Bach was eventually offered thejob, and in 1723 he moved to Leipzig. But Georg Philipp Telemann could not obtain a release from his post in Hamburg, and Christoph Graupner was lured away by the city of Darmstadt. Of the six applicants for the job, Bach was neither the most famous nor the town council's first choice. In 1722, the death of Johann Kuhnau left vacant the position of Kantor at Leipzig's Thomaskirche, an important church and musical center. 6, where the two solo violas answer each other in an imitative pattern and eventually intertwine. If it now appears that Bach was a better and more prolific composer earlier than had previously been thought, it also appears that more than 200 of his compositions from the Cothen years, mainly chamber and orchestral works, may be lost. That is certainly the case in the middle movement of Concerto No. In recent years compelling evidence has been marshaled in support of the claim that the original versions of all six of the works which in 1721 became the Brandenburg Concertos, Bach's matchless contribution to the genre of the concerto grosso, predate his Cothen appointment. One of the ongoing concerns of Bach scholarship has been the question of what Bach composed prior to, and during, his time at Cothen. Bach subsequently spent six productive years as Kapellmeister at the court of Cothen (1717-23), where his young patron, Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Cothen, a fine musician himself, enthusiastically supported his efforts. His next post as organist was in Muhlhausen (1707-08) after that, he served as court organist and chamber musician (and from 1714 court con-certmaster as well) in Weimar (1708-17). Inspired by what he heard there, he composed some of his greatest pieces for organ (among them the monumental Passacaglia in С minor, BWV 582) during his remaining years in Arnstadt. In 1705 he made a pilgrimage to Liibeck to hear Buxtehude, the greatest organist of the day and a composer whose music was to have a profound effect on his own. After completing his studies in Luneburg he was employed as a "lackey" at the ducal court in Weimar (1703) and as an organist in Arnstadt (1703-07). Along the way he set himself a remarkable series of formal and aesthetic challenges and synthesized a unique personal style.īach received what was for the time a thorough humanistic education. From youth onward he undertook a self-directed and systematic exploration of the major musical genres and styles of his day, focusing first on the keyboard, then on the broader realms of concerted vocal and instrumental music. The most intellectual of his remarkable family- the male descendants of Hans Bach, who had served as professional musicians in Thuringia for three generations prior to his birth-he was not only the greatest composer of the Baroque era but the leading organist of his generation and an accomplished violinist and violist as well. GERMAN COMPOSER AND ORGANIST whose music, in every genre but opera, spectacularly crowned the Baroque era.
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