Johann Sebastian Bach

The Profile

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750) was a German Baroque composer and organist, widely regarded as one of the greatest composers in Western music. His output spans sacred and secular music and is renowned for counterpoint and structural mastery.

Born 1685 in Eisenach; died 1750 in Leipzig. Worked in posts including Weimar, Köthen, and Leipzig. Known for keyboard, organ, orchestral, chamber, and sacred vocal works; frequently cited as a pinnacle of contrapuntal writing.

Across these reviews, Bach is treated as a near-mythic benchmark: the architect of counterpoint, endlessly modern, and strangely personal despite all that abstraction. Writers obsess over fugues, variations, and the feeling of “absolute music,” from the Goldberg Variations to The Art of Fugue. There’s also plenty of performer-talk: Glenn Gould, harpsichord “correctness,” period instruments, and recordings that reframe familiar masterpieces.