Musical Works of Johann Sebastian Bach

Musical Works

Choral And Vocal Music Johann Sebastian Bach

Bach wrote a lot of choral music during his hey days at Leipzig, where he prepared over 200 cantatas (choral compositions in style of an oratorio or drama) for performances throughout the year. They proffer Bach’s vision of life and death. The despair, exultation, burden of sin, hope of redemption, wonder of heaven and earth enfold through his cantatas like images of the mystical painters. His passions are epics of the Protestian and Lutherian faith.

The St. Mathew Passion, the St. John Passion, the Christmas Oratorio and the Easter Oratorio represent the artistic glory of the Lutherian Oratorio and its passion.

The Mass in B minor was created over a period at Leipzig in 1733 and was dedicated to Frederich Augustus, elector of saxony. It beautifully mingles the Catholic and Protestant elements and unites the two facets of Christendom.

Gloria in excelsis Deo has found a home in most concert halls and places of worship as well.

Other cantatas include the light-hearted coffee cantata written during the Collegia Musica and the Peasant Cantata, in honor of a newly appointed official.

Organ Music

Most of Bach’s organ music was created during the earlier part of his career and the time he spent as the court organist in Weimar. Chromatic Fantasia and the Fugue in D Minor are singled out as well known. The Fugue in D Minor is a series of simple episodic subjects being answered by one voice at a time. After a climactic expansion the theme closes with a major chord that makes it an all time favorite of audiences.

Chamber Music

During the golden years at Cöthen, Bach devoted his attention to compositions for solo instruments, smaller groups and mundane court orchestras.

Of the various sonatas that generated a special interest among discerning audiences, have been attached to the six sonatas for unaccompanied violin. Here Bach forced the violin to transcend its natural limitations, because he believed that the instrument served his ideas, the ideas were never subservient to the instrument in effect.

The others are the six suites for unaccompanied cello, six for violin and harpsichord and three sonatas for viola-da-gamba and harpsichord, which are famous among cellist and viola players even today.