# The Difficulty of Bach



## BurningDesire (Jul 15, 2012)

One thing that I've noticed in this forum and in other places (I've even heard Leonard Bernstein express similar sentiments) is that for many people Johann Sebastian Bach is difficult music to approach at first, that it seems unemotional. I am curious why this is. The first times I heard Bach, to me, it was very dramatic music, very emotional. I'm not trying to brag or boast about anything, I had difficulties comprehending the expressions in other pieces at first. It just seems bizarre to me to even think of Bach's music as being cold or logical or unemotional.


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## Webernite (Sep 4, 2010)

I find Bach emotionally direct too. All his music has a religious feel, even in the keyboard works.


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## BurningDesire (Jul 15, 2012)

Webernite said:


> I find Bach emotionally direct too. All his music has a religious feel, even in the keyboard works.


To me it has a very human quality. Some pieces are delicate and frail, and some are almost macho and have alot of bravado, and in many there are profound feelings of tragedy, or triumph. I'm not religious so I don't get a religious vibe from it (though I am aware that Bach was quite religious). I just get human emotions, some of which can be attached to his religious beliefs.


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## Head_case (Feb 5, 2010)

Which Bach ?????


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## DeepR (Apr 13, 2012)

I enjoy listening to Bach or baroque in general, it can be very pleasing to listen to, but I don't find it very emotional. For that I need music that is more expressive, dynamic, free and varied in rhythm... romantic / late romantic is by far the most emotional music to me.


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## Head_case (Feb 5, 2010)

I suppose the challenge ...if it is JS Bach ....why not CPE Bach? Why not Quantz? Why not Blavet? Then why not Schoenberg (hmmm..indeed why not?). 

I'm a big fan of Das Wohltemperierte Klavier. Harpsichord music I find spine chillingly good, although most find harpsichord music (who was it who complained it was the sound of cats copulating on a corrugated metal roof?) anachronistic with our culture and taste. 

Maybe we need a theory of appreciation ...to understand why some people appreciate something, and others do not. For example - why do I like blueberry cheesecake? Surely everyone should appreciate blueberry cheesecake because I get it? 

Then a theory of music. Why do some like JS Bach, and not CPE Bach? 

Otherwise, I suppose we should count our blessings, that there is something good in this world that we do like, when it's filled with so much of 'hate this..' 'hate that'....


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

Not dramatic and unemotional? Since when?


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

BurningDesire said:


> To me it has a very human quality.


the art of the fugue to me sound like something composed by an artificial intelligence. But certainly i can't say the same for other pieces, so i think it really depends.


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## BurningDesire (Jul 15, 2012)

norman bates said:


> the art of the fugue to me sound like something composed by an artificial intelligence. But certainly i can't say the same for other pieces, so i think it really depends.


Why does it sound that way to you?


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## Head_case (Feb 5, 2010)

DeepR said:


> I enjoy listening to Bach or baroque in general, it can be very pleasing to listen to, but I don't find it very emotional. For that I need music that is more expressive, dynamic, free and varied in rhythm... romantic / late romantic is by far the most emotional music to me.


I dunno. What about the Bach Flute Sonatas? Baroque music, is essentially dance rhythm. Although there is a lot of freedom in most of the scores for rhythm, the motoric driving rhythm, is essentially - 'baroque'. That is the definition of the baroque phase for me. Everything, that can be transformed, has a relation with the note that precedes it, and the note that it becomes. How it gets there, in compositional transformation, carries me in its sway. It's hard not to detect the natural rhythm laid in his Sarabande and in triplet motifs through his music. Maybe baroque is street dance music of the civilised classes (i.e. we don't go knifing people or spilling vodka over their pinafores; we certainly do not go smashing bottles: everyone can drink and balance their internal rhythm to the external baroque dance rhythm. It can be slow...swaying slow...but it's still dance:






Whereas romantic music is more akin to strangling your lover in an overflowing bathtub with the water taps running, slitting their wrists whilst choking them in flagellating circumstances telling them you love them.

Very moving


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## BurningDesire (Jul 15, 2012)

Head_case said:


> I dunno. What about the Bach Flute Sonatas? Baroque music, is essentially dance rhythm. Although there is a lot of freedom in most of the scores for rhythm, the motoric driving rhythm, is essentially - 'baroque'. That is the definition of the baroque phase for me. Everything, that can be transformed, has a relation with the note that precedes it, and the note that it becomes. How it gets there, in compositional transformation, carries me in its sway. It's hard not to detect the natural rhythm laid in his Sarabande and in triplet motifs through his music. Maybe baroque is street dance music of the civilised classes (i.e. we don't go knifing people or spilling vodka over their pinafores; we certainly do not go smashing bottles: everyone can drink and balance their internal rhythm to the external baroque dance rhythm. It can be slow...swaying slow...but it's still dance:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


O_O you frighten me.

Actually, one thing I really like in Romantic music is the dance-quality of many pieces. I think the best performances of say.... Chopin piano pieces like his waltzes are ones that don't ignore that a 'waltz' is a type of dance and don't lose the groove of that dance, even with rubato.


