Johann Christoph Bach (organist at Ohrdruf)

For other people named Johann Christoph Bach, see Johann Christoph Bach (disambiguation).

Johann Christoph Bach (16 June 1671 – 22 February 1721) was a German musician and composer. He was the eldest brother of the more famous German musician and composer Johann Sebastian Bach. Johann Christoph was born in Erfurt, where he studied under Johann Pachelbel, and his library of keyboard music included works by Pachelbel, Johann Jakob Froberger and Johann Kaspar Kerll. In 1690 he became organist at the Michaeliskirche at Ohrdruf, and in 1694 he was married there. He died, aged 49, in Ohrdruf.

Relationship with his brother Johann Sebastian

Johann Sebastian Bach's parents both died before he was ten (his mother died in 1694, and his father the next year), and he moved in with his eldest brother Johann Christoph, who raised him from that point on. According to J.S. Bach's obituary written by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach and Johann Friedrich Agricola, it was under Christoph's guidance that J.S. Bach "laid the foundations of his keyboard technique".

Johann Christoph is also remembered for a story related by Johann Sebastian's first biographer, Johann Nikolaus Forkel:

The most renowned Clavier composers of that day were Froberger, Fischer, Johann Caspar Kerl, Pachelbel, Buxtehude, Bruhns, and Böhm. Johann Christoph possessed a book containing several pieces by these masters, and Bach begged earnestly for it, but without effect. Refusal increasing his determination, he laid his plans to get the book without his brother's knowledge. It was kept on a book-shelf which had a latticed front. Bach's hands were small. Inserting them, he got hold of the book, rolled it up, and drew it out. As he was not allowed a candle, he could only copy it on moonlight nights, and it was six months before he finished his heavy task. As soon as it was completed he looked forward to using in secret a treasure won by so much labour. But his brother found the copy and took it from him without pity, nor did Bach recover it until his brother's death soon after.

Forkel may be unreliable on the anecdote, at least the brother dying soon after is an error, and "it cannot be questioned that (Johann Sebastian) owed a good deal to his brother". After having stayed with his brother for five years Johann Sebastian left Ohrdruf, joining the choir of St. Michael's Convent at Lüneburg.

Sources

• Johann Sebastian Bach: His Life, Art, and Work at Project Gutenberg, translation by Charles Sanford Terry of Ueber Johann Sebastian Bachs Leben, Kunst und Kunstwerke by Johann Nikolaus Forkel (1802). New York: Harcourt, Brace and Howe. 1920 (e-version: 2011).