Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today we are strapping
in to take on a giant of Western culture, a composer
whose name is synonymous with, well, with structural
perfection, with profound expression, and this
incredible musical architecture, Johann Sebastian
Bach. Born March 31st, 1685. He composed a body
of work. I mean, the Brandenburg concertos, the
Mass in B minor, the Goldberg variations, that
now sits at the absolute foundation of classical
music. It really does. Yet here's the paradox
we have to start with. The icon we celebrate
today was, for the vast majority of his professional
life, known primarily as a stunningly brilliant
organist and teacher. Right, not a composer whose
works were everywhere. Not at all. His music
had what's been called an extremely narrow circulation.
Exactly. If you were a music fan in Leipzig in,
say, 1740, You might know Bach as the excellent,
if maybe a little demanding, choir director at
St. Thomas. For sure. You would probably consider
Telemann or Handel the great contemporary composers
of the day. Bach's music, by comparison, it was
just seen as dense, challenging, and, well, frankly,
a little old -fashioned by the time he died.
He was a working professional. He was navigating
the tough landscape of late Baroque Germany,
constantly vying for better pay, for autonomy,
for security, for his massive family. I mean,
he was the progenitor of harmony who kept getting
into fights with the city council. That's the
part that's so fascinating. So our mission today
is to explore that journey. We want to understand
how this intensely structured, highly ambitious
local Thuringian musician transformed into a
global, timeless giant. We're going deep into
the personal, the professional, and the intellectual
tenacity that defined his career. And how his
unwavering focus on structure really codified
the future of Western music itself. Before we
jump in, you mentioned a note about the dates,
which I think is a great place to start. Yes,
just a quick but crucial contextual note. Bach
was born on March 21st, 1685, according to the
Julian calendar, the old style, which was still
in use in parts of Protestant Germany. But when
those regions finally adopted the Gregorian calendar
or the new style, his birthday translated to
March 31st, 1685. It's a minor complexity, but
it immediately grounds us in this. this historical
reality that Bach lived right on the edge of
major temporal and cultural transitions. OK,
let's unpack this. We have to start with the
concept of the Bach family. I mean, it's less
a family and more a self -perpetuating musical
guild. That's the perfect way to put it. All
concentrated in this very specific culturally
insular region of Thuringia in central Germany.
That's it. The Bach lineage is traditionally
traced back to a baker named Wittes Weitbach,
who died in 1619. But... The family produced
this remarkable string of professional musicians
for three, maybe four generations. Wow. They
were organists, court chamber musicians, town
musicians. This wasn't a hobby for them. This
was the family business deeply ingrained in the
regional administrative and religious structures.
And his father, Johann Ambrosius Bach, he was
the director of the town musicians in Eisenach.
So Sebastian grew up in an environment where
music wasn't just, you know, available. No, it
was the air he breathed. It was the language
he was expected to master from birth. Exactly.
And this creates a fascinating context for his
early life. He wasn't trained in a major cultural
center like Berlin or Vienna. He was trained
within this very insular yet musically rigorous
family system. But that foundational security
was completely shattered when he was orphaned
at age 10. A devastating blow. His mother died
in 1694, and then his father followed just eight
months later in February 1695. That must have
been a pivotal moment. Absolutely. The young
Sebastian moves in with his elder brother, Johann
Christoph, who was the organist at St. Michael's
Church in Ordruf. Johann Christoph essentially
becomes his guardian and his first serious music
teacher. He's giving him lessons on the clavichord,
exposing him to this broader European repertoire
of the time. And this guardianship. This is where
we get to that legendary anecdote, the forbidden
study. Which tells us so much about Bach's intrinsic
intellectual drive, even as a kid. The determination
is the key word. Scores in the late 17th century
were not easily mass produced. They were valuable,
often unique manuscripts, and ledger paper itself
was expensive. You couldn't just print it out.
