| German composer, youngest son of
Johann Sebastian
Bach, born in Leipzig, and given his first musical training there by his
father. In 1750, when his father died, he went to Berlin to study with his
brother Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach. He spent eight years in Italy, from 1754
to 1760 as music director for Count Antonio Litta in Milan and then from
1760 to 1762 as organist at the Milan Cathedral. During this period he also
studied in Bologna with the Italian composer Giovanni Battista Martini (1706-84).
In 1762 Bach settled in London and soon became music master to the queen.
Part of his success was the result of his mastery of the pleasant, tuneful
style of Italian opera, which was then fashionable in London. From 1764
until his death he and another German composer living in London, Carl Friedrich
Abel (1725-87), produced a series of concerts that were famous because of
the composers who wrote for them. One was the seven-year old prodigy Wolfgang
Amadeus Mozart. Bach himself wrote about a dozen operas and many symphonies,
concertos, piano pieces, and chamber music. |