After a design by Robert Adam ... Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts, The Metropolitan Museum of Art ... But one should be on one's guard. Abbé Marc Antoine Laugier (1711–1769), author of the influential Essai sur l’architecture (1755), argued for purity of form in building. The book’s frontispiece shows a rustic hut composed of still-living trees. Laugier explained, “The pieces of wood raised perpendicularly have given us the idea of columns. The horizontal pieces which surmount them have given us ideas of lintels. Finally the sloping pieces which form the roof have given us the idea of pediments. That has been recognized by all the masters of art. But one should be on one’s guard. Never has an idea been more fertile in its consequences.” Laugier’s writings gave support to the view that harmony and grace were principles laid down by nature herself. The rustic hut had been praised by the Roman writer Vitruvius (active late first century B.C.), and for Laugier it was a model for simplicity and the elimination of superfluous embellishment. As eighteenth-century architects were exposed to such ideas, the Greek temple with its mathematically proportioned columns and pediments was reborn as mansion, church, bank, museum, or other commercial institution.
Jacques Germain Soufflot’s (1713–1780) Church of Saint-Geneviève (now the Panthéon) was one of the first Neoclassical structures in France, heralding the simplification of churches that became increasingly classical in inspiration. In England, the leading architects were Richard Boyle (1694–1753), Colen Campbell (1676–1729), and Sir William Chambers (1723–1796), disciples of the architect Andrea Palladio (1508–1580) and called Neo-Palladians. Author of I quattro libri dell’architettura (Four Books on Architecture, 1570), Palladio took Vitruvius’ De Architettura as the foundation for his own study of classical forms, and the resulting designs were directly incorporated into the plans of the Neo-Palladians. Mereworth Castle, Kent (1722–25), is a British country house whose structure is derived from Palladio’s Villa Rotonda in Vicenza. Palladian-style architecture spread rapidly and was favored by wealthy patrons as an expression of their rank and judgment. The style appeared in the United States in the work of Thomas Jefferson at Monticello and the Rotunda, University of Virginia, Charlottesville (1823–26). The Neo-Palladian style gave way to the innovations of Scottish architect and designer Robert Adam (1728–1792), whose interiors such as the Etruscan dressing room at Osterley Park, Middlesex (ca. 1775–76) were drawn from a repertory of classical motifs culled from design literature and his own travels.
Furnishing such elegant interiors were a rich variety of decorative arts for which ancient models were transformed into gilt-bronze ornament, silver, pottery, and porcelain. Paris, in particular, was a great center of production for objects of le goût grec (Greek taste). Eighteenth-century Parisian cabinetmakers Georges Jacob, Martin Carlin, and Jean-Baptiste-Claude Sené freely employed classical motifs in their pieces (1971.206.17; 1977.102.9). Lavish dinner services were issued in porcelain and silver to grace aristocratic dining tables as symbols of status (1997.518; 33.165.2a–c). Miniature biscuit reproductions of noteworthy antique sculptures also decorated the dining table, mantelpiece, and bureau (2001.456), along with classicizing busts of leading intellectuals, political and society figures, and theatrical performers by Jean Antoine Houdon (1741–1828) and Augustin Pajou (1730–1809). Neoclassical taste was perhaps most industrially promoted in England by the pottery firm of Josiah Wedgwood and Thomas Bentley, which produced trade catalogues (in English, French, German, and Dutch) of its wares made after engravings and plaster casts of classical pieces. Another leading design publication was Robert and James Adam’s Works in Architecture (2 volumes, 1773, 1779), which, in addition to building plans, included engraved designs for tables, chairs, mirrors, wall lights, clocks, and doorknobs. In America, furniture makers and silversmiths were directly inspired by English models and ornament prints and books.
Outside the home, classically inspired architecture and other structures like tombs, small temples, and bridges were often strategically set into “picturesque” landscapes. Such landscape gardens were not re-creations from the ancient Greek and Roman world, but instead were made to showcase monuments and encourage contemplation. Inspired by seventeenth-century idyllic Italian landscape paintings, particularly those by Claude Lorrain, these gardens were designed to be seen like pictures as the viewer walked from one carefully constructed vantage point to another.
Faith's pink ribbons are example of a C. SYMBOL.
In Young Goodman Brown, Faith's pink ribbons initially symbolizes Faith's innocence.
However, as the poem progresses, the pink ribbons took up the symbol of deceit when it was found in the forest.
So, from symbolizing innocence, the Faith's pink ribbons became a symbol of deceit hidden behind an innocent facade.
