Johann Christian Bach was born on 5 September 1735, the eighteenth child of Johann Sebastian Bach, and the youngest of his eleven sons. Johann Sebastian was nearly 50 at the time of his birth, and he supervised his son’s early

Many music history lovers know that Johann Sebastian Bach had many children: twenty kids by two wives. What fewer people know is that the wider Bach family was famously fertile…as well as famously musical. In fact, the Wikipedia article on

One of the most promising pianists of her generation, Beatrice Rana has produced yet another fascinating survey of four of Bach’s Keyboard Concertos with the Amsterdam Sinfonietta. As Rana explained in the liner notes, Bach has been an important figure

Once Bach had arrived in Leipzig, he cultivated and maintained connections with the city’s political, commercial, and clerical establishment as well as its intellectual elite. He received support from high-ranking state dignitaries and conducted regular business with town, church, and

The music of Johann Sebastian Bach has long served as a wellspring of inspiration for composers across centuries. From the Classical era to the Romantic period and beyond, Bach’s music has been adapted for new instruments, ensembles, and audiences. Even

Over the years, Anna Magdalena Bach fulfilled many different roles. Above all, she mothered a large and steadily increasing family. When she married the widower Bach, she took on four small children, and subsequently gave birth to thirteen children over

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750) wrote 4 Overtures (as he called them), known as his four Orchestra Suites between 1724 and 1731. Each of these suites consists of several movements that are dance-pieces. The form was extremely popular in Bach’s time,

Carl Philipp Emanuel remembered the Bach household in Leipzig as a “pigeon coop,” with people swarming in and out all the time. Conversing with the Bach biographer Forkel, Carl Philipp recounts, “With his many activities Bach hardly had time for