Spitta's Johann Sebastian Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach is a 19th-century biography of Johann Sebastian Bach by Philipp Spitta. The work was published in German in two volumes, in 1873 and 1880 respectively.

The English translation by Clara Bell and J. A. Fuller Maitland, Johann Sebastian Bach: His Work and Influence on the Music of Germany, 1685–1750, was published by Novello & Co in three volumes.

Spitta's Bach biography gives a chronological account. This includes the discussion of Bach's compositions: these are discussed within the chronological account at the time they were composed. Only for the sixth and last part, covering the last decennia of the Leipzig period, some compositions are grouped by type in subsections.

Spitta writes in long paragraphs and very few divisions in subsections. Coming from a protestant background himself, he is able, like Albert Schweitzer after him, to give insight in the religious context of Bach's time.

Spitta's biography went down in history as "... the most ... comprehensive and important single work on Johann Sebastian Bach". For over a hundred years after its publication biographers rarely revisited primary sources, they just took the facts from Spitta's work. Only by the late 20th century criticisms about Spitta's accuracy and interpretation were raised.

Spitta blew the competition away, leaving only a small place for Bach's Nekrolog, and Johann Nikolaus Forkel's Ueber Johann Sebastian Bachs Leben, Kunst und Kunstwerke. Especially Karl Hermann Bitter's comprehensive Bach biography, published a few years before Spitta's, all but disappeared in the folds of history.

Until the late 20th century Spitta was regarded as an unquestionable authority. All later Bach biographers almost exclusively relied on Spitta for the basic facts of Bach's life. When Spitta had analysed a primary source it was largely deemed unnecessary to revisit it. It took quarter of a century after Spitta before Charles Sanford Terry was able to add some new biographical material to a Bach biography.

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