Johann Sebastian Bach bust statue

Johann Sebastian Bach, born in 1685 in Eisenach into a family that had supplied Germany with church musicians for five generations, spent most of his career as Cantor of the Thomaskirche in Leipzig — a position so practically demanding that the immortality of his music came almost as a by-product of the weekly cantatas, the Passions written for Good Friday, the keyboard exercises composed for his students. He died in 1750 largely forgotten outside the Lutheran church circles of central Germany. Mendelssohn's 1829 revival of the Saint Matthew Passion began the rediscovery, and the marble bust portrait quickly became the standard image of the supreme master of counterpoint.