Not at all. The story, which was passed down
through the family, is that Johann Christoph
had this cabinet containing scores by some of
the greatest composers. You know, German masters
like Carell, Pachelbel, Buxtehude. And Rankin.
And Rankin, yes. As well as foreign influences
like the Frenchman Lillian Marchand and the Italian
Frescobaldi. And his brother forbids him from
accessing them. He did, most likely because of
their value and the proprietary nature of the
music. But Sebastian, just compelled by his own
curiosity, would sneak the manuscripts out, copy
them by moonlight, literally straining his eyesight,
which may have contributed to his future problems.
And then he'd carefully return them. The self
-directed copying was foundational for him. It
wasn't just transcription. It was immersion.
He was building his library and his mental database
of compositional techniques, brick by brick,
against his brother's wishes. And that same tenacity,
it just carries right into his early professional
life. After a short stint in Weimar, he lands
his first significant organist post in Arnstadt
in 1703. Right. And then, at just 20 years old,
he undertakes what sounds like an impossible
professional sabbatical, the Walk to Lübeck.
This truly sets the tone for his scholarly rigor.
In 1705, Bach requested four months leave from
his job in Arnstadt. His destination was Lubeck
on the northern coast, 450 kilometers away. That's
about 280 miles each way. Each way. And he reportedly
made this journey on foot. Twice. So that's nearly
600 miles roundtrip in the middle of winter.
This isn't a casual trip. This is a focused pilgrimage.
What was the driving force? He was driven by
an absolute need to learn from the undisputed
masters of the North German organ tradition,
Diederik Buxtehude and Johan Rankin. Bach was
seeking not just to hear them perform, but a
direct tutelage. He wanted to watch them improvise,
learn their registration techniques, and just
soak up the traditions that had developed in
the North outside his native Thuringia. And that
dedication clearly paid off. I mean, culminating
in that reported compliment from Rankin years
later. Oh, yes. Fifteen years later, in 1720,
Bach demonstrated his improvisatory brilliance
for Rankin in Hamburg, and the aging master recordedly
remarked, I thought that this art was dead, but
I see that it lives in you. That's the ultimate
validation for that grueling journey. The masters
recognize the successor. He is. But this incredible
ambition and scholarly focus also brought him
into conflict with his employers almost immediately.
Even in Arnstadt, he was accused of adding strange
terms to his playing, confusing the singers.
Was this just youthful arrogance, or was it the
sound of a genius pushing the envelope? It was
absolutely the sound of a genius grappling with
a new harmonic reality. This conflict in Arnstadt,
it signals that Bach was already pushing harmonic
boundaries. He was experimenting with bolder
modulations and more dissonant chords than conventional
church music allowed. And the choir just couldn't
keep up. The congregation and, more importantly,
the singers, who were less accomplished, literally
couldn't follow where his music was going. He
was composing for a future system of harmony
that his contemporaries hadn't yet embraced.
That's a perfect foreshadowing of his later work.
Now, before he moved into the high state's world
of court composition, we have to acknowledge
the sheer human logistics of his life, specifically
his family. He had 20 children across two marriages.
The family element is so critical, and it's often
overlooked in favor of the sheet music. In 1707,
while he was in Mühlhausen, he married his second
cousin, Maria Barbara Bach. They had seven children,
including two of his most important future composer
sons, Wilhelm Friedman and Carl Philip Emanuel.
And then tragedy struck. A devastating blow.
In 1720, while Bach was away in Carlsbad with
Prince Leopold, Maria Barbara died suddenly.
He returned to find her already buried. The emotional
and logistical strain of losing his partner and
being left with several young children, you just
can't overstate it. Which explains why he remarried
relatively quickly in 1721 to Anna Magdalena
Wilke. I mean, in that era... Managing a household
of children while holding a demanding job was
nearly impossible without a partner. Absolutely.
And Anna Magdaleno was a gifted soprano, 16 years
his junior. He met her while she was performing
at the Kothan Court. They went on to have 13
children together. She was more than a wife.
