Leipzig

LVZ guest journalist from Thailand seeks out traces of the great Leipzig composer.

When I discovered that I would be travelling to Leipzig, the city of Johann Sebastian Bach, I seriously began to learn something about classical music. Like most of my people, I hardly listen to it. Many people in Thailand even reject this kind of music and consider it “elitist music,” for which one – as we say – needs a ladder to be able to access it.

The five-CD box set of “Signature Classics” showing a picture of Bach with sheets of music in his hand stands prestigiously on my desk. A good friend in Thailand who owns a music studio once explained to me that classical music is best heard at low volume as if from afar. At the moment the musical mood in my little flat on Nürnberger Strasse is like in the days of Bach in the 17th century. “Martin, did you know that Bach had 20 children?” I asked my German colleague. “Yes, what about it?” Martin replied somewhat confused. I asked him to help me search for Bach’s progeny. Even if I can never have the honour of interviewing Bach himself in this life, it would be very exciting for me to be able to speak to his descendants.

At the age of 17 years, Bach married Maria Barbara. They had seven children. After Maria’s death, Bach married the musician Anna Magdalena Wilcken in the year 1721. Their marriage brought forth 13 more children. I was convinced that it would not be difficult to find Bach’s descendants considering that the composer had 20 children and not just two or three.

A few days later, Martin approached me beaming and gave me the good news that he had found two of Bach’s descendants: Ulrike von Colson and her daughter Katharina von Colson. Ulrike works as a self-employed accountant and lives in Schwerte, while her daughter Katharina is presently studying at Birmingham Conservatory in the United Kingdom. Both come to Leipzig only rarely. The family often gets together on Bach’s birthday, not in Leipzig, but in his birthplace of Eisenach.

When I asked how it feels to be the descendant of a world famous genius, both women replied that they are proud of it. Within the family everyone knows where certain descendents of Bach live, yet the people around them often are unaware that they are related to the famous composer.

Katharina, who is studying viola, sometimes perceives her kinship with the world-renowned composer as a burden because everyone who knows it expects a great deal of her. Yet although this can be a difficult burden, the music student is proud to belong to this family. She studies music very seriously and ambitiously in the hopes that she will someday have access to the musical ingenuity of her ancestor Johann Sebastian Bach.