1. Bach, Vivaldi, Pachelbel, Purcell, Handel, Telemann
Baroque Composers
Bach, Vivaldi, Pachelbel, Purcell, Handel, Telemann

2. Johann Pachelbel
German composer Johann Pachelbel was known for his works for organ, and was considered one of the great organ masters of the generation before J.S. Bach.
Johann Pachelbel was baptized September 1, 1653, in Nürnberg, Germany.
In 1695 he was appointed organist at the St. Sebalduskirche in Nürnberg, where he remained until his death.
He also taught organ, and one of his pupils was Johann Christoph Bach, who in turn gave his younger brother Johann Sebastian Bach his first formal keyboard lessons.
Pachelbel's son was also an organist and composer.
He would become a close friend of the Bach family and teach both Johann Sebastian and Johann Christoph. Pachelbel left after a year at Eisenach however, and became organist at the Predigerkirche in Erfurt, in 1678.

3. Johann Sebastian Bach Born on March 31, 1685 in Eisenach, Germany
Came from a family of musicians
Became an orphan at the age of ten. His older brother, a church organist, took him in.
At the age of fifteen, he left his brother’s family.
He got placed at a school in Luneburg because of his soprano singing voice.
When his voice changed, he switched to playing violin and harpsichord.
In 1703, he landed his first job as a musician at the court of Duke Johann Ernst in Weinar.
He had many talents, serving a violinist and at times, filled in for the organist.
He was known as great performer and his technical skill landed him the position of church organist at the New Church in Arnstadt.
He was responsible for providing music for services and special events as well as music instruction.

4. Johann Sebastian Bach
He was independent and an arrogant man who did not get along with his students.
He did not rehearse with the church choir enough.
He left his job for several months to hear another musician in another town.
He left Arnstadt for an organist position at the Church of St. Blaise in Muhlhausen.
This new church he worked at had trouble with his compositions being so complex.
After a year working at this church, he worked for a duke, Wilhelm Ernst.
This is where he wrote, “Toccata and Fugue in d minor” for organ. He also composed a cantata, “Herz und Mund und Tat” which translates Heart and Mouth and Deed. One section of this cantata, “Jesu of Man’s Desiring.”
Over the next few years, Bach had auditions for positions and worked in different places composing different works.
Complex composition: Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit, “Actus Tragicus”

5. Johann Sebastian Bach personal life
In his personal life, he was devoted to his family. He married his cousin and had seven children.
Most of these children, died during child birth. His cousin died in 1706 while he was with Prince Leopold.
In following year, Bach married Anna Magdalena Wulcken. They had thirteen children, more than half of them died as children.

6. Antonio Vivaldi
Born on March 4, 1678, in Venice, Italy, Antonio Vivaldi was ordained as a priest though he instead chose to follow his passion for music.
A creative composer who created hundreds of works, he became renowned for his concertos in Baroque style, becoming a highly influential innovator in form and pattern.
He was also known for his operas, including Argippo and Bajazet. He died on July 28, 1741.
His father was a professional violinist and Vivaldi learned violin from him.
While his practice flourished, his chronic breath barred him from mastering wind instruments.
He studied to be preist, at the age of fifteen. He was ordinaded in 1703.
Due to his red hair he was called, “il Prete Rosso,” or “the Red Priest.”

7. Antonio Vivaldi
Health problems prevented home from delivering mass and forced him to quit the priesthood shortly after his ordination.
At 25, Vivaldi was named master of the violin at the Devout Hospital of Mercy in Venice.
He composed most of his major works in this position over three decades. The Ospedale was an institution where orphans receive instruction.
The boys learned trade work and the girls learned music.
The most talented musicians joined an orchestra that played Vivaldi’s compositions, including religious choral music. This orchestra gained international attention.
In 1716, he was promoted to music director.
He had been writing opera scores by 1715 and about 50 of these scores remain to this day.