She was a partner, a collaborator. She copied
manuscripts for him, didn't she? She did. She
copied manuscripts, helped run the enormous household,
and was instrumental in the musical life of the
family. The sheer scale of that domestic operation.
is just vital context for understanding the structural
discipline he applied to his music. Moving into
part two, we're tracking the professional workhorse.
This is where Bach's tenacity truly shines, often
involving political maneuvering, leveraging jobs,
and most surprisingly, a stint in jail. Let's
start with his return to Weimar in 1708. This
second nine -year period in Weimar, from 1708
to 1717, was really an incubator for his instrumental
genius. He started as the court organist, a prestigious
position. But by 1714, he was promoted to concertmeister,
the director of music. And that job came with
new duties. It did. It required him to compose
a new church cantata every single month for the
castle church. This was the true start of his
monumental sacred output. And this is the moment
when he fully absorbed and synthesized the Italian
style. Precisely. This was a key time for instrumental
music across Europe. Italy, particularly through
the work of Antonio Vivaldi, had perfected the
concerto. You know, the fast, slow, fast structure,
the propulsive rhythmic energy. That driving
beat. Yes, and the idea of dramatic alternation
between solo instruments and the full orchestra,
the tutti. Bach didn't just listen to this music,
he systematically dismantled it. How did he do
that, practically? He spent countless hours transcribing
Vivaldi's, Corelli's, and Torelli's string concertos
for solo harpsichord and organ. By reducing a
complex orchestral work to a single keyboard
instrument, he had to internalize every structural
detail. The counter melodies, the harmonic changes,
the rhythmic motor. He wasn't just copying. He
was reverse engineering the Italian concerto
form. Which fundamentally transformed his own
style. It did. It's where he gets that rhythmic
drive we hear in pieces like the Brandenburg
concertos. Now, let's get to the true standout
anecdote of his professional life. The imprisonment
in 1717. the great composer in a jail cell. What
on earth was he doing that was so egregious?
He was trying to quit his job for a better one,
and his employer wouldn't let him go. As simple
as that. Pretty much. Bach had accepted a much
better paying, more prestigious position as Kapellmeister
for Prince Leopold and Cothen, but he hadn't
received an honorable discharge from the Duke
of Weimar. And the Duke retaliated by locking
him up. Exactly. The court secretary's report
notes that Bach was held for almost a month.
from November 6th to December 2nd for too stubbornly
forcing the issue of his dismissal. This wasn't
a crime of passion. It was a pure professional
dispute. He was fighting for his autonomy and
his career advancement. He got an unfavorable
discharge, but he got the job. He got the job.
This incident showcases the intense tenacity
and, frankly, the business savvy required for
a working artist in the Baroque era. He used
jail time as a bargaining chip. The move to Cothen
from 1717 to 1723 was a major shift. Since Prince
Leopold was a Calvinist, he didn't require the
elaborate sacred music that the Lutherans did.
And this was a secular interlude that proved
incredibly fertile for his instrumental music.
Relieved of the weekly cantata pressure, Bach
focused on composing secular chamber and orchestral
works. Like what? What came out of this period?
This is where we get the orchestral suites, the
six cello suites, the sonatas and partitas for
solo violin, and crucially, the Brandenburg concertos.
He was given the time and the resources to codify
these instrumental forms. And this is where we
have to mention the great near miss of musical
history. His failure to meet his contemporary.
George Frederick Handel. Oh, it's a tantalizing
historical what if. Born the same year, lived
so close by. They were only about 130 kilometers
apart. Bach tried to meet Handel twice. In 1719,
he traveled 35 kilometers from Kothen to Halle,
but Handel had already departed. Just missed
him. Just missed him. And then a decade later,
in 1730, Bach sent his son. Wilhelm Friedman
to Halle to extend a personal invitation to Handel
to visit him in Leipzig. But Handel declined.
