When people ask who my favorite composer is, I usually say "Bach." It saves further argument.
Nicholas Tresilian

Bach is one of the most incredible composers in the last 500 hundred years. As corny as it sounds, Bach's music speaks to us, it is timeless. He was born in Eisenach, Saxony, on March 21, 1865, the youngest of eight children. His mother died when he was nine. His father, a church organist, died when Johann Sebastian was ten. He and his brother Jakob went to live with their older brother Johann Christoph for the next 5 years. J.S. was already a good organist and keyboard player, singer, violinist, and probably was already a composer. At fifteen he went to study at St. Michael's school in Luneburg. He worked at various churches and courts throughout his life, spending the last 27 years of his life as a cantor (teacher) at St. Thomas's School and organist/choir-master at St. Thomas's Church in Leipzig.

During his life he was known mainly as a virtuoso organist. His music, which became the high point of the Baroque style, was already out of fashion in his lifetime. He wrote polyphonic music (several intertwining melodies) instead of the gallant homophonic music his son, Johann Christian, became popular with in London. It seems that this would not have bothered Bach the father because he did not expect his music to outlive him. In his time, a cantor had to compose his own music, and that music was usually thrown away by his successor. Bach himself discarded the music of his predecessor, but not before going over it thoroughly. Luckily, the man who succeeded Bach kept his music and even played some of it during church services.

Nevertheless, Bach knew that he was a good musician and he did not allow anyone to interfere with his music. He also had an overwhelming desire to learn as much as he could about music. He was reproved for missing his organist's duties for a week when he walked hundreds of miles to hear a famous organist Buxtehude.

In Leipzig Bach was constantly bickering with authorities over money. His duties were numerous and the council thought he was neglecting them. He had to teach the boys to sing and play instruments, he was in charge of performing music in Leipzig's four churches, he had to write a cantata each week and Passion music for Good Friday. The music he was supposed to write was "to be of such a nature as not to make an operatic impression, but rather incite the listeners to devotion." No wonder Bach wrote every type of music except opera!

He believed that "the aim of all music should be none else but the Glory of God and the recreation of the mind." While he did write secular music, religion seemed to be foremost on Bach's mind. Two of his best works are the Mass in B minor and St. Matthew Passion. To make some extra money Bach could write music for weddings, funerals or festivals. His income depended on the weather in Leipzig: "When there are more funerals than usual, the fees rise in proportion; but when a healthy wind blows, they fall accordingly, as for example last year, when I lost fees that would ordinarily come in from funerals to an amount of more than 100 thaler."

The council was hoping to hire Georg Philipp Telemann for the post, but "since the best man could not be obtained, mediocre ones would have to be accepted." The council was mistaken. Bach remains a titan of music, while Telemann is all but forgotten.

What was Bach's musical life like? He was constantly struggling with the lack of good performers for his compositions. In 1730 he wrote that for a choir at least 12 and preferrably 16 singers were needed. For the four church choirs of Leipzig he had 54 boys, of whom 17 were "usable," 20 "not yet usable," and another 17 "unfit." For an orchestra Bach wanted at least 18 and preferrably 20 players, but all he had was eight - four town pipers, three professional fiddlers and one apprentice. Bach wrote: "Modesty forbids me to speak at all truthfully of their qualities and musical knowledge." The town pipers were quite versatile musicians, if not always good ones - they "customarily played violin, oboe, transverse flute, trumpet, and horn, and remaining brass instruments."

Bach himself could play most of the instruments in the orchestra. He usually conducted from the harpsichord or the violin. Acoording to an eyewitness account, Bach was a modern conductor since he alone was in charge, though in his day it was customary for two people to share the responsibility - the one at the harpsichord being in charge of time and rhythm and the violinist in charge of nuances. Bach, however, "ruled" single- handedly: he beat time and cued everyone else in, "one with a nod, another by tapping with his feet, the third with a warning finger, giving the right note to one from the top of his voice, to another from the bottom, and a third from the middle of it - all alone, in the midst of the greatest din made by all the participants, and, although he is executing the most difficult parts himself, noticing at once whenever and wherever a mistake occurs, holding everybody together, taking precautions everywhere and repairing any unsteadiness, full of rhythm in every part of his body."

Though the scores of most of Bach's music have been preserved, it is difficult to say what the music sounded like in Bach's time. For instance, scholars have found that in general the pitch at that time was a full tone lower than it is now, but some organs that still operate from that time are tuned higher! More important than abolute pitch is the well-tempered tuning, proposed by Werckmeister and adopted by Bach, used to this day. Before then, mean-tone temperament was used, which meant the instrument, harpsichord, for instance, was tuned perfectly for a single key, tolerably for several more keys, and the rest of the keys could not be used at all. Bach and virtually all musicians after him used the well-tempered alternative, which meant none of the keys was perfect, but they were all tolerable. Bach wrote the Well-Tempered Klavier with its double cycle of a prelude and a fugue in each of the 24 available keys to demonstrate the benefits of the new system. This work is still amazing in its mathematical beauty, and is studied by virtually all pianists.

During every subsequent musical era Bach's compositions were played differently. Romantics introduced their favorite tricks into his music, and today musician's play as close to the score as possible. But that takes all the passion out of Bach; he himself took liberties with music, telling his student that "an organist should not be merely playing the notes." This does not mean shoddy performance, it means processing the music with one's heart, as the composer intended.

After Bach's death in 1750, his sons did a great deal to publicize his music, even though they considered it to be outdated. Bach had 20 children, of whom many died young, but four went on to become important musicians. Johann Christian, for example, traveled to Italy and London, introducing people to his father's music. And Carl Philipp Emmanuel became more famous than his father in his lifetime as a composer, teacher, and keyboard player. (He could not play violin because he was left-handed.) Mendessohn is credited with starting a large-scale Bach revival because he organized a performance of St. Matthew Passion in Berlin in 1829. Thank you, Felix!