ヨハン・ゼバスティアン・バッハ

バッハは1685年、ドイツのアイゼナハで、何代も続く音楽家の家に生まれました。ところが9歳で母を、10歳で父を亡くし、オールドルフに住む長兄ヨハン・クリストフに引き取られます。兄からオルガンや鍵盤楽器を習い、15歳になると北ドイツのリューネブルクの学校へ。聖歌隊で歌いながら、図書館の楽譜を熱心に学びました。Bach was born in 1685 in Eisenach, Germany, into a family that had produced musicians for generations. But he lost his mother at nine and his father at ten, and his oldest brother, Johann Christoph, took him in. His brother taught him the organ and keyboard. At fifteen, Bach went to a school in Lüneburg in northern Germany, where he sang in the choir and studied every score he could find.

大人になったバッハは、アルンシュタットやヴァイマルでオルガン奏者として腕をみがき、ケーテンの宮廷では楽団のリーダーになりました。ここで「ブランデンブルク協奏曲」をまとめ上げ、「平均律クラヴィーア曲集」第1巻を完成させます。1723年からは亡くなるまで、ライプツィヒの「トーマスカントル」（町の音楽監督）として、町のおもな教会の音楽を受けもちました。とくに最初の数年間は、ほぼ毎週のように新しい教会カンタータを書いています。As a young man, Bach worked as an organist in Arnstadt and Weimar, and later led the court orchestra in Köthen. There he put together the Brandenburg Concertos and completed the first book of The Well-Tempered Clavier. From 1723 until his death, he was Thomaskantor in Leipzig, in charge of music for the city's main churches. In his first few years there, he wrote a new church cantata almost every week.

バッハの人生には悲しみも多くありました。1720年、旅から帰ると最初の妻マリア・バルバラはすでに亡くなり、葬られた後でした。翌年、歌手のアンナ・マグダレーナと再婚します。二人の妻との間に生まれた子どもは20人にのぼりますが、大人になれたのは約半分でした。それでも家はいつも音楽でいっぱいで、息子たちの何人かは有名な作曲家になりました。Bach's life also had great sadness. In 1720 he came home from a trip to find that his first wife, Maria Barbara, had died and was already buried. The next year he married a singer, Anna Magdalena. He had twenty children with his two wives, but only about half lived to adulthood. Still, his home was always full of music, and several of his sons became famous composers.

晩年のバッハは目が悪くなり、1750年に手術を受けましたがうまくいかず、同じ年の7月に65歳で亡くなりました。死後、大きな合唱曲などはあまり演奏されなくなりますが、鍵盤やオルガンの曲は音楽家たちに学ばれつづけました。そして1829年、20歳のメンデルスゾーンが「マタイ受難曲」を指揮して大評判に。バッハは広く見直され、今では日本で「音楽の父」と呼ばれ、多くの作曲家や学生に学ばれています。In his last years, Bach's eyesight failed. He had eye operations in 1750, but they did not help, and he died that July at the age of 65. After his death, his large choral works were rarely performed, but musicians kept studying and playing his keyboard and organ music. Then in 1829, twenty-year-old Felix Mendelssohn conducted the St. Matthew Passion, and it caused a sensation. Interest in Bach grew widely. Today he is called the Father of Music in Japan, and generations of composers and students have studied his works.