Johann Sebastian Bach

When Johann Sebastian Bach died in Leipzig in 1750, he left behind forty-six years of unbroken composition: cantatas, fugues, oratorios, and suites that mapped the entire range of what music could be. He was not celebrated in his own century the way later ages would celebrate him. He ran church choirs, taught students, argued with city councils over pay. He buried two wives and ten of his twenty children. And still, through all of it, the counterpoint came. The Art of Fugue was found unfinished on his desk. The Well-Tempered Clavier became the pianists' bible. The Mass in B Minor stood as proof that a single human mind, given enough discipline and devotion, can approach something indistinguishable from the infinite. Every musician alive today is downstream of him, whether they know it or not.