[BITList] The London Bach

[John Feltham]

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Bach,  Johann Christian  (1735-1782), composer, was born on 5 September 1735 in Leipzig, Saxony, the sixth and youngest son and the eleventh of the thirteen children of Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750), composer, and his second wife, Anna Magdalena (1701-1760), daughter of Johann Caspar Wilcke, court trumpeter. He was probably educated at the Thomasschule, Leipzig, where his father was responsible for his musical studies as Kantor at St Thomas's Church and civic director of music. After J. S. Bach's death in 1750, Johann Christian moved to Berlin, where his half-brother Carl Philipp Emanuel assumed responsibility for his welfare and education. His first surviving large-scale compositions, including at least five keyboard concertos, date from his years in Berlin, where he also gained renown as a harpsichordist.

In 1755 Bach made a decisive break with the inward-looking Lutheran traditions of his forebears by travelling to Italy, possibly in the company of an Italian lady singer, where he took counterpoint lessons with Padre Martini in Bologna, composed several Roman Catholic church works (he was received into the Roman Catholic church about 1760), and secured a Milanese patron, Count Agostino Litta, in whose house he lived from before 1757 and through whose efforts he became 'second organist' at Milan Cathedral in 1760. But it was in the opera house, not the organ loft, that he found his true metier. The success of his three operas for Italy, Artaserse (1760), Catone in Utica (1761), and Alessandro nell' Indie (1762), prompted an invitation to compose two works for the King's Theatre, London, and in 1762 Bach travelled to London, where he spent the remaining twenty years of his life as the dominant musical figure in the city, thereby earning the sobriquet 'the London Bach'.

By February 1764 Bach was music master to Queen Charlotte. His duties entailed accompanying the amateur music-making of the king and queen, teaching the harpsichord to the royal family, and organizing the queen's chamber music concerts. For the King's Theatre he composed five Italian operas, of which the first, Orione (1763), and the last, La clemenza di Scipione (1778), were perhaps the most successful, and an oratorio Gioas, re di Giuda (1770). Bach gave his first concert with his compatriot Carl Friedrich Abel in 1764 and in 1765 inaugurated the series of subscription concerts that eventually bore their names. Between 1765 and 1767 these were held at Carlisle House, Soho Square, and were organized by the impresario Teresa Cornelys. From January 1768 Bach and Abel managed the concerts themselves at Almack's assembly rooms in King Street, St James's. The Bach-Abel concerts moved in 1775 to the lavish Hanover Square rooms, specially built for the purpose with the financial assistance of Giovanni Gallini. At these concerts many of Bach's symphonies, concertos, cantatas, chamber works, and keyboard sonatas were given their first performances.

As a composer and a soloist Bach did much to champion the pianoforte, an instrument then being developed in London by German immigrant craftsmen: the sonatas op. 5 are apparently the first works published in England to specify the piano on the title-page, and Bach is credited with performing the first solo on the instrument in public in London in 1768. The composer visited France, Germany, and Italy on a number of occasions, writing operas to be performed in Mannheim and Paris. He was acquainted with many great men of his age, including Sir Joshua Reynolds, John Zoffany, Thomas Gainsborough (who painted his portrait), Charles Burney, Denis Diderot, and Leopold and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. On the Mozarts' visit to London in 1764-5 Bach is reputed to have performed duets with the eight-year-old composer. This friendship with young Mozart, who was much influenced by Bach's music, was renewed at another meeting in Paris in 1778.

In the mid-1770s (the exact date is unknown) Bach married Cecilia Grassi, an Italian singer then past her prime. They had no children. Bach's last years were clouded by financial worries caused by declining receipts and heavy expenditure on the Hanover Square concerts. He died, leaving £4000 of debts, on 1 January 1782, presumably at the house in Paddington to which he had moved in November 1781, and was buried on 6 January 1782 in St Pancras's churchyard.

Stephen Roe 

Sources  C. S. Terry, John Christian Bach, 2nd edn (1967) + H. Gartner, John Christian Bach: Mozart's friend and mentor, trans. R. G. Pauly (1994) + S. Roe, 'Bach (12)', New Grove, 2nd edn + E. Warburton, 'Johann Christian Bach', The New Grove Bach family, ed. C. Wolff (1983)
Likenesses  T. Gainsborough, oils, 1776, Civico Museo, Bologna, Bibliografico Musicale · T. Gainsborough, oils, replica, 1776, NPG [see illus.]



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