They never crossed paths. It just underscores
the regional rather than global focus of their
careers until much later. The Cuthin period ended
abruptly in 1723 when Bach applied for the ultimate
sacred music post, Thomas Cantor in Leipzig.
And this is a humbling moment. He was not their
first choice. Not even close. He was the third
choice for what was arguably the leading cantorate
in Protestant Germany. The Leipzig Council first
offered the job to George Philip Telemann. Who
was a huge star at the time. A huge star. And
Telemann used the offer to negotiate a massive
pay raise in Hamburg and then declined. Then
they offered it to Christoph Graupner, who also
used it as leverage and declined. So Bach was
the backup to the backup. The council settled
on Bach, noting somewhat dismissively that if
they couldn't get the best, they'd have to settle
for a competent option. Bach took the job that
others considered a fallback, and it became the
setting for the final 27 years of his life and
the production of his greatest vocal masterpieces.
What exactly were the duties of this new, massive
administrative role? The responsibilities were
immense. He was the director of the St. Thomas
School, responsible for the education and housing
of the boy choristers. He had to provide music
for four main churches, St. Thomas, St. Nicholas,
the new church, and St. Peter's, and instruct
the students in singing. and the latin curriculum
it was a 247 administrative and artistic burden
the required output alone is staggering he had
to produce a new major church cantata for every
sunday and every feast day just think about the
logistics of that a new complex work requiring
singers and an orchestra often running 20 to
30 minutes Every single week, year after year.
He had to compose it, copy out the parts. Rehearse
the students and conduct the performance. He
began office in May 1723 and started his first
annual cantata cycle immediately. And he went
on to compile five full cycles, composing over
300 cantatas, though sadly over 100 of those
are now lost. The physical and mental strain
of maintaining that quality and speed must have
been extraordinary. It speaks to his almost superhuman
capacity for organization. The second cycle he
composed, starting in 1724, focused exclusively
on chorale cantatas, with each one based on a
single Lutheran hymn. So he's essentially offering
a complex theological and musical meditation
on that specific hymn's themes. Like, watch it
off. Exactly, like, watch it off. This level
of systematic encyclopedic creation is just unmatched.
And all the while, his frustration with the penny
-pinching Leipzig City Council, who constantly
disputed his budget, salary, and resources, it
never ceased. The bureaucracy was relentless.
And to give himself a creative and financial
hedge against the church, in 1729, he took on
an external, secular gig, directing the Collegium
Musicum. Which was a student ensemble, right?
Originally founded by Telemann. That's the one.
And this group allowed him to maintain his instrumental
chops outside the strict religious calendar.
They held weekly two -hour free concerts at the
famous Café Zimmermann in the winter and in the
outdoor garden in the summer. A crucial venue.
It was. It was where he could stage his secular
works like the Coffee Cantata, a piece of operatic
comedy about coffee addiction, and perform older
orchestral pieces, including the Brandenburg
Concert Shows. It was a way for Bach to consolidate
his power over the city's secular and sacred
music life. Now let's talk strategy. To gain
leverage against the city council, Bach executed
a brilliant political maneuver by turning his
compositional skills toward the Catholic court
in Dresden. This was pure professional chess.
In 1733, Bach composed the Kyrie Gloria Mass
in B minor and presented the manuscript directly
to Augustus III of Poland, who was the Catholic
elector of Saxony, requesting a court title.
He was using his music as political capital.
He was, and it worked. In 1736, he successfully
gained the prestigious, non -paying, but crucially
influential title of royal court composer. which
gave him leverage. It gave him official standing
with a higher authority than the Leipzig City
Council, providing him the professional leverage
and diplomatic immunity he needed to fight for
better working conditions. He later expanded
this Kyrie Gloria mass into the complete monumental
mass in B minor. As he moved into his final years,
from 1740 to 1750, his style shifted again, showing
his ongoing dedication to scholarly pursuits.
