Residence 1
📍Frauenplan 21, 99817 Eisenach, Thuringia, Germany
1685 – 1700“I was born Johann Sebastian Bach on the 21st of March 1685 in Eisenach, Thuringia, the son of Johann Ambrosius Bach, a town musician. Eisenach was the city of Luther's castle, Wartburg, visible on the hill above — the city where Luther had translated the New Testament into German, where the German language itself had been shaped. I came from a dynasty of musicians — the Bach family had been producing church and court musicians in Thuringia for generations — and music was the air of the Eisenach household. My father died when I was nine and I was sent to live with my brother Johann Christoph in Ohrdruf. But Eisenach gave me the Lutheran faith, the German musical tradition, and the understanding that music was not entertainment but devotion. Everything I wrote was, in some sense, written in Eisenach.”
👍 LovedThe Lutheran faith that gave my music its purpose. The Bach family musical tradition that surrounded me from birth. Eisenach's connection to Luther and to the German language that shaped my musical thinking.
👎 DislikedMy father's death when I was nine. The move to Ohrdruf and a brother's household. The sense of a musical vocation forming in a body too young to fully exercise it.
🗺️ Approximate location today
🛰️ Satellite view · © Google
Sources: Wolff, C. Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician (2000), W.W. Norton; Williams, P. The Life of Bach (2004), Cambridge University Press
Residence 2
📍Thomasschule, Thomaskirchhof 18, 04109 Leipzig, Germany
1723 – 1750“I served as Thomaskantor in Leipzig for the last twenty-seven years of my life, living in the Thomasschule adjacent to the great church of St Thomas where I directed the music. The position was not glamorous — I was responsible for teaching Latin as well as music to the choirboys, for providing compositions for the city's four main churches every week, for managing a household that at various times included over a dozen children of my own as well as pupils. But Leipzig gave me what I needed: a fixed position, a regular income, a great organ, a choir I could train to my requirements, and enough stability to write. The cantatas, the Passions, the Mass in B minor — all of it emerged from those years in the Thomasschule, from the routine and the discipline and the absolute certainty of what was required of me each Sunday.”
👍 LovedThe Thomaskirche itself — one of the great Gothic churches of Germany, with an acoustic that made even simple music sound profound. The regular demand for new compositions, which suited my nature entirely. The large household and the community of musicians I had built around me.
👎 DislikedThe constant disputes with the Leipzig town council over resources and authority. The teaching duties that consumed time I would rather have spent composing. The city's failure to fully appreciate what I was producing for it.
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today
Sources: Wolff, C. Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician (2000), W.W. Norton; Williams, P. The Life of Bach (2004), Cambridge University Press; Geck, M. Johann Sebastian Bach: Life and Work (2006), Harcourt
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