TheBach family is a family of notable composers of thebaroque andclassical periods of music, the best-known of whom wasJohann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750).[1] A family genealogy was drawn up by Johann Sebastian Bach himself in 1735 when he was 50 and was continued by his sonCarl Philipp Emanuel.[2]
Of the seven children that Johann Sebastian Bach had with his first wifeMaria Barbara Bach, his second cousin, four survived into adulthood: Catharina Dorothea Bach (1708–1774);Wilhelm Friedemann;Carl Philipp Emanuel (the "Berlin Bach", later the "Hamburg Bach"); andJohann Gottfried Bernhard.[3] All four were musically talented, and Wilhelm Friedeman and Carl Philipp Emanuel had significant musical careers of their own.[3]
After his first wife died, Johann Sebastian Bach marriedAnna Magdalena Wilcken, a gifted soprano and daughter of the court trumpeter of PrinceSaxe-Weissenfels. They had 13 children, of whomJohann Christoph Friedrich (the "Bückeburg Bach") andJohann Christian (the "London Bach") became significant musicians. A further four survived into adulthood:Gottfried Heinrich; Elisabeth Juliane Friederica (1726–1781), who married Bach's pupilJohann Christoph Altnickol; Johanna Carolina (1737–1781); and Regina Susanna (1742–1809).[4]
Of Bach's surviving children, only five married. Of these, Johann Christian had no children from his marriage to the soprano Cecilia Grassi. Carl Philipp Emanuel, who married Johanna Maria Dannemann, had three surviving children.[5] Of these children the youngest,Johann Sebastian (1748–1778) was a gifted painter who died young. None of Emanuel's children married or had offspring, with his bloodline dying out with the death of his daughter Anna Carolina Philippina (1746–1804).[6]
Elisabeth Juliane Friederica, known as Liesgen, had three surviving children with Altnickol. Their only son, Johann Sebastian, died in infancy in 1740. The elder daughter, Augusta Magdalena (1751–1809) married Ernest Friedrich Ahlefeldt and had four daughters, of whom only one, Christiane Johanne (1780–1816) survived. From her marriage to Paul Johann Müller, a daughter, Augusta Wilhelmina (1809–1818) was born, though she died as an infant, ending this line of Bach's descendants.[7]
Of the next generation,Wilhelm Friedrich Ernst Bach, also known as William Bach (24 May 1759 – 25 December 1845) was the eldest son of Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach and the only grandson of Johann Sebastian Bach to gain fame as a composer. He was music director toFrederick William II of Prussia. His only son died in infancy. The first born of his three daughters, Caroline Augusta Wilhelmine, lived the longest. She died in 1871 – the last of Bach's descendants to hold the Bach name.[8]
Bach has living descendants via two granddaughters born to Friedemann and Johann Christoph Friedrich, respectively. Anna Philippine Friederike (1755–1804), sister of Wilhelm Friedrich Ernst, married Wilhelm Ernst Colson, a lieutenant in an artillery regiment. They had five sons and a daughter. Whereas this bloodline was traditionally assumed to have died out with this generation, one of her sons, Johann Christoph Friedrich (1778–1831), married and had offspring with progeny to the modern day.[9][10]
Friedemann married Dorothea Elisabeth Georgi and had two sons and a daughter. Both sons died in infancy. During the 20th-century, scholarship has uncovered several children born to his daughter Friederica Sophia (b. 1757), who were hitherto unknown. In 1793, Friederica Sophia married Johann Schmidt, a foot soldier, shortly after the birth of an illegitimate daughter. Little is known about this child and her sister.[11][12] In 1780, she had given birth to an illegitimate son, about whom nothing else is known.[13] Friederica Sophia appears to have left her husband for a man by the name of Schwarzschulz, with whom she had an illegitimate daughter, Karoline Beata (b. 1798), whose descendants eventually emigrated to Oklahoma.[14]
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