JohannSebastianBach (German: Johann Sebastianbach,1March 3, 6851-1July 28, 750) was a German composer and musician in the Baroque period. He is famous for his instrumental works (such as Brandenburg Concerto and Variations of Goldberg) and vocal works (such as Passion of Saint Matthew and Mass in B minor). Bach has been generally regarded as one of the greatest composers of all time since the revival movement of19th century.

Johann sebastian bach is the only son of city musician Eisenach. When he was born, there were already several composers in the Bach family. After being orphaned at the age of 10, he lived with his eldest brother John Christopher for five years, and then he continued his music career in Lueneburg. He has been working in Thuringia since 1703. At Weimar court, he expanded his repertoire; At Keton Palace, he mainly composed chamber music. 1723 was hired as the lead singer of St. Thomas Church in Leipzig. He composed music for the Lutheran Church in this city and the Conservatory of Music in his university. Starting from 1726, he published some keyboard and organ music. In Leipzig, as happened in some early positions, his relationship with his employer was not harmonious, which led to his hard life. 1736, in the last fourteen years of his life, he redesigned and expanded many of his early works. Bach died of complications after ophthalmic surgery on 1750 at the age of 65.

Chinese name: johann sebastian bach.

Mbth: JohannSebastianBach

Alias: JSBach/J. S. Bach

Nationality: Germany

Nationality: Germany

Place of birth: Thuringia-Eisenacher.

Date of birth: 1685 mar 2 1 (julian calendar) mar 3 1 (Gregorian calendar).

Date of death:1July 28th, 750

Occupation: organist, conductor, composer

School of graduation: Saint Michel's School.

Faith: Christianity and Lutheranism.

Major Achievements: Father of Western (European) Music

Representative works: Brandenburg Concerto, Matthew Passion, Mass in B minor, piano music collection with equal rhythm.

Place of death: Leipzig, Germany

At the age of 65.

Music School: Baroque

Good at music: organ music, religious music and concerto.

Father: Johann ambrosius Bach

Mother: Maria Elizabeth Lemot

Language used: German

The life of the character

family background

Johann sebastian bach was born on February1March, 65438 in Eisenacher, Durlingen forest in central Germany. Eisenacher, built on the mountain, is a fairy tale mountain city in central Germany. This place has a deep musical origin. In the Middle Ages, bards and court musicians performed and competed in Eizenakh, which can be said to be the birthplace of German music. Although this is only a small town, its citizens love music-it is said that the words "Music always shines in our town" are engraved on the door of the ancient city. Medieval singers often held harps, where they sang poems and held singing competitions. Wagner once wrote the famous opera Don Hauser. /kloc-Martin Luther, a religious reformer in the 0 th and 6 th centuries, also translated the Bible into German here. Bach's family is an authentic musical family, and his family was famous in the music industry many years before his afterlife.

His father is an excellent violinist, his grandfather's two brothers are talented composers, and his uncles and sisters are respected musicians. For young Bach, he has great musical talent, and he is very lucky to grow up in such a family. But fate insisted on finding some trouble: he lost his mother at the age of 9 and his father at the age of 10, so he had to rely on his eldest brother to continue raising him. Big brother taught him a lot of valuable knowledge. But there are a lot of music materials at home, but my brother doesn't allow him to read and study, because the music score is precious and the copied paper is expensive. Bach had to take advantage of his brother's leaving home and going to bed late at night to secretly copy his favorite music in the moonlight. It took half a year to copy it, and his eyesight was greatly damaged. He spent his old age in blindness until his death.

run away from home

Bach left home alone at the age of fifteen and embarked on the road of independent life. With his beautiful singing voice and excellent playing skills of the clavichord, violin and organ, he was admitted to the choir affiliated to St. Michel's Church in Lombard and also entered the God School. The library here is rich in classical music works, in which Bach fully absorbed and integrated the artistic achievements of various European schools and broadened his musical horizons. In order to practice piano, he often stays up late. Every holiday, he has to walk dozens of miles to Hamburg to listen to famous musicians.

Become famous in employment

He graduated from St. Michel University in 1702 and worked as a violinist in an indoor band the following year. In the next twenty years, he did many things. Bach was mainly known as an outstanding organist when he was alive, although he was also a composer, teacher and conductor. 1723, 38-year-old Bach began to lead the singing class in St. Thomas' church in Leipzig, and he served as a horn for 27 years for the rest of his life.

