Johann Sebastian Bach

The miracle of Bach is that this unassuming Thuringian town musician, who spent his life tuning organs, teaching choirboys, and navigating the petty political squabbles of 18th-century German courts, composed music of such staggering intellectual and emotional depth that it still commands the spiritual attention of the entire world. This concise biography traces the arc of that extraordinary life: from the orphan raised by his musician brother, through decades of demanding ecclesiastical and court posts, to his final years as Thomaskantor in Leipzig, where he produced the Mass in B minor and The Art of Fugue. Peyser illuminates how a man of such pedestrian concerns, a querulous employer, a father of twenty children, a man who once walked two hundred miles to hear a organist, could pour forth works of such celestial ambition. This is a portrait of genius as lived reality, not romantic mythology.