Composer | Johann Sebastian Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach was the greatest of a remarkable family of musicians who flourished in Germany between about 1600 and 1800. Born in 1685 in the Thuringian town of Eisenach and orphaned early, he was trained by an older brother and at eighteen took his first job as a church organist. In 1708 he became a court musician in Weimar, moving a decade later to the court at Cöthen and then in 1723 to Leipzig as cantor and music director of the St. Thomas Church. There he founded the Collegium Musicum for concerts and was eventually appointed court composer at Dresden while teaching, composing, and playing at St. Thomas. Soon after his death in 1750, nearly blind, three of his sons had also become important composers.

Many of his compositions, including the cantatas, passions, harpsichord suites, and choral preludes for organ developed established forms, while others were innovative, including the suites for solo violin and cello, the Forty-eight Preludes and Fugues and the Goldberg Variations for harpsichord, and Art of Fugue. Others, like the Brandenburg Concertos, show his transformation of standard practices.

Famed for his playing and improvising in his lifetime, Bach later served as a model for composers from Mozart and Haydn, Beethoven, Schumann, and Mendelssohn down to today, when choreographers like Balanchine and Taylor turn to his works for inspiration and many jazz virtuosos warm up daily with his preludes and fugues.