0:00:05 > 0:00:09Johann Sebastian Bach is the ultimate composer's composer,
0:00:09 > 0:00:13influencing countless others who followed him, from Mozart
0:00:13 > 0:00:15to Mendelssohn, Beethoven to Brahms,
0:00:15 > 0:00:18and not just in classical music.
0:00:18 > 0:00:20From Duke Ellington, to the Beatles.
0:00:20 > 0:00:23Musicians in jazz and pop have also fallen under his spell
0:00:23 > 0:00:26and learnt from his techniques.
0:00:26 > 0:00:33Bach is still the benchmark, a musical gold standard.
0:00:33 > 0:00:35We know very little about Bach's life.
0:00:35 > 0:00:38There are only a few facts to go on, and our image of him
0:00:38 > 0:00:42is skewed by statues and paintings of a stern,
0:00:42 > 0:00:45forbidding figure in a frock coat and a powdered wig.
0:00:45 > 0:00:47But then there's the music.
0:00:47 > 0:00:49# Herr
0:00:49 > 0:00:51# Herr
0:00:51 > 0:00:53# Herr... #
0:00:53 > 0:00:55The music tells us something completely different about him.
0:00:55 > 0:00:59It's full of energy, full of dance, full of life.
0:00:59 > 0:01:04Over a lifetime of getting to know, singing and conducting Bach's music,
0:01:04 > 0:01:09I've formed a series of hunches about his personality and character.
0:01:09 > 0:01:12In this film, I want to test them out with fellow Bach enthusiasts
0:01:12 > 0:01:16and scholars, and performs some of his most important works, to see
0:01:16 > 0:01:21what they can tell us about the extraordinary man who composed them.
0:01:21 > 0:01:24He really throws everything at it.
0:01:24 > 0:01:26You know, it's just such an overwhelming exploration
0:01:26 > 0:01:30of what is to be a human being.
0:01:30 > 0:01:33I think he's a scientist at work, and instead of using
0:01:33 > 0:01:39the language of mathematics, he's a scientist using music.
0:01:39 > 0:01:41The level of inspiration on which he works is, I think,
0:01:41 > 0:01:45unparalleled in the rest of music.
0:01:50 > 0:01:53Such splendour and wonderfulness, that, on its own,
0:01:53 > 0:01:55would convince me that there was a God
0:01:55 > 0:01:58if I felt inclined to take that conclusion from it.
0:01:58 > 0:02:03In this film, I want to build a new statue of Bach, to see
0:02:03 > 0:02:05if we can detect a beating heart
0:02:05 > 0:02:09and a more approachable personality underneath the wig.
0:02:21 > 0:02:24My own engagement with Bach began as a small child
0:02:24 > 0:02:26growing up on a farm in Dorset.
0:02:26 > 0:02:27Just before the war,
0:02:27 > 0:02:30a refugee from Nazi Germany arrived with a painting in his rucksack,
0:02:30 > 0:02:33one that his great-grandfather had bought in a junk shop.
0:02:33 > 0:02:36He asked my father to look after it for him.
0:02:36 > 0:02:41It was one of only two portraits painted of JS Bach in his lifetime.
0:02:44 > 0:02:47So I passed it every day of my life, until I was ten,
0:02:47 > 0:02:52when the painting was sold and moved to Princeton, New Jersey.
0:02:52 > 0:02:56This is the first time I've seen it since 1953.
0:02:56 > 0:03:00What's so striking to me, seeing it again, is the intensity of his gaze.
0:03:00 > 0:03:06Those eyes. It's just extraordinary, they're so penetrative.
0:03:06 > 0:03:10I still feel there's a division between the upper half
0:03:10 > 0:03:12of his face and the bottom half.
0:03:12 > 0:03:17The upper half is so intense, it's got that beetle-browed,
0:03:17 > 0:03:20slightly myopic look.
0:03:20 > 0:03:23Below that, you see somebody quite different,
0:03:23 > 0:03:28somebody much more approachable, somebody who enjoyed
0:03:28 > 0:03:32the good things of life, a bon viveur, who enjoyed his tobacco
0:03:32 > 0:03:34and his wine and his beer,
0:03:34 > 0:03:37and there's plenty of records of what he drank.
0:03:37 > 0:03:41And the father of 20 children and two wives.
0:03:43 > 0:03:46We know pitifully few hard facts about Bach.
0:03:46 > 0:03:51There's very little to go on, and only a handful of personal letters.
0:03:51 > 0:03:55But, as in any good detective story, it's often the gaps,
0:03:55 > 0:03:57the seeming contradictions in the tale,
0:03:57 > 0:03:59that are as suggestive and intriguing
0:03:59 > 0:04:02as the hard evidence available.
0:04:05 > 0:04:10We do know that Johann Sebastian was born on 21 March 1685,
0:04:10 > 0:04:15in Eisenach, in the middle of modern-day Germany.
0:04:21 > 0:04:26This is the so-called Bachhaus, now a museum devoted to him.
0:04:26 > 0:04:30Until recently, it billed itself as the house where Bach was born
0:04:30 > 0:04:34and where he grew up. We now know that's definitely not the case.
0:04:34 > 0:04:36As with so much of his life,
0:04:36 > 0:04:39exactly where Bach was born remains a mystery.
0:04:43 > 0:04:46Johann Sebastian was baptised here, at two days old,
0:04:46 > 0:04:48in St George's Church in Eisenach.
0:04:50 > 0:04:53Later, he sang here in the choir.
0:04:53 > 0:04:56As a child, he's said to have had an unusually fine treble voice.
0:04:57 > 0:05:00200 years before him, there was another chorister
0:05:00 > 0:05:03who stood in exactly the same place.
0:05:03 > 0:05:05Now that was Martin Luther.
0:05:05 > 0:05:12And Luther created a revolution here in this part of Germany.
0:05:12 > 0:05:14Bach's whole life was to be
0:05:14 > 0:05:17profoundly influenced by Luther's Reformation.
0:05:17 > 0:05:20Luther set in train a new way of worship.
0:05:20 > 0:05:24It totally transformed the role of language and music in church.
0:05:24 > 0:05:27Bach's own music was filtered through his strongly held
0:05:27 > 0:05:32Lutheran beliefs and upbringing.
0:05:32 > 0:05:37Luther preached his Reformation here in the Georgenkirche in 1521.
0:05:37 > 0:05:40Then he disappeared.
0:05:41 > 0:05:43Actually, he hadn't gone far.
0:05:43 > 0:05:47In fact, in the greatest of secrecy, Luther was in hiding up here
0:05:47 > 0:05:51in the Wartburg, the imposing castle that looms above the town of Eisenach.
0:06:02 > 0:06:09His Reformation had made Luther the most wanted man in Europe.
0:06:09 > 0:06:13So, this is the little room where Luther lived.
0:06:13 > 0:06:18For ten months here he was holed up, imprisoned, really, for his own good,
0:06:18 > 0:06:21because he was on the run from the Pope, from the Emperor.
0:06:23 > 0:06:25He was desperately constipated.
0:06:25 > 0:06:29"The Lord has struck me in the rear," he said.
0:06:29 > 0:06:31And he thought that the devil was pelting him
0:06:31 > 0:06:33with walnuts from the ceiling.
0:06:37 > 0:06:40Luther decided that his best weapon
0:06:40 > 0:06:43to use against the devil was black ink.
0:06:43 > 0:06:47And, in a matter of weeks, he sat down at this desk
0:06:47 > 0:06:53and he wrote a translation, from the Greek,
0:06:53 > 0:06:55of the New Testament.
0:06:55 > 0:06:59And it wasn't just any old German, he decided that he needed
0:06:59 > 0:07:04to amalgamate 18 different dialects and, in effect,
0:07:04 > 0:07:09he established the roots of the German language as we know it.
0:07:09 > 0:07:12Not only did Luther want the Bible to be in the language of the people,
0:07:12 > 0:07:16he also wanted them to be able to join in the music,
0:07:16 > 0:07:18something that, in the Catholic church,
0:07:18 > 0:07:21was much more the province of trained choirs.
0:07:24 > 0:07:28Luther was convinced that music added extra expression
0:07:28 > 0:07:31and eloquence to the biblical text.
0:07:31 > 0:07:35"The notes make the words come alive," he wrote.
0:07:35 > 0:07:41"In fact, without music, man is little more than a stone."
0:07:41 > 0:07:43So, the words appealed to the intellect,
0:07:43 > 0:07:46and the music appealed to the passions.
0:07:46 > 0:07:49And, besides, why should the devil have all the good tunes?
0:07:49 > 0:07:52Luther and his followers made sure he didn't.
0:07:52 > 0:07:56They choraled secular tunes that everybody knew,
0:07:56 > 0:08:00including quite earthy love songs, and then set them to new words
0:08:00 > 0:08:05so that the congregation could belt them out in church.
0:08:05 > 0:08:06Hymns, or chorales, written by Luther
0:08:06 > 0:08:10and his followers became absolutely central to Protestant worship,
0:08:10 > 0:08:13and of course to the music of Bach.
0:08:17 > 0:08:19The impact of the reformer Luther
0:08:19 > 0:08:23on the impressionable young Bach was immeasurable.
0:08:23 > 0:08:26It shaped his whole view of the world,
0:08:26 > 0:08:28it bolstered his sense of worth
0:08:28 > 0:08:34as a craftsman musician, and reinforced his service to the Church.
0:08:34 > 0:08:36It's such an announcement,
0:08:36 > 0:08:39a proclamation of the arrival on Earth of the Christ child.
0:08:39 > 0:08:41Relish the words. Relish them.
0:08:41 > 0:08:43So, "Brich an..."
0:09:46 > 0:09:49Bach's destiny was to become a musician.
0:09:49 > 0:09:51Music was the family business.
