mastery, had but to read the See also:Baron von Swieten's manuscript copies of the motets and of the Wohltemperirtes Klavier, and his style, quite apart from his immediate essays in the old art-forms, and apart also from the influence of his study of Handel, See also:developed a new polyphonic richness and See also:depth of See also:harmony which steadily increased until his untimely death .

See also:

Beethoven studied all the accessible works of Bach profoundly, and frequently quoted them in his See also:sketch-books, often with a See also:direct bearing on his own works . His rendering of the Wohltemperirtes Klavier is said to be recorded in the marks of expression and tempo given in See also:Czerny's edition; and if that See also:record is true, Beethoven must have been completely in the dark as to Bach's meaning in many important respects; but art is full of such illustrations of the way in which great minds influence each other in spite of every barrier which diversity of language and time can set . Beethoven's great Thirty-three See also:Variations on a Waltz by Diabelli were actually described in the publisher's puff as worthy of their kinship with the " See also:Goldberg Variations " of Bach; and that kinship is revealed in its truest See also:light by a comparison between Beethoven's 31st variation and Bach's 25th; for here, just where the resemblance is most obvious, each composer utters his most intimate expression of feeling . In 'the same way, See also:Chopin is nowhere more characteristic than where he shows his love of the Wohltemperirtes Klavier in his Etudes and Preludes; and so subtle is the influence of poly- ' See the See also:wild conjectures of the editor of the Four See also:Short Masses as to the " displacing " of structure in the See also:kyrie of the G minor Mass (B.-G., Jahr. viii. See also:preface, with Rust's See also:answer in the preface to Jahr . BACH) phonic style even over a- writer so little See also:apt to make direct useof it as Chopin, that one of Schumann's few plagiarisms occurs in his use of a phrase from Chopin's F minor Etude (written for the Methode See also:des met/lodes) as the subject of a See also:fugue (Op . 72, No . 3) . And, apart from fugues, which Schumann cultivated assiduously at a See also:late See also:stage in his career, the influence of Bach pervades the texture and See also:rhythm of his work in more ways than can easily be followed . In a more See also:external, but not less significant way, the Passion according to St Matthew made its See also:mark on Mendelssohn from the time when he discovered it at the age of twelve, and suggested to him many features in the general See also:design of oratorios, by means of which he rescued that branch of art from the operatic influences that ruined Beethoven's See also:Mount of See also:Olives . Without the example of Bach, See also:Wagner's schemes of Leitmotif would never in his lifetime have become See also:woven into that close polyphonic texture which secures for his music a flow as continuous as that of See also:drama itself:—and intimately connected with this is the whole subject of Wagner's harmonization, which in many of its boldest characteristics was foreshadowed by Bach . A close study of the texture of See also:Brahms's work shows that he develops Bach's and Beethoven's artistic devices pari passu, and that the result is a complete unification of that opposition between polyphony and form which in the See also:infancy of the See also:sonata (as in every transitional stage in musical history) threatened to See also:wreck the art as a false See also:antithesis wrecks a See also:philosophy . Perhaps the only great composers who escaped the direct influence of Bach are See also:Gluck and See also:Berlioz .

Phoenix-squares

Even Gluck reproduced in every detail of harmony and figure the first twelve bars of the Gigue of Bach's B See also:

flat Clavier-Partita in the See also:aria " Je t'implore et je tremble " in Iphigenie en Tauride . But See also:plagiarism, however unconscious, is a very different thing from that profound indebtedness which makes a great See also:man attain his truest originality; and Gluck's training practically deprived him of Bach's direct influence, useful as that would have been to the attainment of his aims in See also:harmonic and choral expression . The indirect influence no one could See also:escape, for whatever in modern music is not traceable to Sebastian Bach is traceable to his sons, who were encouraged by their father in the cultivation of those See also:infant art-forms which were so soon to dazzle the world into the belief that his own work was obsolete . Bach's See also:place in music is thus far higher than that of a reformer, or even of an inventor of new forms . He is a spectator of all musical time and existence, to whom it is not of the smallest importance whether a thing be new or old, so long as it is true . It is doubtful whether even the forms most See also:peculiar to him (such as the See also:arpeggio-prelude) are of his invention . Yet he left no form as he found it,—not even that most conventional of all, the Da See also:Capo Aria, which he did not outwardly alter in the least . On the other hand, with every form he touched he said the last word . All the material that could be assimilated into a mature art he vitalized in his own way, and he had no imitators . The language of music changed at his death, and his influence became all-pervading just because he was not the See also:prophet of the new art, hut an unbiassed seeker of truth . Whether so great a man becomes " progressive " or " reactionary " depends on the artistic resources of his - time . He will always work at the See also:kind of art that is most complete and consistent in all its aspects .

