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Johann Sebastian Bach Biography
Johann Sebastian Bach Biography
Throughout the history of music, many great composers, theorists, and instrumentalists have left indelible marks and influences that people today look back on to admire and aspire to. No exception to this idiom is Johann Sebastian Bach, whose impact on music was unforgettable to say the least. People today look back to his writings and works to both learn and admire. He truly can be considered a music history great.
Bach, who came from a family of over 53 musicians, was nothing short of a virtuosic instrumentalist as well as a masterful composer. Born in Eisenach, Germany, on March 21, 1685, he was the son of a masterful violinist, Johann Ambrosius Bach, who taught his son the basic skills for string playing. Along with this string playing, Bach began to play the organ which is the instrument he would later on be noted for in history. His instruction on the organ came from the player at Eisenach's most important church. He instructed the young boy rather rigorously until his skills surpassed anyone’s expectations for someone of such a young age.
Bach suffered early trauma when his parents died in 1695. He went to go live with his older brother, Johann Christoph, who also was a professional organist at Ohrdruf. He continued his younger brother's education on that instrument, as well as introducing him to the harpsichord. The rigorous training on these instruments combined with Bach’s masterful skill paid off for him at an early age. After several years of studying with his older brother, he received a scholarship to study in Luneberg, Germany, which is located on the northern tip of the country. As a result, he left his brother’s tutelage and went to go and study there.
The teenage years brought Bach to several parts of Germany where he mainly worked as an organist in churches, since that was the skill he had perfected the best from his young training. However, a master of several instruments while still in his teens, Johann Sebastian first found employment at the age of 18 as a violinist in a court orchestra in Weimar. Although he did not remain there terribly long, he was able to make good money playing for the king. He soon after accepted a position as a church organist in Arnstadt. It was here that Bach would soon realize his high standards and regards that he had for music. In Arnstadt as well as in many other places that Bach worked he was notorious for getting into fights over the quality of music that was being produced. A perfect example of this can be seen in Arnstadt. Previous accounts of history claim that Bach was upset with the performance of the church choir for which he played for. He claimed that “the voices could never make the music soar to the sky as it should” (loosely translated). Here Bach realized the high level of music and perfectionism that he wanted. In 1707, at the age of 22, Bach moved on from Arnstadt to another organist job, this time at the St. Blasius Church in Muhlhausen. Once again he did not remain there too long, only a little over a year, when he moved again to Weimar where he accepted the position of head concertmaster and organist in the Ducal Chapel. It was here that Bach settled himself and began to compose the first collection of his finest early works which, included organ pieces and cantatas.
By this time Bach had been married for several years. He actually became married to his cousin Maria Barbara. They, for the most part, had a happy marriage. He was happy. By this stage of his life he had “composed” for himself a wonderful reputation of being a brilliant musical talent. Along with that his proficiency on the organ was unequaled in Europe by this time. In fact, he toured regularly as a solo virtuoso, and his growing mastery of compositional forms, like the fugue and the canon, were already attracting interest from the musical establishment, which, in his day, was the Lutheran church. The church began to look at Bach’s writings and saw the opportunity to possibly use his music in their masses. Thus was the slow birth of the German chorale, which Bach later became renowned for. Bach’s virtuosic career did suffer minor setbacks along the way. He occasionally would be passed over for deserved positions within the court that he worked. However, in 1715 when he did not receive a truly desired position of “Kapellmeister” (choral master) of Weimer, he was insulted and left the city. He accepted a position as a court conductor in Cothen, where he began to work on another part of his musical genre, that of instrumental music. Up until this point, Bach was mainly writing organ pieces and church cantatas. One of his most famous, “Wachet auf ruft uns die Stimme,” became well known around the world and is still looked upon as a classic today. However, when he arrived in Cothen he began to focus on all other instruments and used his talents as a string player and knowledge of “wind & brass” instruments to begin composing instrumental pieces. It was during his stay here in Cothen that the orchestral masterpiece known as the “Brandenburg Concerto” was born.
Bach’s tenure in Cothen lasted approximately seven years. In that time his wife Mara became ill and died. Although distraught, he soon remarried to Anna Magdalena. It was during this time that Bach had several children, three in particular would grow to become talented musicians like their father. Wilhelm Friedmann, C.P.E. Bach, and J.C. Bach. They to became virtosos of the organ and later the harpsichord, much like their father was. After Bach left Cothen, he received a prestigious position as music director at the St. Thomas Church in Leipzig, Germany. Here Bach accepted his most demanding position of all. He had the responsibility of composing cantatas for the St. Thomas and St. Nicholas churches, conducing the choirs, overseeing the musical activities of numerous municipal churches, and teaching Latin in the St. Thomas choir school. Although demanding, Bach persisted and succeeded in Leipzig and continued to write music of various kinds with a level of craft and emotional profundity that was his alone.
Bach remained at his post in Leipzig until his death in 1750. Although he was blinded by cataract problems in the early 1740s, he still managed to compose masterful pieces up until days before his death. His last musical composition that he crafted happened to be a choral prelude, which was dedicated to his son-in law.
To this day more than 1,000 of Bach’s accomplished compositions survive. Some of his most famous works include the “Brandenburg Concerto,” The “Mass In B Minor,” “The Goldberg Variations for Harpsichord,” his vast amount of toccatas, especially his “Toccata In F Major,” his collection of variations on organ preludes captured in the “Well Tempered Clavier,” his immense amount of fugues and chorales including his “Fugue in G minor,” major as well as his tremendous amount of chorales, and his Christmas and Easter oratorios, which was another schism in his music genre. Quite frankly, the list goes on and on and on. Surely, Johann Sebastian Bach never believed that his success would become so heroic and monumental. However, we today perceive him to be one of the key individuals to shape the music we listen to. It is no secret that his writings, especially chorale writings, are used to illustrate the principles of our functional system of harmony. It is in this example alone that it can be seen that Bach’s works have not only survived to the point where they are still heard and listened to, but they also still provide us with knowledge and understanding from which we can learn and discover music. It is for these reasons that the life of Johann Sebastian Bach was truly a great one and it is without any apprehension that he can be considered a musical great.