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## Head_case (Feb 5, 2010)

Yes...that Sarabande was scarily slow 

Here's the rave part that follows:






Yes the Chopin waltzes are very beautiful. As are the Scriabin Preludes and Szymanowski Mazurkas (folk dance).

I suppose dance encompasses every form of dance; slow dance; dirges [that'll be Madonna - most of her music makes me wanna strangle that yank), sarabandes (Americas); waltzes (Matildese in origin), tangoes (Latin American).

Haha ...yes we have different conceptions of dance music. Is this 'romantic era music'? 






or new rom-antiks with dyslexia lol.

The problem with romantic music, is it is a footache to dance to! It is exhausting! Tango ...is great fun [Me Tarzan - You avoid stepping on my spadehammers]. Sarabandes allow the pace to recover, as do waltzes, so it's not as exhausting like a teeny bopper's first night rave, bopping till exhaustion.

But I suppose, most of us like dance music without actually dancing to it. Those of us who claim to - youtube clips of you dancing or it ain't true


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## jani (Jun 15, 2012)

I Like some of his works, but yeah i suffer from this "problem". I specially find his organ works unemotional.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

BurningDesire said:


> Why does it sound that way to you?


maybe because of the nature of the work, an "experiment" on counterpoint, not a work to describe particular sensations, emotions or atmospheres. So the approach is in a sense, very scientific and rational. So if a listener who approaches his music with the art of the fugue says that he find his music not particularly emotional, i can perfectly understand it. But with other works it could be very different.


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## jani (Jun 15, 2012)

norman bates said:


> maybe because of the nature of the work, an "experiment" on counterpoint, not a work to describe particular sensations, emotions or atmospheres. So the approach is in a sense, very scientific and rational. So if a listener who approaches his music with the art of the fugue says that he find his music not particularly emotional, i can perfectly understand it. But with other works it could be very different.


Well you said pretty much what i think. I love his violin concertos tough.
His Double violin concerto in D minor is one of my favorite concertos.


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

I don't think it's difficult because it's unemotional. It's difficult because the structure is so complex. I used to look at the complexity and variation and refinement and feel overwhelmed. That's starting to change as I learn and grow.

The emotional content of Bach is embedded in its structure. It's a quest to create perfection in form to follow the inspiration of the divine. The Alhambra in Spain or Persian rugs would be other artforms that aspire to the same thing. Radiolarians in nature can be like that too. It's not a sort of emotion that many people understand any more. Modern life operates on a much more basic level.


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## BurningDesire (Jul 15, 2012)

norman bates said:


> maybe because of the nature of the work, an "experiment" on counterpoint, not a work to describe particular sensations, emotions or atmospheres. So the approach is in a sense, very scientific and rational. So if a listener who approaches his music with the art of the fugue says that he find his music not particularly emotional, i can perfectly understand it. But with other works it could be very different.


People say similar things of modern music, they call it experimental music, as if every piece is just an experiment in techniques (even if the technique is decades old). I think you can call all music experimental, because every piece is an experiment to find something that you like, as a composer. Even if we're using extremely strict things like classical form, or total serialization of elements, its still an experiment to find the material you want to work with and how you want to work with it. Once the piece is finished, then you can argue that the experiment is over.

Why do you think that "Art of the Fugue" is an experiment in counterpoint? I'd say by that time Bach had thoroughly experimented in the truest sense with counterpoint, and this was the apex of all that practice. It is called the "Art of the Fugue", not the "Studies of Fugal Writing".


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

BurningDesire said:


> People say similar things of modern music, they call it experimental music, as if every piece is just an experiment in techniques (even if the technique is decades old). I think you can call all music experimental, because every piece is an experiment to find something that you like, as a composer. Even if we're using extremely strict things like classical form, or total serialization of elements, its still an experiment to find the material you want to work with and how you want to work with it. Once the piece is finished, then you can argue that the experiment is over.
> 
> Why do you think that "Art of the Fugue" is an experiment in counterpoint? I'd say by that time Bach had thoroughly experimented in the truest sense with counterpoint, and this was the apex of all that practice. It is called the "Art of the Fugue", not the "Studies of Fugal Writing".


i've said experiment but maybe exploration could be a better term. A demonstration of what it's possible to do with the fugue. The counterpoints are of crescent complexity and as i've said it seems to me that Bach had not in mind any particular emotion or atmosphere. In a sense i think that it's a work very similar in spirit to certain music of the 20th century.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

BurningDesire said:


> One thing that I've noticed in this forum and in other places (I've even heard Leonard Bernstein express similar sentiments) is that for many people Johann Sebastian Bach is difficult music to approach at first, that it seems unemotional. I am curious why this is. ...It just seems bizarre to me to even think of Bach's music as being cold or logical or unemotional.


Well I think on the whole I don't connect with J.S. Bach's music the way I do with composers whose emotions I see as pretty bare and on the table, very direct, eg. Beethoven, Brahms (the other two B's) being very good examples.

I don't know the reason. It could be the contrapuntal aspect, that complexity of layering. But this is generalising, as many composers are like that and yet I had not as many 'barriers' with their music as Bach's.

