Johann Sebastian Bach

Bach was born in Eisenach and worked as organist and court musician at Arnstadt, Mühlhausen and Weimar, then as Kapellmeister at Köthen from 1717 and as Thomaskantor in Leipzig from 1723. His music is built on counterpoint, with two to five independent lines heard at once and imitated in fugue and canon. He also absorbed Italian and French forms and transcribed Vivaldi's concertos.

The concertos follow the ritornello plan that Vivaldi standardised: the full group plays a recurring passage, which returns in related keys between episodes for the soloists. The six Brandenburg Concertos, presented to the Margrave of Brandenburg in 1721, give each work a different solo group: two horns, oboes and violino piccolo in No. 1; trumpet, recorder, oboe and violin in No. 2; violin and two recorders in No. 4; flute, violin and harpsichord in No. 5; and no violins at all in No. 6. Most of the harpsichord concertos are arrangements of earlier concertos. The Double Concerto, BWV 1043, is dated around 1730 and now placed in Leipzig; its two violins pass fugal imitation between them. The Oboe and Violin Concerto, BWV 1060, is a reconstruction of a lost double concerto.

The keyboard and organ works show his teaching and his craft. The Inventions and Sinfonias are two- and three-part lessons. Each book of the Well-Tempered Clavier pairs 24 preludes and fugues through all keys, Book 1 compiled in 1722 and Book 2 about twenty years later. The Art of Fugue builds on a single D minor subject and was left unfinished. The Ricercar a 6 of The Musical Offering (1747) is a six-voice fugue. The Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor for organ repeats an eight-bar bass while the music above changes.