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Home / Musician Guides / 9+ BEST Facts about Johann Sebastian Bach You NEVER Knew

9+ BEST Facts about Johann Sebastian Bach You NEVER Knew

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Legends are said to live on, even after centuries of their death. One of those legends who still lives on is a certain man born in Eisenach in 1685. A man named Johann Sebastian Bach, a master composer.

Not many knew him when he was alive, but his works have outlived him and made him even more popular after his death. A man of interesting history. But before we shed the light on the facts of Johann Sebastian Bach, let's get to have some knowledge of him.

Who was Johann Sebastian Bach?

Who was Johann Sebastian Bach?

Johann Sebastian Bach was a man of prestigious musical lineage who took on various organist positions during the early 18th century. He would go on to create famous compositions like "Toccata and Fugue in D minor." Some of his well-known compositions are the "Mass in B Minor," "Brandenburg Concertos" and "The Well-Tempered Clavier." J. S. Bach died in Leipzig, Germany, on the 28th of July, 1750. Till this very moment, he is considered one of the greatest Western composers of all time.



Johann Sebastian Bach was born in Eisenach, Thuringia, Germany, on the 31st day of March 1685 (N.S.) [March 21, 1685 (O.S.)].He came from a family of musicians, stretching back several generations. Johann Ambrosius, his father, worked as the town musician in Eisenach, and it is believed that it was from him the young Johann learned to play the violin.

At 7 years of age, Bach startedschooling, where he received religious instruction and studied Latin and other subjects. His Lutheran faith influenced his later musical works. Unfortunately, by the time he was 10, Bach became an orphan after the death of both of his parents. He was taken in by his older brother Johann Christoph, a church organist in Ohrdruf. Johann Christoph enrolled his younger brother in a local school and provided some further musical instruction for him. Bach stayed with Christoph's family until he was 15.

Bach's beautiful soprano singing voice, would later help him land a place at a school in Lüneburg. Sometime after his arrival, Bach's voice changed and heswitched to playing the violin and the harpsichord. It was said that Bach was greatly influenced by a local organist known as George Böhm. In 1703, he landed his first job as a musician at the court of Duke Johann Ernst in Weimar, where he was a Jack-of-all-trades. He served as a violinist and, at times, filled in for the official organist.

Early Career

Early Career

In his early days, Bach had the reputation of a great performer. It was this great technical skill that landed him the position of an organist at the New Church in Arnstadt, wherehe was given the responsibility of providing music for religious services and special events, as well as giving music instruction. Bach was an independent and sometimes arrogant young man. He did not get along well with his students and was always scolded by church officials for not rehearsing them frequently enough.

In 1705, Bachofficially received a few weeks' leave from the church and disappeared for several months. He had travelled to Lübeck to hear the famed organist Dietrich Buxtehude and extended his stay without informing anyone back in Arnstadt.

In 1707, Bach gladly left Arnstadt for an organist position at the Church of St. Blaise in Mühlhausen. Unfortunately, this movedid not turn out as well as he had planned and hoped. Bach's musical style always clashed with the church's pastor. He created complex arrangements and had a fondness for weaving together different melodic lines. While his pastor believed that church music ought to be simple. One of Bach's most famous works from this time is the cantata "Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit," also known as "Actus Tragicus."

Personal Life

Personal Life

No much is known about Bach as a person. However, the book of recordssheds some light on his character. Bach was known to be devoted to his family. In 1706, he got married to his cousin Maria Barbara Bach, and they had seven children together, some of whom died as infants. Maria died in the year 1720 while Bach was traveling with Prince Leopold. The following year, Bach remarried. He married a singer named Anna Magdalena Wülcken. They had thirteen children together, more than half of them also died as children.

Bach was known tohave shared his love of music with his children. Two children from his first marriage, Wilhelm Friedemann Bach and Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach were composers and musicians. Also, two sons from his second marriage Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach and Johann Christian Bach enjoyed musical success.

Final Years

By 1740, Bach started struggling with his eyesight. Despite his vision problem, Bach continued to work. He was well enough to travel and perform, visiting Frederick the Great, the king of Prussia in 1747. He played and performed for the king, making up a new composition on the spot. In Leipzig, Bach refined the piece and gave Frederick a set of fugues known as "Musical Offering."

In 1749, Bach began a new composition titled "The Art of Fugue," but, unfortunately, he did not complete it. He made efforts to fix his failing sight by having surgery the following year. Unfortunately.the operation ended up leaving him completely blind. Later that year, he suffered a stroke. He died in Leipzig on July 28, 1750.

In his lifetime, Bach was more known as an organist than a composer. Few of his works even got published during his lifetime. Bach's musical compositions were greatly admired by those who followed in his footsteps, such as Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven. Bach's reputation received a substantial boost in 1829 when German composer Felix Mendelssohn reintroduced Bach's "Passion According to St. Matthew."

Bach's Death

Bach's Death

Everyone knows that Steven Spielberg suffers from blindness, but not many people are aware that Bach struggled terribly with his eyesight. It was a botched surgery on his eyes by the English ocular specialist John Taylor that reportedly led to Bach's death in 1750.