0:09:51 > 0:09:56In this part of Germany, in the heart of the Thuringian forest,
0:09:56 > 0:09:59the Bach family were thick on the ground.
0:09:59 > 0:10:02They provided a support system to each other,
0:10:02 > 0:10:06and they carved up the different roles of organist and cantor,
0:10:06 > 0:10:10and Hausmann - the head of the local wind band - between them.
0:10:10 > 0:10:12And, in fact, they became almost
0:10:12 > 0:10:18so important here that the word Bach and musician became synonymous.
0:10:18 > 0:10:21MUSIC: "Quodlibet, BWV 524" by JS Bach
0:10:25 > 0:10:27The Bach clan knew how to let their hair down,
0:10:27 > 0:10:32and often got together for raucous family celebrations.
0:10:32 > 0:10:35Sebastian, the youngest of eight brothers and sisters, was thus
0:10:35 > 0:10:41surrounded by music at home, in church and in school.
0:10:41 > 0:10:47I have in my hands what was probably the most precious book of Bach's childhood.
0:10:47 > 0:10:49It's certainly the one he used every day of his life
0:10:49 > 0:10:52until he left Eisenach.
0:10:52 > 0:10:57It's the Eisenachisches Gesangbuch, the songbook used in church
0:10:57 > 0:10:58and used in school.
0:10:58 > 0:11:06It has wonderful copper engravings which show David and Solomon in the Temple,
0:11:06 > 0:11:09surrounded by their temple musicians,
0:11:09 > 0:11:10and the connections that Bach
0:11:10 > 0:11:14must've made in his mind, between his family
0:11:14 > 0:11:17of the most famous musicians in the area, with a long,
0:11:17 > 0:11:22dynastic lineage going all the way back to Solomon.
0:11:24 > 0:11:27Because he wrote so many masterpieces of sacred music,
0:11:27 > 0:11:28in the 19th-century,
0:11:28 > 0:11:30religiously-inclined writers
0:11:30 > 0:11:32liked to picture Bach as a saintly figure,
0:11:32 > 0:11:34a kind of fifth Evangelist
0:11:34 > 0:11:38to match the goody two-shoes image of his childhood.
0:11:38 > 0:11:42But, in recent years, this picture has started to change.
0:11:42 > 0:11:47This is a book containing the records of Bach's school performance,
0:11:47 > 0:11:51and it gives us his syllabus of classes that he attended,
0:11:51 > 0:11:55and it also shows that, for example, in the third year,
0:11:55 > 0:11:59he came 46th out of 89 pupils,
0:11:59 > 0:12:05and what's more, it tells us that he missed 96 separate classes.
0:12:08 > 0:12:10This is a fascinating document,
0:12:10 > 0:12:13because it's somehow slipped under the radar.
0:12:13 > 0:12:16It's a report on school conditions in the Latin school
0:12:16 > 0:12:21where Bach was a pupil, and it shows the lack of textbooks,
0:12:21 > 0:12:24the overcrowding, the cheeking of the masters,
0:12:24 > 0:12:27the throwing of bricks through the windows,
0:12:27 > 0:12:29all sorts of proto-hooliganism
0:12:29 > 0:12:34and it's been, kind of, neatly ironed out of all the biographies,
0:12:34 > 0:12:37so it's really interesting to come to light now.
0:12:41 > 0:12:45Since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany,
0:12:45 > 0:12:49more documents have come to light that greatly enhance
0:12:49 > 0:12:51our knowledge of Bach.
0:12:51 > 0:12:54In particular, the Bach Archives in Leipzig have made huge strides
0:12:54 > 0:12:57in discovering more about the composer's working methods,
0:12:57 > 0:13:02and, for the first time, opened their doors to researchers.
0:13:02 > 0:13:05All the significant documents about Bach, many originals,
0:13:05 > 0:13:08some copies, are here.
0:13:08 > 0:13:13When Bach was 50, he suddenly got a fascination for family roots
0:13:13 > 0:13:15and family trees, genealogy,
0:13:15 > 0:13:19so, he wanted to give himself legitimacy in some way.
0:13:19 > 0:13:24And here's an example, and it shows the whole Bach family,
0:13:24 > 0:13:27starting with the legendary figure of Veit Bach,
0:13:27 > 0:13:29who arrived from Hungary in the middle of the 16th century,
0:13:29 > 0:13:33and it goes all the way through to Bach himself,
0:13:33 > 0:13:37who's over here, and then his children, and his grandchildren.
0:13:37 > 0:13:42You'll notice every single member of the Bach family is a man.
0:13:42 > 0:13:46All blokes, not a single woman.
0:13:46 > 0:13:47But mothers, sisters
0:13:47 > 0:13:51and aunts must have participated in the family music-making.
0:13:51 > 0:13:56So, was it nature or nurture that we have to thank for the genius of Bach?
0:13:56 > 0:14:00When he was 50, he did a family tree and he also assembled
0:14:00 > 0:14:04pieces of his ancestors' music, and there was one person
0:14:04 > 0:14:07that he singled out as being a profound composer,
0:14:07 > 0:14:10and another one who he singled out as being an able composer,
0:14:10 > 0:14:13but there obviously wasn't anybody of enormous quality
0:14:13 > 0:14:15until he came along,
0:14:15 > 0:14:19and yet he was one of five brothers, four brothers - how come, he,
0:14:19 > 0:14:22and not the others, popped up above the parapet?
0:14:22 > 0:14:26He's such a good example, because he really undermines
0:14:26 > 0:14:30any simplistic explanation of his genius, of genius.
0:14:30 > 0:14:34I mean, if you had a genetic explanation,
0:14:34 > 0:14:37the genes would have gone throughout the Bach family - in fact,
0:14:37 > 0:14:40why did they take so long to generate Bach,
0:14:40 > 0:14:41you know, so many generations,
0:14:41 > 0:14:45and I think all of these more general explanations,
0:14:45 > 0:14:49on the basis of genes, or even on the basis of the musical culture
0:14:49 > 0:14:52that surrounds him, do not deliver the singular genius he was.
0:14:52 > 0:14:54And it's a pity in a way,
0:14:54 > 0:14:59we can't accept the singularity of people who are manifestly unique.
0:14:59 > 0:15:04We can't bear the idea that genius is unexplained.
0:15:04 > 0:15:07But that's not to say Bach was self-taught.
0:15:07 > 0:15:10His father's cousin, Johann Christoph,
0:15:10 > 0:15:13was the profound composer he referred to.
0:15:13 > 0:15:15His music, only recently rediscovered,
0:15:15 > 0:15:19is the link between Bach and the earlier German tradition.
0:15:21 > 0:15:25Johann Christoph may also have been Sebastian's first teacher
0:15:25 > 0:15:29at the organ, an instrument he made his own.
0:15:29 > 0:15:33But Johan Christoph's life was a cautionary tale.
0:15:33 > 0:15:37In a sense, the life of Johann Christoph Bach
0:15:37 > 0:15:41exemplifies the problems that musicians had at the time.
0:15:41 > 0:15:47They shuttled between the service of the Church, or of the court,
0:15:47 > 0:15:51or occasionally of the municipality, and in Christoph's case,
0:15:51 > 0:15:56he had all manner of domestic problems - he was shunted,
0:15:56 > 0:15:59also, from pillar to post here in the town,
0:15:59 > 0:16:03the town wouldn't give him a proper dwelling,
0:16:03 > 0:16:08he had illness in his family, he was underpaid and he was
0:16:08 > 0:16:12thoroughly querulous and miserable about it, and died in penury.
0:16:12 > 0:16:17But there is another side to it, and this is one that Sebastian
0:16:17 > 0:16:19may well have picked up from his elder cousin.
0:16:19 > 0:16:25Which is, that as a composer, you can channel all that frustration,
0:16:25 > 0:16:29and disappointment into music,
0:16:29 > 0:16:32and the marvellous thing is about Johann Christoph's music,
0:16:32 > 0:16:37and Sebastian's music, is that it has this wonderfully consoling
0:16:37 > 0:16:39and uplifting quality to it.
0:16:47 > 0:16:52Most of all, Bach's music offers us balm and comfort in bereavement.
0:16:52 > 0:16:56The subject of death appears again and again in his music,
0:16:56 > 0:16:59as it did in his own life.
0:16:59 > 0:17:01This is the town cemetery,
0:17:01 > 0:17:05and Eisenach's old city walls are here on the right,
0:17:05 > 0:17:11and just beyond it is the school where Bach went, the old Dominican cloister.
0:17:11 > 0:17:16Somewhere here, in unmarked graves, are those of his parents,
0:17:16 > 0:17:20Elisabeth and Ambrosius.
0:17:20 > 0:17:23Elisabeth died when Bach was scarcely nine years old.
0:17:23 > 0:17:28And then nine months later, his father, Ambrosius, died, as well.
0:17:28 > 0:17:30Bach, as the youngest son,
0:17:30 > 0:17:36and member of the parish choir, had to witness the whole event
0:17:36 > 0:17:39and sing while the ceremony was going on,
0:17:39 > 0:17:42and the slow tolling of the bells,
0:17:42 > 0:17:46and as the coffin was lowered into the grave,
0:17:46 > 0:17:50he and his fellow choristers sang Luther's words,
0:17:50 > 0:17:53"Mitten wir im Leben sind" -
0:17:53 > 0:17:57"In the midst of life, we're in death."
0:17:57 > 0:18:00His whole world must have collapsed.
0:18:01 > 0:18:06His first wife was to die at the age of just 35.
0:18:06 > 0:18:10Even in an age of high infant mortality, of his 20 children,
0:18:10 > 0:18:14only ten were to reach adulthood.
