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21-411: Johann Gottfried Walther 's Musicalisches Lexikon (1732) contains the only biographical sketch of Johann Sebastian Bach published during the composer's lifetime. There the motif is mentioned thus: ...all those who carried the name [Bach] were as far as known committed to music, which may be explained by the fact that even the letters b a c h in this order form a melody. (This peculiarity

42-403: A 1715 set of six violin sonatas, had been dedicated to Johann Ernst. According to Walther's Lexicon , published in 1732, Johann Ernst composed 19 instrumental pieces in a period of nine months, shortly before his death, when Walther was teaching him composition. Eight violin concertos are extant in their original instrumentation. Bach transcribed three of these: Op. 1 Nos. 1 and 4 and

63-488: A twelfth birthday present. During his life, Walther transcribed seventy-eight concertos for keyboard. Bach also produced a number of virtuoso organ ( BWV 592–6) and harpsichord (BWV 972–987) arrangements. These included some of the prince's own works (BWV 592, 592a, 595, 982, 984 and 987) as well as works by German and Italian composers, including Georg Philipp Telemann (BWV 985) and Vivaldi (BWV 972, 973 etc.). The Bach transcriptions were created roughly during

84-682: A visit to Amsterdam in February 1713 the Prince may have heard the blind organist J. J. de Graff, who is known to have played keyboard arrangements of other composers' concertos. In any case, Bach's encounter with the prince's collection, and especially the Italian music it contained, had a profound influence on the development of the composer's musical style. As well as influencing Bach, Johann Ernst completed at least nineteen instrumental works of his own before his death at age eighteen. These works show

105-565: A work by Georg Philipp Telemann . The motif's wide popularity came only after the start of the Bach Revival in the first half of the 19th century. A few mid-19th century works that feature the motif prominently are: Composers found that the motif could be easily incorporated not only into the advanced harmonic writing of the 19th century, but also into the totally chromatic idiom of the Second Viennese School ; so it

126-834: Is available in Malcolm Boyd's volume on Bach: it also contains some 400 works. Johann Sebastian Bach used the motif in a number of works, most famously as a fugue subject in the last Contrapunctus of The Art of Fugue . The motif also appears in other pieces. Later commentators wrote: "The figure occurs so often in Bach's bass lines that it cannot have been accidental." Instances of B–A–C–H appearing in Johann Sebastian Bach's compositions and arrangements: Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht goes as far as to reconstruct Bach's putative intentions as an expression of Lutheran thought, imagining Bach to be saying, "I am identified with

147-508: Is known that he had copies of Italian music sent back to Weimar. (Household bills for the year from 1 June following his return record the cost of copying, binding and shelving music. ) In particular, it is thought that he might have encountered Vivaldi 's opus 3 set of violin concertos. The prince's interest in collecting music was sufficiently well known that P. D. Kräuter, when requesting leave of absence to study with Bach in Weimar, mentioned

168-757: Is referenced more than 200 times. Some further information on Walther can be found in the book Musica Poetica by Dietrich Bartel. On page 22, Bartel quotes Walther's definition of musica poetica , or musical rhetoric, as: Walther was the music teacher of Prince Johann Ernst von Sachsen-Weimar . He wrote a handbook for the young prince with the title Praecepta der musicalischen Composition , 1708. It remained handwritten until Peter Benary's edition (Leipzig, 1955). As an organ composer, Walther became famous for his organ transcriptions of orchestral concertos by contemporary Italian and German masters. He made 14 transcriptions of concertos by Albinoni , Gentili, Taglietti, Giuseppe Torelli , Vivaldi and Telemann . These works were

189-589: The Baroque era. Walther was born at Erfurt . Not only was his life almost exactly contemporaneous to that of Johann Sebastian Bach , he was the famous composer's cousin. Walther was most well known as the compiler of the Musicalisches Lexicon ( Leipzig , 1732), an enormous dictionary of music and musicians. Not only was it the first dictionary of musical terms written in the German language, it

210-1712: The Concerto a 8 in G major. Another concerto by Johann Ernst is only known through Bach's transcriptions in C ;major. No original has been identified for BWV 983 : it was possibly transcribed by Bach from a concerto by Johann Ernst. The model for BWV 977 is equally lost: also in this case a possible attribution of the lost original to Johann Ernst is uncertain. Violin Concerto in B-flat major, Op. 1 No. 1, for violino principale and strings (violin I & II, viola, harpsichord): Adaptations: Violin Concerto in A minor, Op. 1 No. 2, for violino principale and strings (violin I & II, viola, harpsichord or cello): Violin Concerto in E minor, Op. 1 No. 3, for violino principale and strings (violin I & II, viola, harpsichord or cello): Violin Concerto in D minor, Op. 1 No. 4, for violino principale and strings (violin I & II, viola, harpsichord or cello): Adaptations: Violin Concerto in E major, Op. 1 No. 5, for violino principale and strings (violin I & II, viola, harpsichord or cello): Violin Concerto in G minor, Op. 1 No. 6, for violino principale and strings (violin I & II, viola, harpsichord or cello): Violin Concerto in G major for violino principale, violin I & II obligato, violin I & II ripieno, viola, cello and harpsichord: Adaptations: Violin Concerto in G major for violino principale, violin I & II, viola, bass and continuo, a.k.a. RV  Anh. 12: Instrumentation and key of

