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Having spent much of the 1720s composing weekly cantatas, Bach assembled a sizable repertoire of church music that, with minor revisions and a few additions, allowed him to continue performing impressive Sunday music programs while pursuing other interests in secular music, both vocal and instrumental. Many of these later works were collaborations with Leipzig's Collegium Musicum, but some were increasingly introspective and abstract compositional masterpieces that represent the pinnacle of Bach's art. These erudite works start with the four volumes of his Clavier-Übung ("Keyboard Practice") a set of keyboard works to inspire and challenge organists and lovers of music that includes the 6 Partitas for keyboard (Vol. I), the Italian Concerto, the French Overture (Vol. II), and the Goldberg variations (Vol. IV).
At the same time, Bach wrote a complete Mass in B Minor, which incorporated newly composed movements with portions from earlier works. Although the mass was never performed during the composer's lifetime, it is considered to be among the greatest of his choral works.
After meeting King Frederick II of Prussia in Potsdam in 1747, who played a theme for Bach and challenged the famous musician to improvise a six-part fugue based on his theme, Bach presented the king with a Musical Offering including several fugues and canons based on the "royal theme." Later, using a theme of his own design, Bach produced The Art of Fugue. These 14 fugues (called Contrapuncti by Bach), are all based on the same theme, demonstrating the versatility of a simple melody. During his life time he composed over 1,000 pieces.
Johann Sebastian Bach died in 1750.
In his later years and after his death, Bach’s reputation as a composer declined: his work was regarded as old-fashioned compared to the emerging classical style. He was far from forgotten, however: he was remembered as a player and teacher, and as father of his children (most notably C. P. E. Bach). In this period, his best-appreciated compositions in this period were his keyboard works, in which field other composers continued to acknowledge his mastery. Mozart and Beethoven were among his most prominent admirers. On a visit to the Thomasschule in Leipzig, Mozart heard a performance of one of the motets (BWV 225) and exclaimed, "Now, here is something one can learn from!"; on being given the parts of the motets, "Mozart sat down, the parts all around him, held in both hands, on his knees, on the nearest chairs. Forgetting everything else, he did not stand up again until he had looked through all the music of Sebastian Bach". Beethoven was also a devotee, learning the Well-Tempered Clavier as a child and later calling Bach "Urvater der Harmonie" ("original father of harmony") and "nicht Bach, sondern Meer" ("not a stream but a sea", punning on the literal meaning of the composer's name). [1]
The revival in the composer's reputation among the wider public was prompted in part by Johann Nikolaus Forkel's 1802 biography, which was read by Beethoven among others. Goethe became acquainted with Bach's works relatively late in life, through a series of performances of keyboard and choral works at Bad Berka in 1814 and 1815; in a letter of 1827 he compared the experience of listening to Bach’s music to "eternal harmony in dialogue with itself". [2]. But it was Felix Mendelssohn who did most to revive Bach’s reputation with his 1829 Berlin performance of the St. Matthew Passion. Hegel, who attended the performance, later called Bach a "grand, truly Protestant, robust and, so to speak, erudite genius which we have only recently learned again to appreciate at its full value". [3]. Mendelssohn's promotion of Bach, and the growth of the composer's stature, continued in subsequent years. The Bach Gesellschaft (or Bach Society) was founded in 1850 to promote the works, and over the next half century it published a comprehensive edition.
Therafter Bach’s reputation has remained consistently high. During the 20th century the process of recognising the musical as well as the pedagogic value of some of the works has continued, perhaps most notably in the promotion of the Cello Suites by Pablo Casals. Another development has been the growth of the authentic or period performance movement, which attempts to present the music as the composer intended it. Examples include the playing of keyboard works on the harpsichord rather than a modern grand piano, and the use of small choirs or single voices instead of the larger forces favoured by 19th and early 20th century performers.
Johann Sebastian Bach's contributions to music, or to borrow a term popularized by his student Lorenz Christoph Mizler, "musical science" are frequently compared to the "original geniuses" of William Shakespeare in English literature and Isaac Newton in physics.
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