# In What Year Did "Everyone" know JS Bach?



## regenmusic (Oct 23, 2014)

I'm curious what year did most fans of classical music know Bach in the major European countries? I imagine it must be sometime in the early 1800s? I would love to get exact dates and facts based on publications or important concerts.


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## hoodjem (Feb 23, 2019)

I think he was rediscovered by Mendelssohn, c. 1829.

"In 1829, with the backing of Zelter and the assistance of the actor Eduard Devrient, Mendelssohn arranged and conducted a performance in Berlin of Bach's St Matthew Passion. Four years previously his grandmother, Bella Salomon, had given him a copy of the manuscript of this (by then all-but-forgotten) masterpiece.[41] The orchestra and choir for the performance were provided by the Berlin Singakademie. The success of this performance, one of the very few since Bach's death and the first ever outside of Leipzig,[n 6] was the central event in the revival of Bach's music in Germany and, eventually, throughout Europe.[43]"


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## vtpoet (Jan 17, 2019)

The way you've asked the question is almost impossible to answer, though hoodjem's is as good as any. You really have to define what you mean by classical music fans as far as historical context go. In truth, there's the myth that JS Bach was forgotten after he died. Not at all true. There were numerous musicians who collected his works, studied and performed them from his death onward.


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## Ethereality (Apr 6, 2019)

Message deleted.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

vtpoet said:


> There were numerous musicians who collected his works, studied and performed them from his death onward.


It's interesting that Joseph Haydn actually had access to a copy of the B minor mass.
"Haydn did, in fact, know the Bach Mass, because there was a copy in the Esterhazy Archives at Eisenstadt"
(Haydn: Haydn at Eszterháza, 1766-1790, page 229)



hammeredklavier said:


> *K475 & K457:*
> 
> <W.A. Mozart's Fantasy in C minor, K. 475, And the Generalization of the Lydian Principle Through Motivic Thorough-Composition> by John Sigerson
> 
> ...


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## regenmusic (Oct 23, 2014)

vtpoet said:


> The way you've asked the question is almost impossible to answer, though hoodjem's is as good as any. You really have to define what you mean by classical music fans as far as historical context go. In truth, there's the myth that JS Bach was forgotten after he died. Not at all true. There were numerous musicians who collected his works, studied and performed them from his death onward.


There's nothing wrong with the way i asked the question.

Most fans of classical music means just that. Most fans of classical music know Bach now, right?


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## BachIsBest (Feb 17, 2018)

It should also be noted that his keyboard works were always quite popular and never 'forgotten'; apperantly Beethoven would usually play Bach before a performance. But as @hoodjem stated the interest in his entire output can largely be traced back to that pivotal performance of the St. Mathew's Passion.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Beethoven’s father took the 7-year old Ludwig on a tour, promoting him as a virtuoso in hopes of emulating Leopold Mozart’s father on a similar tour with his son. He rather shadily promoted Beethoven as six years old. The tour was evidently not a great success, partly (I’d imagine) because Ludwig was a sullen child, lacking young Amadeus’s charm.

Beethoven is said to have performed Bach’s 48 on this tour, and also that he had by this age committed all 48 to memory. It is further said that Beethoven was the first major composer, aside from the Bach boys, to be reared on the music of Sebastian Bach.


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## regenmusic (Oct 23, 2014)

KenOC said:


> Beethoven's father took the 7-year old Ludwig on a tour, promoting him as a virtuoso in hopes of emulating Leopold Mozart's father on a similar tour with his son. He rather shadily promoted Beethoven as six years old. The tour was evidently not a great success, partly (I'd imagine) because Ludwig was a sullen child, lacking young Amadeus's charm.
> 
> Beethoven is said to have performed Bach's 48 on this tour, and also that he had by this age committed all 48 to memory. It is further said that Beethoven was the first major composer, aside from the Bach boys, to be reared on the music of Sebastian Bach.


Thanks. It's information like this that I think is lacking. I think most people hear that his work was largely forgotten for a while and then gradually championed until it reached a new high level of popularity.


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## Guest (Jan 9, 2020)

regenmusic said:


> There's nothing wrong with the way i asked the question.
> 
> Most fans of classical music means just that. Most fans of classical music know Bach now, right?


"Classical Music" is a 20th century construct, in those days it was just "music." To ask about the preference of "fans of classical music" in those times is ill defined, I think.


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

Baron Scarpia said:


> "Classical Music" is a 20th century construct, in those days it was just "music." To ask about the preference of "fans of classical music" in those times is ill defined, I think.


