Johann Sebastian Bach (Eisenach, March 31, 1685 - Leipzig, July 28, 1750) was a composer, organist, harpsichordist and choirmaster. He is universally considered one of the greatest geniuses in the history of music. Bach worked an admirable synthesis between the German style and the works of Italian composers, whose many pieces he transcribed, assimilating especially their concertante style. His work constituted the summa and development of the varied compositional trends of his era. The degree of structural complexity, technical difficulty, and the exclusion of the melodramatic genre, however, made his work the preserve of the most gifted musicians and at the time limited its dissemination among the general public, in comparison with the popularity achieved by other contemporary musicians such as Telemann or Händel. In 1829 the performance of the Passion according to Matthew, conducted in Berlin by Felix Mendelssohn, brought to the attention of enthusiasts the very high quality of Bach's compositional work, which has since been considered the compendium of contrapuntal music of the Baroque period.