JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH
Johann Sebastian Bach
1685.03.21—1750.07.28
Zodiac Sign: Aries
Nationality: German
Musical style: Baroque
Representative works: Gothenburg Variations (1742)
Where have you heard: In The Silence of the Lambs, Dr. Hannibal Lecter famously said, "There's nothing remarkable about it. You just need to find the right tone at the right time, and the rest is left to the instrument
Johann Sebastian Bach's father was a musician, and perhaps this is not surprising – in rural Germany, it is common for a son to inherit his father's business. But it is worth mentioning that Bach's grandfather, great-grandfather, and many uncles, cousins, distant cousins, and nephews are also musicians. The family held the local music scene firmly in control, and even in 1693, when a vacancy appeared in a local orchestra, they issued an urgent job posting that not required a violinist or organist, but that "a man of the Bach family, Bach, too, passed on his musical mantle to four sons, a son-in-law, and a grandson." He also left an astonishing amount of musical legacy for the world. Bach would write a new cantata every week so persistently for years. In addition to Cantata, he composed many concertos, rounds, symphonies, sonatas, preludes, and variations in his spare time. This is a guy who would compose 16 pieces of Fugue Art just to exercise his brain.
Bach's life was uneventful and not extravagant at all. He never traveled, never performed in crowded places, never even left southern Germany, his territory. Admittedly, he married two wives and had 20 children, but overall, his life consisted of a regular and stable career of teaching, conducting, and composing.
I have a good idea: Let's call him John!
In 1685, Johann Sebastian was born in the small town of Eisenach in central Germany. He will be named "John," and as with his future musical path, it seems predestined. His father, great-grandfather, 7 uncles, 4 of his 5 brothers are all named John, and he has an older sister named Johanna
There is also a brother whose name is the slightly eccentric "Johnny".
Bach's peaceful and relaxed childhood came to an abrupt end in 1694 when his mother, Elizabeth, died unexpectedly. Less than a year later, his father followed in her footsteps and walked into the grave. Sebastian followed his brother John Christopher in the small town of Aldruff. John Christopher is one
Famous organist. He was a classmate of John Pahebull, who played Cannon in D major. The brothers sometimes clashed. John Sebastian wanted to learn the sheet music that Pahepur had given to Johan Christopher, but his brother locked the valuable manuscript scores in a cabinet. John Sebastian came up with a way to steal the score: he slipped his hand into the cupboard and quietly took the handwritten sheet music. At night, he would take out his brother's sheet music and secretly copy it in the moonlight. It was 6 months before his brother discovered his ghost trick, and his brother not only hid the score deeper, but also took away the fruits of Bach's painstaking copying.
Grumpy young man
In 1702, Bach got his first job: playing the organ in the small central town of Arnstadt. They asked him to conduct a symphony choir, but many of the members of the choir were one year older than him, which was a difficult and tricky job. Once, a 23-year-old instrumentalist and 18-year-old Bach got into a fight in the market square, starting with Bach scolding him for "a female goat blowing bassoon ii Later, Bach came from Arnstadt to Mühlhausen and then to Weimar, where he worked as organist and conductor. During those years, he married Maria Barbara Bach and his second cousin, who later had a total of 7 children. Bach was moody and had a bad temper, and from time to time he would make such moves: once he took a 4-week leave but did not return after 4 months; another time he threw his wig at an organist and told the hapless guy that it was better for him to be a shoemaker.
In 1717, the Duke of Anhalt-Koten (now part of Germany) gave him a respectable job, so he made a big fuss in Weimar demanding an early termination of the employment contract, which annoyed the dignitaries and sent him to prison for 4 weeks. But even in prison, Bach was definitely not listless and sullen—he used his leisure time to compose the first part of the Average Piano Song Collection.
Play with counterpoint
In Coten, the composer Bach really entered his own period of musical creation. His favorite use of the counterpoint method ------------ music-making technique that dominated the Baroque period. Counterpoint is a technique in musical composition in which two or more independent melodies intertwine with each other, rather than just harmoniously interpreting one melody (if you've seen the musical Happy Music Infinitely). You must have heard of the counterpoint method. In the play "Lida Rose" and "Can I Tell You?" >" are two completely different melodies, but they blend with each other). With regard to the law of counterpoint, there is a complex set of theories, as well as strictly prescribed forms. Bach grasped all these rules
Then, combine mathematical precision with surprising creativity. It wasn't long before Bach's life in Coten was suddenly hit by a sunny day: when Bach returned from a short trip, he discovered that his wife had suddenly passed away while he was away. But he's never been the kind of depressed person who, less than a year after his wife's death, fell madly in love with a female singer 17 years younger than him, whose name was Anna Magdalina Wilk. He gave her an important position in the court ensemble, raised her salary to 3 times that of an instrumentalist, and married her. Later, the Anhalt-Koten court faced a financial crisis, and Bach thought it was time for him to leave.
downer? sleeping pill? No, variations!