But I agree with jani here -



jani said:


> Well you said pretty much what i think. I love his violin concertos tough.
> His Double violin concerto in D minor is one of my favorite concertos.


A concert of this work opened up Bach to me emotionally, it was my road to Damascus moment. So I went 'back to Bach,' back to many things I knew by him before but had not heard for ages.

Subsequently I connected emotionally with some things, eg. the 'Chaconne' from 'Partita for solo violin #2' and also that amazing unfinished fugue from 'The Art of Fugue.' I mean the former has made me cry, or come near to tears. As did the Double Violin concerto at that concert. I don't know why, but there is a strong autobiographical element in the chaconne, written when Bach's first wife died. So his name is woven into it, as I think is her name, as well as a religious type tune. Its a memorial in sound, or a cathedral.

The other works I like are of more formal and technical connection/interest for me. Eg. how he works these themes through a work with such imagination and mastery. Eg. the Goldberg Variations and The Musical Offering. I think there is a sense of release at the end of these works, when the theme/s come back, and there is a kind of 'coming back home' which I get from the other two B's. So there are all these links. I now appreciate BAch for not only emotion, but of course being a great innovator and so inspiring to future composers.


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

i've said experiment but maybe exploration could be a better term. A demonstration of what it's possible to do with the fugue. The counterpoints are of crescent complexity and as i've said it seems to me that Bach had not in mind any particular emotion or atmosphere. In a sense i think that it's a work very similar in spirit to certain music of the 20th century.

How much music... or art... outside of the realm of Romanticism that worshiped emotion over all else... is really a medium intended to convey emotion? This is not to negate the fact that we as the audience will inevitably bring an emotional response to almost anything. I certainly had an emotional response to my dinner plate with its freshly grilled steak still seething... Yummmm!


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

Most Bach music immediately moved me, and I thought he was wonderful. The music that was more difficult was the solo music (cello suites, violin partitas and sonatas, and the keyboard music). My wife is a violinist and played the partitas and sonatas and my daughter is a cellist and played the suites. I relatively quickly learned to love several of them, but the keyboard music has not been as quick. I do like much of it, but some still requires more effort and concentration. I'm not sure why solo music should be more difficult,


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

Well I think on the whole I don't connect with J.S. Bach's music the way I do with composers whose emotions I see as pretty bare and on the table, very direct, eg. Beethoven, Brahms (the other two B's) being very good examples.

Again... that's just an illusion that says more about you than the artists. Undoubtedly Beethoven's working manner was no less businesslike... conscious... self-aware... than Bach's. He merely stressed elements that he recognized as quite likely to elicit a more intense emotional response from the audience.

Let's turn to the visual arts for example (as I am far more fluent here).

Which painting is more "emotionally expressive"?



















The answer is neither. They are both equally expressive... of different things... and employ different means to this end but neither is more expressive of emotions that the other. Now obviously the latter painting, Goya's _Third of May_ may elicit a stronger emotional response from the audience. But does that have the least thing to do with aesthetic merit? Ingres certainly recognized that he might evoke a stronger response if he employed dark colors and a dramatic contrast of light and dark and an emotionally-charged subject matter... like Goya. But such wasn't his interest... and the strength of the viewer's emotional response has nothing whatsoever to do with the aesthetic merits of the works (both masterpieces). Too often an individual's failure to respond emotionally to a work of art is taken as some failure on the part of the artist when in reality every artist worth his or her weight knows just how to employ his or her artistic language in such a manner as to emotionally manipulate the audience. We recognize this in the manner in which a composer of film music is able to manipulate us at juts the right moment with a great Wagnerian rush of lush strings, etc... We see this in today's sophomoric "shock art" which employs pornographic, violent, or otherwise shocking imagery in order to elicit a response from an audience that ignorantly confuses an emotional response with artistic merit. We are repeatedly confronted with this realization in the form of endless adolescents who argue that Beethoven and Mahler are so much greater than Mozart because they fail to be emotionally moved by a composer whose intentions were never to emphasize emotions and who lived at a period where open displays of strong emotion were frowned upon.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

StlukesguildOhio said:


> ...
> Again... that's just an illusion that says more about you than the artists ...


It does say a lot about me, but the 19th century was the era of Romanticism, of emphasising stuff like:
- Expression of the composer's emotions - incl. big contrasts in emotion, like fear or anger
- Historical/political events, eg. 'Eroica' symphony by Beethoven
- Getting away from more formulaic/conventional ways of doing things, eg. Beethoven opening up his fourth piano concerto quietly, not with a flourish - its just one example of countless others
- And so on...



> ...
> Which painting is more "emotionally expressive"?...


Well its Goya, in terms of being part of the Romantic aesthetic, in that work at least. Ingres was a Classicist. He was at loggerheads with his French contemporary, Delacroix, who was part of the Romantic movement/aesthetic.

Ingres was about detachment, he is a good example of a high point of Classicism. Look close at his paintings and you literally can't see any brushstrokes. Its this glassy surface. Its photographic, photorealistic. Compare it to something by Delacroix, who had similar subjects to Goya (eg. 'The rape of the sabine women,' or 'Liberty leading the people,' so more political). & this very painterly, flamboyant style, seen as being more expressive and less detached.

