Getting your questions ready
Getting your questions ready
Beat the crowd
10 questions No timer
60 free Johann Sebastian Bach trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Johann Sebastian Bach trivia quiz covers the Thuringian organist who became, by most reckonings, the greatest composer who ever lived. The easy questions cover the country, the period, the most famous works, the instrument he was best known for in his lifetime and the composer who revived him in 1829. From there it moves through the biography: the musical dynasty he was born into, the brother who raised him, the choir school in Lüneburg, the long walk to Lübeck, the month in a Weimar jail, the Calvinist prince at Köthen, the Leipzig cantorate he only got after Telemann and Graupner said no, two wives and twenty children. The harder end covers the only cantata printed in his lifetime, the King's Theme, the Society of Musical Sciences, the eye surgeon who blinded him and Handel, the estate inventory of five harpsichords, the unmarked grave, Glenn Gould's Goldbergs, the three pieces aboard the Voyager probes, and the doubts over the Toccata and Fugue in D minor. Every answer was checked against Bach's encyclopaedia entry before publishing and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. Our classical music and famous composers quizzes are the natural next stop.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which town was Johann Sebastian Bach born in 1685?
Eisenach
He was the eighth and youngest child of the town's director of musicians.
Q 02To which musical period does Bach belong?
The late Baroque
He died in 1750, the year often used to mark the end of the Baroque.
Q 03How old was Bach when he was orphaned?
10
His mother died in 1694 and his father eight months later; he went to live with his eldest brother in Ohrdruf.
Q 04What did the young Bach do in Ohrdruf despite being forbidden, since scores and paper were costly?
Copied music
His brother Johann Christoph, a pupil of Pachelbel, also taught him the clavichord.
Q 05At which Lüneburg school did Bach continue his education from 1700, singing in the choir?
St Michael's
The journey there from Ohrdruf, two weeks' travel, was probably made mostly on foot.
Q 06Which instrument did Bach's father presumably teach him first?
The violin
It was Ambrosius Bach's own primary instrument; an uncle may have introduced the boy to the organ.
Q 07How far did Bach reportedly walk each way in 1705 to hear Buxtehude play in Lübeck?
About 450 kilometres
He had four weeks' leave from Arnstadt and stayed away about four months.
Q 08What did the elderly Johann Reincken reportedly say after hearing Bach improvise on the organ in 1720?
'I thought that this art was dead, but I see that it lives in you'
Bach had copied Reincken's monumental An Wasserflüssen Babylon at the age of 15.
Q 09Which festive cantata of 1708 is the only Bach cantata published in his lifetime?
Gott ist mein König, BWV 71
The Mühlhausen council paid for the printing to mark its own inauguration.
Q 10Whom did Bach marry in 1707, four months after arriving in Mühlhausen?
His second cousin Maria Barbara
They had seven children including Wilhelm Friedemann and Carl Philipp Emanuel; she died suddenly in 1720.
Q 11How many children did Bach have with his second wife, Anna Magdalena?
13
Six survived to adulthood; with Maria Barbara he had seven more, making twenty in all.
Q 12What was Anna Magdalena Wilcke's profession when Bach met her at the Köthen court?
Soprano singer
She was 16 years his junior; they married on 3 December 1721.
Q 13Which Italian composer's concertos did Bach transcribe for harpsichord and organ in Weimar?
Vivaldi
From about 1712 Vivaldi was his single most important influence.
Q 14How many preludes and fugues does each book of The Well-Tempered Clavier contain?
Q 21Besides music, what subject was Bach assigned to teach at the Thomasschule?
Latin
He employed four 'prefects' for the job; he called the city council 'penny-pinching'.
Q 22For how many years did Bach hold his Leipzig post?
27
He took office in the middle of the liturgical year, on the first Sunday after Trinity 1723.
Q 23On what kind of hymn is each cantata of Bach's second Leipzig cycle based?
A Lutheran chorale
The opening stanza was typically set as a chorale fantasia and the last as a plain four-part chorale.
On which date was the St Matthew Passion first performed?
24
One pair in every major and minor key; the two books were written about twenty years apart.
Q 15What happened to Bach in Weimar in November 1717 when he pushed too hard for his dismissal?
He was jailed for almost a month
The court secretary recorded that he was 'confined to the County Judge's place of detention for too stubbornly forcing the issue'.
Q 16Which prince hired Bach as his Kapellmeister in 1717?
Leopold of Anhalt-Köthen
A musician himself, he paid Bach well and gave him wide latitude.
Q 17Why is most of Bach's output from Köthen secular rather than sacred?
The prince was a Calvinist
The Brandenburg Concertos, Cello Suites and solo violin works all date from those years.
Q 18Which composer did Bach travel 35 kilometres to Halle to meet in 1719, only to find he had left town?
George Frideric Handel
A second attempt via his son in 1730 also failed; the two never met.
Q 19What post did Bach take up in Leipzig in 1723 and hold until his death?
Thomaskantor
It made him director of church music for four Lutheran churches and the St. Thomas School.
Q 20Which two composers turned down the Leipzig post before it was offered to Bach?
Telemann and Graupner
Both used the Leipzig offer to negotiate better terms where they were, in Hamburg and Darmstadt.
Good Friday, 11 April 1727
The St Mark Passion of 1731 is lost, though Picander's libretto survives.
Q 25Bach sent a Kyrie-Gloria Mass to which Catholic court in 1733, successfully seeking the title of Court Composer?
Dresden
He later expanded it into the Mass in B minor, which was never performed complete in his lifetime.
Q 26Which monarch granted Bach the title of Royal Court Composer in 1736?
Augustus III of Poland
He was also Elector of Saxony; the title strengthened Bach's hand against the Leipzig council.
Q 27How many canons does the Goldberg Variations, published in 1741, contain?
Nine
It was the fourth and last of his Clavier-Übung volumes, written for two-manual harpsichord.
Q 28Which Prussian king played Bach a theme in 1747 and challenged him to improvise a fugue on it?
Frederick II, the Great
Bach played a three-part fugue on the king's new fortepiano, then published The Musical Offering on the theme.
Q 29On what new instrument did Bach improvise for the king at Potsdam?
An early fortepiano
The resulting fugues, canons and trio sonata on the 'King's Theme' became The Musical Offering.
Q 30To join Mizler's Society of Musical Sciences in 1747, Bach submitted which composition?
The Canonic Variations on 'Vom Himmel hoch'
He also submitted the Haussmann portrait showing him holding a six-voice triple canon.