Johann Bach

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Johann Bach (baptized November 26th July / December 6th  1604 greg. In Wechmar ; buried on May 13th 1673 in Erfurt ), actually Johannes Bach , not to be confused with the musician and pastor also named Johann Bach (1621–1686) (Founder of the Lehnstedter line of the Bach family of musicians), is the oldest certified composer representative of the Bach family of musicians . He is considered to be the founder of the Erfurt line of the family and was a great-uncle of Johann Sebastian Bach . He was the eldest son of Johannes Bach , brother of Christoph and Heinrich Bach .

Life

The unrest of the Thirty Years' War overshadowed his life . He apparently learned from his future father-in-law, the Suhl town piper Johannes Christoph Hoffmann , with whom he was an apprentice for five years and a journeyman for two years. Johann Bach then stayed in various Thuringian cities, a little longer in Arnstadt and also in Schweinfurt , where he was the organist from 1633. After temporary stays in his home town of Wechmar, he came to Erfurt , where he initially worked as a town piper, played the organ at St. John's Church from 1634, became director of the council music in 1635, and took office as organist at the Predigerkirche in 1636 and at the same time was accepted into the "Stadtmusicanten Companie".

In 1636 he married the eldest daughter of his teacher in Suhl, Barbara Hoffmann. However, she died the next year giving birth to her first child. In the same year (1637) he entered into a second marriage with Hedwig Lämmerhirt, who came from a family in Erfurt. All of Johann Bach's descendants became musicians. They worked as town musicians, three of them even as their directors, and others as cantors or organists at the Preacher, Kaufmann, Barfüßer, Regulator, Michaelis and Thomas Church.

For the Bach family, Erfurt had become the “main meeting point” for a very long time. Johann Sebastian Bach's parents were also from Erfurt and were married on April 8, 1668 in the Kaufmannskirche. Here in Erfurt, the Bachs dominated musical life to such an extent that in 1793 all town pipers were still called “Bache”, although none of them had lived with this name for a long time. In the church registers of the Kaufmannskirche alone, over 60 child baptisms, weddings and funerals of the Erfurt Bach family of musicians are registered.

Only a few compositions have survived from his pen. Compiled has that Johann Sebastian Bach in the recently rediscovered " Altbachischen archive ". His most prominent work in today's concert scene is the motet Our life is a shadow .

See also

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Andreas Kruse: The border crossings of Johann Sebastian Bach . 2nd edition, Springer, Berlin Heidelberg 2014, p. 35, ISBN 978-3-642-54627-3
personal data
SURNAME Bach, Johann
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bach, Johannes; Bach, Hans
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German composer, great-uncle of Johann Sebastian Bach
DATE OF BIRTH baptized December 6, 1604
PLACE OF BIRTH Wechmar
DATE OF DEATH buried May 13, 1673
Place of death Erfurt