Bach's Austrian Years: Life And Music

German composer and musician Johann Sebastian Bach is known for his mastery of counterpoint, harmonic and motivic organisation, and his adaptation of rhythms, forms, and textures from abroad. He was born in Eisenach, Germany, and spent his childhood in Eisenach, Ohrdruf, and Lüneburg. Bach's first job was in Weimar, after which he worked in Arnstadt, Mühlhausen, and Weimar again. He then moved to Köthen in Saxony-Anhalt before spending his final 27 years in Leipzig. There is no evidence to suggest that Bach ever lived in Austria.

Bach's early life in Eisenach

Johann Sebastian Bach was born in Eisenach, Germany, on 21 March 1685, and spent the first ten years of his life there. He was the eighth and youngest child of Johann Ambrosius Bach, the director of the town musicians, and Maria Elisabeth Lämmerhirt. The family lived in a spacious home above the town centre.

Bach was born into a family of musicians. His uncles were all professional musicians, working as organists, court musicians and composers. His father, Ambrosius, taught him to play the violin, and his older siblings also helped him learn music theory. One of his uncles, Johann Christoph Bach, who was the organist at the Georgenkirche, introduced him to the organ.

Bach's early years in Eisenach were marked by tragedy. He lost a brother and a sister in early childhood, and his mother died when he was nine years old. His father died nine months later, in February 1695.

Despite the family's misfortunes, Bach's musical education continued. He attended the Latin Grammar School, where he was invited to sing in the Georgenkirche choir. He was described as having an 'uncommonly fine treble voice' and it was here that he encountered the Lutheran spirit, which inspired so many of his later compositions.

Bach's father held several properties in Eisenach, including the house where he was born, and the current Bach House museum. The exact location of his childhood home is unknown, but it is thought to have been about 100 metres north of the current museum.

After his parents' deaths, Bach and his brother Johann Jakob were adopted by their eldest brother, Johann Christoph, who lived in the nearby town of Ohrdruf.

Bach's time in Ohrdruf and Lüneburg

After the death of his parents, Johann Sebastian Bach went to live with his eldest brother, Johann Christoph, in Ohrdruf. There, he studied music and excelled in his academic studies, learning Latin, Greek and theology. He also performed and copied music, including his brother's, despite being forbidden to do so.

Bach's time in Ohrdruf was foundational to his musical education. He received valuable teaching from his brother, who was the organist at St. Michael's Church, and exposed him to the works of great composers of the day. He also had access to the church's organ and watched it being constructed.

After five years in Ohrdruf, Bach left for Lüneburg, where he joined the choir of St. Michael's Convent. He made the 180-mile journey on foot, accompanied by his school friend Georg Erdmann. In Lüneburg, Bach's musical world opened up even further. He was invited to sing in the Matins Choir, played the harpsichord and the three-manual organ, and had access to the grammar school's extensive music library.

During his time in Lüneburg, Bach was introduced to influential noblemen and musicians, most notably, organist Georg Böhm. A friend of the Bach family in Ohrdruf, Böhm held the post of local church organist at the Johanniskirche and introduced Bach to French instrumental music and organ music from Hamburg.

Bach's two years in Lüneburg were critical in exposing him to a broader range of European culture and music.

Bach's first job in Weimar

Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer and musician of the late Baroque period. He is known for his prolific output across a variety of instruments and forms, including orchestral music, solo instrumental works, and keyboard works. While Bach did not live in Austria, he did have two periods of employment in Weimar, each time under a different employer.

In July 1703, Bach was offered the post of organist at the New Church. However, he had several disagreements with the Church Council and took up a new position at Mülhausen. In 1708, Bach returned to Weimar as a member of the chamber orchestra and as an organist to the court of Duke Wilhelm Ernst, Duke Johann Ernst III's brother. Here, he remained until 1717.

Bach's time in Arnstadt, Mühlhausen and Weimar

Johann Sebastian Bach spent time in Arnstadt, Mühlhausen, and Weimar during his early career as a musician.

Arnstadt

In the summer of 1703, Bach became the organist of the New Church in Arnstadt, now known as the Bach Church. He was invited to inspect the new organ and give the inaugural recital. His duties were light, and he was paid a generous salary. However, after several years, tensions built up between Bach and the authorities. Bach was discontented with the calibre of the musicians he was collaborating with, and he insulted and was physically attacked by one of his choir students. He also upset his employer with a prolonged absence from Arnstadt, taking four months of leave to take lessons from and listen to the organist and composer Johann Adam Reincken and Dieterich Buxtehude in Lübeck.