8. Antonio Vivaldi
His two most successful operas are “La Constanza trionfante” and “Farnace.”
These were performed multiple times during his lifetimes.
During his employment at the school, he also accepted a number of short term positions funded by patrons in Mantua and Rome.
It was during this time, , that he wrote the The Four Seasons.
Vivaldi had fans or admirers that included members of Eurpean royal families. On of his cantatas, was written for the wedding of Louis XV.
He was a favorite of Emperor Charles VI, who honored him as a knight.
Despite this fame, He was not a finanical success.
When younger up and coming composers made their mark, he moved to Vienna, Austria hoping to find work.

9. Antonio Vivaldi
After Charles VI passed, he died in poverty in Vienna on July 28, He was buried in a simple grave after a funeral service that proceeded without music.
Vivaldi’s music was revived in the early 20th century.
The music of Vivaldi has been performed widely since World War II.
The choral composition, Gloria, is performed at Christmas time worldwide.
Vivaldi’s work have influenced composers, including J.S. Bach.

10. Henry Purcell
Born approx in London, England. Died Nov. 21, 1695.
He most remembered for his more than 100 songs, the miniature opera Dido and Aeneas, and his incidental music to a version of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, called The Fairy Queen.
Purcell, the most important English composer of his time, composed music covering a wide field: the church, the stage, the court, and private entertainment.
With these different type of composition styles, he showed an obvious admiration for the past combined with a willingness to learn from the present, particularly from his colleagues in Italy.
With his technique and individual inventiveness, he is marked him one of the most original English composers of his time as well as one of the most original in Europe.

11. Henry Purcell
His father went to a prestigious school at the time, the Chapel Royal. This school was where musicians trained for the royal service.
Purcell received an early education there as a chorister.
When his voice changed in 1673, he was appointed assistant to the keeper of the king’s instruments, whom he succeeded in 1683.
From 1674 to 1678, he tuned the organ at Westminster Abbey and was employed there in 1675–76 to copy organ parts of anthems.
In 1677, he succeeded Matthew Locke as the composer for Charles II’s string orchestra and in 1679 was appointed organist of Westminster Abbey.
A further appointment as one of the three organists of the Chapel Royal followed in He retained all his official posts through the reigns of James II, William III, and Mary. 

12. Henry Purcell
He married in approximately 1680 and had at least six children, three of whom died in infancy.
Purcell seems to have spent all his life in Westminster. A fatal illness prevented him from finishing the music for the operatic version of John Dryden and Sir Robert Howard’s verse tragedy The Indian Queen (1664), which was completed after his death by his brother Daniel.
To later ages, Purcell was best known as a songwriter because so many of his songs were printed in his lifetime and were reprinted again and again after his death.
Purcell’s genius as a composer for the stage was hampered by there being no public opera in London during his lifetime.
Most of his theatre music consists simply of instrumental music and songs inserted into spoken drama, though occasionally there were opportunities for more extended musical scenes. Until his death, he was constantly employed in writing music for the public theatres.

13. Henry Purcell
These productions included some that gave scope for more than merely incidental music—music for Dioclesian (1690), adapted by Thomas Betterton from the tragedy The Prophetess, by John Fletcher and Philip Massinger; for King Arthur (1691), by John Dryden, designed from the first as an entertainment with music; and for The Fairy Queen (1692), an anonymous adaptation of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, in which the texts set to music are all interpolations.
In these works, Purcell showed not only a lively sense of comedy but also a gift of passionate musical expression that is often more exalted than the words. The tendency to identify himself still more closely with the Italian style is very noticeable in the later dramatic works, which often demand considerable agility from the soloists.

14. Henry Purcell
Though the main period of Purcell’s creative activity lasted for little more than the last 15 years of his life, he managed to crowd into it a large number of compositions, including more than 100 secular songs and about 40 duets, apart from those that he contributed to plays. Many of the songs are quite substantial pieces, incorporating recitative and arias on the lines of the Italian solo cantata.
A favorite device used widely by Purcell in his secular music, though rarely in his anthems, was the ground bass, a short melodic phrase repeated over and over again as a bass line, with varying music for the upper parts.