# Do you enjoy Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No 5?



## Vivaldi (Aug 26, 2012)

A passage from movement one of Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No 5 in D is in many ways partially ineffable. The synthesis of musicianship from 2:46 to 4:55 produces music for which there is no universal interpretation or definition. The bass notes at 2:46 lead into a transcendent musical interplay between the flute and violins. I conjure an image in which someone is transcending a divine path of liberation towards heaven. Their soul is severed from their physical presence within reality - 'Dispersit' 'Dispersit' 'Dispersit' personified by the baseline at 2:46 begins the dispersion of all melancholy within the psyche.

At 2:53 the transcendence to a state of 'Ataraxia' begins; a state of robust tranquillity, characterized by ongoing freedom from distress and worry - or heaven. The spirit walks the divine path to heaven. The gates of heaven are discernible and the bass line walks through the meticulous fabric of reality allowing the fractal nature of creation to dematerialize before it; taking us beyond the muddled presence and allowing us to touch something timeless and eternal that is the enigma of creation itself. Hold your hand out in front of you and grasp the essence of creation. You are not grasping nothing; that nothing is something. It is not air. It is fractal matter. A material crafted by the designers - a blue print - a canvas for this particular reality. An artist uses a canvas for his work. A composer uses manuscript paper. Our designers use this illusive matter you have grasped in the palm of your hand as a base for their creations: us and everything else in this reality. 

At 3:18 the state of Ataraixa manifests and becomes omnipresent. Heaven is reached and the gates stand before you. Perfect symmetry and order defy definition in this divine place. There are no antonyms of symmetry or perfection for it does not exist. The interaction between flute and violin personify words of creation and rebirth chanted by the angels of design. Such words of creation echo throughout all realities and life is forged into being. The lucidity and rapidity at which they speak coerces you further through the fractal nature of our reality. 

At 4:55 to 4:58 you can hear the word Amen and your path to heaven is complete. 

Please listen to this piece of music; in particulate the measures I have attached an interpretation to. Do you agree with my interpretation. 

I'd like to hear your interpretation. 

The music is in the post below.


----------



## Davincii (Feb 17, 2012)

View attachment 13 Concerto In D Major, BWV 1050a, _ (online-audio-converter.com).mp3


Here is the attachment!


----------



## GioCar (Oct 30, 2013)

I don't agree 100%, but anyway thank you for providing me a fascinating reading of this wonderful piece!


----------



## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

That recording is a little klunky.


----------



## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

The interesting thing about this concerto's primo is the way the keyboard steals the show.

The ones I listen to most are Leonhardt and Egarr.


----------



## Novelette (Dec 12, 2012)

Vivaldi said:


> Such words of creation echo throughout all realities and life is forged into being. The lucidity and rapidity at which they speak coerces you further through the fractal nature of our reality.


Quoth the Raven...?


----------



## ahammel (Oct 10, 2012)

Novelette said:


> Quoth the Raven...?


Chatty Raven.

Superfluous extra chars


----------



## JohnnyRotten (Aug 10, 2013)

Yes, I enjoy Bach´s Brandenburg No. 5 very much. Is this a trick question?


----------



## MozartEarlySymphonies (Nov 29, 2013)

Bach's Brandenburg Concertos are definitely among my favorite compositions from him. Bach's Fifth Brandenburg Concerto is a giant masterpiece but it isn't my favorite. To list the six concertos in order to my favorite to least favorite, here they are-

2
1
6
5
4
3

My favorite recording of them is Martin Pearlman's with the Boston Baroque.


----------



## Piwikiwi (Apr 1, 2011)

I think you are interpreting something as programmatic music which really is absolute music


----------



## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Piwikiwi said:


> I think you are interpreting something as programmatic music which really is absolute music


It is _really _instrumental music, but in Bach's time some musical gestures were meaningful. The orchestra was an metaphor for society, and the instruments had their "social status", for example. The emergence of the lowly keyboard in the primo as the main player is a vision of social equality, a revolutionary statement in a way, though maybe Bach's egalitarian vision is one reserved for the next world.

And so there is a programme even though it's not expressed in words. To appreciate it we have to do enter into Bach's world, something which can be very disorienting. It was a long long time ago.


----------



## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

Vivaldi said:


> Please listen to this piece of music; in particulate the measures I have attached an interpretation to. Do you agree with my interpretation.


I cannot make head or tails of your interpretation; it's complete gobbledygook. Thus I neither agree nor disagree.


