J.S. Bach - Resources for a Composer Study (with a Giveaway!)
Friday, March 1, 2013 at 12:02AM
March is the perfect time for a composer study!
This composer is near and dear to my heart. He is a German Lutheran (just like me) who had an obsession with all things music. He also wrote his music for the glory of God.
J.S. Bach was born March 31, 1685. (Did you know Handel was born in the same year?)
I'm taking part in the iHomeschool Network's Birthday Lessons for March. Many other bloggers are posting birthday lessons for famous figures, so you will want to check them all out!
Why don't you listen to a little Bach while you are reading?
I have to confess: Bach is my favorite composer. His music is the essence of beauty, especially (in my opinion) his music for the pipe organ.
This piece in particular (The Toccata and Fugue in d minor) is a great way to draw young children into the music of Bach. I'm sure they will all recognize it, but might not know who wrote it.
A little about J.S. Bach:
Bach once had to spend a month in jail because he tried to quit his job composing and playing for a duke. During that month in jail, he wrote forty-six pieces of music, many of which are still performed today.
Bach, a dazzling organist and church musician, had to compose all kinds of original pieces for every church service including pieces for choir, organ, harpsichord and orchestra. Since most of his music was written to be performed in a church service only once and then thrown out, very little of his music was published during his lifetime. It was for this reason that Bach composed more music than almost any other composer. However, his musical genius was not recognized until about 100 years after his death.
Bach was famous for his music and for something else - Bach had twenty children! Five were named Johann, two Johanna and four grew up to become famous composers. He may be remembered long after other composers because in 1977, the Voyager spacecraft was launched into space carrying recordings of three pieces by Bach.
(biography courtesy Dallas Symphony Orchestra)
I'd like to point you to several marvelous resources that will help you study Bach with your children.
You don't need to be a musician to learn about a composer. Just listen to the music and read wonderful books - it's that simple.
I detailed a lot of this in the Ultimate Guide to Composer Study.
Please also visit my J.S. Bach Pinterest board, too.
Online Bach Studies
Listening Lesson: Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 (A SQUILT lesson from yours truly!)
Bach Composer Study Squidoo Lens by Jimmie
Bach's Big Adventure Unit Study from Homeschool Share
Johann Sebastian Bach - A Mini Unit from DIY Homeschooler
J.S. Bach - A Digital 16 Week Unit Composer Study from Living Books Curriculum
Books About Bach
(I believe the best way to learn about a composer is to read about their life. These resources are the best I have found. We have read each of these, so I can personally recommend them.)
Johann Sebastian Bach: The Story of the Boy Who Sang in the Streets (FREE!)
Johann Sebastian Bach: Getting to Know The World's Greatest Composers
Sebastain Bach: The Boy From Thuringia - by Opal Wheeler (STELLAR!)
The Music of J.S. Bach
Bach wrote over 1,000 compositions. In 1950 a special cataloging system was created for Bach's works, the BWV System. (This essentially, when translated, means Bach Works Catalog.) The works are grouped by theme, not by date composed, so a low BWV number doesn't necessarily mean it was written early in Bach's career.
Visit the JS Bach YouTube Channel. Keep this playing the entire time you are studying Bach.
I play the music in the car, while the children are working, basically everwhere. You will be amazed at the effect beautiful music has on children.
Bach's music is so orderly - he wrote everything with patterns of threes (Father, Son & Holy Spirit).
How We Studied Bach
I like to keep things simple when planning a composer study.
We read Sebastian Bach: The Boy From Thuringia and listened to the corresponding music suggested in the book.
I printed JS Bach pages from Notebooking Pages and the children wrote what they could remember about him.
I also made notebooking pages for the harpsichord and pipe organ (very simple to do in Notebooking Publisher, or you could use blank notebooking pages and have your students print their own pictures).
I had Bach playing in the background constantly over the course of two weeks.
Simple, right?
The best part about this was that it was a part of our current history studies.
Inserting a famous composer into your history spine is such an easy and meaningful way to study composers.
I am thankful to Zeezok Publishing for providing a copy of Sebastian Bach: Boy From Thuringia for a giveaway. One lucky reader will win this Bach biography by Opal Wheeler. If you aren't familiar with the Opal Wheeler biographies YOU SHOULD BE. Once you read one, you will want to own them all!
It's been fun sharing my love of Bach with you.
I hope you study the composer and his music this month to celebrate his birthday!
Reader Comments (24)
I loved your post. I used to read books about composers when growing up. :) Thank you. Blessings ~
Thanks for this post. I will be using some of this tomorrow for our music study of Bach. He has been our composer for the last 11 weeks and I have to admit that he isn't one of my favorite and I've had a hard time doing it. This will greatly help me!
We haven't studied any yet, but we listen to different music all the time. We especially like the two Beethoven's Wig CDs we have!
AMAZING POST! Great job...and SO thankful for someone writing about the arts! : )
I love studying music history!
My kids and I were just saying that we need to do more composer studies. Looks like we're starting with Bach!
Yes we have studied composers in the past.
We are part of a Classical Conversations co-op, so we study composers for 5 weeks through that. I haven't done much above and beyond that but I hope to during the summer.
Excellent post. My boys were playing when I hit the "play" button for the Bach piece being played on the pipe organ. Both immediately came over and were totally interested in the music. Lots of observations and questions. We are just getting ready to start our "orchestra" series for fine arts with CC and I love how interested my boys are from the exposure they've had to classical music. (Mary, you'd make an excellent tutor!)
I have a couple of books I plan to use, but I haven't done too much yet. I definitely plan to!
We have done a little, but not as much as I would like.
Hi, I will be beginning homeschool in the fall and this would be a great resource to have :)
We currently don't study composers in our homeschool. My kids are younger, and now would probably be the perfect time to start! I studied music in college, but theory was definitely my stronger suit. What a blessing music is.
I LOVE to do composer studies with my girls! We're actually just staring our second composer. I've heard a lot of great things about Opal Wheeler's books. Thanks for all the ideas and the giveaway!
Wow. No, we haven't studied composers up to now, but this post is a really good incentive to start.
Would love to win this bio. Have been trying to incorporate composer studies into our homeschool.
Yes, I do study composers with my kids. We listen to the music and read books about them.
Yes, we study one composer and one artist each 12-week term.
We have in the past studied Mozart and Beethoven, but not recently. I would love to start up again - thanks for all the great information in your post!
This is the first i'm hearing of these. Was trying to think of a simple way to intro DD to composers! Thanks to God for having me like your FB page and then saw the link to your blog :) very excited and glad you blog all these fun things. We do FIAR but since having a baby my mind is always half asleep...
Very cool... We are working on Beethoven right now. Thanks!
My girls are only 7, 5, and 2 so right now we haven't studied too many composers. I'm trying to get them to learn that not everything they hear is a Little Einstein's original piece. sigh. They will sing the music around the house so that is a start right? I hope? I'm hoping to set something up for the girls to start this and this book would help a lot! Thanks for the chance to win it!
Just found your website and been enjoying reading it. Would love to win this. This will go nicely with symphony study that we're doing.
I haven't yet, but I'd love to!