Bach is the greatest composer and perhaps the greatest artist in human history. Full stop. He is able to condense so much complexity into his works, and he speaks to the heart as equally as he speaks to the intellect. He is proof that the mind and the heart do not have to be at cross purposes, but can be wholly engaged together when stimulated by sublime works of art.
That’s debatable. Mozart was good too. But my real OG is Camille Saint-Saens. You want dark and moody? Light and fluffy? Dazzles and sparkles? He’s your man.
I think from a technical perspective, this is basically still true about Bach. It's not to say he has the most enjoyable music to listen to, but rather his music is built in a way that shows he was basically metagaming his music harder than anyone else ever has.
Why do you say metagaming? Did he really advance the art so far? I think he was just incredibly good at producing music within his specific parameters.
(Said as a huge fan of his work. I spent a year playing essentially nothing but one of his fugues.)
This didn't really get noticed in his own day, as they were busy dumbing things down into the classical period, but he was hugely influencial through rediscovery.
Except for Italian humanists rediscovering Greek and Roman writings, I'm having a hard time thinking of an earlier instance of a chiefly posthumous legacy.
Nah Bach shits on Mozart. Mozart make extremely catchy music like Justin Beiber. I seriously do love mozart, but he merely wrote music. Bach weaved math into his music more than anyone before or after. His music sounds dense and more multi dimensional than mozart or saint saens. It really doesn't sound like he was trying to write beautiful music ( even though it is ) , it sounds like he was solving an equation and just writing out the answers as a harmonic sequence
Also they were not all justin beiber. Bach was a working church musician when mozart was out touring europe getting drunk and shitting on women. Only one of them was in it for the fame. In fact you could say that mozart and liszt were 2 of the first "pop stars" because that archetype didn't exist before them. There was basically no "beatlesmania" over bach. He had a steady job, but he didn't die wealthy or famous.
Do you have any particular pieces in mind when you wrote this?
Bach is impressive, no doubt, but to each their own perhaps. I acknowledge that I have not received the appropriate training to fully appreciate the complexity in his works, so I wish I could hear what you do. To my ear, (and this isn't a novel opinion in the slightest), I think the Baroque era was more limited in expression due to the inherent limitations in the instruments and consequent styles at the time. Within those constraints, calling Bach an absolute titan of composition would be an understatement. But one wonders what he could have made without those constraints.
Sure! When I think of why I love Bach, I often think of works where he demonstrates an ability to express often conflicting emotions at the same time. For example, in St. Mathew’s Passion, there’s a famous piece entitled “Mache Dich, Mein Herze” — it’s sung at a part where the followers of Christ are laying his body to rest, and somehow merges genuine despair with hope, representing the promise of resurrection. I think his ability to represent despair and hope at the same time is pretty extraordinary.
Karl Richter’s version is my personal favorite but there’s lots of different recordings. IMO Bach’s St Matthew Passion is the best piece of musical art, maybe art in general too idk.
There were a lot of these components in middle Germany at that time. Basically every reigning dynasty employed one, and there were a lot of those. They aren't famous now, but Bach wasn't famous at that time either. That he is famous now, is due to Mendelsohn.
Jan Dismas Zelenka wrote for the Saxon king, and many of his works were never released as a result.
Then, they burnt to ashes in 1945. The only extant copies were caught in the bombing of Dresden. We tend to think of "lost works" as something that happened in Antiquity. Nope.
I'm not the GP but I can recommend Bach's Partita in D minor, said to have been composed after returning from travel to find that his wife had died and been buried in his absence.
Brahms said of it: "On one stave, for a small instrument, the man writes a whole world of the deepest thoughts and most powerful feelings. If I imagined that I could have created, even conceived the piece, I am quite certain that the excess of excitement and earth-shattering experience would have driven me out of my mind."
Bach's most approachable music might be his cello suites.
But also, I think there are two camps of fans of "classical music" (by which I mean music in the styles: Baroque, Classical, Romantic, Impressionist, etc). There are those who listen to the music, and those who play it.
For the most part, those who only listen to music often prefer Romantic and Impressionist styles. From the moody and dramatic to the gentle and contemplative, these styles are very approachable to the untrained ear.
