Johann Sebastian Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach, 1685-1750. The greatest composer of the Baroque era, and one of the greatest of all time. His music is intricate and ingenious without being cold or sterile. A favorite of many mathematicians, scientists, and software developers (attested to by DouglasHofstadter's GoedelEscherBach).

Interestingly, during his lifetime, he was considered by many to be old-fashioned and overly intellectual in his composition, usually coming in second place to the more popular Georg Philipp Telemann. It wasn't until 100 years after Bach's death and the genius of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy that Bach was put back in his proper place (to my mind the greatest composer ever).

The cutting edge philosophy of the time (with which Bach was familiar and which I've forgotten the name of) was obsessed with the logical completion of ideas. Bach's music (being primarily fugal - think 'Row Row Row the Boat' with more freedom than simple repetition but with a view to discovering all valid combinations of theme (subject) with delayed/transposed/inverted/etc versions of itself) is very consistent with that philosophy. Since he seems to have completely subsumed the intellectual aspects of composition and his goal was artistic rather than intellectual, his music (to me) represents the supreme combination of emotion and intellect.

Despite all this (plus showing considerable political savvy) he remained humble throughout his life. All in all, damn fine music composed by a righteous dude.

-- LanceWalton

And, he and his two wives had a quite astonishing number of children. Twenty, to be exact.

Yes. He was prolific in every sense. It should be pointed out that although Bach's interest in the fugue implies an intense interest in concurrent activity, his two wives were quite well temporally separated.

Q. Why did J.S. Bach have so many children?

A. His organ had no stops.

Johann Sebastian Bach was born on March 21st l685 and lived to the age of 65. His father was court trumpeter to the Duke of Eisenach. Bach is well known for his excellence as a musician, particularly for his work with the Pipe Organ. His most famous piece is probably the Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV565, although it's been quite plausibly argued that the toccata as originally written was not a toccata, not in D minor, not for the organ, and not written by Bach! See http://www.bachfaq.org/bwv565b.html for more.

In his lifetime Bach was famous mostly as a virtuoso organist, and the quality of his composition was widely appreciated only in later years.

Bach left many children behind him, a large number of whom were also musicians, as were his parents and siblings. Therefore it is common to find musical pieces by Bach that have little to do with JS Bach. Among the more well-known of J.S. Bach's children are Carl Philip Emanuel (C.P.E. Bach), one of the pioneers of the Classical style, Wilhelm Friedemann (W.F. Bach), and Johann Christian (J.C. Bach).

An excellent biography can be found at http://odur.let.rug.nl/Linguistics/diversen/bach/map.html.

See BavarianIlluminati, PdqBach.

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