Bach: The Most Prolific Name in Music

J.S. Bach and some of his sons. Artist and date of this family portrait are unknown. (Public Domain)

“Bach ... needed no audience. He wrote for himself alone.”

So an astonished Mozart tells Baron Gottfried van Swieten after being introduced to “The Art of Fugue.”

“How did you get ahold of this if it was never printed?” Mozart asks.

“I had it copied in Leipzig,” replies the Baron. “There is nothing new except the old.”

This fictional exchange from the excellent 1982 French miniseries “Mozart” captures both the admiration that Mozart had for Johann Sebastian Bach, and the middling status Bach experienced as a composer during his own lifetime. Beyond this general spirit of truth, though, there is no evidence that Mozart ever said these words, nor do we know how he first encountered Bach’s music.

As a court composer and organist to the elector of Saxony, Bach regularly had to write on demand for an audience. Today, he is considered one of the “big three” composers. Though Mozart and Beethoven edge him out in popularity polls with general audiences, musicians and scholars often rank Bach first. According to a 2019 poll by BBC Music Magazine, 174 top living composers voted him as the greatest composer of all time.

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Bach’s musical genius did not occur in a void. Many casual fans of classical music know that he was from a family of musicians. Since they span seven generations, there were a lot of them. So who were the Bachs?

From Humble Beginnings to Local Fame

Much of what we know about the early Bach dynasty is thanks to Johann Sebastian Bach himself. When he was 50 years old, he compiled a genealogical list, “Origin of the Musical-Bach Family.” He listed 53 kinsmen over a 200-year span. It mostly follows the male line, due to the traditional notion that the son should take up the father’s profession. Bach was largely concerned with charting his paternal musical heritage, so he left the women out.

The patriarch of the family, Veit Bach, escaped Hungary in the 16th century to avoid being persecuted for his Lutheran faith. He settled in Thuringia, a forested region in central Germany that to the modern sensibilities sounds a bit like an enchanted land in a fantasy novel. There, Veit set up his trade as a baker and miller. While the mill was grinding, he often played a cittern, a flat-backed stringed instrument.

A portrait of Phillis Hurrell, 1762, by Joshua Reynolds. She holds a cittern, the same instrument that Bach's distant ancestor played in between milling and baking. (Public Domain)

Veit’s love of music became a profession for his descendants, who moved through different towns in Thuringia to fill posts as organists. Then, in the early 17th century, the Thirty Years’ War broke out. This brutal conflict wiped out 75 percent of Thuringia’s population. Notable works of literature and the visual arts almost disappeared from Germany during these years.

However, music thrived because of its essential function in religious services. Periods of hardship and violence often bolster faith, and Lutheranism remained strong. The Bach family thrived and expanded. So did other musical clans. In addition to Bach, a local historian noted in 1684 the family names of Lindemann, Altenburg, Ahle, and Brigel, whose compositions gave “a great name to the province of Thuringia.”

Thuringia, a region of Germany dotted with mountains, forests, small villages, and classic architecture, is akin to a storybook setting to the average American. (Reinhold Möller/CC BY-SA 4.0)

Reading Johann Sebastian’s genealogical list, the repetition of first and middle names makes it a bit difficult to keep track of everyone. Some of these musicians included an uncle (Georg Christoph), a father-in-law (Johann Michael), a first cousin (Johann Ernst), a first cousin once removed (Johann Christoph), and a nephew (Johann Ernst II). This by no means exhausts the list, but I will stop there.

Thanks to a collection known as the “Old-Bach Archive,” we have about two dozen choral works written by these early figures. Most of the music was copied by the cantor of Arnstadt, Ernst Dietrich Heindorff. Johann Ernst Bach (the cousin, not the nephew) was the organist in that town, and Heindorff copied down the music for Ernst to use in performance. When Ernst died and Johann Sebastian took over the post in 1732, the collection fell into his hands.

International Stature

Johann Sebastian was the first member of the family to achieve international recognition. This was mostly due to his masterful skills at the keyboard rather than his compositions. His obituary describes him first as an organist, then as a composer. His intricate pieces were considered too complicated for 18th-century tastes, even by the standards of the Baroque period.

After Johann Sebastian’s death in 1750, the torch passed to his sons. He had 20 children between two wives, and though only half of these survived to adulthood, there were still more than enough to carry on the family legacy. These sons spread out over Europe and achieved fame in their respective cities, which helps in remembering them. These include Wilhelm Friedemann (“Halle Bach”), Carl Philipp Emanuel (“Berlin Bach,” later “Hamburg Bach”), Johann Christoph Friedrich (“Bückeburg Bach”), and Johann Christian (“London Bach”).

Of these Bach brothers, Johann Christian and Carl Philipp Emanuel are the most well-known. They never quite rose to the height of their father’s genius, but they achieved a greater reputation as composers in their lifetimes because they had the good business sense to follow fashionable trends. As the complex polyphonies of the Baroque period transitioned to the simpler symmetries of the Classical, the Bach brothers influenced shifting tastes.

Johann Christian taught Mozart and directly influenced the young boy’s musical development. This may have been where Mozart first learned about Johann Sebastian.

Carl Philipp Emanuel was, for a time, considered to be the Bach family’s greatest composer. While he is known today for his Berlin and Hamburg connections, in the latter 18th century, he had a more universal name: The “Great Bach.”

Carl Philipp Emanuel spent almost three decades serving the king of Prussia in Berlin, and then took up a position as a music director in Hamburg, Germany. Above all, he was a great harpsichordist, and his “Essay on the True Art of Playing Keyboard Instruments” was widely influential. He adapted the methods of opera, such as recitatives and aria accompaniments, into his keyboard compositions, giving them a dramatic feel.

At the same time, Carl Philipp Emanuel retained aspects of his father’s intricate Baroque style, using ascending and descending bass lines and often developing movements out of one subject. Listening to his Keyboard Concerto in D Minor, H. 427 sounds like a cross between Johann Sebastian and the classical elegance of a Mozart sonata.

Fading Talent

Carl Philipp Emanuel’s son, Johann Sebastian II, showed great musical promise but died at age 30 before he produced any masterworks. The “Bückeburg Bach,” Johann Christoph Friedrich, also had a son, Wilhelm Friedrich Ernst. Wilhelm secured a good appointment at the Prussian court. But he never matured as a composer, ignoring the Romantic innovations of Beethoven and Schubert. Along with his ill-fated cousin, these two grandsons of Johann Sebastian represent the bloodline’s final ebbing of musical talent.

After this generation, the torch of inspiration blew out. Shortly after this, Bach’s last direct descendant died in 1871.

A portrait of Bach, 1748, by Elias Gottlob Haussmann. (Public Domain)

Rather than lament the passing of the world’s greatest musical dynasty, we should marvel that it persisted for as long as it did, and that we can still enjoy their works. Nothing lasts forever, but the music of the Bach family has an eternal quality.

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