Johann Christina Bach Free Sheet Music, Program Notes, Recordings and Biography

The London Bach: A Genius and His Mentor

In 1764, the talk of the London music scene was an eight-year-old prodigy from Salzburg, a boy named Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. During a performance at court, the boy’s eyes lit up when he saw the Queen’s esteemed Music Master, Johann Christian Bach. The two sat down at the keyboard, and a musical miracle unfolded. As one observer wrote, they began to play, alternating passages with such seamless intuition that it seemed as if a single mind and a single pair of hands were at work. The boy would later sit on the master's lap, and together they would play through one of Bach’s sonatas, a moment of profound musical connection between the established master of the elegant Classical style and the young genius who would carry that style to its zenith. This was the legacy of Johann Christian Bach: the man who broke from his family’s monumental past to define the music of his time and, in doing so, became the teacher of the greatest composer of all.

The Youngest Son

To be the youngest son of Johann Sebastian Bach was to be born into the very heart of the German musical Baroque. Johann Christian, born in Leipzig in 1735, was only fifteen when his titanic father died. He was the last of the eleven children born to J.S. Bach and his second wife, Anna Magdalena. His early musical education came directly from his father, who was then composing his final, masterful contrapuntal works like The Art of Fugue. Young Johann Christian absorbed this complex style, but his own temperament was already leaning toward something new. The world was changing, and the dense, learned counterpoint of the Baroque was giving way to a new desire for clarity, elegance, and lyrical melody.

After his father's death in 1750, J.C. Bach moved to Berlin to live and study with his older half-brother, the brilliant and innovative Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach. From C.P.E. Bach, he learned the tenets of the emotionally charged Empfindsamer Stil (sensitive style), with its emphasis on dramatic expression and surprise. He was now armed with two distinct musical inheritances: the supreme contrapuntal craft of his father and the forward-looking expressive language of his brother. But Johann Christian was not content to live in the shadow of his family. He yearned for a different sound, a different world, and he made a decision that would have been unthinkable to his staunchly Lutheran father: he decided to go to Italy.

An Italian Transformation

In 1755, at the age of twenty, Johann Christian Bach crossed the Alps into Italy, a move that represented a complete break from his German heritage. He settled in Milan, supported by a wealthy Italian nobleman, and immersed himself in the world of Italian music. He studied counterpoint with the revered theorist and teacher Padre Giovanni Battista Martini in Bologna. Under Martini's guidance, he honed his craft, but the most significant transformation came from the vibrant world of Italian opera. He fell in love with the soaring vocal lines, the clear orchestral textures, and the dramatic pacing of the opera house.

In a move that finalized his separation from his family's tradition, he converted to Catholicism in 1757. This allowed him to secure the post of second organist at the Milan Cathedral in 1760. During this time, he composed a significant amount of sacred music, including masses and a Te Deum, but his real ambition lay in the theater. His first opera, Artaserse, premiered in Turin in 1760 to great acclaim. He followed it with more operatic triumphs in Naples, quickly becoming one of the most sought-after opera composers in Italy. The "Italian Bach" had mastered a style utterly his own—not of dense counterpoint, but of beautiful, singable melody, a style known as style galant. His fame spread across Europe, and a tantalizing offer soon arrived from the one city that could rival Paris as the musical capital of the world: London.

The London Bach

Johann Christian Bach arrived in London in 1762, initially to compose operas for the King's Theatre. He was an immediate sensation. His charming personality, sophisticated music, and continental flair captivated the English aristocracy. Within a year, he was appointed Music Master to Queen Charlotte, the German-born wife of King George III. In this role, he was responsible for the Queen’s private concerts, taught her and the royal children music, and accompanied the King, an amateur flutist. He was now "the London Bach," the most fashionable and influential musician in the city.

In 1764, he joined forces with fellow German expatriate Carl Friedrich Abel, a virtuoso of the viola da gamba, to establish the Bach-Abel concerts. This was one of the first public subscription concert series in history, a revolutionary idea that moved music from the exclusive domain of the court into the public sphere. For nearly twenty years, these concerts were the most important musical events in London, presenting the newest symphonies, concertos, and chamber works from across Europe. It was for these concerts that J.C. Bach composed the bulk of his brilliant orchestral music, including his many sinfonie concertanti, a genre he helped popularize. His keyboard sonatas, particularly the sets published as Op. 5 and Op. 17, became best-sellers among amateur musicians, their graceful melodies and clear, balanced structures perfectly suited to the tastes of the time.

Mozart's Mentor

It was during the height of his fame, in 1764, that the eight-year-old Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart arrived in London on his family’s grand European tour. For the young prodigy, meeting the celebrated "London Bach" was a life-changing experience. Mozart was utterly captivated by J.C. Bach's music. He spent months under his wing, absorbing his style and techniques. What Mozart learned from him was a new way of composing. From Bach, he learned the art of the "singing allegro"—a fast movement driven not by motivic development, but by a succession of beautiful, song-like themes. He learned how to structure a piano concerto as a dramatic dialogue between a lyrical soloist and a dynamic orchestra.

The influence is undeniable. Mozart’s early London notebooks are filled with copies and arrangements of Bach’s sonatas. When Mozart later composed his first great piano concertos in Vienna, he explicitly modeled them on the works of J.C. Bach, famously remarking, "Much of it is stolen from Bach." Even years later, upon hearing of J.C. Bach's death, a saddened Mozart wrote to his father, "What a loss to the musical world!" It was not just a stylistic influence; it was a deep, personal, and artistic mentorship that provided Mozart with the foundational tools he would use to build his own immortal masterpieces.

A Fading Star

By the late 1770s, the musical tastes of London began to shift. The smooth, elegant galant style that Bach had perfected started to seem old-fashioned. A new generation of virtuosos arrived in the city, and the public's favor began to turn. The Bach-Abel concerts faced increasing competition and eventually ceased in 1-781. Compounding his problems, a dishonest servant embezzled a huge sum of his money, leaving him in significant debt.

Though his fame was waning, he continued to compose works of great beauty, including his final set of keyboard sonatas and a powerful London opera, La clemenza di Scipione. But his health was failing, and his financial troubles mounted. Johann Christian Bach died on New Year's Day, 1782, at the age of just 46. He was buried in a pauper's grave in London, his passing barely noticed by the public that had once adored him. Queen Charlotte herself covered the expenses of the funeral and provided a pension for his widow. Though he died in relative obscurity, his legacy was already secure in the music of the young man he had mentored years before. He was the Bach who had dared to be different, the master of melody who built the elegant bridge from the Baroque to the Classical, a bridge upon which Mozart would walk into genius.

Section 4: References and Further Reading

• Terry, Charles Sanford. John Christian Bach. Oxford University Press, 1929 (2nd edition, 1967).

• Gärtner, Heinz. John Christian Bach: Mozart's Friend and Mentor. Amadeus Press, 1994.

• Wolff, Christoph. The New Bach Reader: A Life of Johann Sebastian Bach in Letters and Documents. W. W. Norton & Company, 1998. (Contains letters and documents pertaining to his sons).

• Warburton, Ernest, and C.R.F. Maunder. "Bach, Johann Christian." Grove Music Online. Oxford University Press, 2001.

• Sainsbury, John S. A Dictionary of Musicians: From the Earliest Ages to the Present Time. (Provides a contemporary 19th-century view of his reputation).