Bach

It's the birthday of Johann Sebastian Bach, born in Eisenach, Germany in 1685. He came from a musical family, and was talented enough to get a scholarship to study music. And as a teenager, he was an accomplished organist and held a series of posts at various churches. But he wasn't the easiest organ player to have on staff. He criticized the choir, he took prolonged absences from his job, and once he got in a fight with a bassoonist, in which Bach called the bassoonist something that has been translated as "nanny-goat bassoonist" or "bassoonist breaking wind after eating a green onion." He took a leave of absence from a job in the town of Arnstadt — he asked for a month and stayed for three more — to visit another part of Germany and see the composer and organist Dietrich Buxtehude. Buxtehude was old by the time Bach visited him, and they hit it off, and Bach could have taken over his position. But by practice, he would have had to marry Buxtehude's daughter, and apparently this idea was not appealing because he went back to Arnstadt. His employers were relieved to have him back because he was so talented, but they weren't too happy that he was three months late, nor with the musical innovations he had picked up, inspired by Buxtehude. The Church Council held a meeting and informed him: "Complaints have been made to the Consistorium that you now accompany the hymns with surprising variations and irrelevant ornaments which obliterate the melody and confuse the congregation. If you desire to introduce a theme against the melody, you must go on with it and not immediately fly off to another." Then he was reprimanded for playing the organ for "a strange damsel." Not much later, he left Arnstadt, married his cousin Maria Barbara Bach, and went on to a distinguished career as a composer, organist, and champion of German music.