Sebastian Bach

The biography outlines the subject's musical ancestry and upbringing, follows his early apprenticeship and successive appointments as organist, concertmaster, and court kapellmeister, and describes his later long tenure as cantor in Leipzig. It surveys marriages and household music-making, and offers close readings of major compositions for organ, clavichord, chamber ensemble, orchestra, secular and sacred cantatas, motets, passions, and the Mass, as well as his collections of fugues. The narrative concludes with his final years and death, an appraisal of his character and reception, a discussion of his family of musicians, and a chronological list of church cantatas.