|
JOHANN
SEBASTIAN
BACH
(1685 - 1750) |
|
|
 |
German
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 organ lessons. In 1700 was a chorister at St. Michael's Church,
Lüneburg, staying for three 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 nine years, leaving in
disappointment at not being appointed Kapellmeister in 1717. By this
time he had composed some of his finest organ 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 instrumental composition. From this period date his violin
concertos, sonatas, suites, and Brandenburg concertos. Also composed
many of his best klavier works at Cöthen, probably for his
children's instruction. In 1720 his wife died and in December 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 music, Bach applied for the
cantorship at St. Thomas's, Leipzig, in December 1722. he was not
selected, but the chosen candidate withdrew and Bach was appointed in
May 1723, having in the meantime conducted 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, composed more than 250 church
cantatas, the St. Matthew Passion , Mass in B minor, Christmas Oratorio
, Goldberg Variations , and many other works including his last, the
unfinished Die Kunst der Fuge . 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 organist virtuoso. As a composer his reputation in his
lifetime was restricted to a fairly narrow circle and his music was
regarded by many as old-fashioned. His fame in no way approached that
of, e.g., Telemann. His published works today fill many volumes but in
his lifetime fewer than a dozen of his compositions were printed, and
for half a century after his death this position was only slightly
improved until 1801 the Das Wohltemperierte Klavier was issued. The
revival of interest in Bach's music may be dated from the Berlin
performance of the St. Matthew Passion on the 11th of March 1829,
conducted by Mendelssohn. Systematic publication of his works by the
Bach Gesellschaft began in 1850 to mark the centenary of his death.
Bach's supreme achievement was as a polyphonist. His North German
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
music, 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 four countless listeners, Bach's music
is supreme.
The
Bach Revival
After Bach's death he was remembered less as a composer than as an
organist and harpsichord player. His frequent tours had ensured his
reputation as the greatest organist of the time, but his contrapuntal
style of writing sounded old-fashioned to his contemporaries, most of
whom preferred the new preclassical styles then coming into fashion,
which were more homophonic in texture and less contrapuntal than Bach's
music. Consequently, for the next 80 years his music was neglected by
the public, although a few musicians admired it, among them Wolfgang
Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven. A revival of interest in
Bach's music occurred in the mid-19th century. The German composer
Felix Mendelssohn arranged a performance of the St. Matthew Passion in
1829, which did much to awaken popular interest in Bach. The Bach
Gesellschaft, formed in 1850, devoted itself assiduously to finding,
editing, and publishing Bach's works.
Because the Bach revival coincided with the flowering of the Romantic
movement in music, performance styles were frequently gross distortions
of Bach's intentions. Twentieth-century scholarship, inspired by the
early enthusiasm of the French Protestant medical missionary, organist,
and musicologist Albert Schweitzer, gradually has unearthed principles
of performance that are truer to Bach's era and his music.
Bach was largely self-taught in musical composition. His principal
study method, following the custom of his day, was to copy in his
workbooks the music of French, German, and Italian composers of his own
time and earlier. He did this throughout his life and often made
arrangements of other composers' works.
Master
of Counterpoint
The significance of Bach's music is due in large part to the scope of
his intellect. He is perhaps best known as a supreme master of
counterpoint. He was able to understand and use every resource of
musical language that was available in the baroque era. Thus, if he
chose, he could combine the rhythmic patterns of French dances, the
gracefulness of Italian melody, and the intricacy of German
counterpoint all in one composition. At the same time he could write
for voice and the various instruments so as to take advantage of the
unique properties of construction and tone quality in each. In
addition, when a text was associated with the music, Bach could write
musical equivalents of verbal ideas, such as an undulating melody to
represent the sea, or a canon to describe the Christians following the
teaching of Jesus.
Bach's ability to assess and exploit the media, styles, and genre of
his day enabled him to achieve many remarkable transfers of idiom. For
instance, he could take an Italian ensemble composition, such as a
violin concerto, and transform it into a convincing work for a single
instrument, the harpsichord. By devising intricate melodic lines, he
could convey the complex texture of a multivoiced fugue on a
single-melody instrument, such as the violin or cello. The
conversational rhythms and sparse textures of operatic recitatives can
be found in some of his works for solo keyboard. Technical facility
alone, of course, was not the source of Bach's greatness. It is the
expressiveness of his music, particularly as manifested in the vocal
works, that conveys his humanity and that touches listeners everywhere.
Read
more on Wikipedia ... |
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
