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 Leipzig (1723-1750) This period saw Bach’s choral music flourish and includes several full year cycles of cantatas which he wrote for each Sunday. Prior to this, he had been employed for the post of cantor at St. Thomas’ School in Leipzig. It was a position which he considered as an opportunity for free educational opportunities for his numerous talented children.  His duties at St. Thomas’ School were much and it included teaching in the school and also supervising the music in four Liepzig Churches to which the school furnished choristers. Amidst all these, he still found out the time to direct a local music society choir, the Collegium Musicum, for which he composed and arranged a number of concertos and other secular music. This period, however, produced some important keyboard works which include Part II Of The Well-Tempered Clavier and the remarkable Clavierubung(“Keyboard Studies”), a four-volume series. At the end of his life, Bach’s eyesight completely failed. Nevert...

Johann Sebastian Bach was born in 1685 and was a contemporary of George Handel. He was an outstanding German composer of the Baroque. He was born in Eisenach, and he was the son of a town musician.Bach was orphaned at age ten and had to go and live with his elder brother, Johann Christoph Bach who was also an organist at Ohrdruf. In addition to receiving keyboard instruction from this capable musician, Bach was also an outstanding student in the Ohrdruf Lyceum. In 1700-1702, he completed his rather meager education in St. Luneburg, where he earned his living as a soprano singer in the unusually fine church choir. At the age of 18, he took up a job briefly as a violinist at Weimar, then held more responsible posts as organist at Arnstadt(1703-1707) and Muhlhausen(1707-1708). Bach's later activities as musician and composer reflected the needs of the three musical establishments with which he was associated. Weimar (1708-1717) Bach's duties were connected mainly with religio...

In 1787, he was appointed imperial chamber composer at the meager salary of 800 florins, went to Prague for a performance of his opera, le nozze di figarro(The marriage of figaro) composed in 1786, and was commissioned to write Don Giovanni.  Three years later, at the Austrian emperor’s request, Mozart wrote the opera buffa cosipan tutte(Thus Do They All). In 1791, the year of his death, he created La Clemenza di Tito( The Clemency of Tito) for the coronation of  Emperor Leopold II in Prague. In this Opera, he was unable to rise to the heights of his previous dramatic creations. His genius is once again at its apex, however, in his German opera Die Zauberflote(The Magic Flute), composed in the same year for a Viennese suburban theater. This work is a mixture of comic elements.  As early as 1784, Mozart had joined the masons and a number of his compositions were written for them. His last important work was the Requiem which he was unable to complete.  The causes of M...

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was an outstanding composer born in Salzburg, Austria on January 27, 1756. His father Leopold Mozart was count composer at Salzburg, and from 1762 on was assistant Kappellmeister of the Archbishop of Salzburg. As a child prodigy, Mozart was perhaps unique in history displaying the most outstanding musical gift both as a composer and performer in his early childhood.  In 1762, his father took the six year old, Wolfgang and his older sister, Maria Anna, also known as Nanneri, on highly successful concert tours throughout Europe. Mozart became concert master of the Archbishop of Salzburg’s orchestra in 1769, but interrupted his work for three trips to Italy, where his operas, Mitridate (1770) and Lucio Sila (1772), were performed.  In spite of being refused a leave of absence by the Archbishop’s successor, the count of Colloredo, Mozart together with his mother, went to Munich and Mannheim where he unsuccessfully courted the singer Aloysia Weber. They then...

Opera During his life time, Handel’s fame rested on his achievements as a composer of Italian opera. In this he followed Alessandro Scarlatti, but also absorbed elements of style from Jean Baptiste Lully and his followers. Apart from the few early operas composed in Hamburg on partly German librettos, and  with one exception of the Venetian Agrippina, Handel’s operas were all written for and produced at London opera houses.They employed castrati and prima donnnas and excelled in the beautiful contrapuntal texture of their da capo arias(arias with an ABA form). However, Handel had no confidence in the possibility of an English national opera. When his Neapolitan brand of opera finally failed, especially as it was satirized in “The Beggar’s opera” and in “The  Dragon of Wantley”, Handel’s creative interest shifted to oratorios. Oratorio The oratorios which had a strong popular appeal, encouraging the British audience to identify themselves with the heroic Jewish people of ...

In 1710, Handel was appointed court conductor in Hanover, and also visited London. Around this time, he produced his opera Ronaldo (1711). However, after travelling several times between Hanover and London in the following years, he decided to settle in Great Britain after the spectacular success of his Te Deum, which was first performed to celebrate the peace of Utrecht in 1713. At this point in his career, he established a link with the court of St. James, although still nominally in the service of the Grand Elector of Hanover, who eventually became George I of Great Britain. Following a last visit to Hanover in  1716 when the Brockes Passion was composed, Handel’s connection with his native country, Germany, ended. He became a British citizen by the act  of parliament in 1727, and anglicized his name. The next few years, he dedicated to composing the first and second water music, the anthems for the Duke of Chandos, and the early masques. Handel’s struggle for supremacy a...