The organ was not very good, and it was not used much, so Bach did not write any organ music during this period. Bach was Kapellmeister (Director of Music) and was treated well. The Prince was very musical and a wonderful man to work for. In the end he had to let the musician go.Ĭöthen (1717–1723) Īt Cöthen, Bach worked for Prince Leopold. The Duke was angry and did not want him to go but Bach insisted, so the Duke put Bach in prison for a month. In 1717 he was offered a job in the town of Cöthen, where he would earn an even better salary. In 1714 the Duke made Bach Konzertmeister ( Concertmaster, a job that paid more money.) He had to write cantatas for church services. He realized that Bach would win, so he left. Bach was practicing the day before and Marchant heard him. There was going to be a competition between the two men to see who was better at improvisation. On one occasion he was in Dresden at the same time as a French organist named Louis Marchant. He became very famous as an organist and was invited to play in other big churches and to give advice on organ building. Bach composed many of his great organ works at this time. At the Duke’s court there was a chapel with an organ. Johann Sebastian was made organist to the Duke of Saxe-Weimar. After a year there, he gave up that job and went to a big town called Weimar. Bach got rather fed up with the priests who were always complaining about it, so he resigned and took another job in Mühlhausen, not far away. They did not understand the ornamental notes he added to the hymn tunes.
Unfortunately, the congregation were not musical enough to like it. They asked him to examine the new organ, and then they offered him a job. There was a new organ in the church, and Bach already knew a lot about organ building as well as being a brilliant organist. It was a well-paid job for a young boy who was 18 years old. Bach got his first job in 1703 in Arnstadt. He learned by listening to famous organists like Reincken (1623–1722) and Dietrich Buxtehude (1637–1707). At first he sang treble in the choir and was said to have a very fine treble voice, but his voice very soon got lower, so he made himself useful playing instruments. When he was fifteen, he went to the small town of Lüneburg. Of his twenty children, several became quite famous composers, especially Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (1714–1788), Johann Christian Bach (1735–1782), Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach and Wilhelm Friedemann Bach (1710–1784).
#JOHANN BACH PROFESSIONAL#
Many of his relatives were professional musicians of some sort: violinists and town musicians, organists, Cantors (Directors of Music in a church), court musicians and Kapellmeisters (Directors of Music at a royal court). His father, Johann Ambrosius Bach, was a trumpeter at the court of Saxe-Eisenach. Along with Mozart and Beethoven, Bach is regarded as one of the greatest composers who has ever lived.īach came from a highly musical family. That made some people at the time think he was old-fashioned, but today we know that his work is the very best of Baroque music. During the last part of his life most composers were writing in a new style called the Classical style, but Bach always wrote in the Baroque style.
Bach wrote almost every kind of music except opera. Most of his life, however, he worked in a church where he was expected to write church music. Here he wrote most of his chamber music and orchestral music. He spent several years working at courts of noblemen. John Passion, Mass in B minor, and the Brandenburg Concertos. He is most famous for his work Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, St. He lived in the last part of the Baroque period. Johann Sebastian Bach (31 March 1685 in Eisenach – 28 July 1750 in Leipzig pronounced BAHK) was a German composer and organist.