Bach, the composer who went to prison

Picture: Shutterstock
Written by: 360.org
Monday, 11 February 2019

1685 - Today we congratulate Johann Sebastian Bach with his birthday. Bach was born in 1685 on the 31st of march. He was a very famous composer and he is highly regarded for his musical complexities and stylistic innovations.

Born to play
Bach was born in a hugely musical family. His parents and all his uncles were all musicians. When he was ten, both his parents died. He went to live with his brother. Later in life he enrolled in a music school in L�neburg. Bach was very talented, but he was also a very hard worker. He would spend day and night copying, and learning from, sheet music from all over the world.

Beethoven might have been deaf�
But Bach was blind. In 1749 Bach started writing a piece called "The Art of Fugue", but he never finished it because he slowly went blind. �No problem�, he thought and he went to have surgery. As you can imagine medicine at the time wasn�t great. The surgery ended up making him completely blind. Not much later he died of a stroke.

360 trivial fact
Bach was a very stubborn person, so much so that he ended up in prison for it. He didn�t like his job at the church anymore and wanted to quit. But the church wouldn�t let him, and Bach wouldn�t take no for an answer. Because of his stubbornness he spent a month in jail. He did end up quitting his job.

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