The same spirit of truthfulness that makes Sebastian Bach hold himself aloof from the progressive art which he encourages in his sons, drives Beethoven to invent new forms and new means of expression with every work he writes . Gluck abolished the Da Capo Aria, because it was unfit for dramatic music . Bach did not abolish it, because he did not intend to write dramatic music in the strict sense of the See also:

term . Mature musical art in Bach's time could not be dramatic, except in the loose sense in which the term may be applied to an epic poem . Dramatic expression, properly so called, can only be attained in music by the full development of resources that do not blend with those of Bach's art at all . Meanwhile there are many things unsuitable for the stage which are nevertheless valuable on purely musical grounds; and the Da Capo Aria was one . Bach developed it in a great variety of ways, while retaining even the minor details of what in other hands had long before become its conventional form; but the one thing he did not do was to abuse it according to time-honoured See also:custom as the See also:staple form for opera . For that he had too much dramatic insight . His treatment of other important art-forms is illustrated in the articles on CONTRAPUNTAI . FORMS; See also:CONCERTO and See also:INSTRUMENTATION . Here we may attempt to illustrate his methods by such forms and characteristics as cannot be classified under those headings . r .

The toccatas of Buxtehude and his predecessors show how an effective musical See also:

scheme may be suggested by See also:running over Matra- the keyboard of an organ as if to try (toccare) the dons of See also:touch, then bursting out into sustained and full Bach's harmony, and at last settling down to a fugue . But method. before Bach no one seemed able to keep the fugue in See also:motion long enough to make a convincing See also:climax . Very soon it collapsed and the See also:process of quasi-extemporization began again, to culminate in a new fugue which often gave the whole work a happy but deceptive See also:suggestion of organic unity by being founded on an ingenious variation of the subject of the first fugue . But in Bach's hands the toccata becomes one of the noblest and most plastic of forms . The See also:introductory runs may be disjointed and exaggerated to grotesqueness, until the gaps between them gradually fill out, and they build themselves up into See also:grand piles of musical See also:architecture, as in the organ toccata in C;- or they may be worked out on an enormous scale in long and smooth canonic passages with a definite theme, - as in the greatest of all toccatas, that in F for organ, which is most artistically followed by a fugue unusually quiet for its See also:size . In one instance, the toccata at the beginning of the E minor clavierpartita, the introductory runs, though retaining much of the extempore See also:character from which the form derives its name, take shape in a highly organized and rounded-off See also:group of contrasted themes . The fugue follows without See also:change of time, and is developed in so leisurely a manner that it is fully as long as a normal fugue on a large scale by the time it reaches what sounds like its central See also:episode . At this point some of the introductory See also:matter quietly enters, and leads to a recapitulation of the whole introduction in the See also:key now reached . The obvious sequel would be a See also:counter-development of the fugue, at least as long as what has gone before, as in the clavier-toccata in C minor; but Bach does not choose to weary the hearer and weaken the impression of breadth he has already made here . Instead, he expands this restatement of the introduction, and makes its harmonies deliberately return to the fundamental key, and thus in an astonishingly short time the toccata is brought to a close with the utmost effect of climax and finality . The same grasp of all the possible meanings of an artistic See also:device shows itself in his treatment of the other features of toccata form . With his variety of proportion and flow he has no need to break off the fugue like earlier composers: but all the old devices by which the See also:division into sections was managed are turned to See also:account by him, and almost every toccata has its own scheme of contrasted movements, always based on the old natural See also:idea of the growth of an organized music from a See also:chaos of extemporization .

If this is Bach's treatment of a comparatively small and specialized art-form, it is obviously impossible to reduce the scantiest account of the rest of his work into practical limits here, nor is there as yet a sufficient See also:

body of accepted criticism of Bach for such an account to carry further conviction than an expression of individual See also:opinion . Fortunately, however, Bach was constantly re-arranging his own compositions; indeed he evidently regards adaptability to fresh environment as the test of his finest work: and we cannot do better than See also:review the See also: