A Few Things You Never Knew About JS Bach...

JS Bach (1685-1750)

• 'Bach’ translated into English is ‘stream’ or ‘brook’. Beethoven said of this ‘not ‘Bach’ (stream/brook), but ‘Sea’ should be his name’.

• Although Bach travelled frequently, he never ventured beyond what we now understand as modern Germany; only travelling as far as Lübeck and Hamburg in the north and Carlsbad in the south.

• In his early twenties, Bach is recorded as having had an altercation with a bassoonist called Geyersbach, who had been casting aspersions on his musical abilities. Bach is supposed to have called him a ‘nanny-goat bassoonist’, to which Geyersbach replied Bach was a ‘dirty dog’. Bach then pulled out his sword ready for a duel, but Geyersbach jumped on him and they brawled on the ground until they could be pulled apart.

• In 1705, as a man of 20, Bach was given leave to study with Dietrich Buxtehude (1637-1707), the great German-Danish organist and composer. Legend claims that he walked over 200 miles to Lübeck for these studies.

• Bach’s first wife, Maria Barbara Bach, was his second cousin and daughter of Johann Michael Bach.

• In German, Bach’s name spells out four musical notes B- B flat, A- A natural, C – C natural, H – B natural

• On Bach’s death in 1750 the bulk of his manuscripts were divided between his two eldest sons; Carl Phillip Emmanuel and Wilhelm Friedemann. Emmanuel looked after his, but Friedemann carelessly gave away and sold many of his. By 1774, destitution as a result of his party-boy lifestyle caused him to auction off a large number of his father’s autographs

• After the division of Bach’s estate between Anna Magdalena and his nine surviving children, on top of payment of outstanding debts and expenses, Anna’s share was valued at less than half her husband’s annual earnings. Neither Emmanuel nor Friedemann appear to have felt any obligation to help their stepmother after the death of their father. So Anna remained in Leipzig with her daughters and stepdaughter, existing mainly on charity, until her death as an impoverished almswoman in 1760.

 

Southern Sinfonia opens the Winchester Festival on 6 July 2012 with JS Bach's B Minor Mass with The Bach Choir at Winchester Cathedral. They also perform JS Bach's Nun danket alle Gott BWV 192 with Somerset Chamber Choir on 28 July at Wells Cathedral. For more information please see our website www.southernsinfonia.co.uk.

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.