Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer and musician of the late Baroque period, born 21 March 1685 (Old Style) in Eisenach into a family that had already produced several generations of musicians, and he died 28 July 1750 in Leipzig. After early posts as organist in Arnstadt and Mühlhausen and years as court musician in Weimar and Köthen, he became Thomaskantor in Leipzig in 1723, responsible for music in the city’s four Lutheran churches and the St. Thomas School, a position he held until his death. He was extraordinarily prolific across nearly every genre and instrument of his day, producing the Brandenburg Concertos, the Cello Suites and Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin, keyboard landmarks such as The Well-Tempered Clavier and the Goldberg Variations, organ works including the Toccata and Fugue in D minor, and choral masterworks such as the St. Matthew Passion and the Mass in B minor.

Bach brought the contrapuntal and harmonic techniques of the German Baroque to their highest point of development, synthesizing German, Italian, and French styles into a personal language of unmatched structural rigor and expressive depth. Though he was known mainly as a virtuoso organist during his lifetime and his reputation faded after his death, the 19th-century Bach Revival, sparked by Felix Mendelssohn’s 1829 performance of the St. Matthew Passion, re-established him as one of the towering figures in Western music. His mastery of fugue and counterpoint, exemplified in works like The Art of Fugue and The Musical Offering, has made him a foundational reference point for composers and performers ever since.

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Sources:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Sebastian_Bach
• https://www.britannica.com/biography/Johann-Sebastian-Bach