For years nobody knew for certain where Johann Sebastian Bach's earthly remains were buried. After they were finally exhumed and verified around the turn of the 20th century, the "New Bach Memorial" was erected in 1908 just steps away from the side entrance to St. Thomas Church, where Bach had been the music director. The bust was patterned after the size and shape of the composer's skull.

Due to a lack of authentic historical sources, we have only a rough idea of what Bach looked like. This image of his possible physiognomy, generated for an exhibition at the Bach House in Eisenach in 2008, was based on a plaster cast of the composer's skull and new forensic methods. He looks friendlier here than in the more traditional, severe, bewigged depictions.

The name "Bach" was once synonymous for "musician" in the central German region of Thuringia. There were Bachs in cities and towns everywhere, from Erfurt to Weimar, Ohrdruf to Eisenach, where Johann Sebastian was born in 1685 in the above house. He later listed 53 musician family members, most of them in the service of a court or a church. At family get-togethers, they — what else? — made music.

Having lost both parents by age ten, Johann Sebastian went to live in Ohrdruf with his 14-year-older brother and received musical tutelage. Little is known about his youth other than that he snapped up every scrap of music he could get his hands on. At one point he described a fellow musician's playing in unflattering terms. The quarrel escalated, but a duel was averted at the last moment.

Hearing your favorite music today is easy: just don your headphones. To hear the music he wanted, the young Bach traveled over 200 miles (321 km) — by foot. Destination: Lübeck, on Germany's north coast. It was there the great organist Dieterich Buxtehude held his legendary "Abendmusiken" (evening concerts) in St. Mary's Church. Buxtehude left deep marks on Bach's organ playing and composing.

In 1708, at age 23, Bach landed a prestigious gig in Weimar (above). He wrote his first cantata masterpieces and the greater part of his organ works in the following nine years there. In 1717 he opted to move on to even greener fields, but Weimar didn't want to let him go. In those days, quitting a job could mean imprisonment for insubordination, and Bach did in fact spend a month behind bars.

In the first part of his tenure as orchestra director at the court in Köthen (above), Bach had a superbly equipped orchestra at his disposal and, in Prince Leopold, a music-loving patron and friend. Many of his instrumental works were written there. But when Leopold took a wife who was less interested in music, Bach's working conditions suffered, so he began looking for a different job.

Today Leipzig is proud of Bach, but this was less so during his lifetime. He was only third choice to be cantor of the prestigious St Thomas Church and School (above). His grueling work regimen included writing, rehearsing and performing a new cantata week after week. Bach eventually found himself at odds with church and city authorities, leading him to apply for jobs elsewhere — unsuccessfully.

20 children issued forth from Bach's two marriages. Nine survived him, and four of his sons became musicians of renown. Johann Sebastian Bach did everything he could to pass on the musical family tradition, as this image likely depicting him at the keyboard captures, but it ended with his sons. The generation to follow brought forth no musicians of stature.

With all those hungry mouths to feed, Bach complained about the high cost of living in Leipzig. He even dryly noted that in one year, the city's healthy air meant fewer deaths, less funerals and a regrettable loss of income through a resultant decline in fees for a musician's services.

Restive schoolchildren, bickering with authorities, burdensome tasks and scant respect: The life of a cantor at St. Thomas wasn't easy. For a change of pace, Bach would go to the local coffee house, Cafe Zimmermann (above), and make music with friends and students in Leipzig's Collegium Musicum musical society.

Only one authentic image of Johann Sebastian Bach exists: the painting by Elias Gottlob Haussmann from the year 1748. For over 60 years it hung in the living room of the musicologist, historian and arts patron William Scheide in Princeton, New Jersey, in the US. Scheide left the precious object to the Bach Archive in Leipzig, and it was returned to the city by his widow Judith in 2015 (above).

Bach signed many of his compositions with the initials "S.D.G." (Soli Deo Gloria — To the glory of God alone). This declaration is found even on a number of his works of secular music and points to a deeply felt, personal religiosity. Even in his everyday compositions, Bach always strove for perfection. That in itself could be taken as an expression of his faith.

On Johann Sebastian Bach's 334th birthday, Google greeted users with this doodle, inviting them to engage in an interactive exercise and compose a short melody. After cross-comparing hundreds of compositions by Bach, the software then embellished that melody by adding a multivoiced accompaniment in style of the composer. It seems doubtful that the results were as ingenious as the original, though.

Of the over 1,120 entries in the Bach Works Catalogue (BWV), this cantata is No. 1. Bach composed it for the feast of the Annunciation. Based on one of the best-known hymns by Martin Luther, it is pure splendor, ranging from gentle violin sounds to a swinging, dancing mood of jubilation.

Martin Luther wrote the corresponding hymn in 1524. Despite the cheerful subject of advent, the sound is somewhat dark. Bach wrote at least three cantatas on the basis of this song, the earliest in 1714 in Weimar. He starts out by developing the musical motif in the style of a French overture — very modern music in those days — which heightens the work's sense of dignity.

Around the middle of this piece, you hear a gentle, calm melody which is one of Bach's catchiest tunes. The premise of this well-known cantata: the connection between Jesus and the individual soul is depicted metaphorically as a wedding.

Weary of life, the person of faith longs for death and for life in the hereafter. The work dates from 1727, was written in Leipzig, and the text probably came from the pen of a 24-year-old student of theology by the name of Christoph Birkmann. Nothing unusual about that: Bach frequently set texts by little-known poets to music.

Just after Bach, then a court organist in Weimar, was named concertmaster in 1714, he wrote this cantata about Christ's farewell to his disciples and about the joy of one day meeting again. Despite the depressing title, the piece has an upbeat message that's fitting for Jubilate Sunday, the third Sunday after Easter.

Another work by the young Bach in Weimar. Rather than hope or consolation, the subject is fear of the fires of hell. To illustrate, Bach finds the appropriately dramatic sounds. "My quite terrified heart trembles / so that my tongue cleaves to the roof of my mouth," the choir sings. At the end, there's a ray of hope, with a plea of deliverance from life's suffering and temptations.

"One of the most extraordinary and inspired of Bach's works," in the assessment of the conductor Sir John Eliot Gardiner. Consisting of two parts, the cantata with 11 movements is comparatively long. The moods range from a motif suggesting a gentle sigh to a flood of triumphant joy.

"The raging serpent, the hellish dragon / storms against heaven with furious vengeance," goes the text, which continues: "But Michael conquers / and the host that surrounds him / overthrows Satan's cruelty." The story of this apocalyptic meeting is depicted in music on St. Michael's Day that commemorates Michael the archangel.