60 Fun Facts About Johann Sebastian Bach

In which town was Johann Sebastian Bach born in 1685?

He was the eighth and youngest child of the town's director of musicians.

To which musical period does Bach belong?

He died in 1750, the year often used to mark the end of the Baroque.

How old was Bach when he was orphaned?

His mother died in 1694 and his father eight months later; he went to live with his eldest brother in Ohrdruf.

What did the young Bach do in Ohrdruf despite being forbidden, since scores and paper were costly?

His brother Johann Christoph, a pupil of Pachelbel, also taught him the clavichord.

At which Lüneburg school did Bach continue his education from 1700, singing in the choir?

The journey there from Ohrdruf, two weeks' travel, was probably made mostly on foot.

Which instrument did Bach's father presumably teach him first?

It was Ambrosius Bach's own primary instrument; an uncle may have introduced the boy to the organ.

How far did Bach reportedly walk each way in 1705 to hear Buxtehude play in Lübeck?

He had four weeks' leave from Arnstadt and stayed away about four months.

What did the elderly Johann Reincken reportedly say after hearing Bach improvise on the organ in 1720?

Bach had copied Reincken's monumental An Wasserflüssen Babylon at the age of 15.

Which festive cantata of 1708 is the only Bach cantata published in his lifetime?

The Mühlhausen council paid for the printing to mark its own inauguration.

Whom did Bach marry in 1707, four months after arriving in Mühlhausen?

They had seven children including Wilhelm Friedemann and Carl Philipp Emanuel; she died suddenly in 1720.

How many children did Bach have with his second wife, Anna Magdalena?

Six survived to adulthood; with Maria Barbara he had seven more, making twenty in all.

What was Anna Magdalena Wilcke's profession when Bach met her at the Köthen court?

She was 16 years his junior; they married on 3 December 1721.

Which Italian composer's concertos did Bach transcribe for harpsichord and organ in Weimar?

From about 1712 Vivaldi was his single most important influence.

How many preludes and fugues does each book of The Well-Tempered Clavier contain?

One pair in every major and minor key; the two books were written about twenty years apart.

What happened to Bach in Weimar in November 1717 when he pushed too hard for his dismissal?

The court secretary recorded that he was 'confined to the County Judge's place of detention for too stubbornly forcing the issue'.

Which prince hired Bach as his Kapellmeister in 1717?

A musician himself, he paid Bach well and gave him wide latitude.

Why is most of Bach's output from Köthen secular rather than sacred?

The Brandenburg Concertos, Cello Suites and solo violin works all date from those years.

Which composer did Bach travel 35 kilometres to Halle to meet in 1719, only to find he had left town?

A second attempt via his son in 1730 also failed; the two never met.

What post did Bach take up in Leipzig in 1723 and hold until his death?

It made him director of church music for four Lutheran churches and the St. Thomas School.

Which two composers turned down the Leipzig post before it was offered to Bach?

Both used the Leipzig offer to negotiate better terms where they were, in Hamburg and Darmstadt.

Besides music, what subject was Bach assigned to teach at the Thomasschule?

He employed four 'prefects' for the job; he called the city council 'penny-pinching'.

For how many years did Bach hold his Leipzig post?

He took office in the middle of the liturgical year, on the first Sunday after Trinity 1723.

On what kind of hymn is each cantata of Bach's second Leipzig cycle based?

The opening stanza was typically set as a chorale fantasia and the last as a plain four-part chorale.

On which date was the St Matthew Passion first performed?

The St Mark Passion of 1731 is lost, though Picander's libretto survives.

Bach sent a Kyrie-Gloria Mass to which Catholic court in 1733, successfully seeking the title of Court Composer?

He later expanded it into the Mass in B minor, which was never performed complete in his lifetime.

Which monarch granted Bach the title of Royal Court Composer in 1736?

He was also Elector of Saxony; the title strengthened Bach's hand against the Leipzig council.

How many canons does the Goldberg Variations, published in 1741, contain?

It was the fourth and last of his Clavier-Übung volumes, written for two-manual harpsichord.

Which Prussian king played Bach a theme in 1747 and challenged him to improvise a fugue on it?

Bach played a three-part fugue on the king's new fortepiano, then published The Musical Offering on the theme.

On what new instrument did Bach improvise for the king at Potsdam?

The resulting fugues, canons and trio sonata on the 'King's Theme' became The Musical Offering.

To join Mizler's Society of Musical Sciences in 1747, Bach submitted which composition?

He also submitted the Haussmann portrait showing him holding a six-voice triple canon.

Which British eye surgeon operated twice on Bach in 1750 and is believed to have blinded Handel too?

