Johann Christian Bachs Lifetime and Music - Essay Example

?Johann Christian Bach Johann Christian Bach was a German ical composer who was born to Johann Sebastian and Anna Magdalena Bach in Leipzig, Germany on September 5, 1735. As the son of famous classical composer J.S. Bach, it came as no surprise that his youngest child would be as musically gifted, if not more so. However, as there was a fifty year difference between father and son, J.C.’s classical music was quite different from that of his father’s style, though his father’s influences were still evident. Bach began his music career at a young age, with his father providing instruction for him as a young boy. After J.S. died when J.C. was only fifteen, J.C.’s older brother, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, took over the musical instruction (Erickson 174). Bach’s works reveal the influences from both his father and his brother. Classical music is “serious or conventional music that follows long-established principles (Vandome 7)”. As a classical composer, Bach was limited to the rules placed down by the many classical artists before his time, including those of his father and brother. Indeed, the majority of what J.C. Learned growing up had been the works of his father, which helped him to understand the principles of classical music. After being taught by his father and brother, J.C. Bach moved to Italy in 1756 to learn under Giovanni Battista Martini, another famous classical musician. While living in Italy, Bach obtained the job as the organist at Milan Cathedral, where he also wrote two of his Masses, a Requiem, and a Te Deum. J.C. Bach was the only child of the eleven Bach siblings to dabble in opera, which became a successful career for him. He first wrote the arias to be placed into the operas written by other composers, and then he wrote pastiches; it was in 1760 that he was paid to write a complete opera, Artaserse. Two years after, he was commissioned by the King’s Theatre in London to write more operas. It was in London that he worked and lived until his dying day. Bach premiered three of his operas at the King’s Theatre in 1762, such as his famous Orione opera. Since his father worked in Germany, J.C. Bach was given the nickname of ‘London Bach’ (Marschall 164). The Milan Cathedral in Germany never filled Bach’s position as organist, hoping that he would one day return back to them, believing that his place in London was to be impermanent. However, not only did Bach remain in London, but he also became the most popular musician in England for a reign of twenty years and was given the job of being the music master of Queen Charlotte and her children. This eventually led to Bach’s marriage to the Queen’s daughter, Cecilia Grassi, in 1766 (Thompson 29). Grassi and Bach did not have children together, but instead focused on Bach’s music career. Unfortunately, at the end of his twenty-year music reign, people’s interest in Bach’s works diminished entirely. By the time of his death on January 1, 1782, he was remembered more as his father’s son than the individual musician that he aimed at becoming. After his death, Franz Joseph Haydn, another well-known name in classical music, worked off of many of Bach’s works, and many of his concerts involved quite a few of Bach’s symphonies. During his time in London, Bach met an aspiring young classical musician by the name of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Mozart had been touring London, as well as Paris, on the orders of his father with the hopes of promoting Mozart’s talents as a classical musician; as a young musical prodigy, Bach became interested in the future of the young man. Due to the amount of time that Bach and Mozart spent together, it is believed that Bach became one of the greatest influences on Mozart’s music. The extent of Bach’s influence can be seen in Mozart’s piano sonata in B-flat in the Linz sonata (Nicholas 88), which is similar to two of Bach’s sonatas that Mozart would have been subjected to in his time. Mozart revered Bach so much that he arranged three sonatas from Bach’s Op. 5 into keyboard concertos. Bach and Mozart became greatly associated with on another’s works. In his lifetime, Bach wrote numerous orchestral works, including Six Grand Overtures, Op. 18 and Six Harpsichord Concertos, Op. 7. Bach is considered to be the first composer that preferred the piano to the more common keyed instruments. As such, the majority of the music that he wrote was meant to be played either on the harpsichord or the piano, a fresh development in Bach’s time. A very small portion of Bach’s published works included sonatas designated to be played on the keyboard. In fact, many of these were altered just the slightest bit to be played on piano when possible. Since many of Bach’s works were written for harpsichord but capable of being played on piano, Bach would include this in their titles, such as Six Concerti for Harpsichord or Pianoforte. Bach also wrote a total of forty-eight symphonies, though there are almost forty more that may or may not be the creation of Bach (Gammond 112). He also composed and performed a variety of chamber pieces, liturgical works, and sacred works. Some of the musical techniques that were most common to Bach and his performances included, as previously mentioned, the piano in place of other keyed instruments, as well as composing only two movements to his concerts, whereas most concerts contained three distinct movements. The majority of his melodies were Italian in character, and all of them had themes that were well-stated. Also, the slower movements of Bach’s pieces resembled arias, regardless of their actual intended form. Another common occurrence could be seen with the performances that Bach put in, which often involved him as the soloist and keyboard player. Further differences in Bach’s music can be seen when compared to the compositions of his father before him. While J.S. Bach played according to Baroque standards, J.C. preferred to compose in the Galante style, which involved a great emphasis on accompaniment and melody, prompting delicately balanced phrases. J.C. Bach was an amazing composer. Though he preferred to use piano as much as possible, he also seemed to favor the violin, which only enhanced his music. The movements in many of his pieces, such as Symphony in F Major, Op. 3, No. 5, W. C5: I. Allegro, were surprising and unexpected, which I feel came from the lacking third movement. Bach’s pieces were less predictable than other composers of the same era. At the same time, his style is distinct enough to stand out as his own works, as opposed to being confused with the works of his father, or even Mozart’s. Even though J.C. Bach had the footsteps of his father to follow in, J.C. was capable of being influenced by his father’s teachings and still making a name for himself. His fame may not have been as long-lived as his father’s, but Bach did what he needed to stand out from the crowd of other classical musicians. Works Cited Erickson, Raymond. The Worlds of Johann Bach. New York: Amadeus Press, 2009. Print. Gammond, Peter. Classical Composers: An Illustrated History. New York, NY: Quadrillion Publishing, 1999. Print. Marschall, Richard. Johann Sebastian Bach. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2011. Print. Nicholas, Jeremy. The Great Composers. London: Quercus, 2007. Print. Thompson, Wendy. Classical Composers. New York: Anness Publishing, 2010. Print. Vandome, Agnes. History of Classical Music. Los Angeles: AlphaScript Publishing, 2009. Print. Read More