Johann Sebastian Bach...in Pictures

1. Johann Ambrosius Bach

1685 - On 21^st 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.