He was looking backward and forward simultaneously,
his late style consciously incorporated the older
polyphonic style Antico, the intricate, seamless
textures of Renaissance masters like Palestrina
and Caldara, into his thoroughly modern harmonic
language. He was actively synthesizing musical
history. The Goldberg variations are a perfect
example. Absolutely. Published in 1741, the collection
contains nine complex canons, all based on that
one single bass line. His fame was now reaching
the highest intellectual and royal circles, culminating
in his famous 1747 visit to Frederick II of Prussia.
That meeting cemented his reputation as the greatest
musical intellectual of his time. Frederick II,
who was a serious flute player and patron of
the arts, challenged Bach to improvise a fugue
on a theme the king provided. the thema regium.
And Bach's response was immediate and brilliant.
It was. He improvised on the king's theme, even
playing on one of the early fortepianos the king
owned. But his response didn't end there. No,
he took it home with him. He did. Once back in
Leipzig, he used that theme as the foundation
for an entire cycle of fugues, canons, and a
trio sonata, titling the collection The Musical
Offering and dedicating it to Frederick. This
was more than just a musical gift. It was a demonstration
of intellectual dominance. He took a simple theme
and showed the monarch every possible way it
could be manipulated and elevated through counterpoint.
It's truly tragic, then, that this life dedicated
to such clear sight to architectural perfection
was cut short by blindness and medical malpractice.
It is heartbreaking. Bach's eyesight failed significantly
in his final years. In 1750, he underwent two
separate eye surgeries performed by the itinerant
British eye surgeon John Taylor. And Taylor was
a charlatan. An absolute charlatan. He traveled
Europe promising cures but left hundreds, if
not thousands, blinded, including, tragically,
George Friedrich Handel. Bach's death on July
28, 1750, was a result of complications, including
a stroke, following these disastrous surgeries.
In the inventory of his estate, it reveals the
two dominant forces in his life. Music and faith.
Absolutely. The inventory listed significant
musical assets. Five harpsichords, three violins,
two lutharchsichords. But equally telling was
the listing of 52 sacred books, including one
Williams by Martin Luther and Josephus. It just
confirms that the rigorous structured approach
he applied to counterpoint was fundamentally
linked to his deep commitment to Lutheran theology
and scholarly learning. We've established box
drives, but now we need to dedicate serious time
to the technical core of his genius. Part three
is the deep dive into Bach's blueprint, how his
compositional style fundamentally changed Western
music, cementing his status as the progenitor
of harmony. And the key concept here seems to
be synthesis. Bach was the ultimate cultural
sponge. He didn't invent most of the forms he
used, but he enriched established German styles
by adapting, integrating, and perfecting foreign
influences with unmatched rigor. Specifically,
he was indebted to Italy and France. Okay, so
what exactly did he pull from Italy? From Vivaldi
and the Italians, he adopted the propulsive,
motoric, rhythmic patterns, the clear structure
of the concerto, and a more defined sense of
thematic repetition and contrast. This gave his
instrumental music a forward momentum that earlier
German styles often lacked. It provided the dynamic
energy. And the French contribution. The French
influence provided elegance and structure. He
took forms like the French Overture, with its
slow, majestic opening, followed by a fast, imitative
section, and integrated specific dance forms
like gevalts, sarabandes, and manuettes, which
you see constantly in his suites. So he's taking
the dynamic energy of Italy and filtering it
through the refined, organizational structures
of France. And creating something uniquely German
in its dense perfection. Yeah, but the truly
revolutionary element was his approach to harmony.
Those strange tones back in Arnstadt weren't
just random. They were him grappling with the
transition from the old modal church music to
the modern tonal system. And that transition
is the greatest shift in music history. Bach
mastered a new system of tuning the temperament
that allowed all 24 keys to be used equally.
Before this, keyboard instruments were tuned
based on the older mean tone system, which made
certain common keys, like C major, sound pure.
