The Father of Music - Bach

Do you know who the "Father of Music" is? He is the great musician of the seventeenth century - Bach. He is a very humble person who is good at learning from other master composers. Among the great musicians of his time were the famous music masters Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, etc.

During his creative career, Bach studied Italian and French music. Then he integrates his own thoughts into music creation and creates his own personal music style. The reason why people call him the "Father of Music" is because he developed the music of the seventeenth century to the peak of perfection. After him, no other composer could use this unique musical style to create more perfect works.

Bach's musical family

Bach was born in Germany in 1685 AD. He was a great musician of the same period as another music master, Handel. Although they have never met, they admire each other. Bach was born into a great musical family, and many of his relatives were musicians in the church or very outstanding local musicians. When Bach was a child, his father and brother began to teach him music. So, even as a child, he was already a famous violinist and organist.

However, this kind of informal music education could not satisfy Bach's thirst for knowledge. He has been constantly studying on his own, copying the scores of other composers and imitating their composition techniques. It was this spirit of hard study that made Bach one of the two great music masters of that era, and only Handel could rival him.

Music Enlightenment Period

When Bach was 9 years old, his mother unfortunately passed away. A year later, his father also died. This was a very sad and painful experience for Bach.

Since then, Bach’s eldest brother Christoph has taken on the responsibility of his parents to train and educate the 10-year-old Bach. The eldest brother had very strict requirements for Bach's education. In addition to asking him to learn how to play piano, organ, violin and other musical instruments, he also strictly required him to learn Greek, Latin and theology.

At the age of 14, Bach entered the advanced stage of study. The eldest brother began to teach him the relevant techniques of composition. From then on, Bach showed his extraordinary musical talent and composition talent.

In 1700, Bach and his classmates went to Nuremberg to take the exam to become a member of the choir and successfully passed the exam. He embarked on the road of music and began a colorful music career.

The beginning of his music career

Bach had already begun composing organ music when he was 16 years old. At the age of 18, Bach served as court violinist to Duke Augustus of Weimar. There Bach often heard others playing German music and French dance music, which allowed him to truly understand the well-known European music styles. This had a great influence on his future creations.

At the age of 20, Bach got a rare position as the organist of Allendo Cathedral and was also responsible for leading the church choir. There, Bach met his beautiful distant cousin. In 1707 AD, the lovers finally got married and formed a happy family.

Matthew Passion

Bach was a popular organ player. He was often asked to play the organ and to guide the training and performance of the choir. Bach continued to pursue musical achievements. After unremitting efforts, he finally composed an unprecedented work in 1723 AD, which is the very famous "Matthew Passion". This piece of music expresses the sentimentality of the saints during the crucifixion of Jesus.

Performing the "Matthew Passion" required a very large orchestra, and Bach unexpectedly failed when he performed the piece in public for the first time. Bach was so heartbroken that he never wanted to play the piece in public again.

It was not until a hundred years later that another great musician, Mendelssohn, successfully performed it after more than a hundred days of practice, playing the piano with one hand and conducting the orchestra accompaniment with the other. The performance of this "Matthew Passion" allows people to truly understand the great mystery of Bach's music.

Bach was a very devout Catholic, and the music he composed throughout his life was dedicated to God. Bach wrote an oratorio for the church every week and a hymn to God every Good Friday. God is his hope and the source of his life. In his later years, even though he was blind, he never resented and still praised God. So he was very peaceful and still continued to create great works.

Goldberg Variations

In 1728 AD, there was a Russian minister named Count Kesselin who suffered from severe insomnia. He admired Bach's music very much, so he commissioned Bach to compose a lullaby for him to cure his insomnia.

After the composition of this lullaby was completed, Bach asked his favorite disciple Goldberg to perform it, so this piece of music is also called "Goldberg Variations".

We don’t know whether the Russian count no longer suffered from insomnia after listening to this lullaby. But "Goldberg Variations" can indeed bring a sense of peace and tranquility to every listener.

Bach's Orchestral Suites

The techniques used by Bach to compose music were not original to him. The musical forms he used were often used by other musicians. As mentioned before, Bach studied composition skills diligently by copying the works of other music masters. For example, he served as court organist to the Duke of Weimar in his hometown of Weimar. In his creation, he absorbed all the gorgeous, warm and steady characteristics of Italian music into his works, and then used precise mathematical formulas to process the details of each part of the music to compose music of his own style.

Therefore, whether it is content or technique, Bach's music is different from the original style and has its own style. Bach used this unique method to write many popular orchestral suites, expressing warm and rich emotions that represent his personal style.

Little Angel on the G String

What is interesting is that Bach had a big family. He and his wife gave birth to twenty children in one marriage. When he was 50 years old, his eleventh child was born. In order to support so many children, he had to work hard, create all the time, and make money desperately. Due to overwork, his eyes gradually became blind.

In 1723 AD, Bach began composing music specifically for Nicholas Cathedral. He had to write an oratorio every week, and almost sixty oratorios a year. In order to survive and out of a sense of mission, General Bach wrote three hundred oratorios. No matter how tiring the work was, he still continued to create, full of vitality.

Bach was a loving father. He gave his children meticulous fatherly love and affection. Three of the twenty children later became famous musicians. Bach's "Aria on the G String" is deeply loved by children. It is like a little angel of music, allowing every child to be immersed in beautiful and warm music.

Brandenburg Concerto

This "Brandenburg Concerto" was composed in 1721. It is Bach's earliest orchestral work and one of his most outstanding musical achievements. .

The famous "Brandenburg Concerto" series consists of six pieces, each with rich changes, and the music contains rich emotions.

Bach is like a shrewd mathematician. He distributes every note and every measure in appropriate proportions with mathematical accuracy. He likes to use mathematics to control the surging emotions in music, so that the music can stably and fully reveal emotions. To this day, people are still amazed by Bach's ability to apply mathematics to composition with such precision.

Nowadays, many Bach fans are constantly trying to use computers to analyze Bach's music, and use computers to program Bach's music to analyze it. However, no computer has ever been able to imitate and create more moving and greater music than Bach.

Toccata and Fugue

The pipe organ was once called the king of musical instruments by musicians. It has a history longer than other musical instruments, about two thousand years ago. .

The principle of the sound produced by the pipe organ is that when the fingers are pressed on the keys, the wind in the pipe organ bellows is squeezed out, pushing the reeds to produce sound. Because of the power of the bellows, the sound becomes very thick and has a wide range.

After the 16th century, pipe organs gradually changed from small instruments to large instruments. A pipe organ now housed in the City Hall in Sydney, Australia has more than 10,000 pipes alone, which is quite valuable!

So, when the player plays the organ, it is like directing the performance of the entire orchestra. From the lowest bass to the highest notes, everything can be expressed delicately and vividly. In Bach's time, the organ had already developed to a very sophisticated level and could play many ingenious and varied pieces of music. Bach composed countless pieces of music for it, among which "Toccata and Fugue" is an outstanding masterpiece.

Harpsichord

The harpsichord is a very ancient keyboard instrument. It is the ancestor of the modern piano. The harpsichord was already perfect from the time it first evolved into the sixteenth century. Both Bach and Mozart were particularly fond of keyboard instruments.

In 1717 AD, Prince Cotten hired Bach to serve as the court band conductor. Prince Cotten prefers relaxed life-oriented music to overly serious religious music. As a result, Bach shifted his creative direction to keyboard instruments and other orchestral instruments. During this time, Bach was exposed to French music. He immediately incorporated the beautiful dance melodies of French music into his own works and created many vivid and lively harpsichord performances.