Weimar era (1708 ~ 17 17)

Bach played his oratorio "God is My King, BWV7 1", and resigned in the same year to accept a more generous position: as the court orchestra of William Ernst, Duke of Weimar; 17 14 became a musician. He composed most organ works in Weimar Bach, discovered Vivaldi's music for the first time, and began to compose concertos. 17 17 accepts the position of Le Zheng of Anhalt Baron Arklow in Corden; However, his resignation was blocked by William Ernst, and he was put in prison even before he was relieved of his obligations.

Kaiteng era (17 17 ~ 1723)

The days in Kelten were the golden age of Bach's life. During this period, he created a lot of excellent secular music and religious music, such as the first volume of the Average Piano Music Collection, which is known as the keyboard music in the Old Testament, and the Brandenburg Concerto, a landmark in the history of orchestral development. At the same time, Bach also works in kuerten Palace, and the mirror hall of kuerten Palace is very gorgeous, with Bach's statue in it.

1724, Bach's master, Prince Keton, seemed indifferent to music, so he resigned from the court and went to Leipzig to be the music director (music director) of St. Thomas Church School, where he spent the remaining 27 years of his life.

Since then, Coton Town has been full of vitality because of Bach's music: its choir has been using Bach's name since 1906, 1935 founded Bach Music Festival, and 1967 held Bach Music Festival and Bach Music Competition alternately here to commemorate Bach's 250th anniversary. This tradition has continued to this day. 1983, the Coton Museum of History opened the Bach Memorial Hall.

Leipzig era (1723 ~ 1750)

Leipzig period is the longest period in Bach's life, and it is also the most creative period. At this time, Bach's playing skills and composition level have reached the point of perfection. His representative works in Leipzig include Touching Mass in B minor, Passion of Matthew, Piano Music with Equal Rhythm Volume II, The Art of Fugue, etc., which embodies his profound composition attainments. 1747, when the king of uncrowned music went to Potsdam, he was summoned by another king, Frederick II of Prussia, to improvise. The audience here are all impressed. In the second year, Bach developed the theme of this performance and wrote another work summarizing his art of composing and playing-The Contribution of Music.

In Leipzig, Bach was the conductor of St. Thomas Boys Choir for 27 years. Due to long-term overuse of eyes, Bach's eyesight declined, and he suffered from cataract blindness in his later years, but he still insisted on dictation and writing. A few days before his death, he was dictating a hymn "Towards the Altar of the Lord". Every note of the music expresses the last pious prayer of the old man before his death, and finally comes to an abrupt end in Bar 26, becoming a masterpiece of the master.

1750 On the night of July 28th, Bach drew the last rest of his life and died in Leipzig. Three days later, johann sebastian bach was buried in the cemetery of St. John's Church in Leipzig.

Married children

When Bach was twenty-one, his cousin Maria Barbara, one year older, got married. They had seven children, but his wife died when Bach was 35. The following year, Bach married his second wife, Magdalena. They lived happily and gave birth to thirteen new family members. After Bach died, only nine children survived, and four of them grew up to be famous musicians.

Main work

In the catalogue of Bach's works, BWV is the abbreviation of German "BachWerkeVerzeichnis", which is literally translated as "Bach's catalogue". This classification system was completed by WolfgangSchmieder in 1950. This classification is based on genre, not the year of creation.

Creative style

Theme style

Bach's works are profound, tragic, broad and restrained, and full of the breath of real life in Germany in the first half of the18th century. He believes in religion and Lutheranism. He hopes that his music can serve the church. Most of his works are religious music. His music embodies the thoughts of ordinary German citizens living in18th century.

He is deeply influenced by the pain brought by life and has a rich and profound understanding of life. Although he is passive and obedient, he hasn't seen a way to change his life. However, he believes that a person must have a strong will, lofty beliefs and the spirit of self-sacrifice, which are the main contents of Bach's art. His works reflect this humanistic thought among German citizens in the18th century from different angles and with different images.

He is the last great religious artist. He believes that music is "the harmonious voice of praising God", and praising God is the central content of human life. His music was originally composed by Luther hymns called hymns. Through the melody, we can see that the composer combined the popular voices at that time. In the form of music, he has no intention to innovate, but to push the existing form to the peak.