They settled in Leipzig, and Bach served as choir conductor at the Church of St. Thomas. The most prolific phase of his life began. He was able to write a new Cantata every week, and finally he wrote all 5 rounds of church music—that is, music prepared for every Sunday of the year. He also completed The Passion of Matthew, The Passion of John, and The Christmas Oratorio. Another work was commissioned by Count Hermann von Kaizerlin, who suffered from chronic insomnia. Kaiserlin wanted his pianist, Bach's former student, Johann Gottlieb Gothenburg, to play some pieces for him that would help him fall asleep, so Bach composed the Gothenburg Variations. It's a moving story once but its authenticity is highly questionable. Gothenburg was only 14 years old at the time, and the Gothenburg Variations were not the kind of relaxing pieces. More likely, Bach wanted to practice counterpoint and therefore composed the repertoire, and Gothenburg was perhaps one of the first pianists to play the piece. In conclusion, experts believe that the Goldberg Variations are Bach's greatest piano pieces.
Unexpected death
Bach has been living in Leipzig ever since, but his astonishing creative speed has finally slowed down. He couldn't help but mess with his own owners. Once, for the sake of who chose the hymn of Sunday prayer, he argued with someone else for 3 years. In 1749, the Leipzig City Council began to select Bahe's successor, but Bach was still in great health. Bach was upset when he learned that they had begun to plan his death. But by this time Bach was out of date. The precise and rigorous counterpoint method has long been a fad, but the stubborn composer is still immersed in it and cannot extricate himself. In The Art of Fugue, he explored the possibility of a single melodic line, and even embedded his name in music – he created a piece based on the key of B-A-C-H (in German notation, "H" stands for B major and "B" stands for B minor). The interruption of the fugue "Bach" was very sudden: it is said that Bach died suddenly while composing the music. But the truth about Bach's death is much more complicated. Beginning in the late 1740s, Bach's vision began to decline. In the spring of 1750, he asked a "famous ophthalmologist" John Taylor to operate on both eyes (he was a quack). Taylor's surgery on Bach was the same as the one he had done for Handel before, and it was a complete failure.
Although he briefly regained his sight after the operation, he soon became completely blind. Bahe also seems to have lost all his vitality as a result. After a few more weeks of delay, he suffered a stroke. On July 28, he said goodbye.
I can't believe it's not butter in it!
Bach's music seems to have faded with him. During his lifetime, he published very few works, and the rest of his works were sealed in the church library. Had it not been for the fact that a manuscript of The Passion of Matthew had been given to Felix Mendelssohn as a gift for his 14th birthday, Bach's daimyō would have been lost. Mendelsssohn's grandmother obtained the original manuscript from Carl Ferridrich Zelt, Mendelsohn's piano teacher. Zeltert claims that the manuscript was found in a cheese shop a few years earlier, when it was used to wrap butter. Many music historians believe that Zelt actually collected a lot of Bach's manuscripts, which were passed on to him by one of Bach's former students. Either way, the young Mendelssohn was immediately captivated by Bach's music. In 1829, at the age of 20, Mendelssohn prepared to play the Passion of Matthew in Berlin. He involuntarily revised the work, shortening the 3-hour performance time to two hours, replacing the organ performance with a steel piano performance, and also low-keying the strong Baroque style of the work. If Bach had heard Mendelssohn play, Mendelsohn's exaggerated, romantic, passionate interpretation would have surprised him, but the Berlin audience loved the show. Soon, people began to search for Bach's other scattered works. Since then, Bach's works have become a fixture in concert halls around the world. For a guy who has never left his hometown all his life and has been in a corner of Germany, it's really good.
Lots and lots of little Bach
Bach's two wives bore him 20 children, although only 10 survived to adulthood. Of his 6 sons, only one who didn't become a professional musician was Gottfried Heinrich, who was probably an incompetent.
Another son, Gottfried Bernhardt, seems promising. Bach used various connections to get Gottfried to find a position as an organist in Murhausen, but within a few months he had to return to Murhausen in great embarrassment to pay off Gottfried's debts. Johann Sebastian Bach 015 The second job he got for his son was in the eastern city of Sangerhausen, and this time the situation was even worse, and Gottfried evaporated, leaving more debts. For more than a year, Gottfried heard nothing, and news came that Gottfried had died after being admitted to Yerkin University in law.
Fortunately, Bach's other 4 sons are healthy. William Friedman, Carl Philippe Emmanuel, John Christopher Friedrich and John Christian all became composers, although the music of the first two is rarely played today. The latter two were famous when they were alive, and they were considered to be better than their father, but now they are the opposite.
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