0:18:16 > 0:18:19After his parents died,
0:18:19 > 0:18:22Sebastian and his elder brother Jakob went to live with a sibling
0:18:22 > 0:18:26they hardly knew, Johann Christoph, 14 years older than Sebastian.
0:18:26 > 0:18:31He was a church organist at Ohrdruf, only 30 miles up the road,
0:18:31 > 0:18:33but it could have been a world away.
0:18:34 > 0:18:38I have come across documents in the local archives that show that
0:18:38 > 0:18:41conditions in Sebastian's school in Ohrdruf were
0:18:41 > 0:18:45every bit as deplorable as in the one he had left behind in Eisenach.
0:18:45 > 0:18:48Roughianism and loutish behaviour were rife here, too,
0:18:48 > 0:18:51and there was a sadistic teacher.
0:18:51 > 0:18:54But, curiously, Bach's grades improved.
0:18:54 > 0:18:57Bach was the youngest son of quite a big family,
0:18:57 > 0:19:00and then suddenly he lost both parents before his tenth birthday.
0:19:00 > 0:19:04He then went to live with his elder brother.
0:19:04 > 0:19:08How much of a trauma can it have been?
0:19:08 > 0:19:10What you're describing is a triple bereavement.
0:19:10 > 0:19:13There is losing the parents, losing the home, new town,
0:19:13 > 0:19:19new place, I would say that is pretty difficult for any child.
0:19:19 > 0:19:22We do have a lot of research showing that this kind of
0:19:22 > 0:19:27early bereavement and uprooting can scar people for life.
0:19:27 > 0:19:31Do you think his school grades are relevant and interesting here,
0:19:31 > 0:19:33because, when he was in Eisenach,
0:19:33 > 0:19:39when he was still with his parents, he played truant an awful lot.
0:19:39 > 0:19:41After he moves into his elder brother's house,
0:19:41 > 0:19:44his school grades rocket, they go way up,
0:19:44 > 0:19:46so there's a big change there,
0:19:46 > 0:19:49do think that's to do with the orphanhood?
0:19:49 > 0:19:53Again, I'm speculating. But what I'm hearing here is that there was
0:19:53 > 0:19:55a horrible, horrible environment in the school,
0:19:55 > 0:19:58but maybe there was a little protection from the home.
0:19:58 > 0:19:59Then he loses the home.
0:19:59 > 0:20:02So now the whole world is a dog-eat-dog situation.
0:20:02 > 0:20:06There's only one person he can rely on, and that's himself.
0:20:06 > 0:20:10Which would explain why he has to be good at school now, doesn't he?
0:20:10 > 0:20:14He has to, because, basically, if you show weakness,
0:20:14 > 0:20:16if you are weak, you suffer and you go under.
0:20:19 > 0:20:22At the age of 15, Bach was awarded a singing scholarship
0:20:22 > 0:20:26at a school in Luneburg, 230 miles to the north.
0:20:26 > 0:20:29He walked the whole way with a schoolfriend, Georg Erdmann,
0:20:29 > 0:20:32who would re-enter the Bach story 30 years later.
0:20:40 > 0:20:45Bach spent three years in Luneburg, from the age of 15 to 18.
0:20:45 > 0:20:48His voice would have broken almost as soon as he got there,
0:20:48 > 0:20:50so what was he doing in the meantime?
0:20:50 > 0:20:53This is one of the great puzzles of Bach's life.
0:20:53 > 0:20:56One thing we do know is that, while he was at Luneburg,
0:20:56 > 0:20:59Bach was acquainted with one of Germany's leading musical figures,
0:20:59 > 0:21:03Georg Bohm, a composer and renowned organist,
0:21:03 > 0:21:06also born in Thuringia, like Bach himself.
0:21:10 > 0:21:15This is a letter Carl Philipp Emanuel wrote to Bach's first biographer,
0:21:15 > 0:21:18Johann Nikolaus Forkel,
0:21:18 > 0:21:23telling him all the bits and pieces he could remember about his father.
0:21:23 > 0:21:29The particularly interesting thing is when he refers to his former teacher,
0:21:29 > 0:21:31Georg Bohm, he crosses it out.
0:21:34 > 0:21:37Why, having written that Bohm was his father's teacher,
0:21:37 > 0:21:40did Emanuel think better of it and erase the reference?
0:21:42 > 0:21:46In 2005, a suggestive new clue came to light.
0:21:48 > 0:21:50Some leaves of organ tablature,
0:21:50 > 0:21:53for many years wrongly catalogued in a German library,
0:21:53 > 0:21:57were rediscovered by Leipzig Bach archivist Michael Maul.
0:21:58 > 0:22:04When I read the Latin phrase at the end of the manuscript,
0:22:04 > 0:22:11"Copied after a manuscript of Georg Bohm in the year 1700 in Luneburg."
0:22:11 > 0:22:15I know one person who was in 1700 in Luneburg
0:22:15 > 0:22:19and was very interested in very good organ music.
0:22:19 > 0:22:21And that's the young JS Bach.
0:22:21 > 0:22:26After comparing the manuscript with the other examples,
0:22:26 > 0:22:30we can be absolutely sure that no-one else than Bach
0:22:30 > 0:22:32is the writer of these manuscripts.
0:22:32 > 0:22:35This is the missing piece in the puzzle, isn't it?
0:22:35 > 0:22:40It says that he wrote this on paper belonging to Georg Bohm.
0:22:40 > 0:22:46He went and maybe became a student or an apprentice to Georg Bohm.
0:22:46 > 0:22:52- Yes.- After his supervision, he wrote out this very difficult piece,
0:22:52 > 0:22:55which proves that he played this music. So he was already a virtuoso.
0:23:01 > 0:23:04Did Emanuel suddenly remember that his father, for some reason,
0:23:04 > 0:23:08didn't wish his relationship with Georg Bohm to be known?
0:23:08 > 0:23:10Did he acknowledge that he learnt from other people?
0:23:10 > 0:23:13Did he acknowledge their greatness?
0:23:13 > 0:23:15This is fascinating, because when he made remarks
0:23:15 > 0:23:21about possible teachers, his son, Emanuel, just erased them.
0:23:21 > 0:23:23So Bach didn't want that to be known.
0:23:23 > 0:23:27He wanted everybody to know that he'd done it entirely on his own,
0:23:27 > 0:23:28off his own back.
0:23:28 > 0:23:31If he had this assumption that you have got to have power
0:23:31 > 0:23:34and you should never show weakness,
0:23:34 > 0:23:37he would be very poor in acknowledging those sources.
0:23:37 > 0:23:42At the age of 18, Bach, as well as being a virtuoso organist,
0:23:42 > 0:23:44was a competent violinist.
0:23:44 > 0:23:49In 1703, he left Luneburg to return to the family stamping ground.
0:23:49 > 0:23:52In Arnstadt, only 30 miles from where Sebastian was born,
0:23:52 > 0:23:55the city fathers had put a tax on beer,
0:23:55 > 0:23:58to pay for a brand-new organ for the Neukirchen.
0:23:59 > 0:24:01Bach was hired to test the new organ
0:24:01 > 0:24:05and to play it in audition in front of the thirsty citizens.
0:24:05 > 0:24:09He landed the job on more money than his father had ever earned.
0:24:09 > 0:24:13But there was a catch the council insisted he provide new music.
0:24:15 > 0:24:19All he had at his disposal was a rag, tag and bobtail band
0:24:19 > 0:24:21made up of mature students.
0:24:21 > 0:24:24Thus, Bach began his career as a composer,
0:24:24 > 0:24:27but not in exactly auspicious circumstances.
0:24:27 > 0:24:30He wrote a cantata, his first,
0:24:30 > 0:24:34in which there's a very important bassoon obbligato,
0:24:34 > 0:24:38a solo for the bassoon, in three of the movements.
0:24:38 > 0:24:40It was a banana skin.
0:24:42 > 0:24:45The bassoon part starts innocuously enough,
0:24:45 > 0:24:48honking away at a steady old lick.
0:24:48 > 0:24:52But then comes a bassoonist's worst nightmare.
0:24:52 > 0:24:54HE PLAYS VERY QUICKLY
0:25:02 > 0:25:06In the space of about two-and-a-half bars, he sends the bassoon
0:25:06 > 0:25:10through a whole list of different keys,
0:25:10 > 0:25:13involving very, very complicated fingerings.
0:25:13 > 0:25:18Deliberately or not, Bach had set a trap for his resident bassoonist.
0:25:18 > 0:25:23He was writing for a fellow called Geyersbach
0:25:23 > 0:25:27who, in rehearsal, made a complete hash of it.
0:25:27 > 0:25:31And Bach was exasperated to the point where he called him
0:25:31 > 0:25:35a "Zippelfagottist", which can be translated variously
0:25:35 > 0:25:39as a nanny goat bassoon or a greenhorn bassoon.
0:25:39 > 0:25:43But, in reality, Bach was calling him a prick.
0:25:45 > 0:25:47Yet another translation is
0:25:47 > 0:25:51"Bassoonist breaking wind after eating a green onion."
0:25:51 > 0:25:53However Geyersbach understood the term,
0:25:53 > 0:25:54he didn't like what he was hearing.
0:25:57 > 0:26:02The insult clearly rankled, and Geyersbach plotted his revenge.
0:26:02 > 0:26:07He and his cronies, well-oiled after a party at a christening,
0:26:07 > 0:26:13sat in wait for Bach, here in the town square.
0:26:13 > 0:26:17Bach was making his way back from playing music at the castle,
0:26:17 > 0:26:22Neideck Castle, and was taken completely by surprise.
0:26:22 > 0:26:25Geyersbach came up to him and demanded an apology,
0:26:25 > 0:26:29and then took his cudgel and hit Bach, smack across the face.
0:26:29 > 0:26:32Bach, in self defence, drew his rapier
0:26:32 > 0:26:35and there was a scuffle, a major scuffle.
