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Essay Name       : 1332.txt 
Uploader         : Jack Leeman
Email Address    : 
Language         : English
Subject          : Music
Title            : Bach
Grade            : 97%
School System    : 
Country          : USA
Author Comments  : It's a good report
Teacher Comments : Good Job, and Great attention to detail!
Date             : 10/24/96
Site found at    : From the Report/Essay Database
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               One of the most profoundly inspired and
               masterful composers in history, Johann
               Sebastian Bach was born into a musical family
               in Eisenach, Thuringia - until recently part
               of East Germany. His father, Johann Ambrosius
               Bach, was a talented violinist, and taught
               his son the basic skills of string-playing;
               another relation, the organist at Eisenach's
               most important church, instructed the young
               boy on the organ.

               In 1695, Johann Sebastian was orphaned; he
               went to live with his older brother, Johann
               Christoph, in Ohrdruf. Johann Christoph was a
               professional organist, and continued his
               younger brother's education on that
               instrument, as well as on the harpsichord.
               After several years in this arrangement,
               Johann Sebastian won a scholarship to study
               in Luneberg, Northern Germany, and so left
               his brother's tutelage.

               A master of several instruments while still
               in his teens, Johann Sebastian first found
               employment at the age of 18 as a "lackey and
               violinist" in a court orchestra in Weimar;
               soon after, he took the job of organist at a
               church in Arnstadt. Here, as in later posts,
               his perfectionist tendencies and high
               expectations of other musicians - for
               example, the church choir - rubbed his
               colleagues the wrong way, and he was
               embroiled in a number of hot disputes during
               his short tenure. In 1707, at the age of 22,
               Bach became fed up with the lousy musical
               standards of Arnstadt (and the working
               conditions) and moved on to another organist
               job, this time at the St. Blasius Church in
               Muhlhausen. The same year, he married his
               cousin Maria Barbara Bach.

               Again caught up in a running conflict between
               factions of his church, Bach fled to Weimar
               after one year in Muhlhausen. In Weimar, he
               assumed the post of organist and
               concertmaster in the ducal chapel. He
               remained in Weimar for nine years, and there
               he composed his first wave of major works,
               including organ showpieces and cantatas.

               By this stage in his life, Bach had developed
               a reputation as a brilliant, if somewhat
               inflexible, musical talent. His profiency on
               the organ was unequalled in Europe - in fact,
               he toured regularly as a solo virtuoso - and
               his growing mastery of compositional forms,
               like the fugue and the canon, was already
               attracting interest from the musical
               establishment - which, in his day, was the
               Lutheran church. But, like many individuals
               of uncommon talent, he was never very good at
               playing the political game, and therefore
               suffered periodic setbacks in his career. He
               was passed over for a major position - that
               of Kapellmeister of Weimar - in 1716; partly
               in reaction to this snub, he left Weimar the
               following year to take a job as court
               conductor in Anhalt-Cothen. There, he slowed
               his output of church cantatas, and instead
               concentrated on instrumental music - the
               Cothen period produced, among other
               masterpieces, the Brandenburg Concerti.

               While at Cothen, Bach's wife, Maria Barbara,
               died. Bach remarried soon after - to Anna
               Magdalena - and forged ahead with his work.
               He also forged ahead in the child-rearing
               department, producing 13 children with his
               new wife - six of whom survived childhood -
               to add to the four children he had raised
               with Maria Barbara. Several of these children
               would become fine composers in their own
               right - particularly three sons, Wilhelm
               Friedmann, Carl Philipp Emanuel and Johann
               Christian.

               After conducting and composing for the court
               orchestra at Cothen for seven years, Bach was
               offered the highly prestigious post of cantor
               (music director) of St. Thomas' Church in
               Leipzig - after it had been turned down by
               two other composers. The job was a demanding
               one; he had to compose cantatas for the St.
               Thomas and St. Nicholas churches, conduct the
               choirs, oversee the musical activities of
               numerous municipal churches, and teach Latin
               in the St. Thomas choir school. Accordingly,
               he had to get along with the Leipzig church
               authorities, which proved rocky going. But he
               persisted, polishing the musical component of
               church services in Leipzig and continuing to
               write music of various kinds with a level of
               craft and emotional profundity that was his
               alone.

               Bach remained at his post in Leipzig until
               his death in 1750. He was creatively active
               until the very end, even after cataract
               problems virtually blinded him. His last
               musical composition, a chorale prelude
               entitled "Before They Throne, My God, I
               Stand", was dictated to his son-in-law only
               days before his death.

               Bach was that rare composer whose genius
               cannot be summed up, even approximated, by
               any known means. He was the supreme master of
               counterpoint, fugue, vocal writing, melody,
               chamber composition, solo instrument
               repertoire...the list is endless. His
               Passions are arguably the greatest
               compositions ever created for choral ensemble
               and orchestra. His solo works (for violin,
               and cello) are of such beauty and perfection
               of form that their secrets have never been
               divulged fully, not even by the greatest
               virtuosi on those instruments. His writing
               for keyboard - the Goldberg Variations and
               The Well-Tempered Clavier, among others -
               reveal an unsurpassed ability to combine
               intricate musical structure with pure
               spiritual force; in fact, most leading
               musicians point to the mastery of these
               pieces as their ultimate goal.

               Bach was the greatest master of the Baroque,
               and probably of all classical music. Any
               student of music must start - and end - an
               inquiry into the glories of classical music
               with him.
 
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