----------



## shangoyal (Sep 22, 2013)

I wonder why people come here to express that they did not understand the OP. If you don't understand, just stay away from the discussion and concern yourself with what you do understand. Sometimes I feel they are just trying to say the OP is making some kind of incoherent or irrational statement while the truth is that the reader is actually unable to understand...


----------



## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

Mandryka said:


> To appreciate it we have to [do] enter into Bach's world, something which can be very disorienting. It was a long long time ago.


And this is exactly why music is not timeless, just like any other art.

People can interpret it however they want of course, there's no law saying they can't.


----------



## ahammel (Oct 10, 2012)

Mandryka said:


> It is _really _instrumental music, but in Bach's time some musical gestures were meaningful. The orchestra was an metaphor for society, and the instruments had their "social status", for example. The emergence of the lowly keyboard in the primo as the main player is a vision of social equality, a revolutionary statement in a way, though maybe Bach's egalitarian vision is one reserved for the next world.


This sounds spurious to me. Maybe Bach just wanted to write a harpsichord concerto because he was really awesome at playing the harpsichord.

Is there any evidence that Bach's contemporaries would have interpreted Brandenburg 5 in this way?


----------



## ahammel (Oct 10, 2012)

shangoyal said:


> I wonder why people come here to express that they did not understand the OP. If you don't understand, just stay away from the discussion and concern yourself with what you do understand.


If I had written an analysis of a piece of music with the intent of communicating what I feel about it to other people, I would want to know if I had written it in a way that's incomprehensible to my audience. Saying "I have no idea what this means" isn't rude, it's helpful feedback.


----------



## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

ahammel said:


> This sounds spurious to me. Maybe Bach just wanted to write a harpsichord concerto because he was really awesome at playing the harpsichord.
> 
> Is there any evidence that Bach's contemporaries would have interpreted Brandenburg 5 in this way?


Yes, there is. There's lots of stuff on the hierarchy of instruments in concertos. Keyboards (harpsichords I mean) were at the bottom of the pecking order, fit for nothing more than domestic music making, accompaniment and continuo. And Bach's margin notes in his copy of Luther's translation of the Bible show that he saw orchestras as a model of society, and that he agreed with Luther that in the next world there was no social hierarchy amongst men. This sort of thinking was mainstream among orthodox people. You have to remember that meanings were everywhere in the 17th century.

What's hard to do is to appreciate what a major gesture that "cadenza" is. Nothing like that had ever happened in music before as far as I know. It's a bit like the percussion section had suddenly taken over in the middle of the Brahms violin concerto.

Leonhardt is fantastic in the first movement because you can sense that the harpsichord isn't happy about playing the traditional continuo rôle right from the start.


----------



## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

In fact, far from being a vision of social equality, the gradual growth in prominence and final bursting out of the harpsichord from its co-equal role is intended to symbolize the pride and conceit of Lucifer in his revolt against God, an event of some significance in history. Although this may seem obvious, I have nonetheless e-mailed Herr Bach for confirmation.


----------



## ahammel (Oct 10, 2012)

Mandryka said:


> Yes, there is. There's lots of stuff on the hierarchy of instruments in concertos. Keyboards (harpsichords I mean) were at the bottom of the pecking order, fit for nothing more than domestic music making, accompaniment and continuo. And Bach's margin notes in his copy of Luther's translation of the Bible show that he saw orchestras as a model of society, and that he agreed with Luther that in the next world there was no social hierarchy amongst men. This sort of thinking was mainstream among orthodox people. You have to remember that meanings were everywhere in the 17th century.


I dunno, the extramusical connection still seems to be a bit of a stretch to me. Clearly the point is being made that the harpsichord is a viable member of the _concerto_ as well as the _ripeno_, but that doesn't necessarily mean that Bach or anybody else would've extended that to any kind of metaphor about the lower classes rising up and overthrowing the aristocracy or anything like that.

If that was what Bach was getting at with the Brandenburgs (they all have unconventional instrumentation), and if other people would have interpreted them the same way, then it was _highly_ impolitic to write them for Prince Leopold (and maybe Duke Johann Ernst); and more impolitic still to dedicate them to Margrave Christian Ludwig. I doubt if any of them would be amused by that interpretation.


