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In his day, Johann Sebastian Bach was better known as a virtuoso organist than as a composer. His sacred music, organ and choral works, and other instrumental music had an enthusiasm and seeming freedom that concealed immense rigor. Bach's use of counterpoint was brilliant and innovative, and the immense complexities of his compositional style -- which often included religious and numerological symbols that seem to fit perfectly together in a profound puzzle of special codes -- still amaze musicians today. Many consider him the greatest composer of all time.

Bach was born in Eisenach in 1685. He was taught to play the violin and harpsichord by his father, Johann Ambrosius, a court trumpeter in the service of the Duke of Eisenach. Young Johann was not yet ten when his father died, leaving him orphaned. He was taken in by his recently married oldest brother, Johann Christoph, who lived in Ohrdruf. Because of his excellent singing voice, Bach attained a position at the Michaelis monastery at Lüneberg in 1700. His voice changed a short while later, but he stayed on as an instrumentalist. After taking a short-lived post in Weimar in 1703 as a violinist, Bach became organist at the Neue Kirche in Arnstadt (1703-1707). His relationship with the church council was tenuous as the young musician often shirked his responsibilities, preferring to practice the organ. One account describes a four-month leave granted Bach to travel to Lubeck, where he would familiarize himself with the music of Dietrich Buxtehude. He returned to Arnstadt long after he was expected and much to the dismay of the council. He then briefly served at St. Blasius in Mühlhausen as organist, beginning in June 1707, and married his cousin, Maria Barbara Bach, that fall. Bach composed his famous Toccata and Fugue in D minor (BWV 565) and his first cantatas while in Mühlhausen, but quickly outgrew the musical resources of the town. He next took a post for the Duke of Sachsen-Weimar in 1708, serving as court organist and playing in the orchestra, eventually becoming its leader in 1714. He wrote many organ compositions during this period, including his Orgel-Büchlein, and also began writing the preludes and fugues that would become Das wohltemperierte Klavier (The Well-Tempered Klavier). Owing to politics between the Duke and his officials, Bach left Weimar and secured a post in December 1717 as Kapellmeister at Köthen. In 1720, Bach's wife suddenly died, leaving him with four children (three others had died in infancy). A short while later, he met his second wife, soprano Anna Magdalena Wilcke, whom he married in December 1721. She would bear 13 children, though only five would survive childhood. The six Brandenburg Concertos (BWV 1046-51), among many other secular works, date from his Köthen years. Bach became Kantor of the Thomas School in Leipzig in May 1723 (after the post was turned down by Georg Philipp Telemann) and held the position until his death. It was in Leipzig that he composed the bulk of his religious and secular cantatas. Bach eventually became dissatisfied with this post, not only because of its meager financial rewards, but also because of onerous duties and inadequate facilities. Thus he took on other projects, chief among which was the directorship of the city's Collegium Musicum, an ensemble of professional and amateur musicians who gave weekly concerts, in 1729. He also became music director at the Dresden Court in 1736, in the service of Frederick Augustus II; though his duties were vague and apparently few, they allowed him the freedom to compose what he wanted. Bach began making trips to Berlin in the 1740s, not least because his son Carl Philipp Emanuel served as a court musician there. The Goldberg Variations, one of the few pieces by Bach to be published in his lifetime, appeared in 1741. In May 1747, the composer was warmly received by King Frederick II of Prussia, for whom he wrote the gloriously abstruse Musical Offering (BWV 1079). Among Bach's last works was his 1749 Mass in B minor. Besieged by diabetes, he died on July 28, 1750. ~ Robert Cummings

Perhaps no single musician ever achieved such high accomplishment across such a broad span of repertory as Nikolaus Harnoncourt. His first professional job was as cellist for the Vienna Symphony Orchestra. Almost immediately, however, Harnoncourt sought to specialize in performing music of the past upon historically correct instruments; he was one of the first professional musicians to do so. Over the course of a stunningly influential career, Harnoncourt gradually worked forward into more modern repertories. His many awards included repeated top recording medals from at least six European countries, and a Grammophone Award for Special Achievement in 1990. His decades of recordings on the Teldec label fully encompassed seven centuries of music history.

Harnoncourt considered his own life strongly influenced by an adolescence under the shadow of Nazism. He was born Nikolaus de la Fontaine und d'Harnoncourt in Berlin; his aristocratic family moved south to its ancestral mansion in Graz, Austria. After years of hardship under the Nazi regime, the Harnoncourt family fled to Salzburg in 1945. There he found his calling, and began studying the cello under Paul Grummer. No less a figure than Herbert von Karajan accepted Harnoncourt into the Vienna Symphony in 1952. However, his path was destined elsewhere. While in college, Harnoncourt became fascinated by the original Baroque instruments languishing in antique shops, and wondered why professional musicians didn't use these brilliant artifacts to produce the music of their time.

