Johann Sebastian Bach, regarded as perhaps the greatest composer of all time, was known during his lifetime primarily as an outstanding organ player and technician. The youngest of eight children born to musical parents, Johann Sebastian was destined to become a musician. While still young, he had mastered the organ and violin, and was also an excellent singer. At the age of ten, both of his parents died within a year of each other. Young Sebastian was fortunate to be taken in by an older brother, Johann Christoph, who most likely continued his musical training. At the age of fifteen, Bach secured his first position in the choir of St. Michael's School in Lüneburg. Within a few short years he became organist and concertmaster at the court of the Duke of Weimar.

In 1717, Bach moved on to another post, this time as Kapellmeister at the court of Prince Leopold in Cöthen. During the years Bach was in the service of the courts, he was obliged to compose a great deal of instrumental music: hundreds of pieces for solo keyboard, orchestral dance suites, trio sonatas for various instruments, and concertosfor various instruments and orchestra. Of these, the most famous are the six concerti grossi composed for the Duke of Brandenburg in 1721, and the Brandenburg Concerto no. 3 exemplifies the style of the concerto grosso in which a small group of instruments (in this case a small ensemble of strings) is set in concert with an orchestra of strings and continuo. Of Bach's music for solo instruments, the six Suites for violoncello and the Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin are among the greatest for those instruments. The Violin Partita no. 3 contains an example of a popular dance form, the gavotte. A devout Lutheran, Bach composed a great many sacred works. One such work is the tremendous Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor.

Towards the end of 1749, Bach's failing eyesight was operated on by a traveling English surgeon, the catastrophic results of which were complete blindness. His health failing, Bach nevertheless continued to compose, dictating his work to a pupil. He finally succumbed to a stroke on July 28, 1750. He was buried in an unmarked grave at St. Thomas' Church.

Bach brought to majestic fruition the polyphonic style of the late Renaissance. By and large a musical conservative, he achieved remarkable heights in the art of fugue, choral polyphony and organ music, as well as in instrumental music and dance forms. His adherence to the older forms earned him the nickname "the old wig" by his son, the composer Carl Philip Emanuel Bach, yet his music remained very much alive and was known and studied by the next generation of composers. It was the discovery of the St. Matthew Passion in 1829 by Felix Mendelssohn that initiated the nineteenth century penchant for reviving and performing older, "classical" music. With the death of Johann Sebastian Bach in 1750, music scholars conveniently mark the end of the Baroque age in music.