But those who play an instrument (or sing in a choir) spend lots of time practicing and rehearsing and interpreting the music as it's written on the page. This extra time makes all of the little nuances of Baroque music truly come to life. The classic example is Bach's Crab Canon, which is a fine little piece of music... but once you realize that the whole thing is a palindrome, and you can actively appreciate how the same parts work in a forward and backward context, it becomes really interesting and pleasant.
So if Bach doesn't do it for you, and you play an instrument, try diving into playing it yourself.
I think that's true about Bach's instrumental music, but his big sacred works like his Passions and the Mass in B minor are as "romantic" as the Baroque period gets. Like OP, I think of these works as basically the pinnacle of human artistic achievement. They somehow have all the nuance and complexity you're referring to -- while also telling a deeply emotional story, and just being heart-wrenchingly beautiful even if you don't know the story.
I cut my teeth on Bach on Cello when I was 7. By the time I was in high school I could play all the instruments. I still don’t consider Bach to be the genius everyone says he was. He was a nepo baby with a big purse. His brothers, his family, all musicians of note for prominent figures of society. However, his leaning on his long history of music within the family helped polish his work as structured which helped sell it. Now, Jean-Babtiste Lully was a character…
If you don't like it, that's fine, I won't argue over taste. But your other descriptions of Bach's life deserve to be fact-checked.
> He was a nepo baby with a big purse. His brothers, his family, all musicians of note for prominent figures of society. However, his leaning on his long history of music within the family helped polish his work as structured which helped sell it.
This interpretation is not particularly historically accurate. Let's investigate:
> He was a nepo baby with a big purse.
Musicians of the baroque era weren't particularly wealthy or notable. Musical fame wouldn't come until the Classical era. And yes, music was his family trade, but that's how most trades went in that time. His parents both died before he turned ten, so he was mostly raised by his older brother. By all accounts they were not wealthy. So I think the term "nepo baby" is misleading, and "and "with a big purse" is simply incorrect.
> His brothers, his family, all musicians of note for prominent figures of society.
This is highly overexaggerated. JS Bach had two brothers who survived childhood, and neither was particularly "prominent." Most of his "notable family" were his children, especially CPE Bach.
> However, his leaning on his long history of music within the family helped polish his work as structured which helped sell it.
Bach's career was one of slow and steady growth. It doesn't appear that he leaned on his connections or family name much.
Bach did get some widespread acclaim by the end of his life, but mostly as an organist, not as a composer. His compositions were mostly discarded and ignored for a whole century until Felix Mendelssohn revived interest in his compositions. The cello suites, for example, were lost for nearly two hundred years, and only re-discovered in the 1920's.
He was known as an organist until the 18th century when someone decided to lump him in with the greats. His works were polished. Yes, he dedicated his life to music - but that’s also where his tenure started. Baroque style borrowing from others and making “commercial” music of his day. He was a nepo baby by our standards. His older brother that raised him wasn’t a Duke, but wasn’t poor either. He went to the best schools. They all borrowed from each other in this age.
He wasn't so "commercial" because he was doing more complex and countrapuntal music after it was falling out of fashion, and he never did an opera, which was all the rage.
His father had lots of children, 4 of which became musicians, of which JSB was the last child, the baby. Barbara Margaretha tried to take the family purse (having already been twice widowed). JSB was “orphaned” but his older brothers were adults. Let’s be real.
which I think stands up just fine against pretty much any other classical piece baroque or not.
Personally I have a very big soft spot for his organ works, as I play (badly) some organ myself, and among those I don't see the trio sonatas recommended nearly often enough (here is a live recital of all of them, which is super impressive)
among those I probably enjoy the most the vivace of BWV 530. Other favorite pieces are the passacaglia and fugue https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVoFLM_BDgs the toccata adagio and fugue in C major https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Klh9GiWMc9U (the adagio especially is super nice), but there's so many. Among organists I often come back to Helmut Walcha, and am always amazed at how he was able to learn everything just by listening, him being blind.
you can play it with an ensemble of random instruments.
you can play a single voicing all by itself.
all of it screams "musical". which, if you do play say, Tuba, or one of the larger instruments, is a godsend, as most of your lines in other pieces will bore you to death.
