Lists of “great composers” can be easily found. They likely include different names depending on the opinions and favorites of the people compiling them. But one name appears on almost everyone’s list: Johann Sebastian Bach.

This fact would surprise Bach, who was not well known during his lifetime. In an age when musicians strove to work for the wealthiest and most aristocratic families they could find, or to gain employment for prominent churches, Bach rarely got the plum jobs. It’s hard to imagine that doors would have stood closed for him since we stand in awe at his magnificent compositions.

Surprisingly, it was actually several of his sons who found high-profile opportunities. And his children were indeed trained in music. After all, back then, musicians were considered craftsmen whose trade (composing, conducting, singing, playing) passed from generation to generation. So, for example, his son Carl Philipp Emanuel (C.P.E.) Bach, gained a prominent position as composer and klavier (keyboard) player at the court of Frederick the Great in Berlin. Another son, Johann Christian Bach, held the position of organist at the Cathedral in Milan and then became popular in London as a composer of a trendy new type of music that we call the “early symphony.” Later, that same son became music master to Queen Charlotte, wife of British King George III. Here is an international career that Papa Johanna Sebastian could only have dreamed of.

So, why is J.S. Bach so celebrated today, especially if he was not a super-star during his lifetime? Essentially he mastered nearly every type of musical composition that existed during his lifetime—an era we call the High Baroque. Also, he composed at an unprecedented high level of virtuosity and complexity, while still conveying timeless beauty and piercing drama in his music. Finally, he had to do all of this at lightning speed, since new music was continuously required of composers in those days.

Nonetheless, J.S. Bach’s achievements fell into obscurity for around 75 years, except among pedagogues who used certain of Bach’s pieces for teaching specific principles. Many new styles prevailed, some from Italy, some from France (Rococo), and elsewhere in Europe. These styles were lighter, more melodious, and more instantly rewarding for listeners than music of the High Baroque.

German composers, too, launched new styles, including one called the “sensitive style” (Empfindsamkeit), celebrating what older Baroque composers would have called erratic and unpredictable melodies and harmonies. Taken together, excitement about the new music of the second half of the 18th century eclipsed the interest in J.S. Bach’s works. So what happened? How did Bach emerge from obscurity to end up as arguably the most magnificent composer ever born?

Lasting fame began to return to Bach in 1829 when twenty-year-old Felix Mendelssohn worked under the influence of his teacher Carl Zelter to mount a performance of Bach’s monumental St. Matthew Passion at the Berlin Singakademie. This great—indeed unsurpassed—choral-instrumental work had lain in silence for more than seventy years. But Felix and his gifted sister Fanny were members of Berlin’s Singakademie chorus where Zelter chose to introduce his choristers to Bach’s music. Another of Mendelssohn’s links to Bach seems to have been his great-aunt Sarah Levy. A devotee of J.S. Bach, she had studied harpsichord with Bach’s oldest son. When she joined the Singakademie years earlier, its founding director was C.F. C. Fasch, a self-proclaimed scholar of Bach’s music. When Fasch died in 1800, his enthusiasm for Bach was continued by the new director, Carl Zelter.

Then, in 1823, Felix’s grandmother (and Sarah’s sister) presented Felix with a manuscript copy of the St. Matthew Passion (written nearly a hundred years earlier in 1727). The ambitious teenager Felix determined somehow to revive this work. Mounting the performance took time, research, and planning. But finally, the performance, despite substantial “modernizations” in Bach’s notes, served to thrust Bach’s music strongly into the public’s attention, and to universal acclaim as well! The rest, as they say, is history.

(You will find a recording of the complete St. Matthew Passion in the section on this page titled “The Story of Bach.”)

While the St. Matthew Passion stands out as one of Western Culture’s greatest choral works, Bach’s massive output of works for chorus and instruments is also extraordinary. These pieces were written to fill a constant demand for new works that arose during most of his decades of employment. For that matter, no composer contributed more to the repertoire for organ—a technologically advanced and highly admired instrument. Even today, Bach’s works for organ are considered unsurpassed.

Violinists and cellist spend a lifetime trying to master Bach’s solo (unaccompanied) suites. Pianists (and harpsichordists) inevitably study Bach’s Preludes and Fugues. Music students discover, and often struggle with, the advanced harmonies used in Bach’s chorales (hymns). Music theorists spend their student years analyzing Bach’s counterpoint in works like the Goldberg Variations and his late work Art of Fugue. And while none of Bach’s jobs required that he compose operas, few doubt that he would have been effective doing so.

While Bach is revered for his intellect and ability to craft music of complexity and depth, his music does not come across as solely intellectual. His melodies are elegant, his harmonies are rich and moving, and his expressions and sense of drama never fail to move a listener.

By the time the young Mendelssohn refocused the public’s attention on Bach, musical styles had moved far beyond both the High Baroque style and even the newer styles embraced by Bach’s sons. What we call the classical style of the late 18th century had matured with works by Haydn and Mozart and was pushed to new limits by another genius of a composer, the recently deceased Beethoven. Audiences were being exposed to new kinds of music that we now call “Romantic,” featuring an increasing rejection of clear form and an embrace of individualism and high passion.

Yet the Baroque style that we celebrate in Bach’s music was also passionate. It achieved its effects, though, through a clear delineation of emotions presented in formal, consistent musical structures that thoroughly satisfy the ear. Baroque music appeals to us today for the same reasons that it appealed to audiences in the Baroque era and to audiences who experienced its revival under Mendelssohn. Bach represents the culmination of that style and all that it has to offer.