BACH, JOHANN SEBASTIAN

Preeminent composer who brought the baroque style in music to a close; b. Eisenach, Germany, March 21, 1685; d. Leipzig, July 28, 1750.

Life. Bach was the most illustrious member of a family of successful musicians, all of whom, until Sebastian's youngest son Johann Christian bach became a Catholic, were Lutheran. Sebastian was only ten when his father, a musician in the Eisenach town band, died; thereafter he received most of his musical training from his elder brother, Johann Christof, in Ohrdruf. In 1703 he entered his first post as organist of the New Church at Arnstadt, transferring in 1707 to a similar post at St. Blasius, Mühlhausen, where he married his cousin Maria Barbara Bach. A year later he became court organist to the Duke of Weimar and was later (1714) promoted to the post of concertmaster (i.e., director of the orchestra). In 1717 he became Kapell meister (director of music) to Prince Leopold of Cöthen. His wife died in 1720, and a year later he married Anna Magdalena Wülcken. In 1723 he was appointed to one of the chief musical posts in Germany, music director in Leipzig at two principal churches, St. Thomas and St. Nicholas, as well as the Pauliner-Kirche of the university, and cantor (choir director) at the Thomasschüle. He retained this post until his death. Nine of his 20 children survived him, four sons possessing outstanding musical talent: Wilhelm Friedmann and Carl Philipp Emmanuel (children of Maria Barbara), and Johann Christoph Friedrich and Johann Christian (children of Anna Magdalena). Philipp Emmanuel and Johann Christian became more famous than their father during their lifetimes.

Religious Music. Sebastian's fame was chiefly that of a virtuoso organist and a learned but old-fashioned contrapuntist; his music never had the success of G. F. handel's because it was not addressed to the public audiences of the opera houses and choral concerts. If, like Handel, he had depended on popular approval for his livelihood, he might have adopted more of the newer compositional techniques; but since he remained all his life a paid employee of either prince or town council, he was under no urgent compulsion to please the public ear. Whereas Handel's music looks outward, every note designed to make an immediate impression on its audience, Bach's is introspective, full of detail that can be perceived only through careful listening and sympathetic understanding. Though he wrote much instrumental music, he designed the bulk of his work for use in the Lutheran church. In notes on thorough-bass playing dictated to his student Niedt, he said: "The aim and final reason of all music should be none else but the glory of God and the recreation of the mind. Where this is not observed, there will be no music but only a devilish hubbub."

Bach wrote 295 church cantatas (five yearly cycles of 59 each) during the first six years of his Leipzig cantorate, of which some 200 are extant. To study them profitably it is important to remember their intimate connection with the liturgy of the Lutheran Sunday morning or festal service: their texts frequently contain quotations from, or reference to, the Epistle and Gospel of the day, and the concluding chorale is always that of the particular Sunday or feast day. The music is full of symbolism, allusion, and word painting that become clear only when the works are viewed in their liturgical context. Most of the cantatas commence with a large-scale movement, frequently blended with the Italian concerto style; but where Handel would have a largely homophonic texture, Bach develops the chorus in elaborate counterpoint, e.g., in the Ascension cantata (No. 11). Sometimes this is combined with a chorale cantus firmus in the top chorus voice (Wachet auf, No. 140). The first movement may also be built on a French overture (No. 61) or preceded by it (No. 119). Several cantatas use a chorale melody as a thematic basis for all movements, but treated very freely. Only one of these preserves the melody intact throughout—Christ lag in Todesbanden (No. 4). Cantatas having two or more chorales are generally narrative cantatas, e.g., the six constituting the Christmas Oratorio. Similar variety of style and form is found in the solo arias, duets, and trios that form the middle section of cantatas.

The Mass in B minor is a composite work: the first two movements were heard as a Lutheran missa when the Elector of Saxony visited Leipzig in 1733. The Gloria uses material from an earlier cantata (No. 191). The other movements, from the Credo onward, are now known to

date from the very last years of Bach's life as far as their present form is concerned: most of them are built on materials, sections, and movements from other works. As court composer to the elector (who was a Catholic), Bach compiled the Mass, but it was never intended for Catholic or for any liturgy in its complete form. Each of the sections has something of the plan of a cantata but also follows the shape of contemporary Masses by Austrian and Italian composers.

The Passions according to St. John (1724) and St. Matthew (1729) represent a compromise between the earlier "dramatic" and the newer "opera" forms of Passion composition. Bach retained the complete relevant Gospel portions in both works, adding chorales of his own selection. For the solo arias and accompanied recitatives of St. John he drew on a text by Heinrich Brockes, and for St. Matthew his libretto was prepared by a Leipzig poet, Picander. St. John is more obviously dramatic by reason of the fewer lyrical interruptions to the narrative and the extended "crowd" sections; St. Matthew, though it has dramatic moments, is more meditative and leisurely in its progress. Bach's treatment of the Gospel narrative is peculiarly his own: he abandoned every trace of the old chant intonations, substituting a vocal line ostensibly based on the secco recitativo but with a lyrical turn of phrase not to be found there, an effect that conformed entirely to the requirements of the German language and to the expressiveness required by the subject. In the Passions, as in all his religious music, Bach's devotion and deep feeling for religion are manifest.

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[a. milner]