Johann Sebastian Bach Trivia
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60 free Johann Sebastian Bach trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Johann Sebastian Bach trivia quiz covers the Thuringian organist who became, by most reckonings, the greatest composer who ever lived. The easy questions cover the country, the period, the most famous works, the instrument he was best known for in his lifetime and the composer who revived him in 1829. From there it moves through the biography: the musical dynasty he was born into, the brother who raised him, the choir school in Lüneburg, the long walk to Lübeck, the month in a Weimar jail, the Calvinist prince at Köthen, the Leipzig cantorate he only got after Telemann and Graupner said no, two wives and twenty children. The harder end covers the only cantata printed in his lifetime, the King's Theme, the Society of Musical Sciences, the eye surgeon who blinded him and Handel, the estate inventory of five harpsichords, the unmarked grave, Glenn Gould's Goldbergs, the three pieces aboard the Voyager probes, and the doubts over the Toccata and Fugue in D minor. Every answer was checked against Bach's encyclopaedia entry before publishing and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. Our classical music and famous composers quizzes are the natural next stop.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which town was Johann Sebastian Bach born in 1685?
Eisenach
Eisenach. The half-timbered house opened there in 1907 as his birthplace, now the Bach museum, proved to be the wrong one, and the house where he was really born no longer stands.
Q 02To which musical period does Bach belong?
The late Baroque
The late Baroque. The era is usually dated from about 1600 to 1750, the year he died, and he held to its dense counterpoint while his own sons turned to the lighter galant style.
Q 03What happened in Bach's childhood that sent him to live with his eldest brother in Ohrdruf?
Both his parents died
Both his parents died, his mother in 1694 and his father early in 1695. He and his brother Jacob moved in with their eldest brother, an organist who gave him his first formal keyboard lessons.
Q 04In a story from his obituary, what did the young Bach secretly do by moonlight while living with his brother?
Copied music
Copied music. The story goes that he spent six months of moonlit nights copying a book of keyboard pieces his brother had refused to lend him, only for the brother to find the copy and take it away.
Q 05How did the teenage Bach earn free schooling at St Michael's in Lüneburg?
Singing in its choir
Singing in its choir. The Matins choir was reserved for poor boys with good voices and paid for their schooling and keep; his voice broke soon afterwards, but he managed to stay on.
Q 06Which instrument did Bach presumably learn from his father?
The violin
The violin. His father was a string player who led the town musicians, though in chamber music the grown Bach chose to play the viola, to be 'in the middle of the harmony'.
Q 07Which Lübeck organist did the 20-year-old Bach reportedly walk more than 300 km to hear in 1705?
Dieterich Buxtehude
Dieterich Buxtehude. Bach had four weeks' leave from his church post and stayed away about four months, and on his return his employers demanded to know why.
Q 08Which skill of Bach's led the old organist Reincken to say, 'I thought this art was dead'?
Improvising on a church melody
Improvising on a church melody. In Hamburg in 1720 Bach spun out 'An Wasserflüssen Babylon' for about half an hour, and Reincken, who had written his own setting of it, is said to have added, 'but I see it still lives in you'.
Q 09Gott ist mein König, the only Bach cantata to survive in a print from his lifetime, was written for what occasion?
A town council's inauguration
A town council's inauguration. Mühlhausen installed a new council every year, and in 1708 the councillors paid to print the music as well as the words, making it the first Bach composition ever published.
Q 10How was Maria Barbara, whom Bach married in 1707, related to him?
His second cousin
His second cousin, the daughter of his father's cousin. She died suddenly in 1720 while Bach was away at a spa with his employer, and he came home to find her already buried.
Q 11How many children did Bach father across his two marriages?
20
20. Seven were born to Maria Barbara and thirteen to Anna Magdalena, but only ten lived to adulthood; four of the sons became noted composers.
Q 12What was Anna Magdalena Wilcke's profession when Bach married her in 1721?
Soprano singer
Soprano singer. She was on the court payroll in her own right, and she went on singing professionally after the wedding.
Q 13Which Italian composer's concertos did Bach transcribe for harpsichord and organ in Weimar?
Vivaldi
Vivaldi. The duke's teenage nephew probably brought the newly printed concertos back from his studies in Holland, and Bach learned how they were built by rewriting them for keyboard.
Q 21Besides music, what subject was Bach assigned to teach at the Thomasschule?
