Johann Sebastian Bach (1685 – 1750), one of the greatest composers of all time, elevated music to the pedestal of the most precious human values.
He emerged in the final period of the Baroque era and, through his work, brought to perfection a century of musical achievements, while also heralding new possibilities for the development of music.
The honorary title “master among masters” is owed to his perfect technique of composing in the polyphonic style. Even today, we learn and explore the art of polyphony through Bach’s unparalleled polyphonic works.
Biography
Johann Sebastian Bach was born on March 21, 1685 in Eisenach. From his father Ambrosius Bach, a city and court musician, he learned the basics of playing the violin, from his uncle the piano and organ, and after his parents’ death, his oldest brother Johann Christoph took charge of his musical education, giving him his first instructions in composition. At the age of fifteen, Bach became a student and singer at the St. Michael’s School in Lüneburg, where he received a thorough musical education.
He acquires an amnesty education and deepens his musical education. He often travels to hear performances by famous composers and becomes familiar with the entire Protestant tradition of vocal music and French musical practice, and he also learns the skill of organ building.
After his voice mutation, he becomes an instrumentalist and supports himself by working as a musician, but very quickly in Arnstadt he obtains his first position as an organist. It is from this period that his first church works originate. In 1707, he takes over the position of organist at St. Blaise’s Church in Mühlhausen, but the following year, at the invitation of the Duke of Weimar, he begins working as a court organist and composer, and later as a concert master. In Weimar, Bach dedicates himself to studying Italian masters and mostly composes sacred music. From 1717 to 1723, he leads the court chapel in Cöthen, where he begins to intensively compose instrumental and secular vocal works.
In 1723, a new period of his life begins. He takes over as cantor at St. Thomas’ Church and gr Johann Sebastian Bach was appointed as the Director Musices (Director of Music) in Leipzig and remained in that position until the end of his life. This was the period of his most fruitful creativity, during which he mainly composed sacred music for the needs of his service. However, in 1729, he became the director of the music association Collegium Musicum, for which he composed secular music. During this time, he frequently traveled and received many accolades, including the title of a royal court musician. Towards the end of his life, he suffered from an eye disease which completely deprived him of his sight by the end of 1749. He passed away on July 28, 1750.
The musician’s journey:
Bach came from an old Thuringian musical family that had produced several generations of extraordinary masters: composers, organists, and Protestant cantors. During Bach’s time, musicians in Thuringia were called “die Bache”. In such a family, there existed a traditional medieval musical craftsmanship, in the highest sense of the term, which certainly had an impact on Bach’s creativity.
Even the craft side of his art had brought him recognition. He played the piano, harpsichord, clavichord, and all keyboard instruments, but he excelled at the organ like no other contemporary musician. He was considered the greatest organist of his time and people came from all over to listen to him.
“I play for the best musician in the world. Maybe he doesn’t even exist, but I always play as if he’s there.”
During his lifetime, he was famous as a musical virtuoso, which even overshadowed Bach as a composer after his death. He enriched the technique of playing keyboard instruments. He introduced the novelty of playing with all fingers and changed the fingering technique – he was the first to use what is called the natural crossing of the thumb under the other fingers. He also contributed to the improvement of the piano because, according to his suggestions, his friend Gottfried Silbermann enhanced this instrument.
He was an excellent violinist, and when he started playing chamber music, he felt the need for an instrument that would He filled the gap between the violin and the cello and invented the pompous viola with five strings. When someone praised him as an excellent organist, he would joke and say, “You just have to hit the right note at the right time, and the organ will play itself.” When asked how one can achieve great accomplishments in music, he replied, “I admit, I was diligent, and anyone who works just as hard will achieve the same results as me.”
A Prolific Composer
Although barely half of his vast body of work has been preserved, the extent of his compositional output is almost unimaginable.