When Bach died on July 28, 1750, at Leipzig. His employers proceeded to appoint a successor; Burgomaster Stieglitz remarked, "The school needs a cantor, not a musical director-though certainly, he ought to understand music."

Anna Magdalena was badly leftoff. For some reason best known to them, her stepsons did nothing to help her. Unfortunately, her sons were too young to do so. She died on the 27th ofFebruary, 1760, and was given a pauper's funeral.

Bach appears to have been a good husband and father. Indeed, he fathered 20 children, out of which only 10 survived to maturity.

What was Bach's reputation?

Unfortunately, Bach's thousand-plus works enjoyed relatively littleappreciation during his lifetime. His music was considered to be a little old-fashioned for its timeand was enjoyed only by connoisseurs. The authorities at Leipzig were reported to have famously complained that they only employed Bach because "the best [Telemann] was not available". His main reputation was as an astoundingly gifted organ player and improviser, and consultant for organ repair, not as a composer.

By the year 1840s he had been largely forgotten except to historians, but Felix Mendelssohn revived Bach's 'St Matthew Passion', and musicians steadily rediscovered his extraordinary body of work.

Interesting Facts about Bach

He Brawled With His Students

One of the first jobs Bach got was as a church organist in Arnstadt. When he signed up for the role, no one told him will also have to teach a student choir and orchestra, a responsibility he hated. Not one to mince his words, Bach one day lost his cool with an error-prone bassoonist, Johann Geyersbach, and called him a zippelfagottist-that is, a "nanny-goat bassoonist." Those were fighting words. A few days later, Bach was attacked with a walking stick by Geyersbach. Bach pulled a dagger and the rumble escalated into a full-blown scrum that required the two be pulled apart by people.

He Spent 30 Days In Jail For Quitting His Job

In 1708, Bach took a job as a chamber musician in the court of the Duke of Saxe-Weimar, and he once again had to assume a slew of responsibilities that he never signed up for. This time, he took it in good faith, with thebelief his hard work would lead to his promotion to kapellmeister (music director). Unfortunately, after five years, the top job was handed to the former Kapellmeister's son. Furious Bach resigned and joined a rival court. As retribution, the Duke jailed him for 4 weeks. Bach spent his time in prison writing preludes for organ

The Brandenburg Concertos Were A Failed Job Application

Sometime in 1721, Bach was the head of court music for Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Köthen. It was reported, that the composer didn't get along with the prince's new wife, and he started looking for a new gig. Bach then polished somemanuscripts that had been sitting around and mailed them to a potential employer, Christian Ludwig, the Margrave of Brandenburg. That package, which includedthe Brandenburg Concertos -now considered some of the most important orchestral compositions of the Baroque era-failed to get Bach the job.

He Wrote An Amazing Coffee Jingle

Bach loved coffee enough to have written a song about it: "Schweigt stille, plaudert nicht" ("Be still, stop chattering"). 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.

If Bach Challenged You To A Keyboard Duel, You Were Guaranteed To Be Embarrassed

In 1717, Louis Marchand, a harpsichordist from France, was invited to play for Augustus, Elector of Saxon. He performed so well that he was offered a playing position for the court. This angered the court's concertmaster, who found Marchand arrogant and insufferable. To scare the French harpsichordist away, the concertmaster hatched a plan with his friend, Bach.A keyboard duel. Bach and Marchand would have to improvise over several different styles, and the winner would take home 500 talers. But when Marchand learned how talented Bach was, he hightailed out of town.

Some Of His Music May Have Been Composed To Help With Insomnia

Apparently, some people are ashamed ofadmitting that classical music, especially the Baroque style, makes them sleepy. Well, be ashamed no more.

According to the earliest biographers, the Goldberg Variations were composed to help Count Hermann Karl von Keyserling overcome insomnia(This story is disputed though). Whatever the truth may be, it hasn't stopped the Andersson Dance troupe from presenting a fantastic Goldberg-based tour of performances called "Ternary Patterns for Insomnia." Interestingly, sleep researchers have also suggested studying the tunes' effects on sleeplessness.

A Botched Eye Surgery Blinded Him

When Bach was 65, he hadeye surgery. The "couching" procedure, which was performed by a traveling surgeon named John Taylor, involved shoving the cataract deep into the eye with a blunt instrument. After the surgery, the surgeon gave Bach eye drops that contained pigeon blood, mercury, and pulverized sugar. It failed to work. Bach went blind and died shortly after that. Meanwhile, Taylor moved on to botch more musical surgeries. He performed the same procedure on the composer George Frideric Handel, who also went blind.

Nobody Is 100 Percent Confident That Bach Is Buried In His Grave

In 1894, the pastor of St. John's Church in Leipzig thought to move the composer's body out of the church's graveyard to a more dignified setting. A small problem arose: Bach had been buried in an unmarked grave, as was common for regular folks at the time.

According to craniologist Wilhelm His, a dig crew tried its best to find Bach's remains but instead found "heaps of bones, some in many layers lying on top of each other, some were mixed with the remains of coffins, others already smashed by the hacking of the diggers."Although, the team later claimed to find Bach's box, there's doubt they found the right (de)composer. Today, Bach is supposedly residing in Leipzig's St. Thomas Church.

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