Johann Sebastian Bach Research Paper

Johann Sebastian Bach was born in Eisenach Germany in 1685, this town also happens to be the same town where Martin Luther translated the bible into German. He came from a family of musical people, the first Bach was a miller and brought his zither to work with him. The Bach family originated from Hungary, but decided to leave during the Thirty Years War. At the young age of ten years old his parents died, and he left home to live with his brother. Then after the death of his brother Bach became a boy soprano in Lüneburg, but before his 18th birthday he left Lüneburg, he was known already as a master clavichordist, organist, and a promising composer. He began his professional career playing at Weimar, playing violin and viola in the court orchestra. While at Weimar he walked two hundred miles to hear one of the greatest organists of his generation, Dietrich Buxtehude, he was gone so long that he almost got fired from his position, but this changed his music forever. Also while living in Weimar he married his first wife Maria Barbara, she was his cousin, also a musical Bach.

When he returned he found the while he was away his wife Maria had died and was buried already. This was an extremely difficult for Bach, but all of the struggles and hardships that he went through drove him closer to God. He then married his second wife Anna Magdalena, she was an amazing soprano. She was an inspiration for many of his arias. The years the Bach spent in Cöthen were known as his secular period, he suffered quite a bit under the Calvinists, during this time he composed a lot for secular purposes or for instruction. He still believed that music was for God’s