In 1953, Harnoncourt and his wife Alice founded the Concentus Musicus Wien, the first professional Baroque orchestra. They took players from the symphony, trained collaboratively for four years on early instruments, and exploded onto the European scene in 1957. Their first recording project was the Purcell Viol Fantasias, followed by a series of highly acclaimed recordings of the major works of Bach. In the 1970s, Harnoncourt and Gustav Leonhardt collaborated on a massive recording project of all Bach's cantatas. Meanwhile, Harnoncourt and Concentus Musicus romped through much of the Baroque literature, including Monteverdi's operas, Telemann, Rameau, and Fux. Later, he broadened his repertory to include Haydn and Mozart with Concentus Musicus, as well as masterworks from the 19th century operatic and symphonic repertory (including a million-selling cycle of Beethoven symphonies) with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, the Berlin Philharmonic, and the Concertgebouw Orchestra. He taught as professor of performance practice at the Salzburg Mozarteum (1972-1993), and wrote three full-length books on the subject closest to his heart. He maintained a close relationship guest conducting the Vienna Philharmonic in the years just before his retirement in late 2015 for health reasons. Harnoncourt passed away soon after, leaving behind a legacy as a widely knowledgable, collegial, and well-respected conductor.

The Concentus Musicus Wien (Concentus Musicus of Vienna) has long been one of the premier musical ensembles specializing in period instruments and techniques, with an immense discography.

Conductor and cellist Nikolaus Harnoncourt founded Concentus Musicus in Vienna in 1953. The ensemble, led by Harnoncourt's wife, Alice, on first violin and staffed with many of their young colleagues from the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, then prepared themselves for four years before giving its first concert. Vienna, home of keyboardist Gustav Leonhardt, the Clemencic Consort, the Capella Academica, and the Vienna Recorder Ensemble, was already claiming worldwide attention for its early music performance. However, Concentus Musicus exploded onto the musical scene, displaying a level of technical virtuosity unknown in most period-instrument orchestras of the time.

The group's award-laden and often controversial recording career began with Teldec (then Telefunken) in 1963. The repertories explored by Concentus Musicus, interestingly, have mimicked the trajectory of Western music history. The group's early programs sometimes featured re-creations of medieval and Renaissance music. The first recording project, though, presented the Viol Fantasias (1680) of Henry Purcell, and the ensemble quickly became known for its performance of the high Baroque. Among its many acclaimed interpretations of the music of J.S. Bach are the Brandenburg Concerti (first recorded in 1964), the Orchestral Suites (1966), the St. John Passion (1965), Mass in B minor (1968), St. Matthew Passion (1970), and a massive project to record the complete cantatas (undertaken between 1971 and 1990 with Gustav Leonhardt). In the meantime, the group participated in Zürich productions of all three Monteverdi operas in the '70s and gave performances of Rameau, Telemann, Handel, and many others. From this deep expertise, the Concentus Musicus moved forward into the 18th century, giving sharp and highly energetic performances of Mozart and Haydn symphonies, choral works, and operas. It has received a Grammy and multiple awards of the French Grand Prix du Disque, the Edison Prize, the German Schallplattenpreis, and Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik; the Bach cantata series earned them the Gramophone Award for "Special Achievement."

The performing philosophy of Concentus Musicus follows the vision of founders Nikolaus and Alice Harnoncourt. Nikolaus called his 1954 essay "On the Interpretation of Historical Music" the group's creed. In the face of what he saw as two conflicting approaches to past music -- either to transplant it into the present and thus transform it, or academically transplant oneself into the past and thus lose connection with the present -- his ideal used past techniques and instruments to re-create a vibrant contemporary music. He treated the Baroque orchestra as an instrument "whose sound and technique aid and inspire us" to live and make music in the 20th century. The sonic hallmarks of his approach included a virtuosic level of competence on the early instruments, a characteristic sharpness of musical articulation and accent, a carefully historic tuning system, and creative use of spatial elements to render the "Musical Dialogue."

Nikolaus and Alice Harnoncourt both retired from the Concentus Musicus in 2015. Stefan Gottfried replaced Nikolaus as artistic director, and Erich Höbarth replaced Alice as concertmaster. In 2019, the group released Schubert (Un)finished: Symphony No. 7 in B-flat Major, D 759; Lieder with orchestra, under Gottfried on the Aparte label. ~ Timothy Dickey