Bach Notes

Today Johann Sebastian Bach's name and music are known virtually around the world. Amazingly, during his lifetime he never traveled more than 200 miles from the town of Eisenstadt where he was born.

Going back many generations, Bach's family tree was filled with so many musicians, that in Northern Germany by the time little Johann was born the word "Bach" was simply used as a nickname for any "musician."

Bach and Handel were born within weeks of each other in 1685, in towns less than 80 miles apart. Bach was a middle-class family man who never traveled, while Handel roamed to Italy and England and died in London. The two men never met.

JS Bach was certainly a family man. He had 20 children, the largest family of any of the great composers. He was survived by nine of his children, several of whom became renowned composers themselves.

In 1722 the Leipzig town council considered applicants for the important job of choir master. The City Council minutes read: "Since the best men are not available, mediocre musicians must be considered." And so they chose Bach.

For JS Bach, nothing in life, however mundane, was considered unspiritual. In a humorous poem about his beloved tobacco pipe, he wrote: "On land, on sea, at home, abroad, I puff my pipe and think of God."

In Bach's day a member of the Leipzig musicians' guild was called a "Stadtpeiffer" - town piper. Every one of these "union" members was expected to play violin, oboe, viola, cello, flute, horn, and trumpet.

JS Bach was an active music teacher, and he once gave some disarmingly direct advice to one pupil: "Just practice diligently and you will do very well. You have five fingers on each hand just as healthy as mine."

JS Bach once offered an organ student some remarkably simple advice. Organ playing he said, "...is nothing remarkable..., all one has to do is hit the right notes at the right time and the instrument plays itself."

Bach compared the playing of a certain bassoonist to the bleating of a nanny goat. When the player confronted Bach and threatened him, Bach drew his sword and they fought briefly. School authorities later cited Bach for failure to get along with his students.

During his lifetime Bach was often scorned by the younger generation of composers, including several of his own sons. They thought his music was old fashioned, pompous, and grandiose. They called him "the old powdered wig."

Four of Bach's sons -- Carl Philipp Emanuel, Wilhelm Freideman, Johann Christoph Friedrich, Johann Christian -- went on to significant musical careers. By and large, they practiced the fashionable, superficial "galant" style and regarded their father's music as complicated and passe.

Johann Sebastian Bach's compositions are filled with musical and graphic symbolism and numerology. Scholars believe he was simply amusing himself with his own private word and number games even as he was composing his greatest masterpieces.

Of all Bach's great vocal and choral compositions, only one - a brief cantata - was actually printed and published during his lifetime. All Bach's other vocal works existed only in handwritten manuscripts in his own study.

Bach was a busy man all his life: organist, choir master, music teacher, court musician, headmaster and instructor at a boys school, father of 20 children. The mystery is how he found time to compose music at all, much less create great musical masterpieces.

Johann Sebastian Bach probably was unaware of the his monumental importance to future generations. Although he wrote much music, he published very little of it. He was known primarily as a virtuoso organist, and as the master of a boy's choir school in Leipzig.

"B-A-C-H" In mystical numerology, B is 2, A is 1, C is 3 and H is 8. The total is 14. 14, and its mirror, 41, were among Bach's favorite numbers. Scholars have found these numbers hidden countless times within the notes and musical structure of Bach's music.

Bach worked for the City of Leipzig for more than a quarter of a century. Yet after he died the town council voted to reduce the pension to his widow, Anna Magdelana. She died in abject poverty 10 years ten years later, and was buried in a pauper's grave.

JS Bach's son Johann Christoph was a composer who went to Italy to study Italian opera. This Johann Bach Junior then went to England where he was know as John Bach, and for a while gave music lessons to Mozart.

After JS Bach's death, all his original musical manuscripts were divided among his family. Some of the music was sold, much of it lost. Today we probably have less than half of all the music Bach actually composed during his lifetime.

Bach was buried in Leipzig following his death in 1750. His remains were exhumed in 1894 by Professor Wilhelm His for "scientific" study. And it was concluded, among other things, that Bach's height was 5' 7 1/2", and his ears were exceptionally suited to music!

Johann Sebastian Bach's religious devotion, artistic discipline, and musical inspiration gave the world a musical and artistic legacy which Richard Wagner described as "the most stupendous mirace in all of music."

"Bach" is the German word for a little stream or brook. Of Johann Sebastian Bach, Ludwig van Beethoven said: "His name should not be Brook, it should be Ocean."

© Copyright 1999 David Gordon
david@spiritsound.com
www.spiritsound.com
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These pieces were written for the 1999 Carmel Bach Festival, as part of a radio marketing campaign on KBOQ-FM, Carmel.