A 20th century construct brought about by the wide availability of recordings which brought knowledge of the music to a much wider section of the population. Prior to about 1900 music fans were either the very few who could afford to go to concerts or those with the wherewithal to play the music, which mostly meant being able to afford instruments.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

“Classical” music? Even at the turn of the 19th century distinctions were being drawn between “serious” music and “entertainment” music, and works from prior years and decades were receiving performances as part of an established canon. The term “classical” music wasn’t used, but it was clear that the concept was taking hold. I can supply examples if needed.


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## regenmusic (Oct 23, 2014)

Some people are getting lost in sophomoric semantic analysis and not looking at the heart of the question, which I think is a fascinating one. Sure, the musical cognoscenti and people lucky enough to witness Beethoven's early concert tour might have known about Bach in the late 18th Century but when did the little school girl studying piano know about him?


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## RICK RIEKERT (Oct 9, 2017)

By the time Bach published the complete Clavier-Übung in 1741-2 he was widely recognized in professional circles as among the finest composers of his time. In 1750, the year of Bach's death, Padre Martini, who never heard Bach play, declared that Bach the composer was admired not only in Germany but all over Italy and referred to him as the "world famous Bach". His music was eulogized in similar terms throughout the rest of the eighteenth century. There were various 'Bach Cults' that flourished in Berlin, Vienna, and elsewhere around 1800. The keyboard works were known and admired in England and groups of enthusiastic devotees called 'Sebastian Squads' were formed in the first decade of the nineteenth century to perform them. His vocal works, oratorios, Masses, and cantatas were also better known than is usually assumed, though they were seldom performed and rarely outside Protestant Germany. Bach’s reputation among the wider public was enhanced in part by Johann Nikolaus Forkel’s 1802 biography of the composer. Even so, as far as public concert life is concerned, Bach was only a marginal and somewhat odd figure until the public recognition that began to take shape with Mendelssohn's 1829 Berlin performance of the St Matthew Passion.


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## vtpoet (Jan 17, 2019)

regenmusic said:


> Some people are getting lost in sophomoric semantic analysis...


Hey, have fun with the rest of your conversation.... Later.


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## AeolianStrains (Apr 4, 2018)

regenmusic said:


> Some people are getting lost in sophomoric semantic analysis and not looking at the heart of the question, which I think is a fascinating one. Sure, the musical cognoscenti and people lucky enough to witness Beethoven's early concert tour might have known about Bach in the late 18th Century but when did the little school girl studying piano know about him?


I can't answer your question more than anyone else has already, but interestingly the Anna Magdalena Notebooks were re-published in 1894. That's a good distance away from Mendelssohn's exhumation. Speaking of which, 1894 was also the year Bach's bones were actually exhumed.


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## RICK RIEKERT (Oct 9, 2017)

AeolianStrains said:


> I can't answer your question more than anyone else has already, but interestingly the Anna Magdalena Notebooks were re-published in 1894. That's a good distance away from Mendelssohn's exhumation. Speaking of which, 1894 was also the year Bach's bones were actually exhumed.


The identity of the remains remains in doubt.

https://www.mja.com.au/system/files/issues/190_04_160209/zeg10393_fm.pdf


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## Gallus (Feb 8, 2018)

"Our worthy Haydn, as is well known, found when he came to London a few years ago a not inconsiderable faction opposed to him. It was primarily Italians who attempted to stand in his way. A certain Giardini published two trios, in which Italian music is depicted with long, significant notes, while German music, on the other hand, is depicted with very short and insignificant little notes. The whole was intended as a swipe against Haydn's music. Although the composer didn't identify himself, choosing instead the name of a dilettante, everyone knew who it was. An English organist in the Royal German Chapel (the same one, in fact, who is now planning to publish Joh. Seb. Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier) responded by having a sheet engraved in copper in which a sun of the German composers known to him is depicted. Joh. Seb. Bach is in the middle; immediately surrounding him are Handel, Graun and Haydn. The sun's rays are filled with other German composers in the following manner:










Underneath the sun is an Italian owl that cannot bear the light of the German composers. To the side, however, are an Italian capon and a German rooster, in a position as if they were about to begin a fight with each other.

Our worthy Haydn is supposed to have seen this sheet. It is said that he was not displeased by it, was also not ashamed to be in the vicinity of Handel and Graun, and considered it even less of an injustice that Joh. Seb. Bach should be the center of the sun, hence the man from whom all musical wisdom streams."


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## RICK RIEKERT (Oct 9, 2017)

Interestingly, this article with Bach as the sun was published in the _Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung_ in the very year, 1799, that the journal's contributors were busy writing several derogatory reviews of Beethoven's compositions.


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## Gallus (Feb 8, 2018)

I'm most interested in the decision to place Graun (who?) ahead of Mozart! Perhaps the organist responsible knew something we didn't...


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