Ingres was 'establishment,' a stalwart of the academic style, while Delacroix more of a radical.

So its a good example. Classicism being about more the craft itself, refinement, detachment. Romanticism about subjective expression, big emotions, engaging with the present, colour, drama, excitement and so on.

I am talking about the basics of aesthetics and philosophies of art, I'm not talking about what we get, what the individual viewer/listener gets from these works. But the aim of Delacroix, or Goya in these works was to make a strong statement. Ingres was not about that. Maybe his teacher J-L. David was more, in terms of subject matter (eg. 'The oath of the Horatii' being linked to the rebirth of Classicism, interest in Ancient histories, neo-Classicism), but in formal terms, he was still a classicist.

& to link this to music, Ingres said he admired the music of Beethoven, but Haydn was like his 'daily bread' so to speak. So in other words, Ingres preferred Haydn. Not surprising, given the 'classicism' thing. I don't know what music Delacroix liked, but I see more parallels between him and say Berlioz than with Haydn. But Ingres for me looks back to Haydn, that kind of classical formality and restraint, elegance (which I also like, btw).



> ...
> ...Too often an individual's failure to respond emotionally to a work of art is taken as some failure on the part of the artist when in reality every artist worth his or her weight knows just how to employ his or her artistic language in such a manner as to emotionally manipulate the audience. ...


I never said Bach was a failure. I don't think anyone here has said this. I don't think like this, or try hard not to now.


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## Philip (Mar 22, 2011)

I want to feel her fabric


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## HarpsichordConcerto (Jan 1, 2010)

Philip said:


> I want to feel her fabric


... and more.


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

Well its Goya, in terms of being part of the Romantic aesthetic, in that work at least. Ingres was a Classicist. He was at loggerheads with his French contemporary, Delacroix, who was part of the Romantic movement/aesthetic.

Ingres was about detachment, he is a good example of a high point of Classicism. Look close at his paintings and you literally can't see any brushstrokes. Its this glassy surface. Its photographic, photorealistic.

And of course due to Romanticism... and later Abstract Expressionism there is this belief that a loose brush mark is more expressive or conveys more than the highly polished surface of Ingres... or Vermeer. But they are both equally expressive... but expressive of different things and employing different means to that end. It is interesting the more you read about DeKooning or Motherwell the more deliberate and conscious you find them to have been in their manner of working. There is an anecdote concerning Degas in which a viewer and/or critic proclaims admiration for the spontaneity and emotion of his work. Degas replies that it is all just an illusion. He states that he spend the longest time in the most deliberate manner of working, only adding the loose, "expressive" pastel marks at the very end... in the final 15 minutes.

Ingres was 'establishment,' a stalwart of the academy, while Delacroix more of a radical.

Actually both were equally successful within the academia of the day... and both were equally daring and unconventional.

So its a good example. Classicism being about more the craft itself, refinement, detachment. Romanticism about subjective expression, big emotions, engaging with the present, colour, drama, excitement and so on.

Few artists I know would accept this idea. Both Ingres and Delacroix were master craftsmen. There is as much real craft in being able to paint loosely... in what appears to be a spontaneous manner... and yet have the work hold together... as there is in being able to polish a painting to the absolute Nth degree without loosing the spark of life. Nor is one more expressive than the other. Delacroix's _Sardanapolis_ or Goya's _May Third_ plays upon subject matter that is dramatic and immediately elicits a strong emotional response... but Ingres is no less expressive. His mastery of color is actually greater than Delacroix's and certainly convey's a mood. Looking at his painting I often find myself thinking of an actress like Grace Kelly... or Eva Marie Saint in North by Northwest... an ice queen exuding an icy eroticism. Such is the emotional impact I get from Ingres.

I feel that Oscar Wilde was one of the most astute critics of art. In the famous Preface to _The Portrait of Dorian Gary_ he writes:

_The artist is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim. The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things._

We... the audience... are always "critics"... we interpret and read various impressions into the given work of art.

Wilde continued:

_The nineteenth century dislike of realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass.

The nineteenth century dislike of romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeing his own face in a glass._

One could only imagine what Wilde would have made of the 20th century and our dislike of classicism or modernism.

Perhaps the most astute of Wilde's observations (beyond the oft-quoted, "All art is quite useless.") is found in the following:

_All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors._

What we read into a work of art tells far more about us than it does about the artist.

Returning to Ingres, I will admit that I found him cold, detached, academic... and off-putting myself as a young, Romantic art student. But with time I discovered the wealth of innovations... unexpected distortions and abstractions that exist within his paintings. It is not without reason that Degas, Picasso, DeKooning, and Francis Bacon were all obsessed with his work.

I never said Bach was a failure. I don't think anyone here has said this.

You misunderstand me. I didn't mean to suggest that you personally felt Bach was a failure. Rather, I was addressing the recent slew of negative comments directed toward any number of musical masters in which they were repeatedly dismissed as cold, detached, academic, and unemotional... a criticism again that says more about the critic than the composer.


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## BurningDesire (Jul 15, 2012)

HarpsichordConcerto said:


> ... and more.


