During the Baroque era, crafts were handed down in family clans, and in music the Bach clan was one of the biggest, providing the region of Thuringia, in central Germany, with musicians for many generations. Most of the Bachs were lowly town musicians or Lutheran church organists; only a few of them gained court positions. Johann Sebastian, who was himself taught by several of his relatives, trained four sons who became leading composers of the next generation.

Before he was twenty, Bach took his first position as a church organist in a little town called Arnstadt, then moved to a bigger town called Mühlhausen. Then he worked his way up to a court position with the Duke of Weimar. As a church organist, Bach had to compose organ music and sacred choral pieces, and at Weimar he was still required to write church music for the ducal chapel as well as sonatas and concertos for performance in the palace. The way his Weimar position terminated tells us something about the working conditions of court musicians. When Bach tried to leave Weimar for another court, Cöthen, the duke balked and threw him in jail for several weeks before letting him go. At Cöthen the prince happened to be a keen amateur musician who was not in favor of elaborate church music, so Bach concentrated on instrumental music.

In 1723 Bach was appointed cantor of St. Thomas’sChurch in Leipzig, a center of Lutheran church music in Germany. He had to not only compose and perform but also organize music for all four churches in town. Teaching in the choir school was another of his responsibilities. Almost every week in his first years at Leipzig, Bach composed, had copied, rehearsed, and performed a new cantata — a religious work for soloists, choir, and orchestra containing several movements and lasting from fifteen to thirty minutes.

Bach chafed under bureaucratic restrictions and political decisions by town and church authorities. The truth is, he was never appreciated in Leipzig. Furthermore, at the end of his life he was regarded as old-fashioned by modern musicians, and one critic pained Bach by saying so in print. Indeed, after Bach’s death his music was neglected by the musical public at large, though it was admired by composers such as Mozart and Beethoven.

Bach had twenty children — seven with his first wife (a cousin) and thirteen with his second (a singer), for whom he prepared a little home-music anthology, The Note-Book of Anna Magdalena Bach. The children were taught music as a matter of course, and also taught how to copy music; the performance parts of many of the weekly cantatas that Bach composed are written in their hands. From his musical response to the sacred words of these cantatas and from other works, it is clear that Bach thought deeply about religious matters. Works such as his Passions and his Mass in B Minor emanate a spirituality that many listeners find unmatched by any other composer.

Bach seldom traveled, except to consult on organ construction contracts (for which the fee was often a cord of wood or a barrel of wine). Blind in his last years, he continued to compose by dictation. He had already begun to assemble his compositions in orderly sets: organ chorale preludes, organ fugues, preludes and fugues for harpsichord. He also clearly set out to produce works that would summarize his final thoughts about Baroque forms and genres; such works are the Mass in B Minor, the thirty-three Goldberg Variations for harpsichord, and The Art of Fugue, an exemplary collection of fugues all on the same subject, left unfinished at his death. Bach was writing for himself, for his small devoted circle of students, perhaps for posterity. It is a concept that would have greatly surprised the craftsmen musicians who were his forebears.

Chief Works: More than 200 sacred and secular cantatas; two Passions, with words from the gospels of St. Matthew and St. John; Mass in B Minor ◼ The Well-Tempered Clavier, consisting of forty-eight preludes and fugues in all major and minor keys for harpsichord or clavichord ◼ Three sets of suites (six each) for harpsichord — the French and English Suites and the Partitas; solo cello suites; violin sonatas; Goldberg Variations ◼ Organ fugues and chorale preludes ◼ Brandenburg Concertos, other concertos, orchestral suites, sonatas ◼ Late composite works: A Musical Offering and The Art of Fugue ◼ Chorale (hymn) harmonizations

Encore: After Brandenburg Concerto No. 5, listen to the Concerto for Two Violins; Mass in B Minor (Gloria section).

Image credit: Bettmann/CORBIS.