Johann Christian Bach

Johann Christian Bach, the youngest son of Johann Sebastian Bach, was renowned in his time for his many operas, which exhibit great melodic invention and innovative orchestration. As a standard bearer of galant style, his instrumental creations, especially the overtures for double orchestra and the various sinfonia concertante, were very popular with the concert audiences and became new models for other composers such as Mozart. Sometimes known as the "London Bach" (to distinguish him from his brother, the "Berlin Bach," Carl Philipp Emanuel), he co-founded the Bach-Abel series of concerts and participated in Vauxhall recitals, forerunners of modern public concerts, which introduced the latest music and gained him acclaim as a keyboardist. It is presumed that Johann Sebastian gave the boy solid musical instruction before he died when Johann Christian was 14. Johann Christian was then sent to Berlin to live and study with his well-established, much older half-brother Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach. At the age of 19, Johann Christian set off for Italy, where he studied with Padre Martini, began writing church music, converted to Catholicism, and started using the galant style. In 1760 he became one of two organists at the Milan Cathedral, but more importantly, he was commissioned to write the opera Artaserse with Pietro Metastasio's libretto. It was the first in a string of three successful opera seria, which resulted in a call from London to write for the new King's Theatre in Haymarket. Moving to London in 1762, his first effort there, Orione, was produced on February 19, 1763. It won considerable praise and was transformed into a sensation when King George III and Queen Charlotte returned to see it again the next night. The Queen hired him as her household musician and teacher for herself and her children. He was also an on-call accompanist for whenever King George decided to play flute. He dedicated his Six Harpsichord Concertos, Op. 1 (1763) to the Queen. He met the Mozart family when they visited in 1764 and became a strong influence on the talented young Wolfgang. Mozart acknowledged his debt to his mentor by using several of Bach's piano sonatas as the bases for his own piano concertos. Bach also befriended the musician and historian Charles Burney, and the painter Thomas Gainsborough, whose portrait of Bach has become the most well-known image of the composer. Bach began sharing a residence with composer and viola da gamba player Carl Friedrich Abel. They staged joint concerts, known as the Bach-Abel concerts, which ran from 1764 to 1782 and allowed Bach to premiere many of his chamber works for various combinations of strings, woodwinds, and keyboard; concertos; and symphonies. In the autumn of 1766, Johann Christian became acquainted with soprano Cecilia Grassi, whom he would later marry. Bach made history in 1768 by becoming the first person to give a solo piano performance in London, in a benefit concert to aid oboist J.C. Fisher. Bach's Six Sonatas, Op. 5, were the first to be published (1766) with the designation of the pianoforte as the first choice of instrument, rather than the harpsichord. He had agreements with publishers in London and Paris, but in 1774 he sued Longman, Lukey & Co. which had produced unauthorized copies of his music. A ruling in Bach's favor established that music scores were protected by copyright laws. Bach continued to compose operas for theaters in London and on the Continent, and vocal music for Vauxhall. The first of two operas for the court of the Elector Palatine Carl Theodor, Temistocle of 1772, to a libretto again by Metastasio, is noted for vocal and instrumental writing requiring great virtuosity. Also in that year, his wife took part in the premiere of his serenata Endimione at the King's Theatre. Bach's last Italian opera was La Clemenza di Scipione presented at the King's Theatre on April 4, 1778. Amadis de Gaule (1779), to a rather rambling tragédie lyrique text by Philippe Quinault based on a medieval romance rather than ancient mythology, was Johann Christian's only French opera and his most ambitious, but it was a failure. Around the same time, the Bach-Abel concerts began losing popularity, and Bach discovered that his steward had embezzled practically all his wealth. He died in 1782 at the age of 46 in considerable debt. Queen Charlotte met the immediate expenses of the estate and established a life pension for Bach's widow.
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