As a master of classical music and a representative figure of the Baroque period, Bach is already familiar to us. He had a huge influence on the music style of that time. Below I will share with you a brief introduction to Bach’s life and major works. Welcome to read. A brief introduction to Bach's life

Johann Sebastian Bach (German: Johann Sebastian Bach, March 31, 1685---July 28, 1750), the great German composer is A music master who has successfully integrated the musical styles of different nations in Western Europe into one. He has gathered the essence of traditional music from Italy, France and Germany, making the music perfect and perfect. Bach himself was not famous during his lifetime and was largely forgotten fifty years after his death. But his fame has continued to grow over the past century and a half, and today he is generally regarded as one of the greatest composers of all time.

Life introduction

Self-taught music in his early years

Bach was born on March 21, 1685 in Eisenach in what is today the Dulingen forest in central Germany. Although this is a small town, its citizens love music. It is said that the words "Music always shines in our town" were engraved on the city's ancient city gate. And medieval minstrels, often holding harps, sang poems and held singing competitions here. Wagner once wrote the famous opera "Don Hauser" based on this. Martin Luther, the sixteenth-century religious reformer, also translated the Bible into German here. The Bach family is an authentic musical family. His family had been famous in the music industry many years before his death. His father was an excellent violinist, two of his grandfather's brothers were gifted composers, and several of his uncles and sisters were respected musicians. For the young Bach, who had extremely high musical talent, he was very lucky to grow up in such a family. However, fate wanted to find some trouble: he lost his mother when he was 9 years old and his father when he was 10 years old, so he had to rely on his elder brother to continue raising him. .

Although there are a lot of music materials stored at home, his bossy brother just doesn’t allow him to read and study. No matter how hard he pleads, it’s to no avail. Bach had no choice but to take advantage of his brother's absence from home and his deep sleep late at night to secretly copy down his beloved music score one by one under the moonlight. This lasted for half a year, which greatly damaged his eyesight. He spent his later years suffering from blindness until his death.

Running away from home in his youth

When Bach was 15 years old, he finally left home alone and embarked on the road of independent life. With his beautiful singing voice and outstanding harpsichord, violin, and organ playing skills, he was admitted to the choir attached to St. Michael's Church in Lüneburg, and at the same time he entered

Bach at the age of 30

Bach at the age of 30

Enter the seminary to study. The library here has a rich collection of classical music works. Bach dived into it, like a huge sponge, fully absorbing and integrating the artistic achievements of various European schools, broadening his musical horizons. In order to practice the piano, he often stayed up all night and stayed up all night. Every holiday, he would walk dozens of miles to Hamburg to listen to performances by famous musicians.

Graduation as a performer

He graduated from Saint-Michel in 1702 and became a violinist in a chamber orchestra the following year. Over the next twenty years he worked in many professions. During his lifetime, Bach was primarily known as an outstanding organist, although he was also a composer, teacher, and orchestra conductor. In 1723, when Bach was thirty-eight years old, he began to serve as cantor of the choir at St. Thomas Church in Leipzig, a role he held for the remaining twenty-seven years of his life.

Weimar Era (1708-1717)

Bach performed his oratorio "God is My King, BWV71" and resigned in the same year to accept a more lucrative position. Served as court orchestrator to Duke Wilhelm Ernst of Weimar; became music director in 1714. It was in Weimarbach that he composed most of his organ works, discovered Vivaldi's music for the first time, and began composing concertos. In 1717, he accepted the official position of Prince Leopold of Anhalt from Corden; but his resignation was blocked by Wilhelm Ernst, who even imprisoned him before being relieved of his obligations.

The K?then Era (1717-1723)

The days in K?then were a golden era in Bach’s life. During this period, he created a large number of outstanding secular and religious music such as the first volume of "The Well-Tempered Clavier", which is known as the "Old Testament of keyboard music", and the "Brandenburg Concerto", which is a milestone in the history of orchestral music development. At the same time, Bach also served in the Cotten Palace. The Hall of Mirrors in the Cotten Palace is very gorgeous, and there is also a statue of Bach here.

In 1723, Bach’s master Prince Ketten seemed to have lost interest in music, so he resigned from his position in the court and came to Leipzig to serve as music director (music director) of St. Thomas Church School. There he spent the remaining 27 years of his life.

Since then, the town of K?ten has been full of vitality because of Bach's music: its choir has carried Bach's name since 1908, the "Bach Music Festival" was founded in 1935, and in 1967 there was a memorial ceremony here to commemorate Bach. On the 250th anniversary of the service, the Bach Music Festival and the Bach Music Competition were held in turn, and this has been continued as a tradition to this day, and the organizer at that time was established, which is today's Bach Tenbach Society. In 1983, the K?ten Historical Museum opened the Bach Memorial Hall.

The Leipzig period was the longest period in Bach's life and the period when he created the most. At this time, Bach had reached the level of proficiency in both his playing skills and composition level. The masterpieces he composed in Leipzig include the touching "Mass in B Minor" and "Matthew Passion", the second volume of "The Well-Tempered Clavier" and "The Art of Fugue" which reflects his profound composition skills. . In 1747, when the uncrowned king of music traveled to Potsdam, he was summoned by another king, King Frederick of Prussia, and performed an impromptu performance, which impressed the audience. The next year, Bach developed the theme of this performance and wrote another work that summarized his composition and performance art? "Musical Devotion".