Nice to see the Zenph recording get some love. It's such a fascinating process they had to do. It's way better than the original Gould recordings with all his singing along.
You should listen to Hilary Hahn's renditions of Bach's partitas and sonatas. She brings out the subtleties of Bach's composing beautifully, and the purity of his music is easy to appreciate in these solo pieces.
> But one wonders what he could have made without those constraints.
I had a friend that said if Mozart/Bach/et al had access to modern music production equipment, they'd all write psytrance. But it is just another example of "take great talent from long ago and put them in modern day" comparisons.
This is only scratching the surface but I will present one of his most famous pieces to people who might ask why something like this is said. Keep in mind this was written 300 years ago. That's 300. fucking. years. ago. Think about how dated something from the 80s might sound. How modern does this sound? How completely universal is it's beauty? To me, this could have been written today and still sound fresh and beautiful.
This piece is still deeply moving despite centuries of tastes changing. This is only barely scratching the surface of Bach. As a musician, when I listen to other great musicians speak, they all speak about Bach as the best. Of course that's subjective, and there are no 'wrong' answers on who is your favorite, but when the feeling is so nearly unanimous amount people who are often, frankly, contrarian and counter culture it says something.
> Bach is the greatest composer and perhaps the greatest artist in human history. Full stop.
He's aight. Obviously you enjoy his music and that's fine. But have you experienced all the art from all cultures through all human history to make such authorative statements on such subjective matters?
This is a riposte at the level of "Then name all composers. Nanananana." Obviously, the answer to your question is going to be "no," but really a great amount of music is available to us, and everything that came before the Renaissance was, crudely put, simple music. So the commenter can be considered to be able to weigh Bach's merits against those of other artists'.
IMO too, Bach is the greatest. There's really no-one who can so seamlessly merge content and form and achieve intellectually, musically and emotionally fulfilling results.
Thank you and upvote to the OP for posting this. I love Bach and place him on a pedestal of my own.
Personally I lack the physiological or cultural understanding of the significance of Tuvan Throat Singing [1] and why "Kongurei" (Konggurei / 60 Horses) is often described as the most beautiful and heartbreaking song in the Tuvan Throat Singing (Khoomei) repertoire.
I also get that the Javanese gamelan orchestral masterpiece "Ketawang Puspawarna" [2] is widely cited as the candidate for the "most important, beautiful, and pivotal" global composition. So much so, that NASA included it on the Voyager spacecraft Golden Record in 1977 (side 2 track 2, together with 3 compositions of J.S. Bach). But I probably lack the aesthetic fabric to fully comprehend or appreciate its significance.
I understand that a comment such as mine would rankle. I acknowledge that art is subjective, that there's no accounting for taste, etc. And yet, I don't really believe that, deep down. If I did, I'm not entirely sure how I could speak meaningfully to the differences between great and no so great art. Is War and Peace really as good as any other novel? Would it be possible for any two people to meaningfully communicate about art, if it really all boils down to mere instinctual taste? I think there must be more, even if I can't quite prove it. But I will acknowledge that I can't point to some objective rubric that obtains across all art when I say what I say.
Interesting to read that the complexity in his music is praised and seen as speaking to the intellect, whereas that is not the case when it comes to complexity in software.
complexity in software is invisibly-preceded with "unnecessary", and usually indicates software that is difficult to maintain or even to verify its behavior. A really cool software architecture can scratch a similar itch as a good fugue, but that's not its typical function nor is it the way we usually engage with software professionally.
Bach's complexity, incidentally, is seldom "for its own sake" - the pieces all fit together beautifully and without extraneous movement. Contrast that with some lesser works by later composers like Liszt, where you often get the sense that a given passage could be reduced or removed without harming the work.
My absolute personal favourite is Toccata and Fugue played by organist Hans-André Stamm on the Trost-Organ of the Stadtkirche in Waltershausen [1]. Great videography, great organ and very expressive organist. From 3:28 on you can also see the foot work.
I listened to them the other day, and I can't say I find them interesting additions to the Bach repertoire, certainly not in comparison to works that date to just a few years later.
Maybe that's why he didn't sign them? Maybe he was on rough times, and just took a gig to write a studio jingle for some corporate presentation of the day just to get paid. Was able to pay rent, and keep working on his other work.
