Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
is unquestionably the greatest composer before Mozart,
and arguably the greatest ever.
On one level, his music is an example of supreme craftsmanship, yet his
music is also deeply human.
Bach came not so much from a musical family as from a musical dynasty.
The line of musical Bachs begins in the 16th century and extends to the
middle of the 19th.
After spells as church organist at Arnstadt and Mulhausen,
Bach's first important position was at Weimar,
where in 1708 he became the court organist and a chamber musician to the duke, Wilhelm Ernst.
When eight years later a disgruntled Bach over-insistently applied for permission to leave,
having been passed over for the senior post of Kapellmeister, the duke's response was to jail him
for one month for his impertinence.
(Disagreements with employers were to dog his career.)
He left immediately after, to become Kapellmeister at the small court of Prince Leopold of
Anhalt-Cöthen.
Here he composed most of his instrumental and orchestral music.
When Prince Leopold married, his enthusiasm for music waned and in 1722, Bach applied to be cantor at the
Thomasschule in Leipzig.
He got the position, but only after his friend Telemann, among others, turned it down.
Bach spent his remaining 27 years in Leipzig, maintaining an almost impossible schedule.
He taught at the Thomasschule, oversaw the musical operations for the church at
St. Thomas and three other of the town's churches, and was expected to
provide music for important civic occasions.
(He also found time to father thirteen children by his second wife
Anna Magdalena, of whom only six grew to adulthood, to add to the four
surviving children of his first marriage.)
More than any master composer in Western European history, Johann Sebastian Bach obstinately maintained his
allegiance to techniques, styles, musical figurations and aesthetic doctrines that had gone out of fashion.
In the early 18th century the glorious tradition of North German polyphony had subsided before an onslaught
of Italian operatic style in nearly every center of musical culture.
Bach, with his fugues, chorale variations and mighty organ works, was, for all his recognized genius,
the living embodiment of the past.
Bach's autograph of the six Brandenburg Concerti is dated March 24,
1721, and is described by Bach as the result of a "command" from Christian
Ludwig, the Margrave of Brandenburg, whom Bach had bet two years earlier.
However, it's likely that Bach wrote the concerti with an orchestra like the
one he was directing at Cõthen under Prince Leopold and not the slim
forces at Brandenburg.
Nonetheless, the six Brandenburg Concerti are Bach's most popular works and
display Bach's ability to write diverse, colorful pieces for virtuoso soloists.
Brandenburg Concerto No.4 features two solo flutes (originally recorders)
and a solo violin.
The dialogue between the solo instruments is fairly even in the Andante,
but the solo violin is clearly the "hero" in the outer movements.
Brandenburg Concerto No.3 in G Major, BWV1042, is an orchestral
work for three groups of strings: three violins, three violas,
and three cellos (with basso continuo accompaniment).
Bach explores tonal and contrapuntal possibilities and occasionally
unites the full ensemble for brilliant tuttis,
giving each player a role as soloist and accompanist.
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