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AntiEssays.com : Arts : The developement of Free Jazz
The Development of Free Jazz
All music has to develop into something new and by the late 1950's jazz was ready for a slight turn. A musical style called free jazz emerged with slight differences that has influenced most improvised music to this day. Some people despised this music's lack of set form. They found it difficult to listen to because of the missing order and lack of pre-planed notes. Others embraced the new music and it's emphasis on random feelings of emotion. For the men that developed free jazz it was a journey to find the ultimate expression in music.
There is no set definition for free jazz. In free jazz, musicians improvise freely without adherence to time keeping patterns, conventional solo versus accompaniment roles, or the preset arrangement of harmonies (a chord progression) that commonly guided improvisation in earlier styles.(Free Jazz Encyclopedia Britannica Online)
Ornette Coleman, one of the leading men in free jazz, when asked the definition of free jazz said In most music the composition determines the song, in free jazz, however, the song determines the composition. By this he means that in free jazz the song depends on what is going on around the musician instead of already determined notes. People could say that that is true with improvised music in general but in much of improvised music there are set chord progressions that limit the notes that can be played at certain times. Free jazz brought about a more open and natural type of improvisation in music.
There are a few major common elements in free jazz. Some times the music is based on the moment. The musician would play based on the mood in the room. He would ignore the chords and rhythms of the piece and use the energy in the room to make the piece best for that particular time. Sometimes there is collective improvisation in which some or all of the musicians are improvising at the same time. This is difficult because the musicians do not know what the other musicians are going to play next. And sometimes there is an odd or free time signature, and then music does not follow a strict tempo. A good example of this is mentioned in the book All you need is Love: the story of popular music. It says Ornette Coleman... slowed down or speeded up the tempo of his quartet at will, thus destroying all sense of regular meter or symmetry. These ideas developed over time in certain musicians and later other musicians learned these styles from them.
It is difficult to tell the history behind of free jazz with the many men that helped develop it. There were two men mainly credited with developing this style: Ornette Coleman and John Coltrane. Both men had separate careers but both created his own kind of free jazz.
Ornette Coleman was best known for free jazz. His Album Free Jazz is where the name of this music was derived. Inspired by the music of Charlie Parker, Coleman started playing alto saxophone at 14 in 1944. When he started playing he made a mistake when reading the music. This mistake made him look at harmony and pitch differently. He later learned how to play the tenor saxophone and played in an R&B band. People didn't like his playing because it was not proper blues.
After playing with a couple of other bands he took work not related to music but still studied music theory. In the Mid 50's he found other musicians that respected his ideas. Doing some recordings he formed the Coleman Quartet and started playing at the New York's Spot Cafe. He later recorded several albums including Free Jazz. By the end of the 60's Coleman added electric guitars to his music and formed the band Prime Time. He called his music Harmolodics to symbolize the equal importance of harmony, melody and rhythm.
Born in 1926, Coltrane played the alto saxophone at the Ornstein School of music in Philadelphia. He was influenced by the music that was later known as R&B.
Starting his career he played with a couple big bands. While playing for Dizzy Gillespie Big band he switched to the tenor saxophone. While Coltrane was playing with the Miles Davis band in 1955, Davis was criticized for his choice of a saxophonist because of Coltrane's awkward sound. He was fired from Davis's Band because of his heroin problems. That gave Coltrane the awakening he needed. He quit heroin and focused on his art.
He worked with many well-know artists and released some recordings as a leader instead of a sideman. As his music evolved he studied world religions and music of different cultures allowing him to add more flavor to jazz. In the mid 60's he emphasized more on expression and put more aggressiveness in his music known as avant-garde, which is like free jazz.
During the 50's and 60's men like Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, and others developed a form of jazz know as free jazz that violated traditional structures, tonalities, forms, chord sequences, modes of improvisation, rhythms, and even the tempered scale. (Free Jazz Dictionary of American Pop/Rock) Some people do not like it because of it's total disorder. Free jazz took classical jazz and brought it into the modern era.
Bibliography
Work Cited
Free Jazz, Dictionary of American Pop/Rock
New York: Schimer Books 1982
Free Jazz, Encyclopedia Britannica Online
[Accessed January 5, 2000]
Coleman, Ornette, The Guinness Encyclopedia of Popular Music
Chester: Guinness Publishing LTD, 1992 Vol. 4
Jazz Music History - Legendary Free Jazz & Avont Garde Musicians
[Accessed February 7, 2000]
Free Jazz,Coleman, Ornette, Microsoft Encarta 98 Encyclopedia
Microsoft Corporation 1993-1997
Free Jazz, The New Grove Dictionary of Music & Musicians
New York: Macmillan publishers limited 1980 Vol. 6
John Coltrane, Popular Musicians
Pasadena: Salem Press, Inc. 1999 Vol. 1
Biographies: Ornette Coleman takephivejazz.com
[Accessed February 7, 2000]
Ornette Coleman on UBL.com - Music's Homepage UBL.COM
[accessed February 7, 2000]
The Unofficial Home of Free Jazz
[Accessed February 7, 2000
Word Count: 2234
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