0:26:35 > 0:26:39It was only the other students who eventually stopped the whole thing.
0:26:42 > 0:26:46No doubt to Bach's fury, the Church council sided with Geyersbach,
0:26:46 > 0:26:48according to the records.
0:26:48 > 0:26:51And that was far from the last of the problems.
0:26:51 > 0:26:54Bach was accused of introducing strange harmonies
0:26:54 > 0:26:58into his organ music which upset the old dears of the parish.
0:26:58 > 0:27:01He played either far too long or not long enough,
0:27:01 > 0:27:04and he slipped off down to the pub.
0:27:04 > 0:27:08Once, he smuggled a strange girl into his organ loft to make music.
0:27:08 > 0:27:11The final straw came
0:27:11 > 0:27:14when he asked for four weeks' leave to visit the renowned organist
0:27:14 > 0:27:19Buxtehude, walking the whole 260 miles up to Lubeck.
0:27:19 > 0:27:23In fact, he was away four months, not four weeks,
0:27:23 > 0:27:27and was airily dismissive when he was asked to explain himself.
0:27:27 > 0:27:32What we now see is patterns of behaviour that had their origins
0:27:32 > 0:27:36in the unhealthy environment of his early schooling,
0:27:36 > 0:27:38first in Eisenach and then in Ohrdruf.
0:27:38 > 0:27:44Patterns of anger, patterns of dealing with authority
0:27:44 > 0:27:47in a very surly and uncompromising way,
0:27:47 > 0:27:52impatience, and a kind of self-assuredness
0:27:52 > 0:27:54that was bound to rub people up the wrong way.
0:27:54 > 0:27:56# Gott!
0:27:56 > 0:27:59# Gott!
0:27:59 > 0:28:01# Gott ist mein Koenig. #
0:28:02 > 0:28:06Bach is commemorated in Arnstadt by this curious recent statue
0:28:06 > 0:28:08in "Jack the Lad" pose,
0:28:08 > 0:28:11perhaps in a nod to his feisty and fractious stay here.
0:28:16 > 0:28:21His time in Arnstadt came to an end when, in 1707,
0:28:21 > 0:28:24he was offered a new post 50 miles up the road in Muhlhausen.
0:28:26 > 0:28:29The city had been thriving but it was Bach's bad luck
0:28:29 > 0:28:34to arrive just after a disastrous fire had wreaked havoc in the city.
0:28:34 > 0:28:37Caught up in a local dispute between the clergy,
0:28:37 > 0:28:41Bach moved on in less than a year, but two significant things happened.
0:28:41 > 0:28:45First, aged 22, he married his cousin, Maria Barbara.
0:28:45 > 0:28:49And then, he wrote one of the most important documents we have.
0:28:49 > 0:28:54Here's a letter that Bach wrote to the Muhlhausen town council
0:28:54 > 0:28:59explaining the reasons why he handed in his resignation,
0:28:59 > 0:29:02and the interesting thing from our point of view is that he defines
0:29:02 > 0:29:07his "Endzweck" as he called it, his final ambition, his goal in life.
0:29:08 > 0:29:13The key phrase is "a well-regulated church music to the glory of God".
0:29:15 > 0:29:18Germany was on the brink of the Enlightenment.
0:29:18 > 0:29:21The Scientific Revolution had been in full swing
0:29:21 > 0:29:24for over a century, but superstition was still rife.
0:29:24 > 0:29:28Here, as late as the 1730s, witches were being burned at the stake.
0:29:29 > 0:29:33The Thirty Years' War had ended in 1648, and in its wake
0:29:33 > 0:29:35came a strong revival of Lutheranism.
0:29:35 > 0:29:38Bach took it upon himself to lay down
0:29:38 > 0:29:42the New and the Old Testament Commandments with renewed force.
0:31:18 > 0:31:24In 1708, Bach left Muhlhausen for the elegant Court of Weimar.
0:31:24 > 0:31:27This was a real turning point. For the first time in his life,
0:31:27 > 0:31:30he was able to call on good quality musicians.
0:31:30 > 0:31:32But as so often in his career, there was a snag.
0:31:32 > 0:31:37In fact, there were two of them. Weimar was ruled by a pair of dukes,
0:31:37 > 0:31:41an uncle and nephew team. It was a recipe for disaster.
0:31:41 > 0:31:47The musicians were employed by both, but the uncle made it known
0:31:47 > 0:31:50to the musicians that if they played for his nephew,
0:31:50 > 0:31:53they would be liable to be flogged, dismissed out of hand.
0:31:53 > 0:31:56In fact, there was one poor horn player who was
0:31:56 > 0:31:57dismissed on the spot,
0:31:57 > 0:32:01flogged, and then eventually hung as an example -
0:32:01 > 0:32:03terrible example - to all the other musicians,
0:32:03 > 0:32:05what would happen if they stepped out of line.
0:32:14 > 0:32:18One might imagine that in such a fraught, tense situation,
0:32:18 > 0:32:21nothing creative could've come out of Bach's time in Weimar,
0:32:21 > 0:32:23but of course, the opposite is true.
0:32:23 > 0:32:26It was a hugely stimulating time for him.
0:32:26 > 0:32:29His first encounter with the Italian music of Vivaldi
0:32:29 > 0:32:34and of Corelli and so on. And from Bach's own compositional activity,
0:32:34 > 0:32:36it was an enormously important time.
0:32:36 > 0:32:41We got the beginnings of his really, really important keyboard works,
0:32:41 > 0:32:45and not only that, his cantatas - amazing cantatas -
0:32:45 > 0:32:48that he started to write for Weimar,
0:32:48 > 0:32:51for the Capella and performed up in the Himmelsburg.
0:33:00 > 0:33:04Originally, a cantata was a small, intimate Italian piece
0:33:04 > 0:33:08for a solo voice and a couple of instruments.
0:33:08 > 0:33:11But soon, it was taken over by German composers in the century
0:33:11 > 0:33:15before Bach and was associated with the Lutheran liturgy.
0:33:17 > 0:33:19But by the time Bach came along,
0:33:19 > 0:33:23it had grown into something almost gargantuan.
0:33:23 > 0:33:28His 200 pieces last anything from 25 to 30 minutes each,
0:33:28 > 0:33:32occupied a place somewhere between the reading of the lesson
0:33:32 > 0:33:36and the sermon, and they reflected the theme of the day, as it were.
0:33:38 > 0:33:44You pity the unfortunate preacher who had to follow music as eloquent as this.
0:34:33 > 0:34:37Bach demonstrates his fantastic ability to set a scene.
0:34:37 > 0:34:40In this case, Jesus knocking at the door of the human heart.
0:35:43 > 0:35:46Bach wrote more than 20 cantatas in Weimar,
0:35:46 > 0:35:50but having proved his early mastery of the form, he suddenly stopped.
0:35:50 > 0:35:53The court's musical director had died,
0:35:53 > 0:35:56and when the resulting vacancy was filled by his son,
0:35:56 > 0:36:01a musical nullity, and not by Bach, his reaction was to down tools.
0:36:01 > 0:36:03He simply stopped composing.
0:36:06 > 0:36:07It went from bad to worse.
0:36:07 > 0:36:10When Bach asked to leave his employ, the fiery Wilhelm Ernst
0:36:10 > 0:36:13had him thrown into jail.
0:36:13 > 0:36:16Bach thus became one of the few composers in history
0:36:16 > 0:36:18to do hard time.
0:36:18 > 0:36:21Some of his music, technically the property of his employer,
0:36:21 > 0:36:23may have stayed on at Weimar.
0:36:23 > 0:36:2770 years later, the Himmelsburg burned to the ground
0:36:27 > 0:36:29and Bach's music was lost for ever.
0:36:31 > 0:36:33After a month in prison,
0:36:33 > 0:36:37Bach headed off to the job he'd been hankering after all along,
0:36:37 > 0:36:39that of Kapellmeister.
0:36:39 > 0:36:44He joined a music-loving prince, Leopold, at the castle in Kothen,
0:36:44 > 0:36:47not far from Weimar, as his music director.
0:36:47 > 0:36:50And it was the beginning of a wonderful, new phase in his life.
0:36:50 > 0:36:55Five-and-a-half years of relative trouble-free composition.
0:36:55 > 0:36:59The first time in his life where he's away from the Church,
0:36:59 > 0:37:02he's in a secular environment because he doesn't have to
0:37:02 > 0:37:05write church music, Prince Leopold is a Calvinist,
0:37:05 > 0:37:08there's no requirements of Lutheran Church music at his court.
0:37:08 > 0:37:11Bach is settled with his family and he has a sympathetic
0:37:11 > 0:37:17and extremely music-conscious and music-enthusiastic boss.
0:37:17 > 0:37:21Bach completed the famous Brandenburg Concertos at Kothen,
0:37:21 > 0:37:24as well as a set of solo cello suites which are today
0:37:24 > 0:37:26amongst his most popular works.
0:38:36 > 0:38:41Just as Bach was for once happy and settled, tragedy struck.
0:38:41 > 0:38:44While he was on a trip to Bohemia with the Prince,
0:38:44 > 0:38:47the only time Bach ever left Germany,
0:38:47 > 0:38:49his wife Maria Barbara died unexpectedly,
0:38:49 > 0:38:53and was buried before he returned and could be told of her death.
0:38:53 > 0:38:55Their marriage seems to have been a happy one
0:38:55 > 0:38:59and this sudden bereavement was another crushing blow for Bach.
0:39:00 > 0:39:04No-one knew better than he how terrifyingly unpredictable
0:39:04 > 0:39:06an assignation with death could be.
0:39:06 > 0:39:08THEY SING IN GERMAN
0:39:36 > 0:39:39A year-and-a-half after his first wife died,
0:39:39 > 0:39:41Bach married Anna Magdalena,
0:39:41 > 0:39:45a professional singer at the Koten court, 16 years his junior.
