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C. P. E. Bach in Hamburg: The Son Who Inherited Telemann’s City

A quiet cobbled street of restored eighteenth-century gabled houses in Hamburg's Neustadt, with the tower of St Michael's Church rising behind

C. P. E. Bach in Hamburg: The Son Who Inherited Telemann’s City When Georg Philipp Telemann died in Hamburg on 25 June 1767, aged 86, the city lost the musician who had run its church music for 46 years. The man chosen to replace him was his own godson, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, the second […]

The Bach Family in Erfurt: A Musical Network Before Johann Sebastian

The Krämerbrücke in Erfurt, a medieval stone bridge lined with half-timbered houses, reflected in the river Gera in early morning light

The Bach Family in Erfurt: A Musical Network Before Johann Sebastian As late as 1793, more than forty years after Johann Sebastian Bach died in Leipzig, the town musicians of Erfurt were still known as “die Bache”, the Bachs, although by then no one of that name remained among them. The word had become a […]

Young Bach in Arnstadt: A First Organist’s Post and a Restless Reputation

A small historic market square in Arnstadt, Thuringia, with Renaissance and Baroque townhouses and cobbled paving in morning light

Young Bach in Arnstadt: A First Organist’s Post and a Restless Reputation On 21 February 1706, the church consistory in Arnstadt summoned its young organist to explain himself. He had been away for months longer than his leave allowed, and the congregation was unhappy with his playing: he had “made many curious variations in the […]

Bach in Dresden: Saxon Court Culture, Petition and Musical Prestige

The Baroque old town of Dresden with its great church dome and court church tower, seen across the River Elbe at sunset

Bach in Dresden: Saxon Court Culture, Petition and Musical Prestige On 27 July 1733, Johann Sebastian Bach handed a set of hand-copied parts for a Kyrie and Gloria to the new Elector of Saxony in Dresden, together with a petition. In it he asked for a court title and complained that in Leipzig he had […]

The Musical Offering: Bach’s Potsdam Encounter with Frederick the Great

A candlelit rococo palace music room in Potsdam with gilded ornament, a flute on a music stand and an early fortepiano

The Musical Offering: Bach’s Potsdam Encounter with Frederick the Great On the evening of 7 May 1747, Frederick the Great was about to begin his usual private concert at Potsdam when he was handed the list of visitors to the town. According to the story told ever after, he put down his flute and told […]

Bach’s Organ Music in Weimar: Court, Church and the Orgelbüchlein

The carved and gilded façade of a Baroque church organ with tin pipes high in a gallery in Thuringia, Germany

Bach’s Organ Music in Weimar: Court, Church and the Orgelbüchlein In the ducal palace at Weimar there was once a chapel known as the Weg zur Himmelsburg, the “way to the heavenly castle”. Its organ stood about twenty metres above the altar, in an open gallery under the roof, and the music drifted down to […]

Bach House Eisenach: Family, Instruments and the Making of a Musical Childhood

A half-timbered town house with ochre infill and a small Baroque garden in Eisenach, Thuringia, on a sunny morning

Bach House Eisenach: Family, Instruments and the Making of a Musical Childhood For the rest of his life, Johann Sebastian Bach described himself as “Isenacus”, a man of Eisenach, though he left the town at the age of ten. He was born there in March 1685 into a household where music was the family trade, […]

The Brandenburg Concertos: Bach, Prince Leopold and the Köthen Court

Baroque instruments including a harpsichord, viola da gamba, recorders and natural horns set out in a palace hall in Köthen, Germany

The Brandenburg Concertos: Bach, Prince Leopold and the Köthen Court The six works we call the Brandenburg Concertos were never called that by Bach, were probably never played in Brandenburg, and may have sat unused in a margrave’s library for years. Bach wrote out the fair copy in Köthen in 1721, with a dedication in […]

The Well-Tempered Clavier and Köthen: Courtly Freedom, Keyboard Practice and Craft

An eighteenth-century harpsichord by a tall window in a Baroque palace room in Köthen, Germany, in soft morning light

The Well-Tempered Clavier and Köthen: Courtly Freedom, Keyboard Practice and Craft In 1722, in the small princely town of Köthen, Johann Sebastian Bach wrote out a title page for a collection of keyboard music. It promised preludes and fugues “through all the tones and semitones”, written “for the profit and use of the studious musical […]

Thomaskirche and the Office of the Thomaskantor

A late-Gothic church with an exceptionally steep roof and a slender Baroque tower beside a quiet square in Leipzig at dusk

Thomaskirche and the Office of the Thomaskantor “Since the best can’t be obtained, mediocre ones will have to be accepted.” So said a Leipzig councillor in 1723, as the city settled for its third choice to run its school choir and church music. The candidate was Johann Sebastian Bach, and the post he accepted, Thomaskantor […]

Mendelssohn and Bach in Berlin: The 1829 Revival of the St Matthew Passion

A neoclassical concert hall with a coffered ceiling, columns and tiered choir seating behind a grand piano in Berlin, Germany