But other keys sounded terrible. Exactly. Distant
keys, like F sharp minor, would sound wildly
dissonant or out of tune. This meant if a composer
wanted to modulate, to move from one key to another,
they were severely restricted. So Bach mastered
this new system of well temperament. How did
that work? Well, it essentially distributes the
small imperfections in tuning equally across
all 12 tones of the octave. So no single key
is perfectly pure, but every key is acceptable.
It's a compromise. That. is the crucial insight.
He sacrificed perfect purity in a few keys for
absolute freedom across all 24, and he demonstrated
this freedom definitively in the well -tempered
clavier. Yes. The two volumes of the well -tempered
clavier contain a prelude and a fugue in every
single major and minor key. It was a compositional
instruction manual proving that, thanks to this
new temperament, you could compose beautifully
in F -sharp minor just as easily as C major.
It was Bach who codified the future of Western
music by demonstrating that the modern tonal
system was viable and inexhaustible. His other
foundational structural concept was the centrality
of four -part harmony. We see this everywhere,
from his chorales to his arrangements. His harmonic
architecture was built around four voices, soprano,
alto, tenor, and bass, or SATB progressing chord
to chord according to strict logical rules. This
system didn't just support the melody, it created
a self -contained, complete musical structure.
And the adaptation of Pergolesi's Stepat Mater
is the perfect... illustration of this architectural
necessity. It really is. In the 1740s, Bach transcribed
Pergolesi's famous work. Pergolesi had used a
relatively light three -part texture, two high
strings, and a bass line. For Bach, this was
incomplete. It left the harmony structurally
hollow. He felt something was missing. He did.
Bach viewed a complete chord as needing all four
voices to feel fully grounded and balanced, so
he added a dedicated independent viola part to
fill in that middle harmonic space, adapting...
work to his four -part standard. He felt the
need to make the work structurally sound according
to his own more robust tonal ideals. That choice
highlights that Bach wasn't just performing music,
he was engineering it. He had this deep intellectual
obsession with filling every structural space.
And that obsession extended to elevating instruments
traditionally confined to the background, particularly
the basso continuo. For listeners who may not
be deeply familiar, the basso continuo was the
rhythmic and harmonic foundation of Baroque music,
usually a cello and a keyboard providing accompaniment.
Precisely. But Bach refused to let those instruments
stay in the background. This is where the term
consultante comes in. It means playing as a soloist.
or in dialogue with the orchestra, not just providing
harmonic filler. So he brings them to the front.
He does. Starting in the 1720s, Bach had the
organ play concertante in cantata movements,
treating it as an equal featured voice. He effectively
invented the organ concerto, predating Handel's
work in the genre by a decade. He was a key figure
in liberating the keyboard. He was. When he wrote
his harpsichord concertos in the 1730s, the harpsichord
was no longer just the continuo, it was the star.
Furthermore, in his chamber music, like the sonatas
for viola da gamba and harpsichord, neither instrument
plays a mere continual part. They are treated
as fully independent, equal soloists. This forward
thinking and quality between parts is central
to understanding his next great contribution.
Counterpoint. Counterpoint and the fugue. This
is the intellectual pinnacle of Bach's style.
For many listeners, these words mean complexity
and density. But Bach somehow manages to make
it sound effortless. While counterpoint is defined
by distinct, independent melodic lines for each
voice or instrument that weave together to form
a rich harmonic whole. A fugue is the contrapuntal,
compositional technique built around a primary
musical idea, the subject, which is introduced
successively and imitated by all the other voices.
The complexity seems to defy the possibility
of maintaining a beautiful melodic line in every
part. That's the magic. His first biographer,
Forkel, observed this structural perfection,
stating that in Bach's writing, resulting from
this melodic interweaving, each part seems to
constitute the true melody. What does that mean
exactly? It means if you take a Bach four -part
fugue and you remove the main melody and the
bass line, the inner parts, the alto and tenor,
still form a compelling, independent, and harmonious
melody. It's complete musical engineering where
nothing is wasted or relegated to simple filler.
