Johann Sebastian Bach

Germany, 1700–1750

German Baroque composer and organist. His counterpoint, chorale harmonisation and keyboard works became standard teaching material and a recurring reference for later composers and popular musicians.

MusicRoots documents 6 artists who influenced Johann Sebastian Bach and 24 artists Johann Sebastian Bach influenced in turn. Every connection cites a published source.

Who influenced Johann Sebastian Bach?

• Girolamo Frescobaldi — Bach copied out the Fiori musicali by hand — one of only two foreign publications he treated that way — and its strict organ writing stands behind Clavier-Ubung III.
• Johann Adam Reincken — Bach walked from Luneburg to Hamburg to hear Reincken play; hearing him improvise decades later, the old organist said he had thought this art was dead but saw that it lived on in Bach.
• Dieterich Buxtehude — The 20-year-old Bach walked some 400 kilometres to Lübeck to hear Buxtehude and overstayed his leave by three months — the most famous pilgrimage in music history.
• Antonio Vivaldi — Bach transcribed at least ten Vivaldi concertos for keyboard — his own concerto form was learned directly from these studies.
• Arcangelo Corelli — Bach built an organ fugue (BWV 579) on a theme from Corelli's Op. 3 — direct documented study of the Italian master.
• Johann Pachelbel — Pachelbel taught Bach's elder brother Johann Christoph at Erfurt, and it was that brother who gave the young Bach his first keyboard lessons.

Which artists did Johann Sebastian Bach influence?

• Eduard Artemiev — Bach is woven into Artemiev's most famous score: for Solaris he recorded variations on Bach's Chorale Prelude in F minor as the theme representing Earth.
• Arnold Mendelssohn — Bach was the other pillar of the church-music revival Mendelssohn championed, and the source of the counterpoint in his own liturgical works.
• Paul Hindemith — Where Stravinsky's neoclassicism looked to Mozart, Hindemith looked to Bach - the Kammermusiken pay open homage to the Brandenburg concertos, and Ludus Tonalis answers the Well-Tempered Clavier.
• Max Reger — Reger said plainly: in music I owe everything to J. S. Bach. His fugues and organ works are direct homage.
• Procol Harum — 'A Whiter Shade of Pale' is directly built on Bach's Air on the G String — a documented, legally-settled derivation.
• Nina Simone — Bach was Simone's musical god — she trained to be a classical pianist, and Bach's counterpoint threads through her playing, from fugue-like passages to her chordal statements.
• Heitor Villa-Lobos — Villa-Lobos personally named his major cycle 'Bachianas Brasileiras' after Bach, explaining it as a direct wish to unite his counterpoint with Brazilian folklore.
• Ludwig van Beethoven — Beethoven was trained on The Well-Tempered Clavier as a child and could play it entire by age eleven.
• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart — Mozart discovered Bach's fugues at Baron van Swieten's salons in 1782 and arranged several for string ensemble — a documented turning point in his contrapuntal writing.
• Felix Mendelssohn — Mendelssohn revived Bach's St Matthew Passion in 1829 — the performance that launched the modern Bach revival — and built his own counterpoint on Bach's model.
• Robert Schumann — Schumann studied Bach's counterpoint throughout his life and wrote six fugues on the name BACH.
• Frédéric Chopin — Chopin venerated Bach, warmed up with the Well-Tempered Clavier and modelled his 24 Preludes on its key cycle.
• Johannes Brahms — Brahms was a scholar-editor of Bach and built his late works on Baroque counterpoint — the finale of the Fourth Symphony is a chaconne on a Bach theme.
• Dmitri Shostakovich — Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier is the direct model of Shostakovich's own 24 Preludes and Fugues (1950–51) — the contrapuntal spine of his late style.
• Sergei Taneyev — The 'Russian Bach' earned his name by profound study of Bach — and of Renaissance counterpoint (Ockeghem, Josquin, Lassus) — which he distilled into his own theory of moveable counterpoint.
• César Franck — Bach's organ polyphony was the foundation of Franck's art as organist of Sainte-Clotilde and of his contrapuntal composition.
• Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach — His father was his only teacher — 'In composition and keyboard playing I have never had any teacher other than my father.'
• Sofia Gubaidulina — Offertorium — her breakthrough violin concerto — is built on the royal theme of Bach's Musical Offering; she named Bach her constant point of reference.
• Emerson, Lake & Palmer — Emerson wove Bach into his solos and repertoire throughout — from 'The Only Way' (organ works) to constant live quotation.
• Ferruccio Busoni — The Bach-Busoni editions — his monumental transcriptions — are an official lifelong act of devotion; 'Bach is the foundation of piano playing'.
• Wendy Carlos — Bach was the music Carlos chose to prove the synthesizer with: his counterpoint, where every line must stay separately audible, was the hardest possible test and became the substance of Switched-On Bach.
• Ennio Morricone — Morricone drew openly on the counterpoint of Bach, a foundation of his polyphonic writing across film and concert works.
• Yngwie Malmsteen — Named first in Malmsteen's own list of where the classical side comes from.
• Ritchie Blackmore — The pedal points and arpeggiated triads over a classical progression are borrowed outright, and they are what Malmsteen heard and followed back to the source.