Bach composer5/1/2023 ![]() Initially he was appointed court organist, with responsibility for providing church choral music. There he embraced new musical styles, in particular those of Vivaldi. Within a year he had broken his family’s long tradition of church music by becoming a court musician in Weimar. But employment difficulties soon led him to search for other positions. Better resources were at his disposal, as is shown by the technical demands of his Cantata BWV 4 Christ lag in Todesbanden. Bach moved to St Blasius Church in Mühlhausen in 1707, where his first task was to supervise the building of a new organ. But a condition of the appointment was marrying Buxtehude’s eldest daughter, and Bach, now engaged to his cousin, Maria Barbara, did not pursue matters. There was talk of him succeeding Buxtehude at the Marienkirche. In 1703 he gained the position of organist at the Neue Kirche in Arnstadt, although some disputes with the church administration may have contributed to Bach’s decision to take an extended leave of absence in 1705–06 to visit the organist and composer Dieterich Buxtehude in Lübeck. He also copied out many keyboard works and became acquainted with musical styles from across Europe. ![]() While in Ohrdruf, Bach developed abilities in keyboard playing, improvisation, fugue writing and all of the other skills then required of a church musician. ![]() Both of Bach’s parents had died by the time he was ten, and he was sent to the small town of Ohrdruf, into the care of his half-brother, who had been a pupil of Johann Pachelbel. His early education included the study of rhetoric, which some modern scholars have suggested influenced his approach to musical form, and he learnt several instruments and studied composition. Bach was born in the Thuringian town of Eisenach into a family of church musicians. All of these ideas remain current, and the great German composer’s huge catalogue of works continues to invite new interpretations. In recent decades, the period performance movement has helped to return a sense of historical context to Bach’s music, and fresher, lighter instrumental and vocal textures. To Mendelssohn, he was a composer of epic choral works. To Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, Bach was a master of keyboard counterpoint.
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