During his training at St Michael’s, Bach was probably therefore also a pupil or even a journeyman of Georg Böhm. It makes sense that this lesser-known repertory appealed to Mr. Serkin. 1724 The recipient of this work was thought to have been one of Bach’s Leipzig patrons – but who exactly? The Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis is a catalogue of compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach. The Fantasia II in C (Book Six) has the impish playfulness of a Haydn finale, complete with a penchant for sudden stops and suspenseful pauses. It is said that Bach was unhappy with the composition of this first concerto. In autumn, Bach travelled to Hamburg for an audition. Peter Serkin, shown here around 1972, had an exploratory streak that drew him to contemporary composers and neglected older ones. Incidentally, the organ at St Blasius’s was reconstructed in the 1950s at the instigation of Albert Schweitzer based on Bach’s specification drawn up in 1708. Email info(at)bach-leipzig.de. 1720 J.S. 1714 In August, Bach signed his contract as kapellmeister at the court of Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Köthen, albeit without asking permission to leave Weimar. 1715 Bach visited Frederick II in Potsdam and Berlin. According to his son Carl Philipp Emanuel, Bach wrote five annual cantata cycles, although just under three have come down to us. Bach attended the local Latin grammar school. Bach became the new cantor and ‘director musices’ of Leipzig with effect from 1 June. Cantata No.21. After Bach had stayed at von Stahl’s house during his first trip to Berlin in August 1741, Georg Ernst von Stahl got married just one month later and could well have commissioned Bach to compose a special cantata for the occasion. Bach was a member of the so-called “first Berlin lied school,” founded by Christian Gottfried Krause, although his writing of songs was a only minor focal point during his career. Among the foremost musical institutions were the Collegia Musica – societies at which mainly amateur musicians regularly gave private and public recitals. Johann Bach's love of music and dedication to practice began to pay off. 1750 These are the first 5 completed pieces of music that the genius of Mozart ever wrote. Bach's first productive period of composition came in Weimar, where, in 1708, he was made court organist and chamber musician to Duke Wilhelm Ernst. During the 18th century, if you mentioned Bach, most people assumed you were referring to Emanuel (1714-88), whose renown in that period eclipsed that of his father (1685-1750). Unlike many other composers, J. S. Bach did not make much effort to preserve his music, and as a result, much of it is lost. A few years ago, the list of candidates was augmented by a previously overlooked figure: Georg Ernst von Stahl from Berlin, a personal physician and court counsellor, who had previously been regarded as a friend and supporter of Bach’s sons Wilhelm Friedemann and Carl Philipp Emanuel rather than a patron of Bach himself. The hypothesis that the cantata had been written for Georg Ernst von Stahl is backed up by his biographical data. Bach’s first Leipzig cantata cycle has survived almost in its entirety, but the identities of the librettists are largely unknown. In February, the cantata Gott ist mein König (‘God is my King’, BWV 71) was first performed to mark the inauguration of the new town council. It was for one of these ‘extraordinary’ concerts that Bach composed his famous Kaffee-Kantate (‘Coffee Cantata’, BWV 211), an obvious allusion to the Collegium Musicum’s usual venue. Bach underwent eye surgery by the famous yet controversial ophthalmologist Sir John Taylor, who stayed in Leipzig from 4 to 7 April in 1750. Some passages are rich with milky colorings. Perhaps he saw in him a kindred spirit. Mr. Serkin’s interest in this Bach began early in his career, when he read Emanuel’s influential treatise “On the True Art of Playing Keyboard Instruments.” Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin and Brahms all “loved and had keen interest in C.P.E. Christoph Friedrich Bach was born on 21 June. He completed his journey on foot. Marpurg, the leading Berlin music critic. Word of his musical abilities spread quickly. This is a fascinating question, but there is no way we could possibly know the answer. Here’s why: 1. The house where the three Bach brothers lived was later burned down during a large fire in 1753. Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach was born in 1714 in Weimar. Cantata No. On 17 October he married his second cousin Maria Barbara in the church in Dornheim (near Arnstadt). With the exception of a few older compositions from Bach’s Weimar period, the cantatas from the first Leipzig cycle were all newly written compositions. In the first two the same choirs are used several times, harmonized, however, always in a different way and sometimes even superimposed on the arias, such as, for example, in Johannes Passion in the air for Basso “Mein Teurer Heiland”, where the two independent compositions form a set of stunning intensity, as only Bach could have achieved. I was hooked by the very first track of the first disc: the Prestissimo movement of Sonata I in C (Book One). Yet in less than five minutes, the piece lives up to its title, with fantastical episodes, sometimes dark-hued and ominous. His Lutheran family was pleased to see him carry on the family tradition in music. 1702 His composition of songs brought him into contact with F.W. An example is the first aria from the Christmas Oratorio, Bereite dich, Zion , which, although it has nothing to do with snakes, has a very snake-like obbligato part. In a recent interview, Marty Krystall, a friend of Mr. Serkin and Vivace’s founder, said that even as Mr. Serkin’s health deteriorated, he remained immersed in the intricate editing of these Bach discs, right into the final week of his life. J.S. A dispute broke out between Bach and Johann Gottlieb Görner, the director of music at the University of Leipzig, over the division of responsibilities for music performed at St Paul’s Church. A few years later, Bach gave a number of recitals at the royal court in Weissenfels, which enjoyed an excellent reputation far and wide for the high quality of its musical performances. One of his godfathers was Georg Philipp Telemann. Minuet in G major 2. Newly released by Vivace Records, it was his final recording project before he died in February, at 72, of pancreatic cancer. It was the only time when Bach was still alive that he was mentioned on the front page of a newspaper when an unknown editor of Berlinische Nachrichten reported on Bach’s evening arrival, the welcome extended by the king, Bach’s performance »on the so-called forte and piano«, and finally the king challenging Bach to improvise a fugue off the cuff on a given theme – a great moment in the history of music which led to Bach’s famous anthology of canons and fugues known as The Musical Offering.