Well, now let's talk about my baroque side. Actually, most
musical pieces that I play on the flute are baroque ones. There are many composers from
that time that I admire very much, such as Loeillet, Telleman, Vivaldi, Cimarosa, all the
Bach's sons and many more, but I think that J. S. Bach can resume all their virtues. The
baroque period is very different from the classic or the romantic ones. baroque took
virtuosism to the edge; while the classic period pursued musical perfection, the baroque
chased teachnical perfection. While romantism seeked the link between the internal world
and music, baroque was worried with the link between the instrument itself and music. Bach
reached the top of all baroque perspectives.
ACS.
|
 ach is
considered by many people to have been the greatest composer in the history of Western
music. Bach's main achievement lies in his synthesis and advanced development of the
primary contrapuntal idiom of the late Baroque, and in the basic tunefulness of his
thematic material. He was able to successfully integrate and expand upon the harmonic and
formal frameworks of the national schools of the time: German, French, Italian and
English, while retaining a personal identity and spirit in his large output. Bach is also
known for the numerical symbolism and mathematical exactitude which many people have found
in his music -- for this, he is often regarded as one of the pinnacle geniuses of Western
civilization, even by those who are not normally involved with music.
Bach spent the height of his working life in a Lutheran church position in Leipzig, as
both organist and music director. Much of his music is overtly religious, while many of
his secular works admit religious interpretations on some levels. His large output of
organ music is considered to be the greatest legacy of compositions for the instrument,
and it is the measure by which all later efforts are judged. His other solo keyboard music
is held in equally high esteem, especially for its exploration of the strictly
contrapuntal fugue; his 48 preludes and fugues (The Well-Tempered Clavier) are still the
primary means by which these forms are taught. His other chamber music is similarly lofty,
the sets for solo violin and solo cello being the summits of their respective genres.
Bach's large-scale sacred choral music is also unique in its scope and development. The
St. John and St. Matthew passions and B Minor Mass led to the rediscovery of his music in
the 19th century. His huge output of cantatas for all occasions is equally impressive.
Finally, his large output of concerti includes some of the finest examples of the period,
including the ubiquitous Brandenberg Concertos.
-- Todd McComb |
He was the youngest son of Johann Ambrosius
Bach, a town musician, from whom he probably learnt the violin and the rudiments of
musical theory. When he was ten he was orphaned and went to live with his elder brother
Johann Christoph, organist at St. Michael's Church, Ohrdruf, who gave him lessons in
keyboard playing. From 1700 to 1702 he attended St. Michael's School in Lüneburg, where
he sang in the church choir and probably came into contact with the organist and composer
Georg Böhm. He also visited Hamburg to hear J.A. Reincken at the organ of St. Catherine's
Church.
After competing unsuccessfully for an organist's post in Sangerhausen in 1702, Bach
spent the spring and summer of 1703 as 'lackey' and violinist at the court of Weimar and
then took up the post of organist at the Neukirche in Arnstadt. In June 1707 he moved to
St. Blasius, Mühlhausen, and four months later married his cousin Maria Barbara Bach in
nearby Dornheim. Bach was appointed organist and chamber musician to the Duke of
Saxe-Weimar in 1708, and in the next nine years he became known as a leading organist and
composed many of his finest works for the instrument. During this time he fathered seven
children, including Wilhelm Friedemann and Carl Philipp Emanuel. When, in 1717, Bach was
appointed Kapellmeister at Cöthen, he was at first refused permission to leave Weimar and
was allowed to do so 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 instrumental composition. From this period date his violin concertos and the six
Brandenburg Concertos, as well as numerous sonalas, suites and keyboard works, including
several (e.g. the Inventions and Book I of the '48') intended for instruction. In 1720
Maria Barbara died while Bach was visiting Karlsbad with the prince; in December of the
following year Bach married Anna Magdalena Wilcke, daughter of a court trumpeter at
Weissenfels. A week later Prince Leopold also married, and his bride's lack of interest in
the arts led to a decline in the support given to music at the Cöthen court. In 1722 Bach
entered his candidature for the prestigious post of Director musices at Leipzig and Kantor
of the Thomasschule there. In April 1723, after the preferred candidates, Telemann and
Graupner, had withdrawn, he was offered the post and accepted it.
Bach remained as Thomaskantor in Leipzig for the rest of his life, often in conflict
with the authorities, but a happy family man and a proud and caring parent. His duties
centred on the Sunday and feastday services at the city's two main churches, and during
his early years in Leipzig he composed prodigious quantities of church music, including
four or five cantata cycles, the Magnificat and the St. John and St. Matthew Passions. He
was by this time renowned as a virtuoso organist and in constant demand as a teacher and
an expert in organ construction and design. His fame as a composer gradually spread more
widely when, from 1726 onwards, he began to bring out published editions of some of his
keyboard and organ music.
From about 1729 Bach's interest in composing church music sharply declined, and most of
his sacred works after that date, including the b Minor Mass and the Christmas Oratorio,
consist mainly of 'parodies' or arrangements of earlier music. At the same time he took
over the direction of the collegium musicum that Telemann had founded in Leipzig in 1702 -
a mainly amateur society which gave regular public concerts. For these Bach arranged
harpsichord concertos and composed several large-scale cantatas, or serenatas, to impress
the Elector of Saxony, by whom he was granted the courtesy title of Hofcompositeur in
1736.
Among the 13 children born to Anna Magdalena at Leipzig was Bach's youngest son, Johann
Christian, in 1735. In 1744 Bach's second son, Emanuel, was married, and three years later
Bach visited the couple and their son (his first grandchild) at Potsdam, where Emanuel was
employed as harpsichordist by Frederick the Great. At Potsdam Bach improvised on a theme
given to him by the king, and this led to the composition of the Musical Offering, a
compendium of fugue, canon, and sonata based on the royal theme. Contrapuntal artifice
predominates in the work of Bach's last decade, during which his membership (from 1747) of
Lorenz Mizler's learned Society of Musical Sciences profoundly affected his musical
thinking. The Canonic Variations for organ was one of the works Bach presented to the
society, and the unfinished Art of Fugue may also have been intended for distribution
among its members.
Bach's eyesight began to deteriorate during his last year and in March and April 1750
he was twice operated on by the itinerant English oculist John Taylor. The operations and
the treatment that followed them may have hastened Bach's death. He took final communion
on 22 July and died six days later. On 31 July he was buried at St. John's cemetery. His
widow survived him for ten years, dying in poverty in 1760.
Bach's output embraces practically every musical genre of his time except for the
dramatic ones of opera and oratorio (his three 'oratorios' being oratorios only in a
special sense). He opened up new dimensions in virtually every department of creative work
to which he turned, in format, musical quality and technical demands. As was normal at the
time, his creative production was mostly bound up with the extemal factors of his places
of work and his employers, but the density and complexity of his music are such that
analysts and commentators have uncovered in it layers of religious and numerological
significance rarely to be found in the music of other composers. Many of his
contemporaries, notably the critic J.A. Scheibe, found his music too involved and lacking
in immediate melodic appeal, but his chorale harmonizations and fugal works were soon
adopted as models for new generations of musicians. The course of Bach's musical
development was undeflected (though not entirely uninfluenced) by the changes in musical
style taking place around him. Together with his great contemporary Handel (whom chance
prevented his ever meeting), Bach was the last great representative of the Baroque era in
an age which was already rejecting the Baroque aesthetic in favour of a
new,'enlightened'one.
--The Grove Concise Dictionary of
Music |
Bach 
