Short answers, pulled from the story.
Johann Sebastian Bach entered the world on the 21st of March 1685 in Eisenach, a town within the duchy of Saxe-Eisenach. He was the eighth child and youngest son of Johann Ambrosius Bach who served as the director of town musicians.
Bach composed hundreds of cantatas both sacred and secular throughout his career with most expounding on Gospel readings prescribed for every Sunday and feast day in the Lutheran year. His Latin church music included Passions oratorios and motets such as the St Matthew Passion first performed on Good Friday the 11th of April 1727.
These adaptations helped shape entire generations of composers including Telemann and himself through shared stylistic elements derived from Italian and French music influences. Bach absorbed influences from Italian and French music without ever visiting those countries directly by transcribing concertos and borrowing rhythmic patterns from models attributed to Vivaldi or Marcello brothers.
In 1829 Felix Mendelssohn performed the St Matthew Passion precipitating full Bach Revival movement across Europe. The St John Passion saw its nineteenth-century premiere in 1833 while Mass in B minor followed publicly in 1844.
Four-part harmony formed the core of Bach's style during an era when modal music gave way to tonal systems with each chord containing four notes progressing from one to another according to specific rules. Fugues represented strictly contrapuntal compositions where distinct melodic lines followed four-part harmony rules opening with subjects sounding successively in each voice before returning to opening key often followed by coda.