In Leipzig, Bach spent 27 years as the conductor of the St. Thomas Male Choir. Due to his long-term overuse of his eyes, Bach's eyesight declined and he suffered from cataracts and became blind in his later years, but he still insisted on dictating. creation. A few days before his death, he was still dictating a public hymn, "Toward the Altar of the Lord." Every note of the music expresses the old man's last sincere prayer before his death, and it ends abruptly at the 26th measure, becoming the master's final work.

On the night of July 28, 1750, Bach’s life came to an end and he walked safely to the altar in his heart. Three days later, Johann Sebastian Bach was buried in the cemetery of St. John's Church in Leipzig. Bach's style of composing music

Bach's works are deep, tragic, broad and intrinsic, full of the atmosphere of real life in Germany in the first half of the 18th century. He was deeply religious and a Lutheran. He wanted his music to serve the church, and most of his compositions were religious music. His music reflects the thoughts of ordinary citizens living in Germany in the 18th century. He is deeply affected by the pain that life has brought him, and has rich and profound feelings about life. Although he is passive and surrendered, he has not yet seen a way to change his life. He felt that a person must have a strong will, lofty beliefs, and a spirit of self-sacrifice. This is primarily what Bach reflected in his art. His works reflect this humanistic thought among German citizens in the eighteenth century from different angles and using different images.

He is the last great religious artist. He believes that music is the harmonious sound of praising God, and praising God is the central content of human life. His music originally grew out of Lutheran hymns known as hymns. It can be seen through the melody that the composer combined the popular popular sounds of the time. He has no intention of innovating in musical form, but pushing existing forms to the top.

Bach’s works contain certain philosophical and ethical significance, but his form of expression is not abstract or dogmatic. On the contrary, in his works, philosophical and ethical thoughts are closely integrated with lyricism and scene description. Although he does not use as many modeling techniques as Handel, in order to express certain inner emotions, Bach does not avoid using the natural scenery. Describe (such as wind, river). The polarity of Bach's musical content determines the vitality and comprehensiveness of his musical style. There is no clear distinction between Bach's vocal style and instrumental style. He created a new style of vocal and instrumental music synthesis.

Vocal works

He composed many large-scale vocal works full of dramatic elements, among which "Matthew Passion" and "Mass in B Minor" are the most influential works. In these works, Bach, as a devout Protestant, expressed his pity and sympathy for human disasters and suffering through religious music forms (passions, masses, motets, cantatas, etc.), as well as his hope for a peaceful and happy future. desire. Among Bach's vocal works, cantatas are the most colorful. On the one hand, Bach's cantatas inherit the tradition of secular cantatas close to opera, and on the other hand, they inherit the tradition of religious cantatas close to polyphonic chorus, creating a new type of canta that is a combination of vocal and instrumental music. tower. It is much deeper and richer than the old cantata in both content and style.

Bach’s cantatas are also divided into secular and religious ones. Most of his secular cantatas were written for the needs of official entertainment, and most of the lyrics were boring words and phrases borrowed from ancient Greek mythology to praise the nobles. But Bach often went beyond the scope of lyrics, or seized on individual unimportant words and used the theme to write a lively and interesting musical work, such as "Peasant Cantata". This cantata is sung by two farmers in Saxon dialect, with a strong sense of folk conversation. Bach's religious cantatas were a genre in which he wrote frequently for a long time, and they were numerous, accounting for almost half of all his musical works. The content of these pieces of music is profound and rich, and the expression methods are also very diverse and constantly evolving.

Bach initially started with choral cantatas. Later he expanded the scope of cantatas and wrote some chamber solo cantatas as well as cantatas in various forms. Purely choral cantatas instead Write less. Bach used many folk forms in his religious cantatas. His recitatives, arias, duets, and choruses all have his own original characteristics. Cantata is a comprehensive body of instrumental music and vocal music. The instrumental part is not an accompaniment. The instrumental part is organized by small ensemble, large ensemble or other different instruments.

Like the cantata, Bach's Passion is also a comprehensive genre of instrumental and vocal music; Bach freely used various forms of vocal and instrumental music according to the needs of expressing different stages of psychological states. Bach used the form of the Mass to develop the general thinking of music and create rich musical images to express his profound thoughts and feelings. In this regard, he is similar to Handel. Both of them were far away from the limitations of opera art at that time, but they returned to religious music. Although this is an inevitable result caused by specific historical conditions, this contradiction is particularly serious in Bach's masses.

Instrumental works

Bach’s instrumental music is the most important, harpsichord music. His harpsichord works are much richer in content, genre and style than those of his predecessors and his contemporaries. In the process of composing harpsichord music, Bach drew on various experiences to enrich the content, genre and style of harpsichord music; for example, he absorbed its improvisation and tragic spirit from organ music, and he also incorporated it into Polyphonic forms derived from ancient organ music were developed based on the characteristics of the harpsichord. He drew on the experience of French harpsichordists and wrote a suite composed of dildos; he also learned the Italian violin music style and the harpsichord music style of Doro Scarlatti. This influence can be seen in his variations and "C minor". Most notably in "Fantasy EQ".

Bach’s dance music originated from daily life and historical traditions, and his music has never been divorced from German musical tradition. "The Well-Tempered Clavier" is one of Bach's important legacies in the field of pure music. As a work with a German spirit, "The Well-Tempered Clavier" embodies that rigorous German thinking. In addition, Bach's "French Suite", "English Suite" and six "Brandenburg Concertos" and other orchestra works also express the composer's prayer and desire for peace and a better life. These works aroused strong sentiments deep in the hearts of the German people.

>>>More on the next page? Bach’s main works?