| Johann Sebastian Bach stands with Beethoven as one of the central figures of the European musical tradition, and one who continues to influence composers and musicians to this day.
His organ works, many from the earlier years of his career at Weimar, are fundamental to the organist’s repertoire, and indeed the desire to better recreate them led to a fundamental shift in the style of organ-building in the 20th century.
The works by which he is perhaps known to the general public, the concertos dedicated to the Margrave of Brandenburg, were written in his early maturity at Cöthen. The early years at Leipzig saw an outpouring of cantatas to serve the musical needs of the St. Thomas Church.
By his later years in Leipzig, Bach’s musical style and taste were under attack. The young composer and writer Johann Adolph Scheibe, a native of Leipzig, may well have given voice to many in excoriating Bach for writing unpleasant, unnecessarily difficult and bombastic music (published in Der Critische Musicus, Hamburg, 1738).
It is not coincidental that Scheibe had moved to Hamburg in 1736, for here the widely celebrated Telemann, though four years older than Bach, was writing music that captured the Enlightenment ideals which were to be fundamental to the aesthetics of much of the next 50 years—natural, charming, accessible. |
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