Essay about Bach's Life and Music

In 1717, Bach was appointed Kapellmeister at Köthen but was refused permission to leave Weimar. He was eventually allowed to leave but only after being held prisoner by the duke for almost a month. Bach's new employer, Prince Leopold, was a talented musician who loved and understood the art. Since the court was Calvinist, Bach had no chapel duties and instead concentrated on composition. In this period he wrote his violin concertos and the six Brandenburg Concertos, as well as numerous sonatas, suites and keyboard works (p. 164, Baker’s Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, Vol. 1)

In addition, Bach was a virtuoso on the organ. He also served as an organ consultant, and composer of organ works, like toccatas, chorale preludes, and fugues. He had a reputation for having great creativity, and he was able to integrate many national styles into his works. Many of his works are said to have North German influences that were taught to Bach by Georg Bröhm. Bach also copied the works of many French and Italian composers in order to decipher their compositional languages. Later on, he arranged several violin concertos by Vivaldi for organ. Most experts of musical composition believe that the years, between 1708 and 1714, were his most productive. Within this period, he composed several preludes, fugues, and toccatas. During this span, Bach wrote the Little Organ Book, Orgelbüchlein. This book remains an unfinished collection of forty-nine short chorale preludes.

Johann Sebastian Bach, born in the year 1685, was a German born composer, virtuoso organist and keyboard player, a

When given the task of writing a biography on Johann Sebastian Bach, there are roughly nine periods in his life that can be discussed in detail. Beginning in Eisenach with his birth, moving to Ohrdruf after his parent’s death, deciding to pursue choral studies in Luneburg, his first stay in Weimar while awaiting the organ to be built in Arnstadt, moving to Arnstadt and beginning services for the town at age 18, auditioning for the organist position in Muhlhausen, returning to Weimar to continue working as a member of the chamber orchestra and as Organist of the Court in Weimar, leaving Weimar to become the Chapel master in Cothen, and finally residing in Leipzig where he eventually passed away at age 65.

Born in Eisenach, Thuringia, Germany. He had a respected musical extraction and took on various organist positions during the early 18th century, producing famous compositions like Fugue in D major. Currently, he is well-none as one of the greatest Western composers of all time. His started his music career at the age eighteen after his parent had passed away. His father had taught him to play the violin and the harpsichord. “The Fugue has its subject announced in the alto, answered in the tenor, followed by the bass in the pedals and finally the soprano and continuing on an impressive scale to conclude with a sustained upper note, followed by a final tonic pedal below.” (Johann Sebastian Bach Preludes and Fugues ,

Bach used all of these skills in his concertos, cantatas, and fugues. A concerto is a musical composition for a solo instrument accompanied by an orchestra. Of all of Bach’s concertos, the “Brandenburg Concertos” are the most famous. These concertos were written for the Margrave of Brandenburg, they were written to be performed with a chamber orchestra. When writing these, Bach was the music director in Cothen under Prince Leopold, and he called the pieces “Six Concerts Avec plusieurs Instruments ("Six Concertos With several Instruments")”, but the biographer Philipp Spitta renamed it to “Brandenburg Concertos.” There are six different concertos in the collection; they showed off the musical talent in the province of Cothen as a result because each concerto required a talented soloist. The “Brandenburg Concertos” were also similar to the concertos of Vivaldi, with the three structures of fast, slow, fast, and a returning theme. Cantatas are pieces of music for vocal parts with instrumental accompaniment of an orchestra, and the cantatas of Bach are some of the best known ones in the world. Bach wrote cantatas throughout his life, but it was not until he moved to Leipzig and worked in the St. Thomas Church, did he meet his challenge of producing cantatas for the church throughout the year. Bach had to create a cantata for every Sunday and feast day in the religious calendar, which was five annually. All of these cantatas were the principal music piece used during service to highlight the passage from the sermon and to help people further comprehend the lesson being taught. There are over 200 different cantatas written by Bach, but his most famous cantata is BWV 147, “Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben.” In addition to cantatas, the fugues of Bach are by far his most famous works. A fugue is a

