Johann Sebastian Bach and Some Interesting Facts about the German Composer
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750) is undoubtedly the most revered figure in the entire history of Western classical music. He has often been called the “father of music” and is cited as a source of inspiration by composers such as Frédéric Chopin and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. As the English conductor and leading Bach interpreter Sir John Eliot Gardiner once said, “Bach is astonishing as a composer and in many ways out of proportion to all ordinary human achievements”. This statement eloquently tells us that as a composer Bach has never been and probably never will be surpassed by any human being.
Bach can, of course, also be found here at the Philharmonic, as his works belong to the established repertoire. In addition to listening to his music, there are a number of interesting facts we can mention about the composer that make him an even more fascinating figure.
Bach was born into a large family, but he himself raised an even larger one. With two different wives he had a total of twenty children, many of whom died shortly after birth. Bach was certainly not a quiet man. He had a strong character and made it quite clear to his interlocutors when he was irritated. Bach’s date of birth still stirs up the spirits. He was born on 21 March according to the Julian calendar that was in effect at the time in Protestant Germany. However, according to today’s Gregorian calendar, which the church had already implemented in Catholic countries in Bach’s time, his date of birth would have been 31 March.
Bach was the seventh and last child in a family in which music was the raison d’être. At that time, the word Bach was even used as a term to mean a musician. After being orphaned at the age of nine, he learned the art of music from his older brother. At the age of twenty, he undertook a journey to Lübeck on foot – a distance of 400 kilometres there and back – because he wanted to meet the great master Buxtehude, who was one of the most famous German composers of the time. Little is known about the personal life of the Bach family, but some testimonies reveal the great composer as a lover of the good life, with a fondness for beer and cider. His cousin Johann Elias regularly supplied him with wine, and he also enjoyed hot chocolate, coffee and tobacco. Bach is also known to have smoked a pipe.
Bach owned at least six keyboard instruments, ten string instruments, a lute and two lautenwerks, or lute-harpsichords, a type of harpsichord that sounds similar to a lute due to its gut strings. In 1750, the composer’s health was deteriorating, so the family decided to call the “famous” surgeon John Taylor, who turned out to be a mere charlatan. Bach underwent cataract surgery twice, but it was unsuccessful in both cases. As a result of the interventions, the composer died six months later. In 1753, the same “doctor” also operated on Handel, who had problems with his vocal cords.