It is characteristic of Bach’s manuscripts that he would write the initials S. D. G. (Soli Deo Gloria: Only for the glory of God) on his scores, which for him was not just an empty phrase. For Bach, music was a form of worship, and his creativity was rooted in deep piety. Therefore, the majority of his works consist of religious music. He composed six cycles of cantatas (totaling around three hundred), six motets, five masses, two oratorios, and two “Passions.” that belong to the highlights of music art. The St. Matthew Passion is the crown jewel of Bach’s evangelical church music and one of the greatest works in the entire history of music.
A large number of his instrumental compositions consist of works for piano: preludes, fugues, two- and three-part inventions, French and English suites, fugues with preludes, the most famous of which are the Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue, Well-tempered Clavier (in two volumes), Clavierübung (in four volumes), and his last and greatest work, The Art of Fugue.
Among his orchestral works, the most famous are the Brandenburg Concertos, piano and violin concertos, and four overtures. Among the multitude of chamber works, the most significant are the sonatas and suites for cello, sonatas for violin and piano, and trio sonatas.
Teacher, educator, and didactician tičar He went for pedagogical purposes. His best work in the field of piano music, Well-Tuned Piano, is a collection of preludes and fugues that he wrote: “…for the benefit and use of music-loving youth eager for knowledge, as well as those already skilled in this study, for recreation.”
Die Kunst der Fuge (The Art of Fugue) is a true encyclopedia of Baroque polyphony in which Bach, an unmatched master of fugue, offers a unique course on Baroque counterpoint, following didactic principles, starting from simpler to increasingly complex fugue structures.
Bach’s musical expression
Never before nor after has the rules of musical form imposed such restrictions on the immediacy of expression as in the Baroque era, but nowhere is the music more masterly and emotionally charged than in Bach’s works. or less formalistic than in Bach’s works. At the same time, all of this was combined with an almost incomprehensible inventiveness and fertility that no one had achieved before. Within the world of medieval ideas and musical forms, Bach found new possibilities of expression, and he revolutionized many of these musical forms and preserved them for the future. Everything significant that began in Renaissance music and developed in the Baroque period took on its most intricate and complete forms in Bach’s music.
Due to his upbringing, education, and work, Bach was firmly tied to his country, its customs, and cultural heritage. His music reflects the musical traditions of the Reformation, German folk songs, as well as secular vocal and instrumental practices. However, throughout his life and stylistic evolution, he constantly adopted new elements from French and Italian music, imprinting everything with his own creative personality.
It is well-known that Bach spent a lot of time collecting and studying various musical works and styles of his time. This allowed him to incorporate diverse influences into his own compositions and to develop a unique musical language. Through his meticulous study and assimilation of different musical traditions, Bach was able to transcend the boundaries of his era and create timeless masterpieces.
He studied and processed other people’s music, but everything he learned from his influences he transformed into his own style that never followed any particular direction. Throughout his life, during his artistic development and maturity, he studied all musical forms and persistently followed his inner urge to penetrate the true structure and meaning of music. He often quoted Martin Luther’s thought: “When natural music rises and is infused with art, then one can marvel at the great and perfect wisdom of God that He has added to His great musical work.”
In addition to reflecting the spirit of the time in which it was created, Bach’s art also conveys personal experiences, feelings, and thoughts of the author. In this regard, this Baroque master is a precursor to bourgeois music, not only in terms of content but also in terms of form. Unfortunately, his contemporaries were unable to uncover the beginnings of the same musical language and ideology that later emerged in Classicism and Romanticism, beneath the layers of traditional musical forms. Which form.
Although avid music connoisseurs were very familiar with Bach’s work, for the average music lover Bach almost didn’t exist until the Romantic era. His works only received their full recognition in the first half of the 19th century, when Mendelssohn’s famous performance of the St. Matthew Passion in 1829 showcased the greatness of Bach’s creation and sparked a renewed interest in the works of this almost forgotten master. For Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, he was what others would become later – the greatest master of polyphony and one of the most significant composers of all time.