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.

J.S. Bach's Concerto for Three Violins and Orchestra in D Major, BWV1064, has a somewhat uncertain history. Bach rewrote many of his concerti for different combinations of soloists, and this triple violin concerto shares its themes and harmonies with the Concerto for Three Harpsichords and Strings in C Major, BWV1064. The earliest source of the harpsichord version dates from c.1740. Bach most likely wrote the triple harpsichord concerto to feature his eldest sons, Wilhelm Friedemann and Carl Philipp Emanuel, in Bach's Leipzig Collegium Musicum performances. Some Bach historians believe that Bach used an original version of this concerto for three violins to construct the triple harpsichord concerto, while others believe that the triple violin concerto was constructed from the harpsichord triple concerto.

J.S. Bach's Concerto in F Major for Harpsichord and Two Flutes, BWV1057, is Bach's arrangement of his Brandenburg Concerto No.4, BWV1049, dated c.1719. The flutes, although arguably solo instruments in their own right, are used by Bach largely as part of the accompaniment in this arrangement, while Bach expands the harpsichord solo to virtuosic proportions to rival the Brandenburg Concerto No.5, BWV1050.

The orchestral suite, one of the most important and widely cultivated forms during the mid-to-late baroque period, comes primarily from the French court ballet of the early 17th century. Only four of Bach's Orchestral Suites have survived, but it is certain that he wrote many more. The Orchestral Suite No.3 in D Major, BWV1068, is Bach's most popular suite, probably due to the celebrated second movement, nicknamed "Air on the G string." The suite probably dates from Bach's years in Leipzig and is scored for two oboes, three trumpets, timpani, strings and continuo. Figuring prominently in the Overture is a solo violin, as soloists within the orchestra were popular in the late Baroque. Following the famous Air, Bach concludes with a series of light-hearted dances.

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