0:39:45 > 0:39:47She was to bear him another 13 children,
0:39:47 > 0:39:50seven of whom died in infancy.
0:39:51 > 0:39:54For his new wife, and at her request,
0:39:54 > 0:39:58Bach gathered together the music of the Anna Magdalena notebooks.
0:39:58 > 0:40:01Also at Koten, he began the 48 preludes
0:40:01 > 0:40:03and fugues of the Well Tempered Clavier.
0:40:03 > 0:40:07It's typical of Bach that to test out a new tuning system,
0:40:07 > 0:40:11he wrote two pieces for each key, major and minor.
0:40:11 > 0:40:16For me, the driving thing for Bach must have been this obsessive rigour.
0:40:16 > 0:40:18This is someone who, I think,
0:40:18 > 0:40:22in writing a collection of keyboard works in every key,
0:40:22 > 0:40:25I think it's not just that that's available to him.
0:40:25 > 0:40:28I think he couldn't possibly have done it any other way.
0:40:28 > 0:40:32He would have had to explore every single key and done it again twice.
0:40:34 > 0:40:37Bach's inventiveness is proved by a puzzle contained in the music
0:40:37 > 0:40:40he's showing us in the famous portrait
0:40:40 > 0:40:41I passed every day as a child.
0:40:41 > 0:40:44On the face of it, the piece is straightforward enough.
0:40:44 > 0:40:49It's incredibly simple, it sounds almost like a nursery rhyme.
0:40:57 > 0:41:00But that's the version that we see
0:41:00 > 0:41:03as he shows it to us in the portrait.
0:41:03 > 0:41:05But from his perspective, what do we see?
0:41:05 > 0:41:09Well, if you turned the music up the other way round,
0:41:09 > 0:41:13and read it backwards, what you get is this.
0:41:22 > 0:41:25In other words, what's in my head and what you see
0:41:25 > 0:41:27and what you hear are two different things?
0:41:27 > 0:41:30Yeah, I think he's got it like a secret smile.
0:41:30 > 0:41:34He's not quite looking at it, is he? He knows something that we don't.
0:41:34 > 0:41:38I love the fact it took 100 years for people to start working it out.
0:41:38 > 0:41:40The clue is in the title.
0:41:40 > 0:41:43It's a piece not for three, but for six voices.
0:41:45 > 0:41:50If you move the reverse version by a bar,
0:41:50 > 0:41:53you get this incredible six parts, um,
0:41:53 > 0:41:55bit of pop music, really.
0:42:08 > 0:42:10It's so simple, it's so complex.
0:42:10 > 0:42:16Do you subscribe to the view that a lot of his music is numerological,
0:42:16 > 0:42:20that it is reflecting not simply just his own name,
0:42:20 > 0:42:23but actually that he as a starting mechanism
0:42:23 > 0:42:25would rule the paper
0:42:25 > 0:42:29and measure out the number of bars he was actually going to use?
0:42:29 > 0:42:31Or is that just baloney?
0:42:31 > 0:42:34I think it was a hugely creative,
0:42:34 > 0:42:37structural mechanism for him.
0:42:37 > 0:42:40But that was an intuition
0:42:40 > 0:42:42that he had around numbers
0:42:42 > 0:42:45and the appeal of numbers for him.
0:42:45 > 0:42:49And I think he had an almost obsessive enjoyment of pattern,
0:42:49 > 0:42:51which for me is the mark of a scientist as well.
0:42:51 > 0:42:55Scientists look for and respond to pattern in nature.
0:42:55 > 0:42:57When they find it, they try and categorise it
0:42:57 > 0:43:00and put walls around it, and then they try and break the rules.
0:43:00 > 0:43:03That's the fun bit, playing with the pattern that they find.
0:43:03 > 0:43:07I think it's an intuition that he has, not as a mathematician as such,
0:43:07 > 0:43:08but more broadly as a scientist.
0:43:10 > 0:43:13In his own lifetime, Bach was far more famous as a performer
0:43:13 > 0:43:16than as a composer.
0:43:16 > 0:43:18He wrote many pieces for the organ,
0:43:18 > 0:43:22an instrument on which he was renowned as an improviser of genius.
0:43:22 > 0:43:25He also stretched the boundaries of another instrument he performed on,
0:43:25 > 0:43:29writing a series of solo dance suites for the violin.
0:43:31 > 0:43:34They are light years ahead of anything that was written
0:43:34 > 0:43:37for the solo violin ever before.
0:43:37 > 0:43:41He just takes the violin into a completely different realm.
0:43:42 > 0:43:45And asks from the violin to do very "un-violinistic" things.
0:43:45 > 0:43:48Like triple stops, quadruple stops,
0:43:48 > 0:43:52um, polyphonic writing, fugues.
0:43:52 > 0:43:54You know, fugues were written for harpsichord
0:43:54 > 0:43:56and for organs and orchestras,
0:43:56 > 0:43:58but not for one solo violin.
0:44:27 > 0:44:30That is storytelling too.
0:44:30 > 0:44:33It's a story, if you like, about four notes, D, C, B flat and A.
0:44:35 > 0:44:38But it's also a soliloquy.
0:44:38 > 0:44:41It's a very dramatic argument,
0:44:41 > 0:44:44in a similar way to Hamlet's To Be Or Not To Be,
0:44:44 > 0:44:48where you've got a voice arguing with itself
0:44:48 > 0:44:51and listening to the counter arguments
0:44:51 > 0:44:54and arguing with the counter arguments
0:44:54 > 0:44:57and speaking against the counter arguments and so on.
0:45:10 > 0:45:12There's the continual wonder
0:45:12 > 0:45:14that he brings it about in the way that he does,
0:45:14 > 0:45:18which seems to me an absolute miracle.
0:45:18 > 0:45:23A piece of such splendour and wonderfulness
0:45:23 > 0:45:27that it on its own would convince me that there was a God
0:45:27 > 0:45:30if I felt inclined to take that conclusion from it.
0:46:18 > 0:46:23Aged 38, Bach was now at the very peak of his powers.
0:46:25 > 0:46:28But his lifetime's goal, his Endzweck,
0:46:28 > 0:46:32of writing a well-regulated church music to the glory of God,
0:46:32 > 0:46:36had been on hold for the past six years.
0:46:39 > 0:46:41The opportunities for writing church music to a high standard
0:46:41 > 0:46:46only came to Bach very, very rarely in his life.
0:46:46 > 0:46:49It didn't come in Arnstadt, it didn't come in Muhlhausen,
0:46:49 > 0:46:53it came for a while in Weimar, but not at all in Kothen,
0:46:53 > 0:46:56because in Kothen he was working in a Calvinistic court,
0:46:56 > 0:46:59and then he had his big break.
0:47:00 > 0:47:04Suddenly he saw an opportunity to put his life's ambition into effect.
0:47:05 > 0:47:08In 1723, there was a vacancy in Leipzig,
0:47:08 > 0:47:12one of the most important cultural centres in Germany
0:47:12 > 0:47:14and a thriving cosmopolitan city.
0:47:14 > 0:47:17Kantor of the Thomasschule,
0:47:17 > 0:47:20one of the oldest and most prestigious choir schools in Europe,
0:47:20 > 0:47:22founded in 1212.
0:47:22 > 0:47:24This was a full-on boys choir,
0:47:24 > 0:47:28the younger ones singing treble and alto,
0:47:28 > 0:47:31the older ones tenor and bass, and playing instruments.
0:47:33 > 0:47:35It was a great opportunity,
0:47:35 > 0:47:39but there were problems in plenty awaiting him.
0:47:39 > 0:47:43Besides music, Bach's duties would also include teaching
0:47:43 > 0:47:45the boys other school subjects.
0:47:45 > 0:47:47But he drew the line at teaching them Latin.
0:47:47 > 0:47:50What's more, only a thin party wall
0:47:50 > 0:47:53would separate the boys' dormitories and classrooms
0:47:53 > 0:47:55from Bach's own private living quarters.
0:47:57 > 0:48:00Bach's determination to see his church music project through
0:48:00 > 0:48:03eventually overcame his reservations.
0:48:03 > 0:48:06In April 1723, he showed up at the Leipzig City Hall
0:48:06 > 0:48:09to be interviewed, and offered a job.
0:48:09 > 0:48:13So despite all his misgivings, Bach decided to throw in his lot
0:48:13 > 0:48:17and to accept the title of Thomaskantor
0:48:17 > 0:48:20and Director Of The City Music here in Leipzig.
0:48:20 > 0:48:27So he signed his contract and he swore fealty on the Holy Bible.
0:48:30 > 0:48:32One of the councillors is on record as saying,
0:48:32 > 0:48:35"Since the best man couldn't be obtained,
0:48:35 > 0:48:37"mediocre ones would have to be accepted."
0:48:37 > 0:48:40The truth is that neither party to this contract could have guessed
0:48:40 > 0:48:42what they were letting themselves in for.
0:48:42 > 0:48:46In Bach's own words, "hindrance and vexation".
0:48:46 > 0:48:48From the moment he set foot in Leipzig,
0:48:48 > 0:48:51Bach found himself caught in the political crossfire
0:48:51 > 0:48:54between different factions on the city council.
0:48:54 > 0:48:58Music, since it carried with it an element of cultural prestige,
0:48:58 > 0:49:01formed a part of those political tensions.
0:49:01 > 0:49:05On the one hand, on the city council were those loyal to the elector,
0:49:05 > 0:49:07who wanted a modern Kapellmeister,
0:49:07 > 0:49:11one who could bring real international prestige to the city.
0:49:11 > 0:49:13And they were Bach's natural allies.
