Programme notes for a Bela Siki Concert in New Zealand.
Johann Christian Bach
Johann Christian Bach
Johann Christian Bach was the 18th child of Johann Sebastien Bach, the youngest of his 11 sons, born on the 5th September 1735 in Leipzig. He was first taught by his father however after his father’s death when he was aged 15, his half-brother Carl Phillipp Emmanuel Bach, 21 years his senior instructed him in Berlin. During his time in Berlin, he performed some of his own works in public for the first time. He was his father’s copyist in the last years of his father’s life.
He lived in Italy for a period from 1754 and he became organist at the Milan Cathedral in 1760. It was during his time in Italy that Johann Christian Bach converted from Lutheranism to Catholicism. He devoted much of his time to the composition of church music whilst in Italy.
By Pompeo Girolamo Batoni - https://www.sellingantiques.co.uk/606548/a-portrait-of-the-composer-johann-christian-bach-17351782/, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=114982501
Milan Cathedral by Bernt Rostad - Taken from Flickr https://www.flickr.com/photos/brostad/3455659602/, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7441793
By Bach, Johann Christian, 1735-1782 [performer]Abel, Karl Friedrich, 1723-1787 [performer]Bach, Johann Christian, 1735-1782 [funder/Sponsor]Abel, Karl Friedrich, 1723-1787 [funder/Sponsor]Incledon, Charles Benjamin, 1763-1826 [performer] - Digital Bodleian This file comes from the John Johnson Collection of Printed Ephemera.This file comes from the Bodleian Libraries, a group of research libraries in Oxford University. Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47914806
In 1762 Johann Christian Bach moved to London becoming known as the “London” Bach. He travelled to London to premiere three operas, one of which was Orione. (This was one of the first few musical works to use the clarinet.) In London he was known as John. He became music master to Queen Charlotte, his duties included teaching music to the Queen and her children, accompanying the King’s flute playing and directing the Queen’s band. In 1766 he married the soprano Cecilia Grassi. They did not have any children. Also, in 1762 he became composer to the King’s Theatre in London, writing several Italian operas for it. He was the only of J. S. Bach’s sons to write operas in the Italian language. In 1764 he commenced his fashionable series of subscription concerts with the viola da gamba (a forerunner of the cello) player Karl Abel. Abel and Bach conducted the concerts on an alternate basis and many of their own compositions were played. These concerts at the Great room in Spring Gardens, Carlisle House in Soho, formerly St James, Almack’s Assembly Rooms and then at the bespoke concert room they had built in Hanover Square became a very fashionable public entertainment in London. (The Hanover Square Rooms were demolished in 1900.) Johann Christian Bach also composed many songs for the open-air concerts at Vauxhall Gardens.
He is noted for being an influence on Haydn and Mozart regarding the concerto and he contributed significantly to the development of the new sonata framework. In 1764 Mozart met Johann Christian Bach in London, spending nearly 18 months being taught by him. Mozart valued the time he spent with Bach and when he heard of his death he stated, “What a loss to the musical world!’”. In Maurice Hinson’s book “At the Piano with the Sons of Bach” he states that “Mozart was deeply impressed by the lovely lyrical melodies in Christian’s music, its sensitive elegance and its effective use of melodic contrast”.
Johann Christian Bach’s compositions include cantatas, chamber music, keyboard and orchestral works, operas and symphonies. Some of his compositions were written for the needs of his pupils. In Maurice Hinson’s book “At the Piano with the Sons of Bach” he describes Johann Christian Bach’s music as being influenced by “the brilliance and sensuousness of Italian opera and the melodic grandeur of Italian church music”. The Britannica states that his music “reflects the pleasant melodiousness of the galant, or Rococo style. Its Italian grace influenced composers of the Classical period”. The word rococo from the French word rocaille, means “rockwork”. The rococo style is explained in Maurice Hinson’s book “At the Piano with the Sons of Bach” as being “characterised by ornamental delicacy, graceful elegance, and (often) sophisticated wit.” Galaxy music notes states “his deliberate attempt to signify instrumental music as a manifestation of musical passion, bereft of the contrapuntal complexity and intellectual severity of the earlier eras, deserves plaudits”. His compositions belong to the new homophonic style of writing and contain a strong Italian essence.
From Alamy.com
In 1765 Johann Christian’s opera Adriano in Siria was performed. The Guardian states “despite the high quality – both musically and dramatically – of Adriano in Siria, it received only seven performances, and it was never revived. The Italian members of the original cast and audiences saw to that. To them it seemed inconceivable that a non-Italian could compose a good opera (Mozart was to come up against the same prejudices in Vienna just three years later), and an amusing letter from May 1765 to The Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, written by an anonymous footman at the King’s theatre, records that “the extraordinary merit of Mr Bach’s Adriano in Siria could not rescue it from the vengeance of these destroyers; it was doomed to oblivion as soon as it was presented: and why? Because forsooth Mr Bach did not breathe Italian air as soon as he was born. All but the Italians acknowledged the beauties of Mr Bach’s operas; and none but the Italians could have been capable of smothering so elegant a production.”
By the late 1770s however, his popularity and finances were in decline. His steward embezzled most of his money. Queen Charlotte covered the expenses of his estate, and his widow was provided with a pension for life.
Johann Christian Bach was friends with the painter Thomas Gainsborough.
Johann Christian Bach’s opus numbers are listed using a ‘W’ as they are taken from Ernest Warburton’s “The Collected Works of Johann Christian Bach”. The opus numbers have sub-categories such as ‘A’ for keyboard works and ‘E’ for liturgical works.
He was buried in the Old St Pancras Cemetery in a pauper’s grave on the 6th January 1782, his name is misspelt in the burial register as Back.
www.britiannica.com/biography/Johann-Christian-Bach
www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Johann_Christian_Bach
www.guardian.com/music/2015/apr/10/jc-bach-london-mozart-classical-opera-adriano-in-siria
www.rslade.co.uk/18th-centruy-music/composers/johann/christian-bach
At the Piano with the Sons of Bach, edited by Maurice Hinson, Alfred Publishing 1995
