Johann Sebastian Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach was cantor of St Thomas’s church in Leipzig for the last twenty-seven years of his life, responsible for the music of four churches and the school choir, and wrote a cantata for nearly every Sunday. The St Matthew Passion of 1727, for two choirs and two orchestras, is the setting of the Gospel’s account of the crucifixion that Mendelssohn revived in 1829 and that St. John’s reads with the score in sophomore year. He was known in his lifetime as an organist; the world found out he was the greatest composer in the century after his death.