And he often composed music that didn't specify
instrumentation, like the Art of Fugue. That
seems counterintuitive for a composer who is
such a master of specific instruments. This instrumentation
independence in his later monumental works is
highly significant. By leaving the instrumentation
ambiguous, especially in The Art of Fugue, he
stripped the music down to its absolute abstract
structural essence, the pure relationship between
the melodic lines. This versatility was crucial
for his later popularity, making his work easily
adapted across centuries, from a full orchestra
to a jazz quartet. Finally, we have to tie this
structural perfection back to his faith. His
complex architecture It wasn't just an intellectual
exercise. It was religious expression. His dedication
to the Lutheran faith was his underlying motor.
The Lutheran chorale was the DNA of his sacred
music. His large -scale structures, like the
St. Matthew Passion, are not simply sequences
of musical numbers. They are subtle, elaborately
planned, architectural expressions of deep theological
truths. Even when he was adapting the work of
others, his adjustments focused on structure,
making minor changes to enhance scene transition.
always prioritizing the overall narrative and
architectural perfection. So we arrived at the
great irony of Bach's life. The man who codified
the future of Western music saw his own reputation
collapse immediately after his death. Let's talk
about the 18th century slump. The slump was swift
and serious. When Bach died in 1750, musical
tastes were rapidly shifting across Europe. His
dense, complex, polyphonic style where multiple
melodies interwove was deemed old -fashioned,
passé. The new trend was the gallant style. What
exactly was the gallant style and why was it
so antithetical to Bach? The gallant style prioritized
simplicity, clarity, and ease of listening. It
focused on singable melodies supported by simple,
clear homophonic harmony, one main melody line
supported by chords. The public and critics found
Bach's intricate counterpoint and intellectual
density too heavy, too much work. So he was remembered
as a technician, not an artist. If at all, yes.
Primarily as a technical expert and organ virtuoso,
not a great composer. It was a very real possibility
that much of his legacy would simply disappear.
How was it saved? Well, his surviving family
members inherited the manuscripts, but not all
were dedicated to preservation, which led to
significant losses. We owe an immense debt to
his second eldest son, Carl Philip Emanuel Bach.
C .P .E. Bach. Yes. C .P .E. was the most active
keeper of the flame. He co -authored his father's
obituary, and crucially, he safeguarded the bulk
of the unpublished works, preventing them from
being sold off as scraps. And so the appreciation
began to be passed down through these determined
connoisseurs and collectors. This preservation
work happened in quiet reverence. The key figure
in transmitting this legacy beyond the family
was the diplomat and musical enthusiast Gottfried
van Zwieten. Van Zwieten brought back to the
attention of the Viennese school the bedrock
of classical music, Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven.
Van Zwieten was instrumental. He hosted weekly
musical soirees in Vienna, where he would often
feature the old masters, including Bach and Handel.
Haydn owned manuscript copies of the well -tempered
Clavier. Mozart, after hearing Bach's music performed,
immediately started incorporating denser contrapuntal
techniques into his own late works. But Beethoven's
connection seems different. absolute devotion.
It was a cornerstone of his education. Ludwig
von Beethoven learned the well -tempered clavier
in its entirety by the age of 11. He famously
revered Bach, calling him the Erwarteter Harmony,
the progenitor of harmony. This profound respect
from the towering figures of the classical era
provided the bridge that finally led to the public
revival. The 19th century marks the official
start of the Bach revival, bringing his work
out of the connoisseur's living rooms and back
onto the stage. What was the absolute catalyst?
