Johann Sebastian Bach is the highest achievement of Western music over the last 300 years. Born into a family of musicians, he traveled from organist in Arnstadt to Thomaskantor in Leipzig, where in his first years in the post he composed a new cantata for almost every Sunday and feast day.
His legacy comprises over 1,000 works: the 48 preludes and fugues of the Well-Tempered Clavier (the foundation of keyboard playing); six solo cello suites; the St. Matthew Passion (a three-hour masterpiece on Christ's suffering); the St. John Passion; the Mass in B minor; the Goldberg Variations; the Brandenburg Concertos; the Art of Fugue. Bach's music shaped everything that followed — Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn (who revived interest in Bach in 1829), Max Reger, and Hindemith. Every pianist, violinist, organist, and singer in the world plays or sings Bach.
