Did you know that Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) has two birthdays? Yes, that’s right! Some say Bach was born on March 21 and others say it was March 31. So, who is right? Here’s the story.
Bach was born in 1685 in Eisenach, Germany. Much of Europe at that time still used the Julian calendar. The Julian calendar had been introduced by the Roman Emperor Julius Caesar in 46 BC and was used for many centuries. His calendar was a vast improvement from previous Roman calendars and was based on the best astronomical knowledge of the time. It established the length of one year to be 365.25 days. To accommodate the fractional day, each year was established as 365 days and every four years a day was added to keep the calendar aligned with the earth’s orbit around the sun. This fourth year was eventually called a “leap year.”
The true length of the solar year, however, is closer to 365.2422 days. The difference was only 11 minutes and 14 seconds each year, but by the 13th century scholars noticed that the Julian calendar no longer aligned with the seasons. By the 1500s the spring equinox had shifted 10 days from March 21 to March 11.
In the 1570s Pope Gregory XIII established a task force to study the issue and propose a fix. The committee proposed adjusting the calendar by 10 days and adopting a system that skipped three leap years every 400 years. This system shortened the average year to 365.2425 days. In 1582 Pope Gregory XIII adopted this calendar and it became known as the Gregorian calendar.
According to the official records, Bach was born on March 21, 1685, however this was according to the Julian calendar. 15 years later in 1700 the Duchy of Saxe-Eisenach along with other regions in Germany adopted the Gregorian calendar. Using both calendars had become too confusing. Under the Gregorian calendar, Bach would have been born on March 31, 1685. Some contemporary scholars and performers prefer to use the latter date since it aligns with the calendar used today and provides a consistent framework for historical analysis. So that is how Bach came to have two birthdays. It must be nice to have two birthdays!
With that we wish him a 340th birthday. Happy Birthday, Sebastian!
For your listening pleasure here are some performances of “Schafe können sicher weiden” (“Sheep May Safely Graze”) from a birthday cantata that Bach composed for the Duke Christian of Saxe-Weissenfals.
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