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Bach family

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The Bach family was of importance in the history of music for nearly two hundred years, with over 50 known musicians and several notable composers, the best-known of whom was Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750). A family genealogy was drawn up by Johann Sebastian Bach himself and completed by his son Carl Philipp Emanuel.

The Bach family never left Thuringia until the sons of Sebastian went into a more modern world. Through all the misery of the peasantry at the period of the Thirty Years' War this clan maintained its position and produced musicians who, however local their fame, were among the greatest in Europe. So numerous and so eminent were they that in Erfurt musicians were known as "Bachs", even when there were no longer any members of the family in the town. Sebastian Bach thus inherited the artistic tradition of a united family whose circumstances had deprived them of the distractions of the century of musical fermentation which in the rest of Europe had destroyed polyphonic music.

Ancestors of Johann Sebastian Bach

Four branches of the Bach family were known at the beginning of the 16th century, and in 1561 we hear of Hans Bach of Wechmar, a village between Gotha and Arnstadt in Thuringia, who is believed to be the father of Veit Bach.

  • Veit (Vitus) Bach (d. 1619) was "a white-bread baker in Hungary" who had to flee Hungary because he was a Lutheran and who "found the greatest pleasure in a little Cittern which he took with him even into the mill".
  • His son Johannes (Hans) Bach (d 1626) "der Spielmann" (lit. the player), was the first professional musician of the family. "at first took up the trade of baker, but having a particular bent for music" he became a piper.
  • His second son Christoph (1613-1661) was an instrumentalist.
  • His son Johann Ambrosius was JSB's father.

Descendants of Johann Sebastian Bach

  • Of the seven children that JSB had with his first wife only three survived him. Two of these had musical careers of their own: Wilhelm Friedemann and the aforementioned Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach.
  • JSB then married Anna Magdalena Wilcken, herself a gifted soprano and daughter of the court trumpeter of Prince Saxe-Weissenfels. They had 13 children, of whom Gottfried Heinrich, Johann Christoph Friedrich and Johann Christian became significant musicians. A further three survived into adulthood: Elisabeth Juliane Friederica (1726-1781) who married Bach's pupil Johann Christoph Altnikol, Johanna Carolina (1737-1781) and Regina Susanna (1742-1809)
  • Bach has no known descendants living today. His great-granddaughter, Frau Carolina Augusta Wilhelmine Ritter, who died 13 May 1871, was his last known descendant. (The article from which this was taken was written in 1930. It is currently believed that there are 15 living direct descendants of J.S. Bach bearing the name Von Colson. Source: Boyd, Malcolm & John Butt (Editors) (1999). J.S. Bach. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 29. ISBN-10: 0198662084. ISBN-13: 978-0198662082.)

Others born before 1685

Johann Ambrosius' eldest brother, Heinrich of Arnstadt, had two sons: Johann Michael and Johann Christoph, who are among the greatest of J. S. Bach's forerunners, Johann Christoph being once supposed to be the author of the motet, Ich lasse dich nicht ("I will not leave you"), formerly ascribed to Sebastian Bach and now confirmed to be his (BWV 159a). Another descendant of Veit Bach, Johann Ludwig, was admired more than any other ancestor by Sebastian, who copied twelve of his church cantatas and sometimes added work of his own to them.

Family tree

Expanded genealogy

References

  • The New Grove Bach Family by Christopher Wolff et al, MacMillan 1983 ISBN 0 333 34350 6 provides a substantial treatment of each noted musician in the family

See also

External links



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Last updated on Tuesday June 17, 2008 at 07:36:18 PDT (GMT -0700)
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