Keep it classy, HC


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

Philip- I want to feel her fabric

HC- ... and more.

Indeed!:devil: And it would seem to me that such is not a response devoid of emotion.


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

BD- Keep it classy

Nearly half of art is laden with sensuality and sex... and surely even more when one turns to the "classics". Perhaps that's what many of us "dinosaurs" dislike about Modernism... it seems too focused upon ugliness, horror, and death... and not enough on sex.:lol:


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## BurningDesire (Jul 15, 2012)

StlukesguildOhio said:


> You misunderstand me. I didn't mean to suggest that you personally felt Bach was a failure. Rather, I was addressing the recent slew of negative comments directed toward any number of musical masters in which they were repeatedly dismissed as cold, detached, academic, and unemotional... a criticism again that says more about the critic than the composer.


I haven't seen anybody dismiss composers based on those reasons (except some of the folks dismissing artists like Babbitt and Carter). I've made the claim the many of the Classical masters wrote very formulaic music, and that much of that music can be very boring, and I mostly level that criticism at Mozart because 1.) its true, and 2.) people constantly sprinkle praise on him, and belittle the achievements of everybody else by calling him the greatest of all time. That excessive praise is not deserved, in my opinion.


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## BurningDesire (Jul 15, 2012)

StlukesguildOhio said:


> BD- Keep it classy
> 
> Nearly half of art is laden with sensuality and sex... and surely even more when one turns to the "classics". Perhaps that's what many of us "dinosaurs" dislike about Modernism... it seems too focused upon ugliness, horror, and death... and not enough on sex.:lol:


Frank Zappa would disagree with you on that one  And there's plenty of sex in contemporary music, and at least its not wearing creepy artifices like powdered wigs, and it actually showers


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## Philip (Mar 22, 2011)

BurningDesire said:


> Frank Zappa would disagree with you on that one  And there's plenty of sex in contemporary music, and at least its not wearing creepy artifices like powdered wigs, and it actually showers


Wig sex is the best sex


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

StlukesguildOhio said:


> There is an anecdote concerning Degas in which a viewer and/or critic proclaims admiration for the spontaneity and emotion of his work. Degas replies that it is all just an illusion. He states that he spend the longest time in the most deliberate manner of working, only adding the loose, "expressive" pastel marks at the very end... in the final 15 minutes.


Good anecdote. I'll add to the mix this famous caricature, a comment on the ideological battles of Delacroix (on the left) and Ingres (on the right). Dunno who won the 'duel' but women would say Delacroix is more 'hot.' :lol:

http://images.huffingtonpost.com/2011-01-31-19thcenturyassignmentimage.jpg



> ...Actually both were equally successful within the academia of the day... and both were equally daring and unconventional...


Well its a bit like Berlioz and Saint-Saens. Berlioz was more 'oddball' than Saint-Saens but both where quite innovative in their own time. Berlioz is more profound, Saint-Saens is rarely serious, or too serious. But I like them both, we can enjoy both the 'Romanticism' of one and the 'Classicism' of the other. & both went back to the past and where inspired by it.

So we can think of the three B's similarly, but they were not contemporaries of course.



> ...
> Returning to Ingres, I will admit that I found him cold, detached, academic... and off-putting myself as a young, Romantic art student. But with time I discovered the wealth of innovations... unexpected distortions and abstractions that exist within his paintings. It is not without reason that Degas, Picasso, DeKooning, and Francis Bacon were all obsessed with his work.
> ...


Well I pay homage to Ingres, I esp. like his Turkish Bath scene, and also his odalisques. You are right, it can be alluring, and I think there is the element of this being an unattainable ideal, or something imaginary and exotic. Deliberately not real, beyond the real, hyper-real perhaps.

But I have no time for his successors at the salon that just did bad rehash of him late 19th century. I'm talking of stuff like Cabanel's 'Birth of Venus,' done at the same time as Manet's 'Olympia.' Obviously, that kind of thing had its day by about the 1860's.



> ...
> You misunderstand me. I didn't mean to suggest that you personally felt Bach was a failure. Rather, I was addressing the recent slew of negative comments directed toward any number of musical masters in which they were repeatedly dismissed as cold, detached, academic, and unemotional... a criticism again that says more about the critic than the composer.


Well that's fine. I don't mind if people just say what they think, as long as its not nasty. In the case of some composers, they actually aimed at detachment. Well, compared to previous trends in music anyway. Look at the neo-classical movement of the period following World War I. Guys like Bartok and Stravinsky deliberately went on the 'back to BAch' route. It was linked to moving away from Romanticism, or that of the late/high/overt kind, anyway.

But I digress. Its an interesting conversation but now moving too much away from the OP's topic.


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## neoshredder (Nov 7, 2011)

I find Bach very emotional. Especially during the 'Sturm und drang' period.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

My problem with JS Bach is that he isn't intelligent enough. Mathematicians have been trying to claim Bach forever by increasingly obtuse papers. Most of these read like a satire on academic criticism.

Now Wagner, in _Parsifal_, hints at a unified Spacetime predating Einstein by decades.

*GURNEMANZ:*
I think I know you aright;
no earthly path leads to it,
and none could tread it
whom the Grail itself had not guided.

