Johann Sebastian Bach, Court Organist and Concertmaster…

Johann Sebastian Bach, Court Organist and Concertmaster to the main Court of William Ernest, Duke of Saxe-Weimar, gains some notoriety outside of the immediate circles where he lives and works (namely the areas that comprise the modern state of Thuringia) in 1717 when the diplomat, musician, music theoretician, and Cantor (church) of the old St. Mary's Cathedral, Hamburg (which will be dismantled in 1805), Johann Mattheson publishes his Das Beschützte Orchestre, oder desselben Zweyte Eröffnung: Worinn Nicht nur einem würcklichen galant-homme ... sondern auch manchem Musico selbst die alleraufrichtigste und deutlichste Vorstellung musicalischer Wissenschaften ... ertheilet ... .

In Part I, Chapter V, p. 222 of this treatise, Mattheson states "Ich habe von dem berūhmten Organisten zu Weimar/hrn. Joh. Sebastian Bach/Sachen gesehen..." ("I have of the organist to Weimar/Mr. Joh. Sebastian stream/things seen ...").

In the same work, he also catalogues all the famous organists of the current and former ages.

Thus, for the first time, the name of Johann Sebastian Bach appears in print.

In autumn of this year, Bach is invited to a keyboard instrument contest to take place in the capital city of the Electorate of Saxony, Dresden, between himself and the French Royal Court Organist and Keyboardist Louis Marchand, who is at this time towards the end of a long concert tour of the Holy Roman Empire.

When Bach arrives, however, he learns that his rival had left the night before, thus aborting the contest and by default acknowledging his inferiority to Bach's skills.