Sheet Music of Johann Sebastian Bach biography and program notes.

The Fifth Evangelist

On March 11, 1829, nearly eighty years after Johann Sebastian Bach’s death, the 20-year-old Felix Mendelssohn stood before an orchestra in Berlin and conducted a performance of the St. Matthew Passion. At the time, Bach was a forgotten figure, a minor cantor from Leipzig whose complex, polyphonic music was considered hopelessly old-fashioned. That single performance, however, sparked a cultural firestorm. The audience was overwhelmed by the work's profound spiritual power and dramatic intensity. The "Bach Revival" had begun, a movement that would restore Bach to his rightful place and reveal to the world what we now take for granted: that this humble church musician was not merely a composer, but a towering genius whose work represented a summation of all that came before and a prophecy of all that would follow.

The Bach Dynasty: A Musician's Destiny

Johann Sebastian Bach was born into music as if by destiny. He was part of a vast German dynasty of musicians that had produced dozens of town organists, cantors, and court musicians for generations. Born in Eisenach, Germany, he was orphaned by the age of ten and went to live with his older brother, a church organist who continued his musical training. He was a brilliant and fiercely independent student, famously copying out entire manuscripts of other composers' music by moonlight when he was forbidden access to them.

The Young Organist: Arnstadt, Mühlhausen, and Weimar

Bach’s early career was spent in a series of posts as a church organist and concertmaster. He quickly gained a reputation as the most brilliant organ virtuoso in Germany. His skill in improvisation was legendary. A famous story tells of him, at age twenty, walking over 250 miles to the city of Lübeck just to hear the great Danish-German organist Dieterich Buxtehude play. He was so captivated that he overstayed his leave by several months, much to the annoyance of his employers in Arnstadt. It was during these early years, particularly at the court of Weimar, that he composed the bulk of his monumental works for the organ, including the famous Toccata and Fugue in D minor.

The Court of Cöthen: A Secular Interlude

From 1717 to 1723, Bach held the position of Kapellmeister (music director) for the music-loving Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Cöthen. This period was a happy and incredibly productive one for instrumental music. Because his patron was a Calvinist, whose church services did not require elaborate sacred music, Bach was free to focus on secular concertos, suites, and sonatas for the court's excellent orchestra.

From this short, six-year period came an astonishing number of masterpieces that are now central to the repertoire: the six Brandenburg Concertos; the four Orchestral Suites; the Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin; the six Cello Suites; and the first book of The Well-Tempered Clavier, a revolutionary collection of preludes and fugues in all 24 major and minor keys.

Cantor in Leipzig: Music for the Glory of God

In 1723, Bach accepted the position he would hold for the rest of his life: Cantor of the St. Thomas School in Leipzig. It was one of the most prestigious musical jobs in Germany, but it came with immense responsibilities. He was in charge of the music for the city’s four main churches, which required him to compose, rehearse, and perform a new church cantata almost every Sunday and for every religious holiday. Over the course of his first few years in Leipzig, he produced cantata cycles of breathtaking quality and quantity, composing a body of sacred music of unparalleled depth and complexity.

His life in Leipzig was often difficult. He was a stubborn and proud man who frequently clashed with the town council, his employers, who he felt were unsupportive and artistically ignorant. Despite these struggles, it was in Leipzig that he composed his greatest sacred works, including the St. John Passion, the St. Matthew Passion, the Christmas Oratorio, and, late in his life, the monumental Mass in B minor.

The Final Masterworks and a Fading Light

Bach was a devoted family man. He was married twice and fathered twenty children, ten of whom survived into adulthood. Several of his sons—most notably Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, and Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach—became important composers in their own right, bridging the gap between their father's Baroque style and the new Classical era.

In his later years, Bach’s style grew more intricate and deeply contrapuntal, even as musical tastes around him were shifting toward a simpler, more elegant style. He turned to creating encyclopedic collections that represent the summation of his art, including the Goldberg Variations, the Musical Offering, and his final, unfinished masterpiece, The Art of Fugue.

His eyesight, strained by years of composing in poor light, began to fail. In 1750, he underwent two eye operations by a traveling English surgeon, which were unsuccessful and likely hastened his death. He died of a stroke on July 28, 1750. He was buried in an unmarked grave and his music, with the exception of his keyboard works used for teaching, fell into obscurity. It took the passion of a new generation of Romantic composers, led by Mendelssohn, to rediscover his genius and reveal him as the eternal and foundational master of Western music.

Section 4: References and Further Reading

References and Further Reading

• Wolff, Christoph. Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician. W. W. Norton & Company, 2001.

• Gardiner, John Eliot. Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven. Alfred A. Knopf, 2013.

• Spitta, Philipp. Johann Sebastian Bach: His Work and Influence on the Music of Germany, 1685-1750. 3 vols. Translated by Clara Bell and J. A. Fuller Maitland. Dover Publications, 1992.

• Boyd, Malcolm. Bach. 3rd ed. Oxford University Press, 2000.