Palau de la Música Catalana: MAGNIFICAT(s)

About the Event

In this highly‐anticipated concert, hear the mellifluous sounds of classical music by the Bach‐Family at Barcelona's treasured and world‐renowned Palau de la Música Catalana.

A unique production, the result of the sum of the best young talent in the country, brings the 10th edition of Bachcelona to a close with an equally original programme, bracketed by two Magnificats by the Bach family: one by Johann Christian, at the beginning, and the more famous Christmas motet by his father, Johann Sebastian, at the end. A Symphony by Carl Philipp Emmanuel, second son of the Thomaskantor and a composer of a catalogue of works that are considered the precursor of Classical era, will make up the middle section.

Johann Sebastian Bach

The name Bach and the word musician had long been synonyms in Germany as the world saw 56 musicians from this kin. But it was Johann Sebastian Bach, a genius composer and virtuoso organ player, who shed lustre on his family name. He was born on th 31st of March 1685 in Eisenach, a small town in Thuringia. At the age of 10 he became an orphan and was brought up by his elder brother Johann Christoph, who was an organist in a neighbouring town. His brother was the one to teach music to the young Johann Sebastian. Later he moved to Luneburg where he attended a church school and mastered the techniques of playing violin, viola, piano and organ by the age of 17. Besides that, Bach was a choir singer and later after his voice broke he became a chanter’s assistant.
In 1703 Bach was hired as a court musician in the chapel of Duke Johann Ernst III. He earned such a good reputation there that he was later invited to Arnstadt to be an organist at the New Church, where he wrote his best organ works. In 1723 he moved to Leipzig to be a chantor at St. Thomas Church where he stayed until his death of a stroke in 1750. In the year of his death he had undergone unsuccessful eye surgery which lead him to lose his eyesight. During that strenuous time his second wife Anna Magdalena helped him to write his last musical pieces. Bach’s artistic legacy is vast. He created compositions in all genres of the time: oratorias, cantatas, masses, motets, music for organ, piano and violin.