As Thomaskantor, Johann Sebastian Bach provided Passion music for Good Friday services in Leipzig. The extant St Matthew Passion and St John Passion are Passion oratorios composed by Bach.
First page of a manuscript copy from around 1750 of Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel's Ein Lämmlein geht und trägt die Schuld Passion oratorio (1720)
Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer and musician of the late Baroque period. He is known for his prolific authorship of music across a variety of instruments and forms, including; orchestral music such as the Brandenburg Concertos; solo instrumental works such as the cello suites and sonatas and partitas for solo violin; keyboard works such as the Goldberg Variations and The Well-Tempered Clavier; organ works such as the Schubler Chorales and the Toccata and Fugue in D minor; and choral works such as the St Matthew Passion and the Mass in B minor. Since the 19th-century Bach Revival, he has been generally regarded as one of the greatest composers in the history of Western music.
1748 portrait of Bach, showing him holding a copy of the six-part canon BWV 1076.
Johann Ambrosius Bach, 1685, Bach's father. Painting attributed to Johann David Herlicius [de]
The Wender organ Bach played in Arnstadt
Organ of the St. Paul's Church in Leipzig, tested by Bach in 1717