----------



## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

ahammel said:


> I dunno, the extramusical connection still seems to be a bit of a stretch to me. Clearly the point is being made that the harpsichord is a viable member of the _concerto_ as well as the _ripeno_, but that doesn't necessarily mean that Bach or anybody else would've extended that to any kind of metaphor about the lower classes rising up and overthrowing the aristocracy or anything like that.
> 
> If that was what Bach was getting at with the Brandenburgs (they all have unconventional instrumentation), and if other people would have interpreted them the same way, then it was _highly_ impolitic to write them for Prince Leopold (and maybe Duke Johann Ernst); and more impolitic still to dedicate them to Margrave Christian Ludwig. I doubt if any of them would be amused by that interpretation.


Bear in mind that noone was saying that social equality was an ideal for this world, least of all Bach, who was a bit of a bootlicker of the aristocracy, and was acutely aware of status. The vision was one for paradise. The Margrave had nothing to worry about.

I'll try to dig out the references to the passages in the margialia in Bach's bible (which included some exegetical stuff by Luther), of anyone's interested. But it will have to wait till after Christmas.


----------



## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

MozartEarlySymphonies said:


> Bach's Brandenburg Concertos are definitely among my favorite compositions from him. Bach's Fifth Brandenburg Concerto is a giant masterpiece but it isn't my favorite. To list the six concertos in order to my favorite to least favorite, here they are-
> 
> 2
> 1
> ...


I've noticed a few people here place 3 as their least favorite, I can't fathom this! The only logical reason I could see for this is perhaps people have over-played it and now start to prefer the others. Perhaps it is because I listen to many other Bach works more often than the Brandenburgs that I've never had this problem. The 3rd Brandenburg Concerto is out of this world. Of all these Concertos I think the 3rd has the most impressive 'natural flow', and sounds the most inspired and least 'composed'. Bach was a master in virtually all his pieces at complex contrapuntal writing, he could take the most mundane melody and transform it into something beautifully intricate and masterfully crafted time and again, but in my opinion few of his works seem as inspired, organic, and spontaneous as the 3rd Brandenburg Concerto.


----------



## ahammel (Oct 10, 2012)

Mandryka said:


> I'll try to dig out the references to the passages in the margialia in Bach's bible (which included some exegetical stuff by Luther), of anyone's interested. But it will have to wait till after Christmas.


I'd be interested to read about Bach's marginalia, for what it's worth. I'm very skeptical about the interpretation you're putting on Brandenburg 5, and Bach's ideas about social equality in paradise aren't really the issue for me, so if you decide it's not worth it to dig out your notes on my account, that's fine


----------



## Aurelian (Sep 9, 2011)

I saw only one reference to the cadenza. Is it perhaps too long? Bach had such a good sense of balance and form, so the length of the cadenza is unusual.


----------



## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Yes well if you see the primo as a keyboard concerto then it's too long. But it isn't a keyboard concerto, it's a violin, viola and recorder concerto which breaks out of the box.

The cadenza is a good example of stylus fantasticus. Are there examples of non-keyboard instruments playing in this style? (I'm sure there must be but my mind's gone blank.)


----------



## MozartEarlySymphonies (Nov 29, 2013)

tdc said:


> I've noticed a few people here place 3 as their least favorite, I can't fathom this! The only logical reason I could see for this is perhaps people have over-played it and now start to prefer the others. Perhaps it is because I listen to many other Bach works more often than the Brandenburgs that I've never had this problem. The 3rd Brandenburg Concerto is out of this world. Of all these Concertos I think the 3rd has the most impressive 'natural flow', and sounds the most inspired and least 'composed'. Bach was a master in virtually all his pieces at complex contrapuntal writing, he could take the most mundane melody and transform it into something beautifully intricate and masterfully crafted time and again, but in my opinion few of his works seem as inspired, organic, and spontaneous as the 3rd Brandenburg Concerto.


As I said before, I love all of the Brandenburg Concertos almost equality. I just find his third not as interesting (by not as interesting, I mean not as interesting by 0.89%)as the other ones. I'm perfectly okay with you having a different opinion then me on this concerto. (That's why sites like this exist don't they?)

Listening to the Concerto as I'm writing this review, I'm listening for the natural flow and organic nature you mentioned which I'm started to notice more closely now. I still think two is my favorite because I think Bach went to his highest degree in the counterpoint and the beautiful second movement.

All of the concertos are masterpieces. I just think some of them are bigger masterpieces then the others.


----------



## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Short answer: No I don't! Sounds like sewing machine music.


----------