*PARSIFAL:*
I scarcely tread,
yet seem already to have come far.

*GURNEMANZ:*
You see, my son,
*time here becomes space.*

Clearly the gravity of the Grail bends spacetime such that a wormhole is opened making possible the trip.


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## Sofronitsky (Jun 12, 2011)

I can't really say much about how difficult J.S. Bach's music is to play on the piano, but I can say one thing: After playing preludes and fugues, the Rachmaninoff Etudes or Copland Passacaglia or whatever piece I am playing at the moment seems extremely easy to play.

I also happen to agree with whatever Couchie said.


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

StlukesguildOhio said:


> Which painting is more "emotionally expressive"?
> 
> The answer is neither. They are both equally expressive... of different things...


My answer is different, i guess... I think that particular Goya painting may just be the greatest and most expressive one ever painted. It makes Guernica look trivial in comparison. Goya may be the greatest and most complex artist ever. I can sit and pore over the Capricchos for hours. So many layers and depths that I may never be able to reach. If you had used Reubens I would have agreed though.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

StlukesguildOhio said:


> i've said experiment but maybe exploration could be a better term. A demonstration of what it's possible to do with the fugue. The counterpoints are of crescent complexity and as i've said it seems to me that Bach had not in mind any particular emotion or atmosphere. In a sense i think that it's a work very similar in spirit to certain music of the 20th century.
> 
> How much music... or art... outside of the realm of Romanticism that worshiped emotion over all else... is really a medium intended to convey emotion?


a lot, from masaccio and grunewald and maybe even before to our days there are a lot of example of art that is more concerned about expression, as there is art that is more or less concerned about form.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

StlukesguildOhio said:


> Well I think on the whole I don't connect with J.S. Bach's music the way I do with composers whose emotions I see as pretty bare and on the table, very direct, eg. Beethoven, Brahms (the other two B's) being very good examples.
> 
> Again... that's just an illusion that says more about you than the artists. Undoubtedly Beethoven's working manner was no less businesslike... conscious... self-aware... than Bach's. He merely stressed elements that he recognized as quite likely to elicit a more intense emotional response from the audience.
> 
> ...


you're doing a jump from "expression of emotions" that is one thing to "aesthetic merit" that is another.
I was talking of the first, and to me (and to the critics that invent the term expressionism) the painting of Goya is obviously conveying strong emotions, horror, despair, while in the other there is a photorealistic detached balance. What is thinking the model? Who cares, as you say "such wasn't his interest", the painting is not about that. It's about about form, it's about the incredible realism of the details.


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## Andreas (Apr 27, 2012)

Sid alluded to it before, and I think he's on to something: it's the dense polyphony of Bach. He gives you very little opportunity to admire the beauty of a particularly melody without "disturbing" you with several countrapuntal lines that all seem to request your attention just as much.

I think one of his most famous pieces is the Air on the G string. I'd guess it's partly because here, the melody line stands out quite clearly, you can actually sing or hum the entire piece. It's a single, continuous emotional utterance, if you will.

Emotional engagement requires some degree of concentration, that is, putting aside other things. Listening to one person telling you something intimate, you can easily connect emotionally. But imagine three or four people surrounding you, simultaneously telling you something intimate, that would be pretty difficult I think.

So that would be my guess as to why some people may find Bach's music not as emotionally engaging. For me, it's different, I find many of his fugues bursting with emotion, and the interplay of voices, to me, often only intensifies it even more.


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## BurningDesire (Jul 15, 2012)

Andreas said:


> Sid alluded to it before, and I think he's on to something: it's the dense polyphony of Bach. He gives you very little opportunity to admire the beauty of a particularly melody without "disturbing" you with several countrapuntal lines that all seem to request your attention just as much.
> 
> I think one of his most famous pieces is the Air on the G string. I'd guess it's partly because here, the melody line stands out quite clearly, you can actually sing or hum the entire piece. It's a single, continuous emotional utterance, if you will.
> 
> ...


I agree with the intensity of the emotion in it. To me, its not so much 3 or 4 voices that you should listen to separately (not that you can't do that and still enjoy the music) but they build together to form this overall morphing texture, and even more importantly, harmony. You can't really listen to it the same way you'd listen to a piece where you have one strong, primary melody that is supported by accompaniment.


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## Guest (Aug 1, 2012)

I find that music can come with emotion, but also that emotion can attach itself to the music. For personal reasons, I find it difficult to listen to this Bach...










...not because the music is difficult, but because it is haunting, and recalls emotions from when I used to hear my stepfather playing it.

Similarly, the two artists may have set out to invest them with a number of attributes, but the viewer brings to each, his/her own baggage, as SLGO suggests. Whether this has anything to do with "aesthetic merit" is an argument that many artists (and mathematicians) have long debated - can art be judged without reference to the consumer's response to it? (Personally, the Goya is a turn off and the Ingres is beautiful, both equally valid emotions.)


