Alberto de Miguel Listening to MusicNovember 2014Ben BrodyJOHANN SEBASTIAN BACHJohann Sebastian Bach was born in Eisenach, Thuringia, Germany, in 1685. He was a composer and musician of the Baroque period. Bach was born into a family with a long musical tradition as his antecedents had been professional musicians for several generations. Johann Sebastian grew up in a strictly musical environment. All of his closest relatives were musicians, and surrounded by these influences, the young Johann Sebastian developed his musical and instrumental skills. Bach's mother died in 1694 and his father died eight months later. Thus, at the age of 10, he had to move in with his older brother, Johann Christoph Bach, who was an organist3. BWV in D major. Johann Sebastian Bach wrote four orchestral Suites. This piece is the second of the five movements that make up his orchestral suite no. 3. The date of composition remains uncertain, as there is clear evidence that the writing of the piece was carried out during his years in Köthen, although the piece is said to have been composed and premiered some years later in Leipzig between 1727 and 1730 by his son Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, one of his students and by himself. Johann Sebastian wrote the main violin and basso continuo parts, CPE Bach did the same with the trumpet, oboe and timpani parts, and Johann Ludwig Krebs, his student, finished with the second viola and violin parts. Regardless of the piece's authors, Johann Sebastian Bach ended up taking all the credit for the piece. The Aria stands out as one of his most famous and successful pieces of the Baroque period, as well as of his lifetime. The beginning of the piece is one of the most recognizable melodies of the Baroque3 and is the second movement of the piece. It lasts approximately five minutes of the total 22 minutes of the entire Orchestral Suite. The aria is written for trumpet, timpani, oboe, violin, viola and continuo. It is written in a major key. The meter is double, and I dare say it is quadruple. The plot is polyphonic. It has a slow tempo and there is no accelerando or delay. Harmony is consonant. The melody is joint and peaceful. It has a lot of repetition. The melody is coherent. Stringed instruments are predominant while timpani and oboe simply accompany the melody. This is a simple binary piece; clearly there is no devolution of the opening melodic material in the second part of the