MLP Composers Johann Sebastian Bach

Ponyfied Johann Sebastian Bach is flying over various abstract images, masses of color, vague shadows and geometrical objects floating in space

 Music : Brandenburg Concertos, Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, Jesu Joy of Mans Desiring

 Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) had extraordinary gifts that were not recognized until a revival of interest and performances of his music in the first half of the 1800's. He was an important baroque composer that established German styles through his skill of counter point, which was a type o music where melodies work against each other.

 Bach was born in Eisenach, Germany in 1685 into a great musical family, His father Johann Ambrosius Bach was the director of the town musicians and was the eighth and youngest child and all his uncles were musicians as well. His father taught him how to play the violin and the harpsichord. But when Bach was 9 years old his parents died, so he moved in with his oldest brother Johann Christoph Bach who was an organist at St. Michael's church in Ogrdruf, Saxe-Gotha Altenburg where he studied, performed and copied music, Christoph also gave him some music lessons and taught him how to fix organs.     

 In his early twenties, Bach married his cousin Maria Barbara, who bore him seven children. He gained a post as organist to Duke Wilhelm Ernst of Weimar and began to compose in earnest. When he got a new job as a conductor to Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Kothen, the duke refused to let him go that he had him placed in jail for a month.

 During his time in Kothen, Bach was inspired to compose some his finest works, including the famous Brandenberg Concertos which are a collection of six pieces of music he wrote for  a soldier named Christian Ludwig.

 In 1720 Bach's wife died and he remarried Anna Magdalena who was the daughter of a court trumpeter and in 1723 he moved to Leipzig, Germany where he remained for the rest of his life. Johann Sebastian Bach died on July 28th 1750 at the age of 65. After his death his music was forgotten until composer Felix Mendelssohn contributed to the renewed interest in Bach's work with his 1829. Mendelssohn also published Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor in 1833 and it became the most famous work for a pipe organ. No one knows for sure when Bach wrote the Toccata and Fugue, but it was later used and made famous in Disney's Fantasia.