Boroque Music - Johann Sebastian Bach, World of Biography

Musical Works

Bach was the last artist of the glorious Baroque age. Understanding the socio-cultural milieu of that age and its musical style will help us gain insight into Bach’s musical tryst.

The Baroque Music

After the Renaissance, came the Baroque age, with its momentous changes. Akin to architecture and art, music in the Baroque age had certain peculiarities that made it unique and ethereal.

Opera was attached with immense social significance in the Baroque. It placed the theatre at the center of all musical arts alongside the palace, church and home.

Individual music gained enviable status. A new dramatic style flowed from a cataclysmic clash of individual will where pure musical thinking overpowered words and music stood at constant service of poetry.

Improvisation played a major role in Baroque music. For example, a church organist was expected to perform and improvise an intricate piece and add abrupt changes of mood in the fantasias leading to its enrichment as a whole.

The Baroque believed in the Doctrine of the Affections whereby music mirrored the words, the chorale played time to its meaning. Bach associated the sorrow of the crucifixion by a bass line that descends was the best piece to bring out the necessary emotions that it was meant to portray.

Dynamic rhythm with energetic, clear-cut movements imparting singleness of purpose and appearing turbulent yet controlled, is what the Baroque musicians attempted and achieved to quiet an extent.

The principle of continuous expansion of a single ‘affection’ was another ornamentation of this music. Music began with a mood and unfolded through a process of ceaseless churning. Like relentlessly pursuing its goal, the music moved to highlight the impact of the words and helped empathize the affection.

Baroque music was dynamically terraced. A passage uniformly loud was followed by one that was uniformly soft, thus creating the effect of light and shade. Musicians also desired to play their instruments to its loudest.

Baroque was the first era in history where instrumental music was of comparable tenor to vocal. This led to the fact that many musicians developed new instruments and perfected the old. Baroque music made generous use of the trumpet, oboe, bassoon and flute which already boasted with the organ, harpsichord and clavichord. The interest in instruments went hand in hand with a desire to master techniques and each composer was distinguished ever more clearly among varying styles that were performed.

Finally, the Baroque was a period of international culture. The sensuality of French melody, the precision of the French dance rhythm, the luxuriance of German counterpoint, the freshness of the English choral songs – all these were absorbed in this one cesspool of European art.

A court, church, town council or an opera house provided suitable employment to the Baroque composer, who was in direct contact with the public. His music was created for special occasions. He was an artisan, a religious person bred on the word of God, expressing the grandeur of his talent and his era. He began writing for a particular time and place; he ended by creating for the ages. Johann Sebastian Bach

Bach is remembered as one who perfected existing musical forms rather than the creator of new ones. Each musical form he touched was perfected from the rough to its brilliance. Bach also believed in perfecting the techniques of composition. His mastery over them have never been challenged so far. Bach’s incomparable profundity of thought and feeling and the capacity to explore and visualize the diverse musical wishes in a given musical situation, was indeed remarkable.

Bach was among the last of the great legion of religious musicians. He considered music to be "a harmonious euphony to the glory of the God."

He is also considered as one of the greatest preachers since some of his cantatas begin with "Jesus help me !" and close with, "To God alone be thy praise." A strong all pervading influence of the Lutheran chorale, that beholds the tunes of reformation, was omnipresent in his music. This helped him unite with the contemporary current of popular melody then.

Bach is also well remembered as a fabulous organist. The organ was the prime medium for all his music. He created an abode of music played on the organ, which is considered as the high watershed of musical realm. The various chorale preludes, fantasias, toccatas, fugues and the great Passacaglia in C minor, make him an organ maestro.