0:49:13 > 0:49:16But opposed to them were the estates party,
0:49:16 > 0:49:20who wanted a traditional Kantor, tied into the school system
0:49:20 > 0:49:23with all its regulations, and all its teaching duties.
0:49:23 > 0:49:26And that throttled Bach's room for manoeuvre.
0:49:28 > 0:49:32Before these problems boiled to the surface, Bach set to work.
0:49:32 > 0:49:34It used to be thought that his cantatas,
0:49:34 > 0:49:36well over 200 of them, and the two great passions
0:49:36 > 0:49:40were composed over the whole 27 years he spent in Leipzig.
0:49:41 > 0:49:45But in the 1950s, an astonishing discovery was made.
0:49:45 > 0:49:47By a careful examination
0:49:47 > 0:49:49of the watermarks on the original scores and parts,
0:49:49 > 0:49:53scholars discovered that the greater part of the cantatas and passions
0:49:53 > 0:49:55were actually produced
0:49:55 > 0:49:58in a white-hot frenzy of just three years.
0:49:58 > 0:50:02How he kept up that rhythm, how he managed to sustain
0:50:02 > 0:50:05that level of intensity and creativity
0:50:05 > 0:50:07is just beyond belief.
0:50:07 > 0:50:10Particularly when you consider Bach's living conditions.
0:50:11 > 0:50:13This is a model of the Thomas School.
0:50:13 > 0:50:17The original building was torn down in 1902.
0:50:17 > 0:50:20Here, Bach and his family lived right next to the schoolboys.
0:50:20 > 0:50:22There wasn't enough room for all the kids
0:50:22 > 0:50:24and they slept two to a bed.
0:50:24 > 0:50:28There must have been a heck of a lot of background noise.
0:50:28 > 0:50:32And he had to concentrate to produce these phenomenal pieces,
0:50:32 > 0:50:37and then to supervise their copying out...in his own room?
0:50:37 > 0:50:39I think so.
0:50:39 > 0:50:42You wonder how he could ever have had any sort of private life
0:50:42 > 0:50:45in this sort of outfit,
0:50:45 > 0:50:47the conditions being so cramped, and the noise!
0:50:47 > 0:50:49And the descriptions of mice and rats
0:50:49 > 0:50:52running up and down the staircases as well.
0:50:52 > 0:50:57Yeah, they probably had a different concept of private life back then.
0:50:57 > 0:50:58Must have done!
0:51:00 > 0:51:04Bach didn't just have to write 25 minutes of new music each week.
0:51:04 > 0:51:07He also had to get it copied into individual parts for the musicians
0:51:07 > 0:51:08to sing and play from.
0:51:08 > 0:51:11His already cramped lodgings now had to accommodate
0:51:11 > 0:51:14not just his large family, but also cousins
0:51:14 > 0:51:18and live-in apprentices to help with the never-ending copying out.
0:51:19 > 0:51:23In the pressure cooker atmosphere of the Thomasschule,
0:51:23 > 0:51:27and this devastating pace Bach had set himself,
0:51:27 > 0:51:29things started to go wrong.
0:51:29 > 0:51:33If you look at this, you'll see there's a frenzy in the writing.
0:51:33 > 0:51:37It's almost as though he hardly has time to actually put the beams
0:51:37 > 0:51:40of the semiquavers and demisemiquavers into the page.
0:51:40 > 0:51:43They look like bamboos in a hurricane.
0:51:43 > 0:51:46And here's something interesting.
0:51:46 > 0:51:49Because this is one of his favourite copyists,
0:51:49 > 0:51:52and Bach leaning over to see what he has copied
0:51:52 > 0:51:57notices that his name has been misspelt. B-ACCH.
0:51:57 > 0:52:01He gives him a hell of a cuff across the earholes,
0:52:01 > 0:52:04and the ink flies across the page.
0:52:04 > 0:52:07And here's another example -
0:52:07 > 0:52:11a cousin, Johann Heinrich, came to Leipzig,
0:52:11 > 0:52:14and Bach put him to work immediately in the sweatshop of copying.
0:52:14 > 0:52:17He's made a complete hash of it.
0:52:17 > 0:52:22He's written out the chorale in the wrong clef and mis-transposed it.
0:52:22 > 0:52:25So he has to cross it all out, and Bach himself has to leap in
0:52:25 > 0:52:28and write out the chorale neatly at the end.
0:52:28 > 0:52:31I mean, what a plonker!
0:52:31 > 0:52:35Here, you can see Bach painstakingly trying to repair the damage,
0:52:35 > 0:52:38against the clock, to make sure that there weren't terrible errors
0:52:38 > 0:52:40on the music stands when it came to their
0:52:40 > 0:52:43one and only rehearsal before the cantata was performed.
0:52:53 > 0:52:56Bach had constantly to adjust his music to the talents
0:52:56 > 0:52:58and skills of his available musicians.
0:52:58 > 0:53:01But also he had to lure in university students
0:53:01 > 0:53:04in exchange for private music lessons.
0:53:04 > 0:53:09There's something about Bach's orthography, his handwriting,
0:53:09 > 0:53:13which suggest already the gesture, the direction of a phrase.
0:53:13 > 0:53:15In some cases, Bach was forced to
0:53:15 > 0:53:18pay for extra musicians from his supplementary earnings,
0:53:18 > 0:53:21made from playing at weddings and funerals.
0:53:30 > 0:53:34At the end of each frantic week, Bach unveiled his latest cantata.
0:53:35 > 0:53:39What the Leipzig congregation made of these towering works,
0:53:39 > 0:53:41frustratingly, we simply don't know.
0:53:42 > 0:53:45All we do know is that plenty of people would have heard them.
0:53:45 > 0:53:49Leipzig was known as "the city of churches".
0:53:49 > 0:53:52It's been estimated that on a normal Sunday,
0:53:52 > 0:53:56of a population of 30,000, 9,000 parishioners
0:53:56 > 0:54:01and members of society were crammed into these two churches.
0:54:01 > 0:54:03The Thomaskirche, the Nikolaikirche,
0:54:03 > 0:54:06and bulging from the seams of the other churches in the town.
0:54:08 > 0:54:11Thus, every week, Bach had an audience
0:54:11 > 0:54:1410 or a dozen times bigger than in any opera house.
0:54:14 > 0:54:17Unfortunately, people at the main churches tended to behave
0:54:17 > 0:54:21as if they were in an opera house, much to the fury of the clergy.
0:54:22 > 0:54:23The preachers often think
0:54:23 > 0:54:26they don't listen carefully to the sermons, that's for sure.
0:54:26 > 0:54:30You get all kinds of complaints about people flirting in church,
0:54:30 > 0:54:34people sleeping in church, people throwing paper aeroplanes in church.
0:54:34 > 0:54:39- Yes.- Taking snuff in church. - Dogs coming into church.- Absolutely.
0:54:39 > 0:54:42And some churches employed special dog whippers to get the dogs out.
0:54:42 > 0:54:45- Really?- And earlier on you had complaints about people
0:54:45 > 0:54:48taking pigs through church because it's the quickest way
0:54:48 > 0:54:50from where the pig was to market, and so on.
0:54:50 > 0:54:55So I think our sense of proper behaviour in a church is different.
0:54:55 > 0:54:58So, there must have been a huge amount of noise,
0:54:58 > 0:55:01and one of the problems - that's one of the few things
0:55:01 > 0:55:05we really do know - is that people drifted in and out,
0:55:05 > 0:55:08before the sermon, after the sermon, during the music.
0:55:08 > 0:55:10It must have been chaos.
0:55:10 > 0:55:13Everything was very, very stratified here socially,
0:55:13 > 0:55:17so the ladies were seated down here, below,
0:55:17 > 0:55:20the men were in the two galleries, both sides,
0:55:20 > 0:55:24and the hoi polloi were at the back with the riff raff.
0:55:26 > 0:55:29And the music, of course, came from the back of the Church,
0:55:29 > 0:55:31up in the organ gallery.
0:55:31 > 0:55:33And it was raining down on the congregation,
0:55:33 > 0:55:38but exactly at the moment where the ladies made their grand entrance.
0:55:38 > 0:55:41And given the fact this is Germany,
0:55:41 > 0:55:44there was a huge amount of social greetings...
0:55:44 > 0:55:47Wie geht es Ihnen, gnaedige Frau? That sort of thing.
0:55:47 > 0:55:50..while the ladies took their seats and then gazed up
0:55:50 > 0:55:53adoringly at the preacher about to give his sermon.
0:55:54 > 0:55:58And the hubbub during Bach's music must have been excruciating.
0:55:58 > 0:55:59Poor man.
0:56:00 > 0:56:03This, then, is the congregation who first heard the masterpiece
0:56:03 > 0:56:07Bach presented at the Nikolaikirche on Good Friday 1724.
0:56:07 > 0:56:10It was his first passion oratorio,
0:56:10 > 0:56:13the central jewel of his necklace of cantatas, a musical
0:56:13 > 0:56:17retelling of the story of Jesus' arrest, trial and crucifixion.
0:56:17 > 0:56:21There had been passions before, but nothing so radical,
0:56:21 > 0:56:25so complex or as ambitious as Bach's John Passion.
0:56:25 > 0:56:29He ingeniously blends orchestral and choral writing
0:56:29 > 0:56:33into a thrilling amalgam of storytelling, meditation and drama.
0:56:33 > 0:56:36Can I just have the cello and bass, please?
0:56:36 > 0:56:38Violas start. Bar one.
0:56:42 > 0:56:46That's OK. Now, can we just add the violins, please?
0:56:52 > 0:56:55Good, that's it. Right, thank you.
0:56:55 > 0:56:59And just flutes and oboes, please. And one...
0:57:10 > 0:57:13It's like nails being driven into bare flesh.
