Johann Ludwig Krebs was unrivaled next to Bach in his organ proficiency. However, Krebs found it difficult to obtain a patron or a cathedral post. His Baroque style was being supplanted by the newer galant music style and the classical music era. Krebs took a small post in Zwickau, and in 1755 (five years after the death of Bach, which is normally referred to as the end of the Baroque period) he was appointed court organist of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg under Prince Friedrich. Krebs had seven children and struggled to feed his family. Despite never holding a court composer post, and never being commissioned for
Baroque architecture and well before his death in 1724, the style had lost currency in Britain. In the Holy Roman Empire, the Baroque period began somewhat later. Although the Augsburg architect Elias Holl (1573–1646) and some theoretists, including Joseph Furttenbach the Elder already practiced the Baroque style, they remained without successors due to the ravages of the Thirty Years' War. From about 1650 on, construction work resumed, and secular and ecclesiastical architecture were of equal importance. During an initial phase, master-masons from southern Switzerland and northern Italy, the so-called "magistri Grigioni" and the Lombard master-masons, particularly the Carlone family from Val d'Intelvi,