Bach's works have certain philosophical and ethical significance, but his forms of expression are not abstract and dogmatic. On the contrary, in his works, philosophy and ethics are closely combined with lyricism and scenery writing. Although modelling technique was not widely used like Handel's, Bach inevitably drew lessons from the description of natural scenery (such as wind blowing and rivers) in order to set off certain inner feelings. The indirectness of Bach's music content determines the activity and comprehensiveness of his music style. There is no obvious difference between Bach's vocal music style and instrumental music style. He created a new style of combining vocal music and instrumental music.

Vocal music works

He has created many large-scale vocal works full of dramatic factors, among which the most influential are The Passion of Matthew and Mass in B minor. In these works, Bach, as a devout Protestant, expressed his pity and sympathy for human disasters and sufferings and his desire for a peaceful and happy future through religious music forms (passionate melody, mass, classical songs, oratorios, etc.). ) Among Bach's vocal works, oratorios are the most colorful. Bach's oratorios, on the one hand, inherited the secular tradition of "Conluta" approaching opera, on the other hand, inherited the tradition of religious oratorios approaching polyphonic chorus, and created a new type of oratorios which integrated vocal music and instrumental music. Both content and style are much richer than the old oratorio.

Bach's oratorios are also divided into secular and religious. Most of his secular oratorios are written for the needs of officialdom entertainment, and most of his lyrics are boring words borrowed from little people in ancient Greek mythology to praise the nobility. Bach often goes beyond the scope of lyrics, grasps individual unimportant words and uses the topic to write a lively and interesting music work, such as "Peasant Chorus". This oratorio was sung and answered by two farmers in Saxon dialect, with a strong sense of humor in folk conversation. Bach's religious oratorios are a genre he often creates for a long time, with a large number, accounting for almost half of all his music works. The content of these songs is profound and rich, and the expression methods are also very diverse and constantly evolving. Bach started with choral chorus, and later expanded the scope of choral chorus, wrote some indoor solo choruses, and also wrote various forms of choral chorus, but few choral choruses were written. Bach used many forms in his religious oratorios, and his recitation, aria, duet and chorus all had their own unique characteristics. Oratorio is a comprehensive genre of instrumental music and vocal music. Instrumental music is not an accompaniment, but is organized by small ensembles, big ensembles or other different instruments.

Bach's suffering music, like chorus, is also a comprehensive genre of instrumental vocal music; Bach freely used various forms of vocal music and instrumental music according to the needs of expressing his psychological state at different stages. Bach developed the thinking of music generalization in the form of mass, shaped rich musical images and expressed profound thoughts and feelings. In this respect, he is similar to Handel. They all got rid of the limitations of opera art at that time, but returned to religious music. Although this is the inevitable result under specific historical conditions, this contradiction is particularly serious in Bach's Mass.

instrumental work

Bach's instrumental music is the most important one. His harpsichord works are much richer in content, genre and style than those of his predecessors and contemporaries. Bach enriched the content, genre and style of harpsichord music by drawing lessons from various experiences in the process of composing harpsichord music. For example, he absorbed its improvisation and tragic spirit from organ music, and developed the polyphonic form of organ ancient music according to the characteristics of harpsichord. Drawing lessons from the experience of French harpsichordists, he created a suite composed of dance music. He studied the Italian violin music style and scarlatti's harpsichord music style, and this influence was most obvious in his Variations and Fantasies in C minor.

Bach's dance music originated from daily life and historical traditions, and his music has never been divorced from the German music tradition. The piano music collection with even rhythm is one of Bach's important legacies in the field of "pure music". As a work with German spirit, Equal Rhythm Piano Music Collection embodies that rigorous German thinking. In addition, Bach's band works such as French Suite, English Suite and Six Brandenburg Concertos also express the composer's prayer and desire for peace and a better life. These works have aroused strong resonance in the hearts of the German people.

The influence of later generations

Bach is the greatest composer who has integrated Dutch, Italian and French music since16th century, and is known as "the father of modern music". His works are not only strong in logic and rigorous in structure, but also inherently philosophical and profound. Because of his lofty belief in humanitarianism and indomitable pursuit of a better life, his music is often full of vitality and human touch. Feng Lan thinks Bach is the highest and greatest composer in the world.