0:57:17 > 0:57:18That's it. That's it.
0:57:18 > 0:57:21In this opening chorus, he does something which none of
0:57:21 > 0:57:27the other people had done, which is to set up a huge dynamic tension
0:57:27 > 0:57:31between this turbulence in the orchestra going on
0:57:31 > 0:57:35and this tremendous acclamation of Christ in majesty.
0:59:20 > 0:59:22Bach was not trying to write an opera.
0:59:22 > 0:59:26Bach's purpose was to draw the listener in. To recreate
0:59:26 > 0:59:32in front of their ears and eyes the drama of Christ's crucifixion.
0:59:32 > 0:59:37And his St John Passion is an extraordinary amalgam of theology
0:59:37 > 0:59:41and music, religion and politics, drama
0:59:41 > 0:59:44and wonderful presentation of storytelling.
0:59:44 > 0:59:48So we sense the tension that is already in St John's gospel,
0:59:48 > 0:59:54that between the light and darkness, between sin and good work
0:59:54 > 0:59:57and faith and doubt.
1:00:16 > 1:00:18John is particularly remarkable
1:00:18 > 1:00:22because you could say that in his account of the Passion,
1:00:22 > 1:00:26everybody else suffers and is perplexed and agonised,
1:00:26 > 1:00:30and Jesus is utterly stable.
1:00:30 > 1:00:32I mean, he's not suffering, he's not under things,
1:00:32 > 1:00:35he sort of stands there over and above them.
1:00:35 > 1:00:38- Zen-like.- He's extremely enigmatic.
1:01:14 > 1:01:18I mean, in the middle you have Christ's sacrifice,
1:01:18 > 1:01:23in which he takes upon himself human sin and gives people back grace.
1:01:23 > 1:01:25That's in the middle.
1:01:25 > 1:01:30And then, on one side of that, there are the individuals in the text,
1:01:30 > 1:01:32particularly Pilate.
1:01:32 > 1:01:37Then, on either side of that, there is community,
1:01:37 > 1:01:40- there's the mad community... - The mob.- ..of the chorus. The mob.
1:01:40 > 1:01:45Hysterical, paranoid, and utterly deranged, really.
1:01:45 > 1:01:51On the other side is the present community, which is in order
1:01:51 > 1:01:55and sings these sculptural, monumental chorales.
1:01:55 > 1:01:56So there you have...
1:01:56 > 1:02:00As you say, he ticks all the boxes, he includes the whole thing,
1:02:00 > 1:02:04the whole human thing, individual, social.
1:02:04 > 1:02:09- And it's a reflection of Lutheran... ordered society?- It is.
1:02:56 > 1:02:59Today the St John Passion is accepted as a masterpiece,
1:02:59 > 1:03:03but at its first performance it didn't please the Leipzig clergy,
1:03:03 > 1:03:05ever suspicious
1:03:05 > 1:03:08and alert to the danger of music stealing their thunder.
1:03:08 > 1:03:12Bach was forced to revise it radically over the next year,
1:03:12 > 1:03:15and only towards the end of his life was it once again performed
1:03:15 > 1:03:18in a version close to its original.
1:03:38 > 1:03:41Without so much as a break, Bach began another round of cantatas.
1:03:41 > 1:03:45This time the cycle was based on iconic chorales,
1:03:45 > 1:03:48and Bach had to write a new work each week.
1:03:48 > 1:03:51The cycle is breathtaking in the variety of its moods,
1:03:51 > 1:03:54intensely serious at one moment, cheeky at the next.
1:04:56 > 1:04:59Measure him against any of his contemporaries,
1:04:59 > 1:05:02and there's one thing that makes Bach stick out from all the rest.
1:05:02 > 1:05:06He didn't write an opera, not a single opera.
1:05:07 > 1:05:12And yet, at the time, opera was really the gold currency,
1:05:12 > 1:05:15it was the thing that established careers.
1:05:15 > 1:05:19It brought with it fame, it brought with it success,
1:05:19 > 1:05:23it brought with it a lot of money, and Bach would have none of that.
1:05:23 > 1:05:26In fact, he talked rather disparagingly of those
1:05:26 > 1:05:29little ditties that you could hear at the Dresden Opera.
1:05:31 > 1:05:36And yet his music is intrinsically as dramatic, if not more dramatic,
1:05:36 > 1:05:40than that of any of the opera composers of the day.
1:05:40 > 1:05:45Vivaldi, Scarlatti, Telemann, none could match Bach in this respect.
1:05:45 > 1:05:46Only Handel came close.
1:05:47 > 1:05:51Everything Bach had learned up to now, dramatic scene-setting
1:05:51 > 1:05:53to underpin the Gospel narration,
1:05:53 > 1:05:56and subtle musical power to convey contrition and remorse,
1:05:56 > 1:05:58was poured into his St Matthew Passion,
1:05:58 > 1:06:03first performed at the Thomaskirche Leipzig on Good Friday 1727.
1:06:28 > 1:06:32The St Matthew Passion is even more atmospheric than the St John.
1:06:32 > 1:06:36Lasting around two-and-a-half hours, it's even more monumental in scale,
1:06:36 > 1:06:39with a double choir and a double orchestra.
1:06:51 > 1:06:54He speaks with the voice of someone
1:06:54 > 1:06:56whose belief is absolutely rock solid.
1:06:56 > 1:06:59Goes right to the roots of his being.
1:06:59 > 1:07:04He believes every word of this, it is true, that it is completely true.
1:07:04 > 1:07:09And...there's a solidity, a firmness to what comes through
1:07:09 > 1:07:14in the Passions that I have seen very rarely anywhere else.
1:07:47 > 1:07:51You wonder, well, where is there room for Bach's own voice?
1:07:51 > 1:07:54It's difficult to answer, but I feel there are moments,
1:07:54 > 1:07:58chinks in the drama, where you feel that Bach himself
1:07:58 > 1:08:01is very much present and very much making the decisions.
1:08:09 > 1:08:13So you've got a, er, crotchet, to turn round completely,
1:08:13 > 1:08:16180 degrees, from being an absolutely foulmouthed mob
1:08:16 > 1:08:20into being contrite and responsible and tender.
1:08:20 > 1:08:22And bewildered - who's hit you?
1:08:22 > 1:08:25We don't understand. Go.
1:08:40 > 1:08:46The choir have to switch into being the community, the believers.
1:08:48 > 1:08:51And it's in that moment that I feel Bach is saying,
1:08:51 > 1:08:55"This suffering is unbearable. We have to stop it.
1:08:55 > 1:08:59"We have to show our sense of moral outrage."
1:09:13 > 1:09:17The emotional centre of the Matthew Passion is Erbarme Dich,
1:09:17 > 1:09:22Peter's plea for forgiveness, having denied his Christ.
1:09:22 > 1:09:26In comes the violin, announcing, "Erbarme dich,"
1:09:26 > 1:09:31and the violin with no words at all can convey, in a way that
1:09:31 > 1:09:37the human voice could not convey, this concentration of lamentation,
1:09:37 > 1:09:42of grief, of contrition, of utter abject horror, in a way,
1:09:42 > 1:09:46and yet taking on to a spiritual level,
1:09:46 > 1:09:52because the voice line of the violin becomes an agency of...
1:09:52 > 1:09:56of compassion and forgiveness, and that's before the singer's sung a note.
1:12:13 > 1:12:15Three years after the St Matthew Passion,
1:12:15 > 1:12:19Bach's relationship with his masters began to fall apart.
1:12:19 > 1:12:22In 1730, he wrote what he called an "Entwurf,"
1:12:22 > 1:12:24a memorandum to the Leipzig council,
1:12:24 > 1:12:28complaining bitterly that he could no longer operate.
1:12:28 > 1:12:29He hadn't sufficient musicians,
1:12:29 > 1:12:33and too few of quality to perform his work.
1:12:33 > 1:12:36Several months later, Bach took up his pen again.
1:12:37 > 1:12:41And this is the most poignant document of all for me.
1:12:41 > 1:12:45It's the only truly personal letter we have of Bach's,
1:12:45 > 1:12:50in which he's writing to his old pal, Georg Erdmann.
1:12:50 > 1:12:55He was the guy that Bach walked from Ohrdruf to Lueneburg with
1:12:55 > 1:12:58when they were both in their early teens.
1:12:58 > 1:13:02And Bach is just pouring out all his frustration about why
1:13:02 > 1:13:06the council had not responded to this Entwurf,
1:13:06 > 1:13:09this statement of his intentions.
1:13:09 > 1:13:12And Bach tells Erdmann,
1:13:12 > 1:13:19"My life is full of hindrance and vexation and I see no future for myself and my family here."
1:13:19 > 1:13:23One of the features that you might expect to see in this
1:13:23 > 1:13:28inflexible persona, if you like, is that he would never be guilty.
1:13:28 > 1:13:31No matter what happened, it's always somebody else's fault.
1:13:31 > 1:13:36- Does that ring?- Yes, it does. Because he's never to blame.
1:13:36 > 1:13:40He always has a reason. And his motto...
1:13:40 > 1:13:43I don't know whether it's his motto but something that's like a mantra
1:13:43 > 1:13:44that comes up and up and again,
1:13:44 > 1:13:49is that "My life is lived always with fixation and hindrance."
1:13:49 > 1:13:54I have brought you something here, which is a textbook definition,
1:13:54 > 1:13:57and this is paranoid personality disorder,
1:13:57 > 1:13:59and these are the characteristics.
1:13:59 > 1:14:03"Pervasive suspicion of others, distrusting their motives.
1:14:03 > 1:14:07"Others seen as deliberately demeaning or threatening,
1:14:07 > 1:14:09"constantly expect to be harmed or exploited,
1:14:09 > 1:14:12"very sensitive to perceived slights,
1:14:12 > 1:14:17"fear and avoidance of anything that could make them feel or seem weak."