Now regarded as a charlatan, he is thought to have blinded hundreds of patients.

For roughly how long did Bach's grave in Leipzig go unmarked?

His remains were moved in 1894 and again in 1950 to St Thomas Church; whether they are really his has since been questioned.

How many harpsichords were listed in the inventory of Bach's estate?

There were also two lute-harpsichords, three violins, three violas, two cellos, a viola da gamba, a lute, a spinet and 52 sacred books.

Which son saw The Art of Fugue into print in 1751 and co-wrote his father's obituary?

For much of the later 18th century his reputation eclipsed his father's; Mozart said 'Bach is the father, we are the children' of him.

Which is the one major genre of his time that Bach never wrote in?

He was not averse to the operatic style, as his Coffee Cantata shows.

For what was Bach chiefly known in the decades after his death?

His music circulated narrowly and was thought old-fashioned next to the galant style.

Whose 1829 performance of the St Matthew Passion launched the Bach Revival?

His father Abraham had bought a large collection of Bach manuscripts in 1805 and given them to the Berlin Sing-Akademie.

By what age had Beethoven learned the whole of The Well-Tempered Clavier?

He called Bach the 'Urvater der Harmonie', progenitor of harmony.

Which composer's 24 Preludes, Op. 28, were inspired by The Well-Tempered Clavier?

Schumann wrote six fugues on the name BACH; Shostakovich later wrote his own 24 Preludes and Fugues.

When Peter Cornelius coined the 'Three Bs' in 1854, who joined Bach and Beethoven?

Hans von Bülow later swapped him for Brahms, the version everyone now knows.

Which pianist's 1955 debut recording of the Goldberg Variations made it standard repertoire?

It sold 40,000 copies by 1960 and over 100,000 by his death in 1982.

Which cellist was the first major performer to record the Cello Suites?

He championed the suites throughout the 20th century.

Whose orchestration of a famous Bach organ toccata opens Disney's Fantasia?

Ferruccio Busoni's late-Romantic piano editions were another route by which Bach reached 20th-century audiences.

How many Bach works are on the Voyager Golden Records sent into space in 1977?

Brandenburg Concerto No. 2, a violin gavotte played by Grumiaux, and Gould playing the C major Prelude and Fugue.

What does the catalogue abbreviation 'BWV' stand for?

The catalogue was designed in 1950; doubtful works go in its Anhang, or appendix.

Which famous organ piece in the BWV catalogue had its attribution questioned in the late 20th century?

It is BWV 565, the best-known organ composition in the catalogue.

Which German writer heard the St Matthew Passion three times in one week in 1870?

Nietzsche wrote to Erwin Rohde about the experience.

Which composer's 'Ave Maria' melody was written over Bach's first prelude from The Well-Tempered Clavier?

Liszt, Zelter and Robert Franz also arranged Bach for 19th-century tastes.

Which Bach manuscript did UNESCO add to its Memory of the World Register in 2015?

It is held by the Berlin State Library.

On which date do the Episcopal and some Lutheran calendars keep a feast day for Bach?

It is the anniversary of his death; Lutherans remember Handel and Schütz on the same day.

Which Brazilian composer's Bachianas Brasileiras pay tribute to Bach in title and spirit?

Jazz players from Jacques Loussier to the Modern Jazz Quartet have also reworked him.

Who wrote the first Bach biography, published in 1802?

Spitta's standard life followed in 1873-80; 200 books on Bach appeared in the 19th century.

In which town did Bach take his first organist post, at the New Church, in August 1703?

He had been invited to inspect the new organ and give its inaugural recital while a court musician in Weimar.

Where were Bach's remains moved in 1950 after their previous resting place was bombed in the war?

Later research has questioned whether the bones in the grave are really Bach's.

The composer's musical family is traditionally traced back to which patriarch, who died in 1619?

The family produced three to four generations of musicians in Thuringia.

Which cantata did the Bach-Gesellschaft choose to open the first volume of its complete edition in 1851?

Robert Schumann and Thomaskantor Moritz Hauptmann were among the society's founders.

Which conductor's recording of Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 travels on the Voyager Golden Records?

Glenn Gould's Well-Tempered Clavier prelude and Arthur Grumiaux's violin gavotte are the other two Bach pieces aboard.

Which French composer called Bach a 'benevolent God' to whom musicians should pray before working?

The prayer, he said, was so that they 'may be preserved from mediocrity'.

Bach was the youngest of how many children of Johann Ambrosius Bach?

His father was director of the town musicians in Eisenach.

Bach's Christmas Oratorio was written for the Christmas season of which years?

He assembled it largely from music he had already composed, covering all seven occasions of the season.