Vitus "Veit" Bach (born 1550, Pressburg/Pozsony - March 8, 1619, in Wechmar) was a Hungarian miller who, according to Johann Sebastian Bach, founded the Bach family, which became one of the most important families in Western musical history. Veit's son, Johannes Bach (ca. 1580-1626), was the grandfather of Johann Ambrosius Bach, J.S. Bach's father, which makes him J.S's great-great-grandfather.
Evading religious persecution in the Kingdom of Hungary, then under the control of the staunchly Roman Catholic Habsburgs, Bach, being a Protestant, settled in Wechmar, a village in the German state of Thuringia. His descendants continued to live there until Christoph Bach, grandfather of J.S. Bach, moved to Erfurt to take up a position as municipal musician or Stadtpfeifer (lit. "town piper").
Bach's son Johannes studied music with the town's head piper.
Famous quotes containing the word bach:
“Music is the effort we make to explain to ourselves how our brains work. We listen to Bach transfixed because this is listening to a human mind.”
—Lewis Thomas (b. 1913)