Bach - Pater Familias

Surrounded by a large family Bach was perhaps the loneliest giant in history. No top giant ever lived a quieter nor more hectic existence than this perhaps greatest composer of all - Johann Sebastian Bach. Quiet it was because he rarely left his home and lived a mostly spiritual life. Hectic it was, because his household teemed with children, and he must have lived as turbulent an inner life as any mortal who ever lived. Yet Bach's life wasn't entirely without glamour. When he was organist at Arnstadt, having supplanted his uncle Heinrich, charges were brought against Bach because a "stranger maiden" was seen in the choir loft. The girl so quaintly dubbed was his cousin Maria Barbara Bach, shortly to become his first wife. Yes, he married twice and had circa twenty children in all, by both wives. Thus his house was filled with scrapping tots.

Bach was born at Eisenach in 1685 of a family that boasted the longest line of composers for nearly two centuries --fifty of whom achieved some fame. At least three of his sons became more famous than himself. For unlike Handel, his fame was hardly more than local during his lifetime. Orphaned at ten, Bach studied with his pedantic, martinet of an elder brother, and was forced to strain his eyes in the dark, copying a forbidden manuscript. This ruined his eyesight, and blindness may have hastened his death in 1750. Aged twenty, Sebastian trekked to Lubeck to hear the great organist Buxtehude, eager to succeed him. But Buxtehude's unlovely, not-so-young daughter (at least 10 years his senior) went with the job, according to custom. He hastily declined the offer of marriage and fled home. Two years later Bach married his cousin Maria Barbara, who bore him ten children, among whom were two of the three most talented of Bach's progeny -the dissolute but most gifted eldest son, Wilhelm Friedemann, and Carl Philip Emanuel, the most famous of them all.

Bach was the epitome of humility. It was he, the provincial, who sought out Handel, the cosmopolite, by walking to Halle from Leipzig and missing him by just a few hours. Thus the two giants never met! That was in 1719. The next year Bach lost his lovely wife and loyal helpmate through those arduous years together. Then, in 1721, he married the beauteous Anna Magdalene who inspired so much of his music. She bore him thirteen children of which Johann Christian was the third and in my humble opinion, the greatest bearer of Bach's genius, although C.P.E. was the profounder of the two. J.C. was perhaps the most colorful, and Mozart's early teacher-mentor in London.

What a teeming household that Bach ménage must have presented. How irascible, quick-tempered Bach ever got so many miraculous masterpieces down on paper is an all time enigma. (Try to write anything with just 1 or 2, let alone a dozen tots on the loose!) Yet this lowly giant never hesitated to help his wife with the dishes.

No words can convey the ineffable sublimity of this man's colossal contribution to mankind. A pious Lutheran, he took his religion as seriously as he did his music. He would be the last to say that he achieved anything in any way  but by hard work. He was recognized only locally during his lifetime and even that small fame died with him. Anna Magdelene remained a pauper for the ten years she survived him, while her prosperous ingrate sons did little to alleviate her dire suffering! She had to sell a batch of Bach Manuscripts for $40 - valued today at millions! For almost a century Bach was virtually unheard of until Mendelssohn unearthed the St. Matthew Passion. After Johann Sebastian, the Bach clan practically died out and today not a Bach offshoot survives. But the master's heavenly and immortal music will live (paraphrasing Shakespeare) "so long as men can breathe and ears can hear."