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| 1. Johann Ambrosius Bach |
1685 - On 21st March 1685, Johann Sebastian Bach
was born in Eisenach, Saxe-Eisensach to Johann Ambrosius Bach and Maria
Elisabeth Lämmerhirt.
He was orphaned by the age of 10 and went to live with his eldest brother,
Johann Christoph Bach.
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| 2. Church of St. Boniface, Arnstadt |
1703 - Bach graduated from the prestigious St. Michael’s
School in Lüneburg
and completed a short stint as a court musician in the chapel of Duke Johan
Ernst in Weimar, from where he was appointed the organist at St. Boniface’s
Church in Arnstadt.
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| 3. Wilhelm Friedemann Bach |
1706 – Bach was offered the post of organist at St. Blasius’s
in Mühlhausen,
which he took up in 1707. It was in here that he would meet and marry his first
wife Maria Barbara Bach, with whom he had seven children, including Wilhelm
Friedemann Bach (1710-1784) and Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (1714-1788) who would both become composers.
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| 4. Title page -Das Wohltemperierte Clavier |
In 1708 Bach left Mühlhausen
and returned to Weimar as organist and concertmaster at the ducal court. This would
be a key period in Bach’s composition of keyboard and orchestral works and also
when he would begin writing what was later assembled into his monumental work Das Wohltemperierte Clavier (‘The
Well-Tempered Clavier’). Bach eventually fell out of favour in Weimar and, according
to a translation of the court secretary’s report, was jailed for almost month
before he was unfavourably dismissed.
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| 5. Leopold, Prince of Anhalt-Köthen (1694-1728 |
1717 – Leopold, Prince of Anhalt-Köthen (1694-1728) hired Bach to serve as his Kapellmeister (Director of Music).
The prince was a Calvinist, so much of Bach’s work during this period was secular,
and includes his Orchestral Suites,
the Six Suites for Unaccompanied Cello,
his Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin
and the Brandenburg Concertos.
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| 6. J S Bach with his wife Anna Magdalena? |
1720 – While abroad with Prince Leopold, Bach’s first wife
suddenly died. The following year he met and married a highly gifted soprano 17
years his junior, Anna Magdalena Wilcke, with whom he would have a further 13
children.
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| 7. Georg Philipp Telemann (1681-1967) |
1723 – Bach was appointed Cantor of the Thomasschule at
Thomaskirche in Lepizig, and Director of Music of the principal churches in the
town – a position he held for 27 years until his death. He would broaden his
composition and performance during this time through his directorship of
the Collegium Musicum (a secular performance ensemble begun by Georg Philipp
Telemann) and indeed many of Bach’s works during the 1730s and 40s were written
for and performed by the Collegium Musicum.
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| 8. Augustus III, King of Poland |
1733 – Bach composed the Kyrie and Gloria of the B Minor Mass and presented the
manuscript to the King of Poland, Grand Duke of Lithuania and Elector of
Saxony, Frederick Augustus III (1696-1763) in a successful bid to be appointed as Royal
Court Composer. He would later extend this work into a full Mass.
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| 9. Dr John Taylor |
1750 – Bach’s eyes were operated on by British doctor John
Taylor (1703-1772), in an attempt to prevent further blindness in the composer. The surgery
on both eyes went badly wrong leaving Bach completely blind. Later that year
Bach died, with one contemporary newspaper citing ‘the very unsuccessful eye
operation’ as the cause of death. Modern historians, however, have suggested
that the cause was instead a stroke complicated by pneumonia.
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| 10. Thomaskirche, Leipzig. |
Bach was originally buried in an unmarked grave at Old St.
John’s Cemetery in Leipzig, where he would remain for nearly 150 years. In 1894
his coffin was found and moved to a vault in St. John’s Church. However, the
church was destroyed by Allied bombs in December 1943, and Bach subsequently
found his final
resting place in the Thomaskirche (Church of St. Thomas) in
Leipzig.
Southern Sinfonia performs Bach's B Minor Mass with The Bach Choir on 6th
July at Winchester Cathedral to open the Winchester Festival, for more
information please see our website.
