Johann Christian Bach
Johann Christian Bach (
September 5,
1735 –
January 1,
1782) was a
composer of the
Classical era, the eleventh and youngest son of
Johann Sebastian Bach.
JC Bach was born in
Leipzig,
Germany. His father, and possibly also Johann Christian's second cousin Johann Elias Bach, trained young Johann Christian in music. It is believed that Book II of Johann Sebastian's
The Well-Tempered Clavier was written and used for Johann Christian's instruction. Johann Christian served as copyist to his father, and, on the death of his father in
1750, Johann Christian became the pupil of his half-brother
Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach in
Berlin.
In 1754 JC Bach went to
Italy where he studied
counterpoint under
Giovanni Battista Martini, and from 1760 to 1762 held the post of organist at
Milan Cathedral, for which he wrote two
Masses, a
Requiem, a
Te Deum, and other works. Around this time he converted from
Lutheranism to
Catholicism.
He was the only one of Johann Sebastian's sons to write
opera in
Italian, starting with
arias inserted into the operas of others, then
pasticcios. The Teatro Regio in
Turin commissioned him to write
Artaserse, an opera seria that was premiered in 1760. This led to more opera commissions and offers from
Venice and
London to compose operas for them. He accepted the London opportunity and travelled there in 1762, and it was to be London where he would spend the rest of his life, much like
George Frideric Handel, another composer who decided to make his permanent residence in London 50 years prior. Thus, JC is often referred to as the "
London Bach". The Milan Cathedral kept his position open, hoping he would return.
For twenty years he was the most popular musician in
England: dramatic works, produced at the King's theatre, were received with great cordiality.
The first of these,
Orione, was one of the first few musical works to use
clarinets. His final
opera seria,
La Clemenza di Scipione (1778), remained popular with London audiences for many years and shows interesting parallels with
Mozart's last opera in this genre,
La Clemenza di Tito (1791), suggesting the younger composer may have been influenced by the elder's score.
Johann Christian was appointed music master to the
Queen, and his duties included giving music lessons to her and her children, and accompaniment on piano, with
the King playing flute. JC's concerts, given in partnership with
Abel at the
Hanover Square rooms, soon became the most fashionable of public entertainments. The most famous musicians in that period participated in those concerts, such as the italian cellist
Giovanni Battista Cirri, and many of Haydn's works received their English premiere in the same building.
Later life and friendship with Mozart
During his first years in London, Bach made friends with the eight-year old Mozart, who was there as part of the endless tours arranged by his father
Leopold for the purpose of displaying him as a child prodigy. Many scholars judge that J. C. Bach was one of the most important influences on Mozart, who learned from him how to produce a brilliant and attractive surface texture in his music. This influence can be seen directly in the opening of Mozart's piano sonata in B‐flat (KV 315c, the
Linz sonata from 1783 – 1784) which very closely resembles that of two sonatas of Bach's which Mozart would have known; and indirectly in Bach's attempt in an early sonata (the C minor piano sonata, Op. 5 no. 6) to more effectively combine the
galant style of his day with fugal music.
Johann Christian Bach died in London on the first day of 1782. Mozart said in a letter to his father that it was "a loss to the musical world." The two were described as "inseparable" by Mozart's father. They would sit at the organ, Mozart on JC's lap, both playing music for hour upon hour. It is often said by learned scholars that the music of Mozart was greatly influenced by Johann Christian. This is precisely why, in later years, Mozart would embrace the elder (Johann Sebastian) Bach's music as well. Johann Christian likely influenced the young Mozart in the forms of symphony and piano concerto. The spirit and sound of the young Mozart and JC's music is remarkably similar. At the time of Bach's death, Mozart was composing his
Piano Concerto No. 12 in A Major, K. 414; the Andante second movement of this concerto has a theme close to one found in Bach's
La calamità del cuori overture. It has been suggested that Mozart's slow movement was intended as a tribute to Bach, his music, and his importance to Mozart's own work.
Although Bach's fame declined in the decades following his death, his music still showed up on concert programmes in London with some regularity, often coupled with works by
Haydn. In the 19th century, scholarly work on the life and music of Johann Christian's father began, but often this led to exaltation of J.S. Bach's music at the expense of that of his sons; Phillip Spitta claimed towards the end of his J.S. Bach biography that "it is especially in Bach's sons that we may mark the decay of that power which had culminated [in Sebastian] after several centuries of growth" (Spitta, Vol. 3, p. 278), and Sebastian's first biographer,
Johann Nikolaus Forkel, said specifically of Christian that "The original spirit of Bach is . . . not to be found in any of his works" (
New Bach Reader, p. 458). It was not until the 20th century that scholars and the musical world began to realize that Bach's sons could legitimately compose in a different style than their father without their musical idioms being inferior or debased, and composers like Johann Christian began to receive renewed appreciation.
He is of some historical interest as the first composer who preferred the
piano to older keyboard instruments such as the harpsichord. Johann Christian's early music shows the influence of his older brother Carl Philipp Emanuel, while his middle period in Italy shows the influence of
Sammartini.
Johann Christian Bach's father died when he was fifteen; this may be one reason why it is difficult to find points of obvious comparison between Johann Sebastian Bach and Johann Christian. The piano sonatas of Carl Phillip Emanuel Bach, Johann Christian's brother, tend to invoke certain elements of the father at times, being that his father died when he had reached the age of 36. The use of counterpoint is especially comparable to that of Johann Sebastian.
Johann Christian's music, however, departs completely from the styles of the elder Bachs - his music is highly melodic and brilliantly structured. He composed in the galant aesthetic, a style encorporating balanced phrases, emphasis on melody and accompaniment, without too much
contrapuntal complexity. The galant movement was against the intricate lines of Baroque music, and instead places importance on fluid melodies in periodic phrases. It preceded the classical style, which fused the galant aesthetics with a renewed interest in counterpoint.
The symphonies, over 90 of them, may well be some of his finest. The composer known for the invention of the symphony, Haydn, only wrote slightly over 100 - most of which are comparable to those of Johann Christian Bach's. The two composers were contemporaries, but Johann Christian died long before Haydn did. It is interesting to observe that Haydn received an honorary doctorate from Oxford when he presented the first of his great London symphonies - the very place where JC had achieved his greatest fame - and Haydn did it in the decade after Johann Christian's death.
Whereas Haydn has grown to become known as one of the greatest and most well-known composers, JC Bach has become known to society as more of a second-tier composer. Concert halls across America are frequently filled with the music of Haydn, and very rarely with JC Bach, which is suprising considering their similarity and mutual talent.
*A full account of J. C. Bach's career is given in the fourth volume of
Charles Burney's
History of Music.
*There are two others named Johann Christian Bach in the Bach family tree, but neither were composers.
*The complete works of J.C. Bach were published in
The Collected Works of Johann Christian Bach.* Ernest Warburton, "Johann Christian Bach," in Christoph Wolff et. al.,
The New Grove Bach Family. NY: Norton, 1983 (ISBN 0393300889), pp. 315ff..
* Philipp Spitta,
Johann Sebastian Bach, trans. Clara Bell & J.A. Fuller-Maitland, NY: Dover, 1951 (reprint of 1889 ed.).
* Christoph Wolff, ed.,
The New Bach Reader, NY: Norton, 1998.
*