There were three key moments. First, the intellectual
foundation was laid by Johann Nicholas Forkel's
1802 biography. Second, and the real public -facing
catalyst, was Felix Mendelssohn. And his 1829
performance of the St. Matthew Passion. A seismic
cultural event. The St. Matthew Passion had not
been publicly heard for 100 years. Mendelssohn,
at only 20 years old, organized and conducted
a massively dramatic performance. It was a revelation
to the public and precipitated the widespread
Bach revival. And the third major development
was institutionalizing his legacy. Yes. In 1850,
a century after his death, the Bach Gesellschaft,
the Bach Society, was founded with the mission
to promote his music and, most importantly, publish
every known work. By the end of the 19th century,
the task was complete and Bach was firmly established
as one of the three Bs, alongside Beethoven and
Brahms. The 20th and 21st centuries saw Bach's
music transcend classical boundaries entirely,
becoming truly universal. This is the renaissance
of performance. Think of cellist Pablo Casals,
whose recordings in the 1930s popularized the
solo cello suites, transforming them from technical
studies into masterpieces of expressive depth.
And then Glenn Gould. Then, in the 1950s, Glenn
Gould recorded the Goldberg Variations, transforming
that incredibly long, intricate, and previously
obscure work into standard piano repertoire.
His debut recording sold over 100 ,000 copies
by 1982, astonishing numbers for a dense classical
work. We also see the fascinating contrast between
two performance philosophies, the desire for
historical accuracy versus total modernization.
This tension perfectly reflects Bach's enduring
versatility. On one side, you have the rise of
historically informed performance, H .I .P. playing
on period instruments. On the other side, you
have grand romantic transcriptions like Leopold
Sikowsky's massive orchestration of the Toccata
and Fugue in D minor. Which most people know
is the memorable opening sequence of Disney's
Fantasia. Exactly. He became a universal influence,
crossing into jazz, film, and modern composition.
Jazz artists like Jacques Lucio found the perfect
foundation for structured improvisation in his
work. But the ultimate sign of his timeless appeal,
going beyond Earth's atmosphere, has to be the
Voyager Golden Record. That is the ultimate metaphor
for his universality. When NASA prepared a record
containing a representative sample of Earth's
culture and sent it into space, three works by
Bach were selected. The Brandenburg Concerto
No. 2, a piece from the Violin Partita No. 3,
and a prelude and fugue from the Well -Tempered
Clavier. So if intelligent life intercepts that
record, Bach is one of the first voices they
will hear from us. One of the very first. And
here in the 21st century, the acclaim is unequivocal.
The New York Times critic Anthony Tomasini ranked
Bach the greatest composer of all time in 2011,
praising his matchless combination of masterly
musical engineering and profound expressivity.
His influence is global, digitally archived,
and structurally foundational. So we have mapped
the life of Johann Sebastian Bach. The Thuringian
workhorse, who used jail time to force a career
move, walked hundreds of miles for musical mentorship,
endured poverty and tragedy, and yet left behind
a legacy defined by perfect, integrated melodic
architecture. His professional life was characterized
by relentless strategic maneuvering, but his
intellectual life was dedicated entirely to synthesis,
scholarship, and structural integrity. He meticulously
compiled and revised his major encyclopedic works
right up until his death, striving for the final,
most perfect expression of every musical form
he touched. It is so powerful to realize that
those final definitive works, the complete mass
in B minor and the art of fugue, were never heard
in their entirety by the public during his lifetime.
He composed them for posterity, for the concept
of perfect form rather than for the immediate
consumption that defined his daily job. And that
realization leads us to our final provocative
thought for you, the listener. Consider Bach's
focus in his last years. Knowing his health was
rapidly failing, he chose to work almost exclusively
on the art of fugue. It's a masterpiece of abstract
architecture, consisting of 14 fugues and four
canons, reducing complex counterpoint to its
bare, timeless essentials without even specifying
the instrumentation. Just the pure music. The
pure structure. So what does it mean for a composer,
knowing the end is near, to focus entirely on
the pure, timeless, intellectual structure of
music over its public, emotional, or liturgical
function? Was this final act of structural mastery
a dedication to posterity and offering to God,
or simply the ultimate satisfaction of his own
scholarly obsession with form itself?