Johann Sebastian Bach

was a composer in the Baroque era.
 

Bach was born in Germany in 1685. Bach is part of the largest family tree in music. Of his male relatives 76 were musicians and 53 of them were named Johann! Bach's parents died when he was very young but he was able to support himself by the time he was fifteen by singing and taking organ jobs in towns near enough to walk to. He married Anna Magdalena who was also a singer and a keyboard player. They worked together so often that Anna's handwriting came to look just like his. Bach fathered twenty children but only ten lived to adulthood. Five were named Johann, two Johanna, and four grew to be famous composers themselves. Bach produced 1,200 musical works but hardly any of them were published in his lifetime, nor did he expect them to be. It was 100 years later that the genius of Bach became widely recognized. Bach loved food and coffee. He once wrote a whole cantata about coffee and among his most prized possessions were two silver coffee pots. The famous Two-Part Inventions were written for Bach's children, to exercise each finger and train the hands to play independently. The two Voyager spacecraft, launched into the solar system in 1977, contain three pieces by Bach, along with special record-playing equipment.

 

Here are a few examples of the variety of Bach's compositions: