Bach,
Johann Christian
(1735-1782), German composer, youngest son of
Johann
Sebastian Bach,
born in Leipzig,
and given his first musical training there by his father. In 1750, when his father died,
he went to Berlin to study with his brother Carl
Philipp Emanuel Bach.
He spent eight years in Italy, from 1754 to 1760 as music director for Count Antonio Litta
in Milan and then from 1760 to 1762 as organist at the Milan Cathedral. During this period
he also studied in Bologna with the Italian composer Giovanni Battista Martini. In 1762
Bach settled in London
and soon became music master to the queen. Part of his success was the result of his
mastery of the pleasant, tuneful style of Italian opera,
which was then fashionable in London. From 1764 until his death he and another German
composer living in London, Carl Friedrich Abel, produced a series of concerts that were
famous because of the composers who wrote for them. One was the seven-year old prodigy
Wolfgang
Amadeus Mozart.
Bach himself wrote about a dozen operas and many symphonies, concertos,
piano pieces, and chamber
music.