Johann Sebastian Bach
1685 - 1750
German composer. Born into a musical family, he became an outstandingly well-rounded musician; from 1700 he worked as a singer, violinist and organist.
His first significant job was in 1708 as an organist at the ducal court of Weimar. This was followed by a six-year stay (1717-23) as Kapellmeister at the royal court in Koethen, which in turn was followed by his appointment as cantor at the great St. Thomas Church in Leipzig, where he stayed for the rest of his life.
Imbued with the North German contrapuntal style (see counterpoint) from earliest childhood, he encountered the lively Italian style especially in the works of Antonio Vivaldi around 1710, and a large part of his music embodies an extremely convincing amalgamation of the two styles. In St. Thomas he wrote more than 200 church cantatas. His orchestral works include the six Brandenburg Concerts, four orchestral suites and many harpsichord concerts, a genre he invented.
His solo piano works include the great teaching work "The Well-Tempered Clavier" (1722 and 1742), the great Goldberg Variations (1742), the massive but unfinished Art of the Fugue (1749), numerous suites and many organ preludes and fugues .
His traditional choral works include (in addition to the sacred cantatas) more than 30 secular cantatas, two monumental passions and the B minor mass. His works, which were never widely known during his lifetime, fell into an almost complete solar eclipse after his death and were not revived to great acclaim until the early 19th century.
He was perhaps the most accomplished organist and harpsichordist of his time. Today Bach is considered the greatest composer of the Baroque and by many the greatest composer of all time.