Mendelssohn and Bach in Berlin: The 1829 Revival of the St Matthew Passion On 11 March 1829, in the concert hall of the Berlin Sing-Akademie, a twenty-year-old Felix Mendelssohn raised his hands before a choir of 158 singers and began a work that had never been performed outside Leipzig and had not been heard there […]

Bach in Germany: A 16-Day Music-History Itinerary

Rolling farmland and a village church spire in Thuringia, central Germany, in golden early-summer light

Bach in Germany: A 16-Day Music-History Itinerary Johann Sebastian Bach never left the German-speaking lands, yet he worked for almost every kind of employer his world offered: a town council, a duke, a prince, a city school, and, by title at least, a king. Each move changed what he wrote, because each employer needed different […]

Bach Cantatas in Leipzig: A Weekly Cycle of Sacred Music

The nave of a Gothic Lutheran hall church in Leipzig in early-morning light, with wooden pews leading towards the organ gallery.

Bach Cantatas in Leipzig: A Weekly Cycle of Sacred Music At seven o’clock on a Sunday morning in Leipzig in the 1720s, the main service began, and somewhere inside its three hours came roughly half an hour of new music that had not existed a week before. Week after week, the composer was Johann Sebastian […]

Bach Museum Leipzig: Objects, Archives and a Composer’s Afterlife

An eighteenth-century organ console with wooden stop knobs displayed in a quiet museum room in Leipzig, Germany.

Bach Museum Leipzig: Objects, Archives and a Composer’s Afterlife For years a heavy iron chest with eleven bolts served as a donation box in the cathedral museum at Meissen, until in 2009 it was recognised as property of the Bach household, its painted monogram the same “JSB” that Johann Sebastian used to seal his letters. […]

Bachfest Leipzig: How a City Performs Bach’s Legacy

A Gothic church in Leipzig on a June evening, with chairs, music stands and kettledrums set out for a concert at the front of the nave.

Bachfest Leipzig: How a City Performs Bach’s Legacy For eleven days each June, Leipzig hands itself over to one composer. In 2026 Bachfest Leipzig staged 212 events at 30 venues and drew close to 96,000 visitors from 56 countries, many of them crossing the old town between the two churches where Johann Sebastian Bach’s music […]

The Isle of Skye on a Small Group Tour: Dunvegan Castle, Armadale and Portree

The Old Man of Storr rock pinnacle above the Sound of Raasay on the Isle of Skye

The Isle of Skye on a Small Group Tour: Dunvegan Castle, Armadale and Portree Skye is the largest of the Inner Hebrides and, for many people, the island that defines the Highlands: volcanic ridges, sea lochs on every side, and a history of clans, a fugitive prince and the crofting townships emptied by the Clearances. […]

Orkney Tours for Mature Travellers: Skara Brae, Gurness Broch and Neolithic Orkney

The Neolithic village of Skara Brae above the Bay of Skaill on Orkney's west coast

Orkney Tours for Mature Travellers: Skara Brae, Gurness Broch and Neolithic Orkney Orkney lies barely ten kilometres off the north coast of mainland Scotland, yet it holds the densest concentration of prehistoric sites in Britain. Five thousand years ago its farmers were building stone villages with dressers and box beds, while the pyramids of Giza […]

Shetland Tours for Mature Travellers: Jarlshof, Mousa and Four Days on the Islands

Sumburgh Head lighthouse and keepers' cottages on the sea cliffs at the southern tip of Shetland

Shetland Tours for Mature Travellers: Jarlshof, Mousa and Four Days on the Islands Shetland sits closer to Bergen than to Edinburgh. It was ruled from Norway until 1469, its place names are still largely Norse, and on a clear day at Sumburgh Head the cliffs seem to lean out towards the open North Atlantic. On […]

England’s Estate Villages: Planned Settlements, Paternalism and Rural Design

Matching pairs of whitewashed, thatched cob cottages lining the street of a planned eighteenth-century estate village in Dorset.

England’s Estate Villages: Planned Settlements, Paternalism and Rural Design Some English villages grew slowly, house by house, as families built where and how they could. Others were made by a single owner. In an estate village, the land, the cottages, the school and often the church belonged to the landed family at the big house, […]

Cotswold Wool Churches: Trade, Parish and Perpendicular Architecture

A fifteenth-century Perpendicular wool church with a tall pinnacled tower and clerestory above a Cotswold market town.

Cotswold Wool Churches: Trade, Parish and Perpendicular Architecture Some of the finest parish churches in England stand in small Cotswold towns that today seem far too modest for them. Their tall towers, great windows and carved porches were paid for, in large part, by the late-medieval wool trade, when the wool of the Cotswold sheep, […]

Yorkshire Dry-Stone Walls: Building the Boundaries of the Dales

Buttercup hay meadows divided by dry-stone walls with a stone field barn in almost every field in upper Swaledale, Yorkshire Dales.

Yorkshire Dry-Stone Walls: Building the Boundaries of the Dales Look across almost any valley in the Yorkshire Dales and the first thing you notice is the net of grey walls laid over the green: tight, crooked enclosures around the villages, then larger fields on the lower slopes, then long straight lines marching up the fellsides […]