About Me
JOHANN CHRISTIAN BACH (September 5, 1735 .. January 1, 1782) was a composer of the Classical era, the eleventh and youngest son of JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH. He is sometimes referred to 'the London Bach' or 'the English Bach', due to his time spent living there.
LIFE
Johann Christian Bach was born on September 5, 1735 to Johann Sebastian and Anna Magdalena Bach. His distinguished father was already 50 at the time of his birth, which would perhaps contribute to the sharp differences between his music and that of his father. Even so, his father first instructed him in music until he died when Johann Christian was 15, after which he worked with his oldest brother Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, considered at the time to be the most musically gifted of Bach's sons.
He lived in Italy for many years starting in 1756, first studying with Padre Martini in Bologna before becoming an organist at a cathedral in Milan four years later. During his time in Italy he converted to the Roman Catholic Church from Lutheranism. Later, he met soprano Cecilia Grassi in 1766 and married her shortly thereafter. She was about eight years older than Johann Christian, and perhaps because of this, they never had any children.
He enjoyed a promising career, first as a composer then as a performer playing alongside Karl Friedrich Abel, a notable player of the viola da gamba. He was also appointed as music master for Queen Charlotte. He composed cantatas, chamber music, keyboard and orchestral works, operas and symphonies. He died on Jan. 1, 1782 in London.
POSTHUMOUS EVALUATION
Although Bach's fame declined in the decades following his death, his music still showed up on concert programmes in London with some regularity, often coupled with works by Haydn. In the 19th century, scholarly work on the life and music of Johann Christian's father began, but often this led to exaltation of J. S. Bach's music at the expense of that of his sons; Phillip Spitta claimed towards the end of his J. S. Bach biography that "it is especially in Bach's sons that we may mark the decay of that power which had culminated [in Sebastian] after several centuries of growth" (Spitta, Vol. 3, p. 278), and Sebastian's first biographer, Johann Nikolaus Forkel, said specifically of Christian that "The original spirit of Bach is . . . not to be found in any of his works" (New Bach Reader, p. 458). It was not until the 20th century that scholars and the musical world began to realize that Bach's sons could legitimately compose in a different style than their father without their musical idioms being inferior or debased, and composers like Johann Christian began to receive renewed appreciation.
He is of some historical interest as the first composer who preferred the piano to older keyboard instruments such as the harpsichord. Johann Christian..s early music shows the influence of his older brother Carl Philipp Emanuel, while his middle period in Italy shows the influence of Sammartini.
Bach departed from the musical style of his father and older brothers, anticipating and indeed contributing to the development of the so-called "classical" era. His tendencies include a new emphasis on emotional expression, a shift from ecclesiastical to concert-hall forms and genres, and a conscious featuring of virtuoso instrumental registration. His work embodies the "style galant" of the last half of the 18th Century.Besides his many operas and chamber compositions, Bach wrote around 90 symphonies, productivity akin to that of Haydn. Had Johann Christian's father J. S. Bach never existed, Johann Christian's place in musical history would be secure. So profound and excellent were his talents and knowledge, the child prodigy Wolfgang Mozart was brought to him in London in 1764 for instruction. Mozart acknowledged his debt to his mentor by using several of Bach's piano sonatas as the bases for his own piano concertos.
CONTRASTING STYLES of J. S. BACH and J. C. BACH
Johann Christian Bach's father died when he was fifteen; this may be one reason why it is difficult to find points of obvious comparison between Johann Sebastian Bach and Johann Christian. The piano sonatas of Carl Phillip Emanuel Bach, Johann Christian's brother, tend to invoke certain elements of the father at times, considering that his father died when he had reached the age of 36. The use of counterpoint is especially comparable to that of Johann Sebastian.
Johann Christian's music, however, departs completely from the styles of the elder Bachs - his music is highly melodic and brilliantly structured. He composed in the galant aesthetic, a style encorporating balanced phrases, emphasis on melody and accompaniment, without too much contrapuntal complexity. The galant movement was against the intricate lines of Baroque music, and instead places importance on fluid melodies in periodic phrases. It preceded the classical style, which fused the galant aesthetics with a renewed interest in counterpoint.
J. C. BACH and The SYMPHONY
The symphonies listed in the Work List for J. C. Bach in the New Grove Bach Family number ninety-one works. A little more than half of these, 48 works, are considered authentic, while the remaining 43 are doubtful or spurious.
By comparison, the composer sometimes called "the Father of the Symphony," Joseph Haydn, wrote slightly over 100. Most of these are not fully comparable to Johann Christian Bach's symphonies, because many of Bach's works in this category are closer to the Italian sinfonia than to the late classical symphony in its most fully developed state as found in the later works in this category by Haydn and Mozart. Using comparative duration as a rough means of comparison, consider that a standard recording of one of Bach's finest symphonies, Op. 6 no. 6 in g minor, has a total time of 13 minutes and 7 seconds (as performed by Hanover Band directed by Anthony Halstead), while Haydn's "Surprise" Symphony in a typical recording (by Adam Fischer conducting the Austro-Hungarian Haydn Orchestra) lasts 23 minutes and 43 seconds.
It is clear that the listener of J. C. Bach's symphonies should come to these works with different expectations from the ones he or she brings to those of Haydn or Mozart. Concert halls across America are frequently filled with the music of Haydn, and comparatively rarely with that of J. C. Bach, which probably has less to do with their relative quality (since the music of the latter is clearly accomplished and worthy of being heard) than with their relative historical positions regarding the classical symphony. But J. C. Bach's music is more and more being recognized for its high quality and significance. The Halstead recording mentioned above is part of a complete survey of this composer's orchestral works on 22 CDs for the record label CPO, and the complete works of J. C. Bach have now been published in The Collected Works of Johann Christian Bach.
Further Reading;
Ernest Warburton, "Johann Christian Bach," in Christoph Wolff et al., The New Grove Bach Family. NY: Norton, 1983.
Philipp Spitta, Johann Sebastian Bach, trans. Clara Bell & J. A. Fuller-Maitland, NY: Dover, 1951.
Christoph Wolff, ed., The New Bach Reader, NY: Norton, 1998.
