Johann Sebastian Bach

Born in Eisenach in 1685 into a family already thick with composers, Bach was orphaned at ten and raised by his eldest brother. He worked his way through Protestant church posts in Arnstadt and Mühlhausen, spent time at the courts in Weimar and Köthen writing organ and chamber music, then landed in Leipzig in 1723 as Thomaskantor - responsible for music at four churches and the St. Thomas School. There he composed annual cycles of cantatas, published his keyboard works starting in 1726, and spent years feuding with his employer until Augustus III named him court composer in 1736. His last decades were spent reworking earlier pieces: the Brandenburg Concertos, the Goldberg Variations, The Art of Fugue. He died in 1750 from complications of eye surgery, leaving four of his twenty children to carry the work forward.