231-520: The Duke's second wife, Charlotte Dorothea Sophia of Hesse-Homburg . As a young child the prince took violin lessons from G.C. Eilenstein, who was a court musician. He studied at the University of Utrecht between February 1711 and July 1713. It is thought that Johann Ernst furthered his understanding of music at this time. From Utrecht, he could visit such centres as Amsterdam and Düsseldorf and it

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252-532: The French and Italian music that the prince was expected to introduce there. Kräuter also praised Johann Ernst's virtuosity as a violinist. On his return from university, Johann Ernst took lessons in composition with a focus on concertos from the local church organist Johann Gottfried Walther , a cousin of Bach. Walther had previously given the prince keyboard lessons and had given him his Praecepta der musicalischen Composition ( Precepts of Musical Composition ) as

273-579: The influence of Italian music more than that of German models such as Bach. Johann Ernst died in Frankfurt after a long illness resulting from a leg infection, possibly a metastatic sarcoma , which, despite the intensive care of his heart-broken mother and medical treatments in Schwalbach , spread to the abdominal area. He was buried, not in Weimar, but in Homburg ( Bad Homburg vor der Höhe ) in

294-434: The models for Bach to write his famous transcriptions of concertos by Vivaldi and others. On the other hand, Walther as a city organist of Weimar wrote exactly 132 organ preludes based on Lutheran chorale melodies. Some free keyboard music also belongs to his legacy. Johann Ernst of Saxe-Weimar (composer) Johann Ernst of Saxe-Weimar ( German : Johann Ernst von Sachsen-Weimar ) (25 December 1696 – 1 August 1715)

315-418: The period July 1713–July 1714 between Johann Ernst's return from Utrecht and the prince's final departure from Weimar. There is some scholarly debate on Johann Ernst's role in the creation of these arrangements, whether he commissioned some from one or both of the musicians or whether Bach, in particular, was studying some of the works collected by the prince for their own sake. There are suggestions that on

336-475: The tonic and it is my desire to reach it ... Like you I am human. I am in need of salvation; I am certain in the hope of salvation, and have been saved by grace," through his use of the motif rather than a standard changing tone figure (B ♭ –A–C–B ♭ ) in the final measures of the fourth fugue of The Art of Fugue . The motif was used as a fugue subject by Bach's son Johann Christian , and by his pupil Johann Ludwig Krebs . It also appears in

357-547: The vault of his mother's family, the Landgraves of Hesse-Homburg . A period of mourning was declared in Weimar from 11 August to 9 November 1715. Music was banned, including in church, resulting in an interruption in Bach's attempt to build an annual cycle of cantatas. Following his death, six of the prince's concertos were sent to Telemann, who edited and published them in 1718. He himself had already started to have them set before his death. Telemann's own first publication,

378-520: Was a German prince, son by his second marriage of Johann Ernst III, Duke of Saxe-Weimar . Despite his early death he is remembered as a collector and commissioner of music and as a composer , some of whose concertos were arranged for harpsichord or organ by Johann Sebastian Bach , who was court organist in Weimar at the time. Johann Ernst was born in Weimar , the fourth son and sixth child of Johann Ernst III, Duke of Saxe-Weimar , and second child of

399-510: Was discovered by Mr. Bach of Leipzig.) This reference work thus indicates Bach as the inventor of the motif. In a comprehensive study published in the catalogue for the 1985 exhibition "300 Jahre Johann Sebastian Bach" ("300 years of Johann Sebastian Bach") in Stuttgart, Germany , Ulrich Prinz lists 409 works by 330 composers from the 17th to the 20th century using the BACH motif. A similar list

420-436: Was the first to contain both terms and biographical information about composers and performers up to the early 18th century. In all, the Musicalisches Lexicon defines more than 3,000 musical terms; Walther evidently drew on more than 250 separate sources in compiling it, including theoretical treatises of the early Baroque and Renaissance . The single most important source for the work was the writings of Johann Mattheson , who

441-450: Was used by Arnold Schoenberg , Anton Webern , and their disciples and followers. A few 20th-century works that feature the motif prominently are: In the 21st century, composers continue writing works using the motif, frequently in homage to Johann Sebastian Bach. Johann Gottfried Walther Johann Gottfried Walther (18 September 1684 – 23 March 1748) was a German music theorist , organist , composer, and lexicographer of

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