![]() ![]() ![]() Bach and Marchand would improvise over a number of different styles, and the winner would take home 500 talers. To scare the French harpsichordist away, the concertmaster hatched a plan with his friend, J.S. This annoyed the court’s concertmaster, who found Marchand arrogant and insufferable. In 1717, Louis Marchand, a harpsichordist from France, was invited to play for Augustus, Elector of Saxony, and performed so well that he was offered a position playing for the court. If Bach challenged you to a keyboard duel, you were guaranteed to be embarrassed. She rebels and sings this stanza:Īh, then bring me coffee as a gift! 8. Performed in 1735 at Zimmerman’s coffee house in Leipzig, the song is about a coffee-obsessed woman whose father wants her to stop drinking the caffeinated stuff. He wrote an amazing coffee jingle.īach apparently loved coffee enough to write a song about it: "Schweigt stille, plaudert nicht" ("Be still, stop chattering"). That package, which included the Brandenburg Concertos-now considered some of the most important orchestral compositions of the Baroque era-failed to get Bach the job. (Notice a pattern?) Bach polished some manuscripts that had been sitting around and mailed them to a potential employer, Christian Ludwig, the Margrave of Brandenburg. Unfortunately, the composer reportedly didn’t get along with the prince’s new wife, and he started looking for a new gig. The Brandenburg Concertos were a failed job application.Īround 1721, Bach was the head of court music for Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Köthen. Bach spent his time in the slammer writing preludes for organ. As retribution, the duke jailed him for four weeks. Furious, Bach resigned and joined a rival court. But after five years, the top job was handed to the former kapellmeister’s son. This time, he took it in stride, believing his hard work would lead to his promotion to kapellmeister (music director). When Bach took a job in 1708 as a chamber musician in the court of the Duke of Saxe-Weimar, he once again assumed a slew of responsibilities that he never signed up for. He spent 30 days in jail for quitting his job. The rumble escalated into a full-blown scrum that required the two be pulled apart. Days later, Geyersbach attacked Bach with a walking stick. Not one to mince words, Bach one day lost patience with a error-prone bassoonist, Johann Geyersbach, and called him a zippelfagottist-that is, a “nanny-goat bassoonist.” Those were fighting words. When he signed up for the role, nobody told him he also had to teach a student choir and orchestra, a responsibility Bach hated. One of Bach’s first jobs was as a church organist in Arnstadt. Mary's Church, but marriage to one of Buxtehude's daughters was a prerequisite to taking over the job. Bach hoped to succeed Buxtehude as the organist of Lübeck's St. He stuck around for four months to study with the musician. In 1705, 20-year-old Bach walked 280 miles-that's right, walked-from the city of Arnstadt to Lübeck in northern Germany to hear a concert by the influential organist and composer Dieterich Buxtehude. He took a musical pilgrimage that puts every road trip to Woodstock to shame. According to the Nekrolog, an obituary written by Bach’s son Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, "tarting with Veit Bach, the founding father of this family, all his descendants, down to the seventh generation, have dedicated themselves to the profession of music, with only a few exceptions." 3. Bach also had 20 children, and, of those who lived past childhood, at least five became professional composers. He had five brothers-all named Johann-and the three who lived to adulthood became musicians. At least two of his uncles were composers. His father was a violinist, organist, court trumpeter, and kettledrum player. He was at the center of a musical dynasty.īach’s great-grandfather was a piper. “True, his life was actually 11 days longer because Protestant Germany adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1700,” he told Classical MPR, “but with the legal stipulation that all dates prior to Dec. And while most biographies opt for the March 31 date, Bach scholar Christopher Wolff firmly roots for Team 21. Today, we use the Gregorian calendar, which shifted the dates by 11 days. Bach was born in Thuringia in 1685, when the German state was still observing the Julian calendar. The correct date depends on whom you ask. Other people light the candles on March 31. Some people celebrate Bach’s birthday on March 21. There's some disagreement about when he was actually born. Here are 11 things you might not know about the man behind the music. Shredding electric guitar solos? Look, it’s Bach! The Baroque composer produced more than 1100 works, from liturgical organ pieces to secular cantatas for orchestra, and his ideas about musical form and harmony continue to influence generations of music-makers. ![]()
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