What is Johann Sebastian Bach's accomplishments?

Answer 1

An easier question might be: what isn't his contribution? For my money he was the greatest composer ever, or at least in the period of common tonality since 1600. He wrote in every style except Opera, and I don't doubt that he could have done that brilliantly if he'd had the chance. His contributions to music include but are not limited to the following.

1. He established the definitive form of every Baroque genre and style in which he wrote. His four orchestral suites, concertos (especially the six Brandenburgs), sacred cantatas, two Passions (the St Matthew and the St John), Goldberg Variations for keyboard and his sonatas and partitas for solo violin, his fugues and the jaw-dropping compendium of contrapuntal wizardry in his Musical Offering and Art of Fugue are just some examples.

2. Related to 1. above, his music is the cornerstone of the repertoire for every genre in which he wrote. The Brandenburgs are the standard Baroque concertos; no 'cellist can claim to be one without mastering the six solo 'cello suites; many organists make his organ music the main, if not the sole, content of their repertoire. For many people, when you say "Passion" and "cantata" you mean the Bach ones by default. It comes as a bit of a surprise to learn that other people wrote them, too!

3. Related to 2. above, this applies to every level. If you're a six-year-old starting to learn the piano, you won't get through many lessons without coming across the Minuet in G by Petzold that Bach collected for his wife. A grade or two later you'll play the first of the preludes (the one that Gounod foolishly arranged as his Ave Maria) from The Well-Tempered Clavier(WTC), itself the standard compendium of fugue technique. Then you'll quickly progress to the first of the Fifteen Inventions. When you become an established keyboardist (you might be specialising in harpsichord, organ or even clavichord by this stage), you could make a career solely from Bach: after the delightful French Suites you'll progress to the larger and more demanding English Suites and the Goldberg Variations, for instance. If you're learning harmony beyond the most basic level, the 371 chorales (Lutheran hymn tunes) harmonised by Bach and collected by Riemenschneider will be your textbook, defining how chords work and how individual parts or voices move. (That's perhaps his greatest contribution to music: when we say "tonal harmony", we mean basically the practice established by Bach, which is still standard practice for tonal music 250 years after his death.) If you're learning counterpoint (the independent movement of voices against each other), those same chorales will teach you that as well; you can then advance to his hundreds of fugues, from the wealth of fugue types in the WTC through the organ preludes and fugues and the ones in The Art of Fugue to the ones in his sacred choral works such as the two Kyries at the beginning of the Mass in B Minor. If you're a violinist, you might regard the solo violin sonatas and partitas as the greatest music for your instrument that you will ever play; likewise if you're a flautist for the solo Flute suite and the solo lute works if you're a lutenist. The Passions, the cantatas and the motets are likewise among the cornerstones of the choral repertoire. (My favourite choral experience was singing in a local choir that was no more than reasonably good, but whose main repertoire was the cantatas. We did one of these works every month, and being immersed in this great music week by week at rehearsals was just pure heaven.)

4. He heavily influenced the music of many great composers who came after him. Schumann said: "Let the WTC be your daily bread. Then you will certainly become a solid musician"; he also said "Playing and studying Bach convinces us we are all numbskulls". Mozart absorbed Bach's influence in the last decade of his life, and it shows in the greater contrapuntal ingenuity and depth of his music over that time. For Wagner, Bach was "the most stupendous miracle in all of music", and his counterpoint in The Mastersingers clearly refers to that of Bach. Brahms said "Study Bach and you will find everything". Mahler said "In Bach the vital cells of music are united as the world is in God". Mendelssohn adored Bach, and arranged for the first performance of his St Matthew Passion in a century. The "atonal" composers like Schoenberg revived the Bach's contrapuntal influences in their own work, while Shostakovitch wrote a set of preludes and fugues in obvious imitation of the WTC. Generally speaking, his contribution to music exists in two forms: specific instances of influence like that of Shostakovitch, and the general result of study of his music, which invariably made the students' works deeper and put them in closer touch with the essence of music.

To sum up: you could think of Bach's influence as the funnel of his mighty genius, in which he collected, absorbed and synthesised the musical styles and forms of his day and realised their possibilities to the utmost, and through which he imparted to his successors the inspiration to take music to its limits.

Answer 2

For me it is

Toccata et Fugue BWV565

Answer 3

please awncer it