Born on March 21 [March 31, New Style], 1685, Eisenach, Thuringia, Ernestine Saxon Duchies [Germany]—died July 28, 1750, Leipzig), composer of the Baroque era, the most celebrated member of a large family of north German musicians. Although he was admired by his contemporaries primarily as an outstanding harpsichordist, organist, and expert on organ building, Bach is now generally regarded as one of the greatest composers of all time and is celebrated as the creator of the Brandenburg Concertos, The Well-Tempered Clavier, the Mass in B Minor, and numerous other masterpieces of church and instrumental music. Appearing at a propitious moment in the history of music, Bach was able to survey and bring together the principal styles, forms, and national traditions that had developed during preceding generations and, by virtue of his synthesis, enrich them all.
0000214229-wtfvid007-109
Johann Sebastian Bach
QUICK FACTS
Bach
View Media Page
BORN
March 21, 1685
Eisenach, Germany
DIED
July 28, 1750 (aged 65)
Leipzig, Germany
NOTABLE WORKS
“St. Matthew Passion, BWV 244”
“Brandenburg Concertos”
sinfonia
“Three-Part Inventions”
“St. John Passion”
“Mass in B Minor”
“Jesu meine Freude”
“Christmas Oratorio”
“Hunt Cantata”
“God Is My King”
MOVEMENT / STYLE
Baroque music
NOTABLE FAMILY MEMBERS
Son Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach
Son Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach
Son Johann Christian Bach
Son Wilhelm Friedemann Bach
RELATED FACTS AND DATA
James Newton Howard - Facts
DID YOU KNOW?
Bach's parents both died when he was ten years old.
The same doctor performed eye surgery on Bach and George Friedrich Handel, who both became blind after the procedure.
Bach was attacked by one of his students with a club.
He was a member of a remarkable family of musicians who were proud of their achievements, and about 1735 he drafted a genealogy, Ursprung der musicalisch-Bachischen Familie (“Origin of the Musical Bach Family”), in which he traced his ancestry back to his great-great-grandfather Veit Bach, a Lutheran baker (or miller) who late in the 16th century was driven from Hungary to Wechmar in Thuringia, a historic region of Germany, by religious persecution and died in 1619. There were Bachs in the area before then, and it may be that, when Veit moved to Wechmar, he was returning to his birthplace. He used to take his cittern to the mill and play it while the mill was grinding. Johann Sebastian remarked, “A pretty noise they must have made together! However, he learnt to keep time, and this apparently was the beginning of music in our family.”
TOP QUESTIONS
Why is Johann Sebastian Bach important?
What did Johann Sebastian Bach compose?
What was Johann Sebastian Bach’s childhood like?
When did Johann Sebastian Bach get married?
What were Johann Sebastian Bach’s children’s names?
Until the birth of Johann Sebastian, his was the least distinguished branch of the family; some of its members, such as Johann Christoph and Johann Ludwig, had been competent practical musicians but not composers. In later days the most important musicians in the family were Johann Sebastian’s sons—Wilhelm Friedemann, Carl Philipp Emanuel, and Johann Christian (the “English Bach”).
Life
Early years
J.S. Bach was the youngest child of Johann Ambrosius Bach and Elisabeth Lämmerhirt. Ambrosius was a string player, employed by the town council and the ducal court of Eisenach. Johann Sebastian started school in 1692 or 1693 and did well in spite of frequent absences. Of his musical education at this time, nothing definite is known; however, he may have picked up the rudiments of string playing from his father, and no doubt he attended the Georgenkirche, where Johann Christoph Bach was organist until 1703.
Get exclusive access to content from our 1768 First Edition with your subscription.
Subscribe today
By 1695 both his parents were dead, and he was looked after by his eldest brother, also named Johann Christoph (1671–1721), organist at Ohrdruf. This Christoph had been a pupil of the influential keyboard composer Johann Pachelbel, and he apparently gave Johann Sebastian his first formal keyboard lessons. The young Bach again did well at school, and in 1700 his voice secured him a place in a select choir of poor boys at the school at Michaelskirche, Lüneburg.
His voice must have broken soon after this, but he remained at Lüneburg for a time, making himself generally useful. No doubt he studied in the school library, which had a large and up-to-date collection of church music; he probably heard Georg Böhm, organist of the Johanniskirche; and he visited Hamburg to hear the renowned organist and composer Johann Adam Reinken at the Katharinenkirche, contriving also to hear the
