![]() Upon his return to Leipzig he composed a set of fugues and canons, and a trio sonata, based on the Thema Regium (theme of the king). Bach obliged, playing a three-part fugue on one of Frederick's fortepianos, which was a new type of instrument at the time. The king played a theme for Bach and challenged him to improvise a fugue based on his theme. In May 1747, Bach visited the court of King Frederick II of Prussia in Potsdam. ![]() In order to be admitted Bach had to submit a composition, for which he chose his Canonic Variations on "Vom Himmel hoch da komm' ich her", and a portrait, which was painted by Elias Gottlob Haussmann and featured Bach's Canon triplex á 6 Voc. In 1746 Bach was preparing to enter Lorenz Christoph Mizler's Society of Musical Sciences . ![]() He also programmed and adapted music by composers of a younger generation, including Pergolesi (BWV 1083) and his own students such as Goldberg (BNB I/G/2). Throughout this period, Bach also continued to adopt music of contemporaries such as Handel (BNB I/K/2) and Stölzel (BWV 200), and gave many of his own earlier compositions, such as the St Matthew and St John Passions and the Great Eighteen Chorale Preludes, their final revisions. His fourth and last Clavier-Übung volume, the Goldberg Variations, for two-manual harpsichord, contained nine canons and was published in 1741. Bach's own style shifted in the last decade of his life, showing an increased integration of polyphonic structures and canons and other elements of the stile antico. Many of Bach's works during the 1730s and 1740s were written for and performed by the Collegium Musicum among these were parts of his Clavier-Übung (Keyboard Practice) and many of his violin and keyboard concertos.įrom 1740 to 1748 Bach copied, transcribed, expanded or programmed music in an older polyphonic style (stile antico) by, among others, Palestrina (BNB I/P/2), Kerll (BWV 241), Torri (BWV Anh. 30), Bassani (BWV 1081), Gasparini (Missa Canonica) and Caldara (BWV 1082). Year round, Leipzig's Collegium Musicum performed regularly in venues such as the Café Zimmermann, a coffeehouse on Catherine Street off the main market square. ![]() In the words of Christoph Wolff, assuming the directorship was a shrewd move that "consolidated Bach's firm grip on Leipzig's principal musical institutions". This was one of the dozens of private societies in the major German-speaking cities that were established by musically active university students these societies had become increasingly important in public musical life and were typically led by the most prominent professionals in a city. He died of complications after eye surgery in 1750 at the age of 65.īach broadened his composing and performing beyond the liturgy by taking over, in March 1729, the directorship of the Collegium Musicum, a secular performance ensemble started by Telemann. In the last decades of his life he reworked and extended many of his earlier compositions. In Leipzig, as had happened during some of his earlier positions, he had difficult relations with his employer, a situation that was little remedied when he was granted the title of court composer by his sovereign, Augustus, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, in 1736. From 1726 he published some of his keyboard and organ music. He composed music for the principal Lutheran churches of the city, and for its university's student ensemble Collegium Musicum. From 1723 he was employed as Thomaskantor (cantor at St. Thomas) in Leipzig. From 1703 he was back in Thuringia, working as a musician for Protestant churches in Arnstadt and Mühlhausen and, for longer stretches of time, at courts in Weimar, where he expanded his organ repertory, and Köthen, where he was mostly engaged with chamber music. After being orphaned at age 10, he lived for five years with his eldest brother Johann Christoph, after which he continued his musical formation in Lüneburg. The Bach family already counted several composers when Johann Sebastian was born as the last child of a city musician in Eisenach.
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