During the second half of the 17th century, German composers started pairing preludes ( or sometimes toccatas ) with fugues in the same key ; Johann Pachelbel ( c. 1653 – 1706 ) was one of the first to do so, although Johann Sebastian Bach's ( 1685 – 1750 ) " prelude and fugue " pieces are much more numerous and well-known today.

Bach's toccatas for harpsichord are multi-sectional works which include fugal writing as part of their structure.

The piece starts with a three-part Praeludium in C resembling Bach's toccatas, and ends with a Postludium which is an exact retrograde inversion of the Praeludium.

The fretting of a clavichord provides new problems for some repertoire, but scholarship suggests that these problems are not insurmountable in Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier ().

He looked to older music for inspiration in the art of counterpoint ; the themes of some of his works are modelled on Baroque sources such as Bach's The Art of Fugue in the fugal finale of Cello Sonata No. 1 or the same composer's Cantata No. 150 in the passacaglia theme of the Fourth Symphony's finale.

Historical studies of music are for example concerned with a composer's life and works, the developments of styles and genres ( e. g. baroque concertos ), the social function of music for a particular group of people ( e. g. court music ), or modes of performance at a particular place and time ( e. g. Johann Sebastian Bach's choir in Leipzig ).

Bach's motets are:

In Johann Sebastian Bach's case many of the larger cantatas are actually called oratorios ; and the Christmas Oratorio is a collection of six church cantatas actually intended for performance on six different days, though together forming as complete an artistic whole as any classical oratorio.

Puns are occasionally used to connect ideas, such as " the Magnificrab, Indeed " with Bach's Magnificat in D ; " SHRDLU, Toy of Man's Designing " with Bach's Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring ; and " Typographical Number Theory ", or " TNT ", which inevitably reacts explosively when it attempts to make statements about itself.

They are currently touring with an audio-visual performance centered on Johann Sebastian Bach's Die Kunst der Fuge.

Bach's many chorale preludes are the best-known examples of the form.

* Johann Sebastian Bach's works are referred to by BWV ( Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis ) number assigned in the catalogue by Wolfgang Schmieder.

Bach's Partitas are very rarely called the " German Suites ", in analogy with the national naming of the English and French Suites.

The ultra-short version of jean cut-offs are also known as Daisy Dukes, in reference to Catherine Bach's character of that name from the American television show The Dukes of Hazzard.

Apart from the trio sonata, which is written for flute, violin and basso continuo, the pieces have few indications of which instruments are meant to play them, although there is now significant support for the idea that they are for solo keyboard, like most of Bach's other published works.

Book 2: Preludio, Fuga e Fuga figurata ( Studie nach J. S. Bach's Wohltemperiertem Klavier )-The " Preludio " and " Fuga " are almost unaltered transcriptions of the D major prelude and fugue from the first book of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier.

Bach's organ preludes are quite diverse, drawing on both southern and northern German influences.

Scholars believe that Bach intended the works to be considered as a systematically conceived cycle, rather than an arbitrary series of pieces: Compared to Bach's other suite collections, the cello suites are the most consistent in order of their movements.

A gigue is usually in 3 / 8 or in one of its compound metre derivatives, such as 6 / 8, 6 / 4, 9 / 8 or 12 / 8, although there are some gigues written in other metres, as for example the gigue from Johann Sebastian Bach's first French Suite ( BWV 812 ), which is written in 4 / 4.

In some cases the repeats of a " perpetuum mobile " piece are at a different pitch ( while a modulation or a chord progression occurs during the repeatable part ): some of the riddle canons of Bach's Das Musikalische Opfer are examples of this particular kind of Perpetuum Mobile / Canon Perpetuus.

On the other hand, the parts in the manuscript are numbered from 1 to 4, and Bach's usual closing formula ( S. D. G = Soli Deo Gloria ) is only found at the end of the Dona Nobis Pacem.

The order of the fugues and canons has been debated, especially as there are differences between the manuscript and the printed editions appearing immediately after Bach's death.

The BWV numbers are universally used and accepted as the standard numbering of Bach's works ; for example, Mass in B minor is BWV 232.

Emanuel Bach's work itself influenced the work of, among others, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Mendelssohn.

In 1989 the Monteverdi Choir had its 25th anniversary, touring the world giving performances of Handel's oratorio " Israel in Egypt " and Bach's " Magnificat " among other works.

" His recordings of Bach's Mass in B Minor and St. John Passion are frequently counted among the finest of these works to use large choral and orchestral forces.

