Bach FAQ 124
An Asteroid Named Johann Sebastian Bach? Or are There Two?..
Stars? Asteroids? Named after Johann Sebastian Bach? Yes and no. No stars are named after Bach. But at least one asteroid is named after Johann Sebastian Bach. That said, there’s hardly a Classical Composer who doesn’t have an asteroid named after them. Well, there are 638,546 of them whirling around in our solar system. They’re also called minor planets or planetoids. And you can find them mainly in the so-called main asteroid belt between Mars, Jupiter, and the Sun. But Johann Sebastian Bach wins … once again. In one of my own made-up, funny, fictional contests: Johann Sebastian Bach might actually have two asteroids named after him. One is asteroid 1814 (Bach), which was discovered as early as 1931 by the German astronomer Karl Wilhelm Reinmuth in Heidelberg. And the other is asteroid Sebastiana, which bears the number 1482. It is also said to be named after Bach. By Max Wolf. So he must have been a real Bach fan. Or, he did not hide his admiration for Bach behind the name. Instead, he honored a completely different person. As some experts believe..
By now, there are not only countless asteroids named after Classical Composers (… because the names from ancient texts ran out), but also an incredible number of characters named in the works of Classical Composers. There is the asteroid Papagena and the asteroid Pamina (… both from The Magic Flute). There are the asteroids Sieglinde (… Die Walküre), Norma (… an opera by Bellini), the asteroid Carmen (… an opera by Bizet), Cosima (… again by Wagner), and Arabella (… an opera by Strauss). As an example, let’s conclude with the asteroid Aida from Giuseppe Verdi’s opera. By the way, you can find them all here. Not the names of the 638,546 known asteroids, but the names of the celestial bodies (… that is, not stars) that are named after characters in the Classical Works of the great masters. So many Classical Composers have been honored with the naming of an asteroid that it almost makes no sense to list them all here. There are the asteroids Beethoven, Brahms, and Dvořák. Handel is fun because it’s the English word for Händel. So there’s the asteroid Handel, Haydn, Schubert, Verdi, and Mendelssohn Bartholdy..
But there are also asteroids named before the greats of Classical Music we know so well, such as Buxtehude. And there are asteroids (… that is, minor planets) that honor composers who, in my world, are considered young, popular masters of Classical Music: Asteroid Vangelis and Asteroid Copland, as well as Asteroid Morricone, whose namesake passed away as recently as 2020. The name of the asteroid Mozartia is quite unusual, as it was, of course, named after … well … you know, Mozart. One is called Andreabocelli, another Tafelmusik, and yet another Honegger (… please don’t confuse them!)..
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