Nothing happens for about the first seven minutes, then there's an intro in German until about 11 minutes, and then another not much happens until 15 minutes. But then...!
(Said as a huge fan of his work. I spent a year playing essentially nothing but one of his fugues.)
This didn't really get noticed in his own day, as they were busy dumbing things down into the classical period, but he was hugely influencial through rediscovery.
Except for Italian humanists rediscovering Greek and Roman writings, I'm having a hard time thinking of an earlier instance of a chiefly posthumous legacy.
Aquarium was my sons childhood theme song
By a ridiculous stroke of luck I got to perform that piece as soloist once. Unforgettable.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmsNH8t25ck - This guy is like 95 and still shredding on youtube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1xJoVzoIQg
Truth is, they were ALL Justin Bieber. It’s all pop music of the time.
https://youtu.be/_1xJoVzoIQg?list=RD_1xJoVzoIQg
Also they were not all justin beiber. Bach was a working church musician when mozart was out touring europe getting drunk and shitting on women. Only one of them was in it for the fame. In fact you could say that mozart and liszt were 2 of the first "pop stars" because that archetype didn't exist before them. There was basically no "beatlesmania" over bach. He had a steady job, but he didn't die wealthy or famous.
Bach is impressive, no doubt, but to each their own perhaps. I acknowledge that I have not received the appropriate training to fully appreciate the complexity in his works, so I wish I could hear what you do. To my ear, (and this isn't a novel opinion in the slightest), I think the Baroque era was more limited in expression due to the inherent limitations in the instruments and consequent styles at the time. Within those constraints, calling Bach an absolute titan of composition would be an understatement. But one wonders what he could have made without those constraints.
Other pieces I love are the 3rd and 5th Brandenburg concertos, as well as “Wachet Auf”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgXL_wrSPF0
No shade if he still doesn’t click with you. I’m just particularly ardent on the subject of Bach and baroque music!
Karl Richter’s version is my personal favorite but there’s lots of different recordings. IMO Bach’s St Matthew Passion is the best piece of musical art, maybe art in general too idk.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EKanXXMkz8
Amazing musicality, but the cellist never made it big cause she was a woman
Then, they burnt to ashes in 1945. The only extant copies were caught in the bombing of Dresden. We tend to think of "lost works" as something that happened in Antiquity. Nope.
https://youtu.be/VfwVim0EybY
Brahms said of it: "On one stave, for a small instrument, the man writes a whole world of the deepest thoughts and most powerful feelings. If I imagined that I could have created, even conceived the piece, I am quite certain that the excess of excitement and earth-shattering experience would have driven me out of my mind."
But also, I think there are two camps of fans of "classical music" (by which I mean music in the styles: Baroque, Classical, Romantic, Impressionist, etc). There are those who listen to the music, and those who play it.
For the most part, those who only listen to music often prefer Romantic and Impressionist styles. From the moody and dramatic to the gentle and contemplative, these styles are very approachable to the untrained ear.
But those who play an instrument (or sing in a choir) spend lots of time practicing and rehearsing and interpreting the music as it's written on the page. This extra time makes all of the little nuances of Baroque music truly come to life. The classic example is Bach's Crab Canon, which is a fine little piece of music... but once you realize that the whole thing is a palindrome, and you can actively appreciate how the same parts work in a forward and backward context, it becomes really interesting and pleasant.
So if Bach doesn't do it for you, and you play an instrument, try diving into playing it yourself.
> He was a nepo baby with a big purse. His brothers, his family, all musicians of note for prominent figures of society. However, his leaning on his long history of music within the family helped polish his work as structured which helped sell it.
This interpretation is not particularly historically accurate. Let's investigate:
> He was a nepo baby with a big purse.
Musicians of the baroque era weren't particularly wealthy or notable. Musical fame wouldn't come until the Classical era. And yes, music was his family trade, but that's how most trades went in that time. His parents both died before he turned ten, so he was mostly raised by his older brother. By all accounts they were not wealthy. So I think the term "nepo baby" is misleading, and "and "with a big purse" is simply incorrect.
> His brothers, his family, all musicians of note for prominent figures of society.