1:14:17 > 1:14:19That's a perfect description.
1:14:21 > 1:14:26The one thing that we do know is that there is an association with
1:14:26 > 1:14:28bullying and abuse in childhood.
1:14:30 > 1:14:33Thanks to the bone-headedness of the city fathers
1:14:33 > 1:14:36and the obvious flaws in Bach's own character,
1:14:36 > 1:14:39his output of religious music now began to dwindle away.
1:14:40 > 1:14:44St Thomas's Church didn't deserve those cantatas.
1:14:44 > 1:14:47Nobody deserved those cantatas, but least of all St Thomas's Church.
1:14:47 > 1:14:49That's the striking thing about a great artist,
1:14:49 > 1:14:53is they deliver absurdly over contract -
1:14:53 > 1:14:56heartbreakingly over contract - and that is the thing that
1:14:56 > 1:15:00I think is most impressive and very deeply moving about him.
1:15:00 > 1:15:02There he is, worrying about his children,
1:15:02 > 1:15:05who are popping off one after the other,
1:15:05 > 1:15:06worrying about their education,
1:15:06 > 1:15:10trying to keep the town councillors less irritated,
1:15:10 > 1:15:15and so on and so forth, and at the same time, he just delivered...
1:15:15 > 1:15:19this work that, 250, 260 years later, is supreme in the canon.
1:15:22 > 1:15:25Bach now gravitated towards the other main centre of music-making
1:15:25 > 1:15:29in Leipzig, the thriving coffeehouse scene.
1:15:29 > 1:15:30Here was a different audience,
1:15:30 > 1:15:34a more relaxed ambience in which to make music with better musicians
1:15:34 > 1:15:37from the university, eager to learn from the master.
1:15:41 > 1:15:44But Bach didn't completely give up on sacred music.
1:15:44 > 1:15:48Indeed, his new secular style found its way into religious pieces
1:15:48 > 1:15:50of unbuttoned high spirits.
1:16:26 > 1:16:27Throughout his life,
1:16:27 > 1:16:31Bach had much more than his fair share of heartbreak.
1:16:31 > 1:16:34That direct experience of personal grief comes over in his music,
1:16:34 > 1:16:37but never in a saccharine or morbid way,
1:16:37 > 1:16:41but as consoling, soothing, uplifting.
1:16:41 > 1:16:44In many ways, you can imagine he's creating a lullaby for himself,
1:16:44 > 1:16:47which, again, becomes a lullaby for all of us.
1:16:47 > 1:16:53A profound lullaby which comforts him and through him, comforts us.
1:18:19 > 1:18:22The thing that to me is so touching
1:18:22 > 1:18:25and powerful in the expression of the music is the way that
1:18:25 > 1:18:29Bach seems to focus all that distress
1:18:29 > 1:18:32and private grief in his own life,
1:18:32 > 1:18:35the loss of parents, the loss of children, the loss of a wife,
1:18:35 > 1:18:39always the difficulties that he was experiencing,
1:18:39 > 1:18:43and yet, the music that comes out of it is so ineffably consoling
1:18:43 > 1:18:49- and...touching. - And nowadays, we look at the texts,
1:18:49 > 1:18:53and with this constant longing for death,
1:18:53 > 1:18:59this anticipation with joy of one's final demise, it seems bizarre to us
1:18:59 > 1:19:04and yet it's with, as you say,
1:19:04 > 1:19:06Bach's private grief, it was commonplace.
1:19:06 > 1:19:08- EVERYBODY'S private grief.- Absolutely.
1:19:08 > 1:19:12Everybody was losing their families, their babies, their wives.
1:19:12 > 1:19:14And, you know, this is surely
1:19:14 > 1:19:18the prime purpose of religion at that time,
1:19:18 > 1:19:21was to give a consolation in the face of this baffling reality.
1:19:22 > 1:19:26With his disagreements with the council dragging on and on,
1:19:26 > 1:19:28Bach now had a new power struggle.
1:19:28 > 1:19:31This time, with the headmaster of the Thomas School who was
1:19:31 > 1:19:34bitterly opposed to all the emphasis on music in school.
1:19:36 > 1:19:39In Bach's desire to put an end to his woes in Leipzig,
1:19:39 > 1:19:42we find the origins of one late religious masterpiece,
1:19:42 > 1:19:44the B minor Mass.
1:19:44 > 1:19:47Just try and think how different this is from Messiah.
1:19:47 > 1:19:50Messiah, you've got the angels wafting in on a cloud
1:19:50 > 1:19:53and they come in and they sing and then disappear, all very gently.
1:19:53 > 1:19:57Here, it's a stomp. It's much more kind of Bruegel than Botticelli,
1:19:57 > 1:20:00it's not wiffy-waffy at all. OK, off we go. Yep?
1:20:09 > 1:20:11Bach was angling for a new job,
1:20:11 > 1:20:13or at the very least an honorary title,
1:20:13 > 1:20:16at the court in Dresden, which was Catholic,
1:20:16 > 1:20:19so despite his unwavering commitment to Lutheranism,
1:20:19 > 1:20:22Bach, ever practical, saw there was an opportunity for composing
1:20:22 > 1:20:24a Latin Mass on a grand scale.
1:21:26 > 1:21:29Bach didn't get his hoped-for move to Dresden,
1:21:29 > 1:21:31although he did get the honorary title,
1:21:31 > 1:21:35and for the next 15 years, we lose all trace of the B minor Mass.
1:21:38 > 1:21:42And then suddenly, we have a Missa Tota,
1:21:42 > 1:21:47a complete Catholic Mass with the magnificent Credo and the wonderful
1:21:47 > 1:21:52Agnus Dei and the touching way it ends with the Dona Nobis Pacem.
1:21:52 > 1:21:56This was Bach's compendium of all the style
1:21:56 > 1:22:00since he was a young composer up to the most recent music
1:22:00 > 1:22:07that he composed. It was his version of Ars Perfecta, of art perfected.
1:22:07 > 1:22:10This is Bach at his most playful, most jazzy
1:22:10 > 1:22:13and most exotic, and it's ebullient, and that's what we need to feel
1:22:13 > 1:22:17because there's something really folky about this music.
1:22:17 > 1:22:19Let's see if we can get that through.
1:24:07 > 1:24:11A question that can never be solved is what Bach himself
1:24:11 > 1:24:14thought of his work, but we do have one clue that suggests
1:24:14 > 1:24:17he saw himself and his music as inextricably linked.
1:24:18 > 1:24:23He loves inscribing his own name - B-A-C-H, the family name -
1:24:23 > 1:24:26into his music in all sorts of contexts.
1:24:26 > 1:24:32And you can only do that in German because H doesn't exist in English,
1:24:32 > 1:24:36it's not a note on the piano, but in German, B is B flat, isn't it?
1:24:36 > 1:24:42- PLAYS SEQUENCE OF SINGLE NOTES - A, C, B natural, which is H.
1:24:42 > 1:24:46So that's the little kind of family motto that's in there.
1:24:46 > 1:24:49PLAYS MORE COMPLICATED PATTERN
1:24:49 > 1:24:53# B, A, C, H. #
1:25:00 > 1:25:03One of Bach's most famous last works,
1:25:03 > 1:25:06The Art Of Fugue, breaks off in mid-flow.
1:25:06 > 1:25:09The reasons why this happened have long been debated.
1:25:09 > 1:25:13I thought what we'd do is actually go just from where he inscribes
1:25:13 > 1:25:16his own name, B-A-C-H,
1:25:16 > 1:25:19because that's what's so extraordinary about this piece,
1:25:19 > 1:25:23is that he finds a way halfway through this whole composition
1:25:23 > 1:25:28to put his name in and then to develop it, so we've got two fugues
1:25:28 > 1:25:32going on and then suddenly, it comes to an abrupt halt.
1:25:32 > 1:25:37And according to Carl Philipp Emanuel, he stopped then
1:25:37 > 1:25:41because he died, that was it. It's just chilling.
1:25:42 > 1:25:43Let's try it.
1:26:31 > 1:26:35- My fantasy is that it's completely... - Deliberate.- ..deliberate.
1:26:35 > 1:26:37And that actually, it's that unfinished business.
1:26:37 > 1:26:41That, "I've written my music for the future
1:26:41 > 1:26:43"and someone else is going to carry on now."
1:27:10 > 1:27:17Bach died aged 65 in Leipzig in the Thomasschule on 28th July, 1750.
1:27:17 > 1:27:22Two successive eye operations performed by an English quack doctor
1:27:22 > 1:27:24seemed to have finished him off.
1:27:24 > 1:27:29After his death, his works fell out of favour, though not with everyone.
1:27:29 > 1:27:33His music was passed from hand to hand and Haydn, Mozart
1:27:33 > 1:27:36and Beethoven all marvelled at it.
1:27:36 > 1:27:39Only in 1829 when Mendelssohn performed a devoted
1:27:39 > 1:27:42but stylistically mangled version of the Matthew Passion
1:27:42 > 1:27:46did Bach begin to regain the public's affection.
1:27:46 > 1:27:47CHORAL SINGING
1:28:06 > 1:28:09Bach's legacy is assured.
1:28:09 > 1:28:12If Monteverdi was the first composer to find musical expression
1:28:12 > 1:28:16for human passion, and Beethoven, what a terrible struggle it is
1:28:16 > 1:28:20to be human and to aspire to be godlike, Mozart, the kind of music
1:28:20 > 1:28:26we'd hope to hear in heaven, Bach is the one who bridges the gap.
1:28:26 > 1:28:31He helps us to hear the voice of God but in human form, ironing
1:28:31 > 1:28:35out the imperfections of humanity in the perfection of his music.
1:28:48 > 1:28:53Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd