Son of a Court Musician
Johann Sebastian Bach was born in Eisenach on March 21, 1685, according to the Old Style reckoning, which is ten days behind the Gregorian calendar. His father, Johann Ambrosius Bach, had married an Elisabeth Lämmerhirt nearly twenty years earlier in Erfurt, where he was town player. Probably he became Court musician to Duke Johann Georg, at Eisenach, whither he had removed. His plea to return to Erfurt was disallowed by his noble employer and so it came that Johann Sebastian saw the light in Eisenach. Not, however, in the rambling house on the Frauenplan as traditionally supposed. Comparatively recent investigation has shown that the actual birthplace is a short distance away, in a street named after Martin Luther. A rather unromantic looking dwelling, it was occupied till just before the Second World War by a barber.
There is a certain symbolic propriety that Bach should have been born in Eisenach rather than in the more prosaic Erfurt. Eisenach had powerful religious and romantic associations. Luther had been entertained by Frau von Cotta in one of its gabled houses while the Reformer was still a boy. High above the city towered the Wartburg, where Luther translated the Bible, threw his inkwell at the Devil, and composed some of his sturdiest chorales. Up there, too, had dwelt the saintly Elisabeth, while in its halls knightly Minnesingers had competed in tourneys of song. In the remoter distances rose the fabled Hörselberg, where according to legend Dame Venus held her unholy court and ensnared the souls of unwary men. Just what impression these things made on the child Bach we cannot say. At any rate he could not remain untouched by the currents of music. The boy had a pretty treble voice and at the local school he sang in the so-called Currende choir, making a few pennies now and then on feasts and holidays, at weddings and at funerals, in company with his schoolmates. He may even have sat in the organ loft of St. George’s Church, pulling out the heavy stops for his uncle, Johann Christoph Bach, who had been the organist there for many years.
Nevertheless, we have no elaborate record of Johann Sebastian’s boyhood. His father, indeed, taught him the rudiments of violin and viola, and Terry credits the youngster with “patient concentration” in the pursuit of these instrumental studies. We do know that he became before long an uncommonly proficient violinist but took particular delight in playing viola when he participated in ensemble work. Like Mozart in after years, the youthful Bach loved to find himself “in the middle of the harmony.”