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## Webernite (Sep 4, 2010)

BurningDesire said:


> To me it has a very human quality. Some pieces are delicate and frail, and some are almost macho and have alot of bravado, and in many there are profound feelings of tragedy, or triumph. I'm not religious so I don't get a religious vibe from it (though I am aware that Bach was quite religious). I just get human emotions, some of which can be attached to his religious beliefs.


I'm not particularly religious either. But I do still get a religious vibe from most of his music...


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## Dimboukas (Oct 12, 2011)

StlukesguildOhio said:


> Well I think on the whole I don't connect with J.S. Bach's music the way I do with composers whose emotions I see as pretty bare and on the table, very direct, eg. Beethoven, Brahms (the other two B's) being very good examples.
> 
> Again... that's just an illusion that says more about you than the artists. Undoubtedly Beethoven's working manner was no less businesslike... conscious... self-aware... than Bach's. He merely stressed elements that he recognized as quite likely to elicit a more intense emotional response from the audience.
> 
> ...


I think neither of these paintings represent Bach. Such paintings represent Bach:


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## Krisena (Jul 21, 2012)

Please omit images when quoting posts! These pages become unnecessary long and cluttered.


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

Dimboukas said:


> I think neither of these paintings represent Bach. Such paintings represent Bach:


You miss his point. He isn't selecting images to represent Bach. He's showing how expressiveness can be illustrated in different ways.

The images you posted were from the same general time period as Bach, but I don't think they necessarily relate to Bach's music. I mentioned some imagery that I thought related to the structural elements in Bach, and in case folks aren't familiar with what I was referring to, here are some examples...





















More information on Moorish and Persian design from Owen Jones' "The Grammar of Ornament" on my website...
http://animationresources.org/?p=118















More info on radiolarians and other natural structures from Ernst Haeckel's "Art Forms in Nature" on my website...
http://animationresources.org/?p=1848


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

Sorry, double post.


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

norman bates said:


> I was talking of the first, and to me (and to the critics that invent the term expressionism) the painting of Goya is obviously conveying strong emotions, horror, despair, while in the other there is a photorealistic detached balance.


The first painting has tremendous sensuality, which is an expression of emotion. One of the first comments was "I want to touch her". That's exactly what the artist is trying to evoke. It may not be as dramatic in a political sense as the Goya, but it isn't just photorealism and detail.


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## KRoad (Jun 1, 2012)

J.S.Bach's musical "emotion" is that of a devoutly religious person. His passion is directed towards and defined by his Lutheran God - evidently a God of symmetrical, contrapunctal perfectionism. And yet... who could say that the crucifixion sequence in the Mass in B Minor is without feeling or passion? Yes, it is of a different order to that expressed in Mahler's symphonies - but then Mahler was very much of this world, as was Beethoven, whose passion was to a significant degree generated by his anger at losing his hearing. So I disagree with the OP.


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

Yes... I think if I were looking for a visual art form analogous to the music of Bach I would indeed go with an abstract Islamic work:





Or a Medieval work... especially one of the great architectural works... for certainly Bach's work is almost architectural... and bears a similar hypnotic and profoundly spiritual feeling:







Especially check out this fabulous site:

http://paris.arounder.com/en/churches/sainte-chapelle/sainte-chapelle-01.html


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

Music is often an abstract art form. But that doesn't mean it isn't rich with ideas and emotion.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

bigshot said:


> The first painting has tremendous sensuality, which is an expression of emotion. One of the first comments was "I want to touch her". That's exactly what the artist is trying to evoke.
> It may not be as dramatic in a political sense as the Goya, but it isn't just photorealism and detail.


i don't see it that way, and i don't think that StlukesguildOhio has posted that painting because he thinks that painting convey a strong sensuality but it's just an example, we can use another if you want. Mondrian? I don't like him but in a sense i think (actually not a very original thought) that his paintings have a conceptual similarity with the Art of the fugue, exactly because they are not about any subject and unlike Kandinksy he does not try to convey any particular emotion.


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

See the post immediately above yours! I answered you psychically!


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

bigshot said:


> See the post immediately above yours! I answered you psychically!




i agree with that, my consideration was only about the art of the fugue (and some other works). I don't think that it's possible to say the same thing about the entire bach's production, in a way or another.


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## BurningDesire (Jul 15, 2012)

bigshot said:


> Music is often an abstract art form. But that doesn't mean it isn't rich with ideas and emotion.


_ALL_ music is abstract. Even if it has a clear subject matter in its title, or is set to another medium of art, or even if it has text. The sounds can never express something in totally concrete terms. The only thing that music can refer to is other music by way of quotation, and that is still abstract.


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## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

BurningDesire said:


> _ALL_ music is abstract. Even if it has a clear subject matter in its title, or is set to another medium of art, or even if it has text. The sounds can never express something in totally concrete terms. The only thing that music can refer to is other music by way of quotation, and that is still abstract.


We may believe so now, but this has certainly not been the predominant view for most of Western history. Whether it was the Medieval view that music was a representation of the cosmos, or the Renaissance view that music was a form of rhetoric, or the Baroque and, later, Romantic view that music was the language of the emotions, or the Classical view that music (through the use of _topoi_) was a representation of humanity itself, music has very rarely been treated as a strictly abstract sonic phenomenon.

