Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer and organist. The most important member of the Bach family, his genius combined outstanding performing musicianship with supreme creative powers in which forceful and original inventiveness, technical mastery and intellectual control are perfectly balanced. While it was in the former capacity, as a keyboard virtuoso, that in his lifetime he acquired an almost legendary fame, it is the latter virtues and accomplishments, as a composer, that by the end of the 18th century earned him a unique historical position
JOHANN SEBASTIAN
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Bach was considered a master of counterpoint – which is a term to describe music made up of multiple interlocking melody lines. He excelled even more at the fugue, a glorious but fiendishly difficult contrapuntal musical form. A fugue is a kind of musical chase between two or more lines. The first line starts; after a few seconds the second line joins in. It is slightly higher or lower than the first, but otherwise almost identical. A third or fourth line may join. The skill of a fugal composer is to make the lines develop independently, yet still fit together, while making each line recognisably a delayed variation of the preceding one. Such was Bach’s expertise on the organ that he could improvise a four-part fugue.
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