This is highly overexaggerated. JS Bach had two brothers who survived childhood, and neither was particularly "prominent." Most of his "notable family" were his children, especially CPE Bach.
> However, his leaning on his long history of music within the family helped polish his work as structured which helped sell it.
Bach's career was one of slow and steady growth. It doesn't appear that he leaned on his connections or family name much.
Bach did get some widespread acclaim by the end of his life, but mostly as an organist, not as a composer. His compositions were mostly discarded and ignored for a whole century until Felix Mendelssohn revived interest in his compositions. The cello suites, for example, were lost for nearly two hundred years, and only re-discovered in the 1920's.
Interesting interpretation of "he was orphaned at 10 and left with nothing and had to go and live with his brother".
(Who gets married and dies 3 months later?)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ce8CDz9PUfs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsxP-YjDWlQ (arioso from the cantata 156, here for oboe)
which I think stands up just fine against pretty much any other classical piece baroque or not.
Personally I have a very big soft spot for his organ works, as I play (badly) some organ myself, and among those I don't see the trio sonatas recommended nearly often enough (here is a live recital of all of them, which is super impressive)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eK9irE8LMAU
among those I probably enjoy the most the vivace of BWV 530. Other favorite pieces are the passacaglia and fugue https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVoFLM_BDgs the toccata adagio and fugue in C major https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Klh9GiWMc9U (the adagio especially is super nice), but there's so many. Among organists I often come back to Helmut Walcha, and am always amazed at how he was able to learn everything just by listening, him being blind.
Put on a good set of headphones and go sit in the corner.
Also obligatory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ah392lnFHxM&list=RDAh392lnFH...
The thing I appericiate most about bach is:
you can play it fast.
you can play it slow.
you can play it with an ensemble of random instruments.
you can play a single voicing all by itself.
all of it screams "musical". which, if you do play say, Tuba, or one of the larger instruments, is a godsend, as most of your lines in other pieces will bore you to death.
https://inv.nadeko.net/playlist?list=PLor_18TcpRrxQmne5_SKRy... (YouTube proxy)
I had a friend that said if Mozart/Bach/et al had access to modern music production equipment, they'd all write psytrance. But it is just another example of "take great talent from long ago and put them in modern day" comparisons.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWoI8vmE8bI
This piece is still deeply moving despite centuries of tastes changing. This is only barely scratching the surface of Bach. As a musician, when I listen to other great musicians speak, they all speak about Bach as the best. Of course that's subjective, and there are no 'wrong' answers on who is your favorite, but when the feeling is so nearly unanimous amount people who are often, frankly, contrarian and counter culture it says something.
He's aight. Obviously you enjoy his music and that's fine. But have you experienced all the art from all cultures through all human history to make such authorative statements on such subjective matters?
IMO too, Bach is the greatest. There's really no-one who can so seamlessly merge content and form and achieve intellectually, musically and emotionally fulfilling results.
Personally I lack the physiological or cultural understanding of the significance of Tuvan Throat Singing [1] and why "Kongurei" (Konggurei / 60 Horses) is often described as the most beautiful and heartbreaking song in the Tuvan Throat Singing (Khoomei) repertoire.
I also get that the Javanese gamelan orchestral masterpiece "Ketawang Puspawarna" [2] is widely cited as the candidate for the "most important, beautiful, and pivotal" global composition. So much so, that NASA included it on the Voyager spacecraft Golden Record in 1977 (side 2 track 2, together with 3 compositions of J.S. Bach). But I probably lack the aesthetic fabric to fully comprehend or appreciate its significance.
[1] Tuvan Throat Singing, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qx8hrhBZJ98
[2] Ketawang Puspawarna, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Irt2AsxYYnI
Bach's complexity, incidentally, is seldom "for its own sake" - the pieces all fit together beautifully and without extraneous movement. Contrast that with some lesser works by later composers like Liszt, where you often get the sense that a given passage could be reduced or removed without harming the work.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nnuq9PXbywA&list=RDNnuq9PXby...
A system for buying arrangements of the Well-Tempered Clavier for any combination of instruments:
welltemperedconsort.com
Nothing happens for about the first seven minutes, then there's an intro in German until about 11 minutes, and then another not much happens until 15 minutes. But then...!
... an unskippable ad. /s