Are these things _inherent_ to musical sounds? Of course not, any more than meanings are inherent to the letters of the alphabet. But it's only been in the twentieth century and afterward that musicians have put so much stock in the "inherent" properties of music; for everyone else, it's what you _do_ with the sounds (just like it's what one does with the letters of the alphabet) that counted. The former view would have almost certainly been completely alien to Bach, that's for sure.


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

BurningDesire said:


> _ALL_ music is abstract.


all music has elements of abstraction, but not all music is completely abstract. Music can have programmatic elements, such as thuderstorms or donkey hooves in the Grand Canyon Suite, or it can have a specific meaning within an overall context, like the leitmotifs in Wagner's Ring.

Bach's music is among the most abstract music, but it still has a meaning.


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## BurningDesire (Jul 15, 2012)

bigshot said:


> all music has elements of abstraction, but not all music is completely abstract. Music can have programmatic elements, such as thuderstorms or donkey hooves in the Grand Canyon Suite, or it can have a specific meaning within an overall context, like the leitmotifs in Wagner's Ring.
> 
> Bach's music is among the most abstract music, but it still has a meaning.


As I said, you can have programatic things, but the sounds can only attempt to portray them. In painting, you can paint a picture of the grand canyon, but in music its just abstract things, like ideas about the grand canyon, emotions about it, etc.


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

Any painting is an abstraction too. Van Gogh's irises are masses of brushstrokes that evoke irises the same way that Mussorgsky's Samuel Goldedberg and Schmuyle is a mass of piano notes depicting two Polish Jews arguing. Abstraction is a continuum with Jackson Pollack on one end and photo realists on the other. But it's all the abstraction of representing a dimensional subject on the two dimensional plane of a canvas. It's the same in music. Some music is purely abstract, and others are more representational.


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## BurningDesire (Jul 15, 2012)

bigshot said:


> Any painting is an abstraction too. Van Gogh's irises are masses of brushstrokes that evoke irises the same way that Mussorgsky's Samuel Goldedberg and Schmuyle is a mass of piano notes depicting two Polish Jews arguing. Abstraction is a continuum with Jackson Pollack on one end and photo realists on the other. But it's all the abstraction of representing a dimensional subject on the two dimensional plane of a canvas. It's the same in music. Some music is purely abstract, and others are more representational.


It is not the same o3o


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

It is to an artist. They aren't depicting reality like a camera. They're abstracting and filtering in their own particular way.

Three trees by Mondrian...





















Is any one of those less of a tree than any other one? Certainly, some are more abstract than others.


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## MaestroViolinist (May 22, 2012)

Everyone understands Bach differently, some don't understand him at all. I love him personally. His music has so much in it, all fitting together perfectly. 

I felt like crying yesterday when I had to sit through a couple of pieces by Bach being played at the eisteddfod. The people playing them made them sound like a study, devoid of any emotion. His music is no study. Although maybe I should add, not all studies have to be played so boringly, but that's getting off the point.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

bigshot said:


> all music has elements of abstraction, but not all music is completely abstract. Music can have programmatic elements, such as thuderstorms or donkey hooves in the Grand Canyon Suite, or it can have a specific meaning within an overall context, like the leitmotifs in Wagner's Ring.
> 
> Bach's music is among the most abstract music, but it still has a meaning.


Another point related to that is that the farther back we go in music history, the less we know about a piece. Eg. its only been found in the last 10 years or so that that famous chaconne in his Second partita for violin, its related to the death of his first wife. There was an online article I saw about this (recent, say of last 5 years) and also the recording I have, a reissue on Australian Eloquence label, the cd notes talk about this too.

Another example is that we think that 'The Musical Offering' the king's theme in that was maybe not by Frederick the Great. It may well be by Bach's son, CPE who was working at the Berlin court at the time. So its posited that CPE made up a very hard theme that even his father would not be able to respond to musically without giving it more thought/time than other things. So Bach was given the theme when he went to Berlin, but had to go back home to work on 'The Musical Offering.' In comparison, he did other works more quickly. I mean this is only educated guesses, but it seems the theme is too complex for the king to have invented. But we don't know for sure.

So we could have more links to real and not only abstract things in Bach's music, just as we do with more recent composers, its just that the scholarship is ongoing and the evidence is not as plentiful as with modern composers or romantic era ones, etc.



MaestroViolinist said:


> Everyone understands Bach differently, some don't understand him at all. I love him personally. His music has so much in it, all fitting together perfectly.
> 
> I felt like crying yesterday when I had to sit through a couple of pieces by Bach being played at the eisteddfod. The people playing them made them sound like a study, devoid of any emotion. His music is no study. Although maybe I should add, not all studies have to be played so boringly, but that's getting off the point.


Yes, with Bach I have connected with performances that give him a bit of 'zing' or 'lift.' Not too much mind you, as that can ruin it. On the other hand, the dry/academic interpretation is boring as hell. I am talking of my response, not any definitive definition of good or bad performances. That's up to the individual listener to judge. What I'm saying is that a little bit of emotion goes a long way when interpreters handle Bach. That's partly why I think playing him can be so difficult, from what I can gather as a non-muso.


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