Latin
He employed four 'prefects' for the job; he called the city council 'penny-pinching'.
Q 22In a comic Bach cantata, a father tries to break his daughter's addiction to which fashionable drink?
Coffee
Coffee. In the Coffee Cantata the daughter gives it up to win a husband, then quietly tells her suitors she will only marry a man who lets her drink it; Bach's ensemble probably first played it in a Leipzig coffee house.
Q 23On what kind of hymn is each cantata of Bach's second Leipzig cycle based?
A Lutheran chorale
A Lutheran chorale. From June 1724 he wrote a new cantata almost every week, each built on the words and tune of one familiar chorale, until the run broke off early in 1725 and the cycle was never finished.
Q 14Why does each book of The Well-Tempered Clavier have 24 preludes and fugues?
One per major and minor key
One per major and minor key. On many keyboards of the day, keys with many sharps or flats sounded sour, so a set that marches through all 24 showed off a tuning in which every key is playable.
Q 15What happened to Bach in Weimar in 1717 when he pushed too hard for his dismissal?
Jailed for almost a month
Jailed for almost a month. Passed over for the top music post, he had already accepted a job at another court, so the duke held him from 6 November to 2 December and then dismissed him in disgrace.
Q 16Which six works did Bach send in 1721 to a margrave who apparently never paid him for them?
The Brandenburg Concertos
The Brandenburg Concertos. Bach had played for the margrave in Berlin while buying a harpsichord, was invited to send some music, and took two years to deliver, largely by reworking older pieces.
Q 17Why is most of Bach's output from Köthen secular rather than sacred?
The prince was a Calvinist
The prince was a Calvinist, so his court chapel used no elaborate music. He loved music all the same and kept a court orchestra, so Bach wrote for its players instead.
Q 18Which composer is Bach said to have travelled to Halle to meet in 1719, only to find him gone?
George Frideric Handel
George Frideric Handel. He had been visiting his mother in his home town; a second try in 1729, when Bach was ill and sent his son with an invitation, also failed, and the two never met.
Q 19What post did Bach take up in Leipzig in 1723 and hold until his death?
Thomaskantor
Thomaskantor. He was his employers' third choice for the job, and ten days after his death a burgomaster, looking for a successor, said the school needed a cantor, not a music director.
Q 20Which two composers were the Leipzig council's first choices for the post Bach took up in 1723?
Telemann and Graupner
Telemann and Graupner. Telemann used the offer to win a raise in Hamburg and Graupner's employer in Darmstadt refused to let him go, so Leipzig turned to Bach.
Q 24Bach's St Matthew Passion is scored for which large forces?
Two choirs and two orchestras
Two choirs and two orchestras. For the Good Friday performance of 1736 Bach reworked the score so that each choir also had its own continuo players.
Q 25Bach sent a Kyrie and Gloria to which Catholic court in 1733, hoping for the title of court composer?
Dresden
Dresden. The title arrived only in 1736, after a second application, and it gave Bach a royal patron to cite in his long quarrels with his Leipzig employers.
Q 26A slow movement from Bach's Orchestral Suite No. 3 is popularly known by which nickname?
Air on the G String
Air on the G String. The name comes from an 1871 arrangement by the violinist August Wilhelmj, who shifted the tune down so that he could play it entirely on his instrument's lowest string.
Q 27Bach's Goldberg Variations were reportedly written to ease which complaint of a count?
Insomnia
Insomnia. Bach's first biographer tells how the sleepless count would call, 'Play me one of my variations, Goldberg', and how he paid Bach with a golden goblet holding a hundred gold coins.
Q 28Which ruler played Bach a theme in 1747 and challenged him to improvise a fugue on it?
Frederick the Great
Frederick the Great. Bach improvised a three-part fugue on the spot, then went home and worked the royal theme into a six-part one, canons and a trio sonata, printed that year as The Musical Offering.
Q 29On what new instrument did Bach play during his 1747 visit to Potsdam?
An early fortepiano
An early fortepiano. The king owned several by the organ builder Gottfried Silbermann; Bach had once faulted Silbermann's first pianos for a heavy touch and weak treble, and the improved ones won his approval.
Q 30In the famous Haussmann portrait of 1746, what is Bach holding in his hand?
A sheet of music
A sheet of music. It shows a short puzzle canon for six voices: the portrait was his entry piece for a learned society of musicians, which asked each new member for a likeness and a piece of 'scientific' music.