Mühlhausen

In 1706, Bach applied for a position as organist at the Blasius Church in Mühlhausen. As part of his application, he had a cantata performed on Easter in 1707, likely an early version of his Christ lag in Todes Banden. His application was accepted, and he took up the post in July. The position came with higher pay, improved conditions, and a better choir. Four months after arriving, Bach married Maria Barbara Bach, his second cousin. He convinced the church and town government to fund an expensive renovation of the organ. In 1708, he wrote Gott ist mein König, a festive cantata for the inauguration of the new council.

Weimar

Bach left Mühlhausen in 1708 and returned to Weimar as an organist. In 1714, he became the Konzertmeister (director of music) at the ducal court, where he worked with a large, well-funded group of professional musicians. That same year, his first child, Catharina Dorothea, was born. Bach's time in Weimar marked the beginning of a sustained period of composing keyboard and orchestral works. He learned to write dramatic openings and employ the dynamic rhythms and harmonic schemes found in the music of Italians such as Vivaldi, Corelli, and Torelli. He also started work on the Little Organ Book, containing traditional Lutheran chorale tunes set in complex textures. In 1717, Bach fell out of favour in Weimar and was jailed for almost a month before being dismissed.

Bach's final years in Leipzig

Johann Sebastian Bach spent the last 27 years of his life in Leipzig, from 1723 until his death in 1750. He was appointed Thomaskantor (cantor at St Thomas's) and director of church music in Leipzig, where he composed music for the principal Lutheran churches of the city and its university's student ensemble Collegium Musicum.

Bach's first cantata cycle ran from the first Sunday after Trinity in 1723 to Trinity Sunday the next year. He presented the first new cantata, 'Die Elenden sollen essen', in the St Nicholas Church on the first Sunday after Trinity. He collected his cantatas in annual cycles, with five mentioned in obituaries and three extant. Of the more than 300 cantatas he composed in Leipzig, over 100 have been lost. Most of these works expound on the Gospel readings prescribed for each Sunday and feast day in the Lutheran year.

Bach started a second annual cycle on the first Sunday after the Trinity of 1724 and composed only chorale cantatas, each based on a single church hymn. These include 'O Ewigkeit, du Donnerwort', 'Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme', 'Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland', and 'Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern'.

Bach broadened his composing and performing beyond the liturgy by taking over the directorship of the Collegium Musicum in 1729. This was a secular performance ensemble founded by Georg Telemann. Every week, the Collegium Musicum gave two-hour performances, in winter at the Café Zimmermann, a coffeehouse off the main market square, and in summer in the proprietor's outdoor coffee garden just outside the town walls.

In 1733, Bach composed a Kyrie-Gloria Mass in B minor that he later incorporated into his Mass in B minor. He presented the manuscript to the Elector in a successful bid to persuade the prince to give him the title of Court Composer. He later extended this work into a full mass by adding a Credo, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei.

In 1735, Bach started preparing his first organ music publication, which was printed as the third Clavier-Übung in 1739. From around that year, he started to compile and compose the set of preludes and fugues for harpsichord that became the second book of The Well-Tempered Clavier. He received the title of "Royal Court Composer" from Augustus III in 1736.

In 1746, Bach was preparing to enter Lorenz Christoph Mizler's Society of Musical Sciences. To be admitted, he had to submit a composition, and he chose his Canonic Variations on 'Vom Himmel hoch da komm' ich her'. In May 1747, Bach visited the court of King Frederick II of Prussia in Potsdam. The king played a theme for Bach and challenged him to improvise a fugue based on it. Bach obliged, playing a three-part fugue on one of Frederick's fortepianos. Upon his return to Leipzig, he composed a set of fugues and canons and a trio sonata based on the Thema Regium ("king's theme"). Within a few weeks, this music was published as The Musical Offering and dedicated to Frederick.

Two large-scale compositions occupied a central place in Bach's last years. Beginning around 1742, he wrote and revised the various canons and fugues of The Art of Fugue, which he continued to prepare for publication until shortly before his death. After extracting a cantata from his 1733 Kyrie-Gloria Mass for the Dresden court in the mid-1740s, Bach expanded that setting into his Mass in B minor in the last years of his life. The complete mass was not performed during his lifetime.

Bach's health was declining in his final years. He underwent eye surgery in March 1750 and again in April by the British eye surgeon John Taylor, a man widely understood today as a charlatan and believed to have blinded hundreds of people. Bach died on 28 July 1750 from complications due to the unsuccessful treatment.

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