21.3.1685 - 28.7.1750
JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH
"... may he protect them from mediocrity!"
JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH, musician and composer
The composer Claude Debussy once wrote:
“Let us take a look at Bach, the good
lord of music, to whom composers should offer a prayer before they set
to work to protect them against mediocrity: look at his extensive work
in which we encounter everywhere things that are so full of life as if
they had originated only yesterday.”
It was not until many years after his death that Bach’s important
contribution to music was understood. Neither he nor his contemporaries
were aware of his remarkable qualities.
He brought together the different forms of the music of his age and
those that had gone before and combined them to the highest perfection.
That was Bach’s genius.
As a combination of European music, his work formed the platform from
which the development to the classical period was able to emerge above
and beyond the Rococo period.
As an orphan at the age of ten, he went to live with his older brother,
who taught him to play various instruments. He became a professional
musician and chorister in Lüneburg when he was just 15 and violinist at
the court in Weimar at the age of 18 ... These were followed by
many further positions in Germany.
Now, 150 years after his death, Johann Sebastian Bach’s organ music is
regarded as being among the most important ever written.
The "good lord" of music was a gifted master, with many of his
brilliant creations forming the pičce de résistance of modern-day
concert programmes.
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