Born in Leipzig[1] in the Electorate of Saxony, he was taught music by his father, and also tutored by his distant cousin Johann Elias Bach [de].

Bach wrote keyboard sonatas, symphonies, oratorios, liturgical choir pieces and motets, operas and songs.

He married the singer Lucia Elisabeth Münchhausen (1728–1803) in 1755[2] and the Count stood as godfather to his son Wilhelm Friedrich Ernst Bach.

He was an outstanding virtuoso of the keyboard, with a reasonably wide repertory of surviving works, including twenty symphonies, the later ones influenced by Haydn and Mozart; hardly a genre of vocal music was neglected by him.

[3] A significant portion of J. C. F. Bach's output was lost in the WWII destruction of the Staatliches Institut für Musikforschung in Berlin, where the scores had been on deposit since 1917.

Musicologists Hansdieter Wohlfahrth, who catalogued his works, and Ulrich Leisinger consider Bach a transitional figure in the mold of his half-brother C. P. E., his brother Johann Christian, the Grauns (Carl and Johann), and Georg Philipp Telemann, with some works in the style of the high Baroque, some in a galant idiom, and still others which combine elements of the two, along with traits of the nascent classical style.