He became its conductor in 1850, and under his management a number of masterpieces of choral music were given their first performance in Denmark, among them Bach's St. Matthew Passion in 1875.

On a more traditional level, the East German government celebrated the fact that Johann Sebastian Bach was born in East German territory, and spent a great deal of money converting his house in Eisenach into a museum of his life, which, among other things, included more than 300 instruments from Bach's life.

Johann Ambrosius ' uncle, Heinrich of Arnstadt, had two sons: Johann Michael and Johann Christoph, who are among the greatest of J. S. Bach's forerunners, Johann Christoph being once supposed to be the author of the motet, Ich lasse dich nicht (" I will not leave you "), formerly ascribed to Sebastian Bach and now confirmed to be his ( BWV 159a ).

Grumiaux's recordings of Bach's Sonatas & Partitas for Unaccompanied Violin are frequently cited as a supreme reflection of the violinist's art and as first choices among the many recordings available.

The first of many recordings by him appeared in 1975 ; among them are J. S. Bach's lute works and the complete guitar works of Per Nørgård.

J. S. Bach's son Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach was a great proponent of the instrument, and most of his German contemporaries regarded it as a central keyboard instrument, for performing, teaching, composing and practicing.

" In response to these accusations of anti-Semitism, composer and Oberlin College professor Conrad Cummings wrote a letter to the editor defending " Klinghoffer " as " the closest analogue to the experience of Bach's audience attending his most demanding works ," and noted that, as someone of half-Jewish heritage, he " found nothing anti-Semitic about the work.

The style is most often used in preludes to suites, and can be found in non-staged vocal works such as cantatas, for example in the opening chorus of Bach's cantata Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland, BWV 61.

The composer who most influenced Bach's maturing style was unquestionably his father Sebastian.

It uses several melodic figures found in Bach's work, most notably the BACH motif ( B flat, A, C, B natural ).

The suites contain a great variety of technical devices, a wide emotional range, and some of Bach's most compelling voice interactions and conversations.

It is their intimacy, however, that has made the suites amongst Bach's most popular works today, resulting in their different recorded interpretations being fiercely defended by their respective advocates.

Some of Bach's most important works used Picander / Henrici's librettos.

After his father's death, when Johann Christian was 15, he worked with his second-oldest half brother Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, who was twenty-one years his senior and considered at the time to be the most musically gifted of Bach's sons.

The Mass was most probably never performed in totality during Bach's lifetime, and the work largely disappeared in the 18th century.

Among the most notable of Joachim's achievements were the revivals of Bach's Sonatas and partitas for solo violin, BWV 1001-1006, and particularly of Beethoven's Violin Concerto in D major, Op.

" The most distinguishing feature of P. D. Q. Bach's music, in the words of Schickele, is " manic plagiarism ".

Together with Bach's Mass in B Minor, it is the most significant mass setting of the common practice period.

One of his most famous recordings is a 1954 recording of Bach's solo violin sonatas and partitas played using a violin with what was referred to as the Bach ( or Vega ) bow, which could be adjusted so the player could play three or even all four strings of the violin at once.

Helmut Walcha has also recorded most of Bach's harpsichord works ( The English and French Suites, The Goldberg Variations, Partitas, The Italian Concerto, 15 Inventions and 15 Sinfonias, The Well-Tempered Clavier ) for EMI.

Bach's most lasting innovations was the shortening of the theme to a motif, which could be shaped more dramatically in pursuit of " development ".

* Four Canadian Juno Awards for Best Classical Album, most recently in 1995 for Bach's Brandenburg Concertos

* in the Baroque era, there were many works written for the viola da gamba, including sonatas ( the most famous being Johann Sebastian Bach's three, now most often played on the cello )

In 1968, Wendy Carlos's landmark electronic-music album Switched-On Bach, containing transcriptions of a number of Bach's most famous compositions for the Moog synthesizer, was issued on Columbia Masterworks, which continued to release Carlos's output until the mid -' 80s.

In addition, Leonhardt recorded Bach's St Matthew Passion, Mass in B minor, Magnificat, and the complete secular cantatas, as well as the harpsichord concertos, Brandenburg concertos, and most of his chamber and keyboard music ; he recorded Bach's Goldberg Variations ( three times ), Partitas ( twice ), The Art of Fugue ( twice ), The Well-Tempered Clavier, French Suites, English Suites ( twice ), Inventions and Sinfonias, and many other individual works for the harpsichord, clavichord, or organ.