     Among the influential composers of baroque music, there have been few who have contributed so much in talent, creativity, and style as Johann Sebastian Bach. Bach was a German organist and composer of the baroque era. Bach was born on March 21, 1685 in Eisenach, Thuringia and died July 28,1750. Bach revealed his feelings and his insights in his pieces. Bach’s mastery of all the major forms of baroque music (except opera) resulted not only from his genius talent, but also from his life long quest for knowledge. In some parts of Germany, the name, “Bach” became a synonym with the word, “musician.” Extremely talented in the art of baroque composition, Bach placed his heart, soul, and

In 1706 Bach decided that he wanted to further his career in music and made the first change by leaving his organ playing position at the church and took upon a new position in Munhlhausen at the St. Blasius as an organist there (Johann Sebastian BACH). This change was for the best because the church was larger and located in a city that was important to the north. A few months after being an organist at the St. Blasius church he married his second cousin Maria Barbara Bach. After a year of Bach being a organist for St. Blasius, he was offered a better position in Weimar. Bach took the offer with pride and became their new court organist and concertmaster at the ducal court. Johann and Maria Bach decided to start their family, after their first born child, Marias unwed sister moved into their home to help with raising their children. Maria and Johann Bach had a total of seven children. The gifted musically talented family continued as two of Bach children, Wilhelm Friedemann Bach and Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach became vital composers following the baroque period.

Bach was a prolific composer during the later parts of the baroque period, he was also a prolific concerto composer also, He himself composing many pieces in concerto form. Most of these works were composed around 1720. Bach was the Kapellmeister for Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Cothen during this period; this was also the period in which his wife died suddenly, perhaps striking inspiration. Many of Bach’s concertos used additional and varied instrumentation to those of Corelli and the concerto grosso form. They often had woodwind and brass instruments such as the oboe, recorder, trumpet and piccolo. There was no standard instrumentation for Bach’s concertos, the instruments he used varied from piece to piece. To contrast this, Bach’s concerto No. 1 used two horns, three oboes, a violino piccolo accompanied by the bassoon, a strings section (similar to a

So Bach moved on to the job in Weimar, which gave him greater musical freedom. His main duties were court organist and chamber musician to the reigning Duke Wilhelm Ernst, and he afterwards attained the job of conductor to the court orchestra in his last three years of service. It was at the beginning of this period of work that he wrote some of his most famous organ pieces, including the marvelous Passacaglia.

J.S. Bach, short for Johann Sebastian Bach, is a prominent composer during the Baroque Era. Bach was born in Eisenach, Thuringia, Germany on March 31, 1685. He is the youngest son of his parents, Johann Ambrosius Bach and Elizabeth Lammerhirt Bach. Because he came from seven generations of musicians, it was not unusual that Bach became a musician and composer himself. In fact, Bach’s father and brother are both church organist. Although Bach is well known for his organ skills, his musical career did not start with an organ. In fact, it started with violin lessons with

Johann Sebastian Bach was born on March 21st 1685. He is the son of Johann Ambrosius. For many years, members of the Bach family had held positions such as organists, town instrumentalists, or Cantors.

While both Bach and Handel are known as two of history's greatest composers, these two men had different lives. Despite the fact that they were both from Germany, born in the year of 1685, Bach and Handel worked with different genres of music you could say. Johann Sebastian Bach, commonly know as J. S. Bach, was self taught and was influenced by the likes of Vivaldi, Palestrina, and Pachelbel. Bach was also the product of a family of musicians. While George Frideric Handel worked under King George I. in London and composed for theater, Bach composed for the church while staying in Germany. In London, and with being connected to the King, Handel was able to excel not only in fame but in fortune, especially after straying from his fathers plan

Bach was a well-known German composer and musician of the Baroque Period. His skills in composition, counterpoint, harmonic and motivic organization are highly respected even until present. Bach composed the cello suites sometime around 1720, the same time he wrote the equally astonishing six partitas and sonatas for solo violin.

As soon as he arrived, Bach had the position of court organist and was also a member of the orchestra. He mostly focused on the organ for the first few years of his post.in 1713, he had the opportunity to follow Friedrich Wilhelm Zachow’s position at the Liebfrauenkirche, Halle; but his salary was raised so that he could remain where he was. In 1714, he became the concert master which required him to compose one cantata per month. Bach befriended a relative named Johann Gottfried Walther who was a composer and music lexicographer, as well as organist of the local church. Bach participated in music activities in the town, and then began to teach Ernst August and Johann Ernst, Duke Wilhelm’s nephews. Johann had a talent for composing concerti