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:
“We know that a man can read Goethe or Rilke in the evening, that he can play Bach and Schubert, and go to his day’s work at Auschwitz in the morning.”
—George Steiner (b. 1929)