An Exaltation of Bachs

Music written by people related to the composer Johann Sebastian Bach. That may seem an odd way put a show together. If you were to make a playlist of the greatest hits of people related to Taylor Swift, it would be a very short list. But if you ever wanted to get into a complicated debate about nature versus nurture, the Bach clan of what is now northern Germany would be an interesting place to start. Somewhere between twenty and thirty relatives of Johann Sebastian Bach wrote music still recorded and performed two and three centuries later. And these were not merchants who wrote a few choral works for fun — these were people who made their living from music. As an aside… Of the six Bach relatives you'll hear in this episode, there is only one whose first name is not Johann. This is not going to be confusing at all.