First of all, Bach developed music from vocal music to instrumental music, which made instrumental music playing skills develop to an unprecedented peak. Before Bach, the music was mainly vocal music, and musical instruments were rarely used as accompaniment. Instrumental music has no independent status. Bach gave full play to the playing skills of the ancient piano and invented the fingering of playing the keyboard with five fingers. Before Bach, the keyboards for playing organ and clavichord did not use thumbs, but only used four fingers. Bach invented thumb fingering, which laid the foundation for today's piano fingering. After the invention of this new fingering, the skills of keyboard instruments are very developed. Pure "music" is the art of "sound" and has nothing to do with literature and poetry. Of course, vocal music cannot be used to perform "singing", and instrumental music must be used to perform "beating". Therefore, the development of instrumental music means the formation and development of pure music. Bach developed instrumental music, making it a brand-new and independent art form, liberating music from the shackles of other arts and becoming a free and independent art, so Bach is also known as the "father of music" in the West.

Secondly, Bach originally used the twelve-tone scale in his composition. "Twelve-tone scale" is to divide the intervals of a scale into twelve equal parts, one of which is divided into semitones and the other into whole tones. This music theory was initiated by larmor, a French music theorist. But this is just a theory and has never been put into practice. Bach was the first person to apply this music theory to composition and achieved satisfactory results. The use of average rate makes mode modulation (fixing the composition of one tone and changing it to another tone halfway) very free, and the fugue of polyphonic music is very developed. The fugue usually consists of three parts: the presentation part, the expansion part and the reproduction part. The basic feature is to use imitation counterpoint method to make short and distinctive themes appear in all parts of the music in turn; Then it enters the interlude developed from some motives in the theme, and then the theme and interlude appear repeatedly in different new tunes; Finally, the theme returns to the original tune, often ending with an epilogue. The development of fugue has a great influence on the development of sonata form later. The application of average rate also leads musicians to use chromatic harmony very freely, which makes the effect of harmony more novel and rich. Bach himself wrote chromatic fantasia with chromatic harmony.

When Bach was alive, his works were not understood by people. He has neither a prominent position nor won social recognition. 1829, Mendelssohn conducted and staged Bach's Passion of Matthew in Leipzig, and the world began to pay attention to Bach from then on. Mozart and Beethoven discovered his valuable value. They were shocked by the profundity, perfection and impeccable of Bach's music. When Beethoven first saw some of Bach's works, he couldn't help exclaiming: "He is not a stream (Bach's name is Devin Bach, which means" stream "), but the sea!" 1829, Mendelssohn revived Bach's The Passion of Matthew in an epoch-making performance in Berlin. Chopin practiced Bach's works before the concert, and Liszt adapted some of Bach's organ works for the piano. Schumann is one of the founders of Bach Society, which undertakes the heavy responsibility of publishing the complete version of this master's works. Today, Bach's music can be heard all over the world Many of these works have long been listed as art schools.

The school trains students' required teaching materials and entries in major international music competitions. Bach is known as "the unparalleled master" and even as "the father of modern European music".

Personality assessment

Karajan once said: "The first thing in the morning is to listen to Bach's music. It is like a clear spring flowing through my heart, which helps me correct my hearing." If you are a music lover, not listening to Bach's music is like missing the whole Baroque.

Bach's music is like a person, and the tone of Qingquan always expresses feelings implicitly. When you carefully analyze the music style, the feeling may have reached your heart before you react. Bach's music creation paved the way for later generations, just like philosophers or mathematicians.

French music critic Paul Long Toure said: "Bach's creative purpose is not for future generations, or even for Germany in his time. His ambition is not beyond the scope of his city or even his church. Every week he just works for the next Sunday, preparing a new work or modifying an old tune; After the performance, he put it back in the bookcase, never thinking of publishing it, and even kept it for his own use. There is no longer a masterpiece in the world whose conception and practice are so naive! "

Goethe's evaluation of Bach's music is very incisive: "This is like an eternal and harmonious dialogue, just like the flow in my heart before God created the world. I seem to have no ears, no eyes, no other senses and no need to use them. My heart is rhythmic, and it comes out one after another. "

Lessing, a great German playwright and political critic, once said: "Genius is born in a very hard class, even if it is not born in extreme poverty."