# Did J.S. Bach write works not worth listening to?



## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

He wrote, what we have left of it, about 1000 works. Estimate is that one third again over that are lost. Almost all of them can be said to be 'perfectly made.' Not at all a bad track record: it is a stunning one.

Of those so many perfectly made, the master daily at work, there are a good amount many find very 'expressive.' There are many I find completely cerebral with nothing to say except about the mechanics of music in that style - in short, not worth listening to unless you feel satisfaction in all the gears of a motor meshing while it is in idle yet is going nowhere.

This is an extremely unpopular opinion.

People literally revere this music, I think because even if the motor is idling it gives them a very comforting sense of everything being 'in place' and 'in order,' something real life often enough lacks. Maybe that is 'function enough' for many a listener. While I appreciate perfectly made music, it still has to say something more to me than it is perfectly made.

That he wrote so much and any of it is expressive or inspired should be enough of a miracle for the greatest of admirers. 

But that reverence thingy or that strong longing for order I think prevails in many people, and that affects otherwise reasonable people's ability to discern the variance in quality of whether the works are or aren't inspired -- at least when it comes to Bach.

Non-discernment and an unqualified wholesale acceptance in about any other area of life or in the appreciation of something is thought of as ....


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## tgtr0660 (Jan 29, 2010)

In answer to the question, yes, he wrote a lot of works not worth listening to.


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## Webernite (Sep 4, 2010)

Considering that most people (including me) have only taken the trouble to hear a minority of Bach's 1000+ compositions, your opinion doesn't seem to be that unpopular. I don't know anyone who claims that every single thing Bach wrote is special. 

Many of his compositions show workmanship and not a lot else. But I think that's also true of Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Chopin, etc.


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

JSB wrote 220+ cantatas alone - surely it's impossible for all of them to be top draw, even by his own lofty standards. His four shorter mass settings (where music derived from various cantatas is often pressed into service) obviously pale in comparison to the gargantuan B-minor one.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

The cantatas = his day job. When you have to crap a new one out every week for years they can't all be gems.


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## kv466 (May 18, 2011)

It also depends on taste,...the cantatas themselves are something I am not normally drawn toward and so they have to be outstanding for me to really like them...his keyboard works, however, I could have triple of what is out there and it wouldn't be enough.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

For all of Bach's purported religiosity, from his letters he was unhappiest when under the church's employment and preferred when he was free to write secular works. That he carefully preserved the secular works while allowing ~200 cantatas to be lost speaks volumes.


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

Having listened to virtually all of his surviving works (I was almost through listening to everything on the Brilliant Classics complete works when my computer crashed and I've lost track of my progress unfortunately). However, based on having listened to the majority of his works, I would say while they are obviously not all equal - I think they are ALL worth listening to.


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## kv466 (May 18, 2011)

^^

Yeah, I have to correct something in my post. I mentioned about 'really liking' a piece or bunch of works. As far as being worth listening to,...absolutely. All of them by many a composer and Bach would be right at the top of the list.


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## haydnfan (Apr 13, 2011)

Couchie said:


> For all of Bach's purported religiosity, from his letters he was unhappiest when under the church's employment and preferred when he was free to write secular works. That he carefully preserved the secular works while allowing ~200 cantatas to be lost speaks volumes.


No it doesn't speak volumes since the cantatas were not lost. Many of his sacred cantatas are considered to be masterpieces, and they have attracted the attention of multiple conductors who have devoted years of their careers performing these works. Scholars have written books on just the sacred cantatas.

Both the Mass in B Minor and the Christmas Oratorio use material from previous cantatas, but are considered to be two of the greatest works of the baroque era.

I can only think of two secular cantatas of interest: Coffee and the Peasant. The secular cantatas are nice works but in no way dwarf the sacred cantatas in quality.

Bach was unhappy with his employment because they gave him an enormous work load and he did not get along at all with the administration. That doesn't mean that he didn't care about the music that he wrote. Those are two very different things.


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## Webernite (Sep 4, 2010)

OK, but a lot of cantatas _were _lost. That's well-known.


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## Argus (Oct 16, 2009)

That depends on how much you like J.S. Bach. 

Personally, I think there is far too much music floating about out there to devote thousands of hours listening time to quite similar sounding music by one individual.


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## Namito (Oct 12, 2012)

Having listened to all of his surviving works, I can say that some were sometimes boring to me. However all of them worth listening to. Also I offer listening to his all works by several times. Some pieces that I found boring at first sounded much better next time.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Webernite said:


> OK, but a lot of cantatas _were _lost. That's well-known.


I've read that about half of Bach's works were lost -- that's another thousand BWV numbers! Lots of cantatas, for sure, and lots more as well.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

KenOC said:


> I've read that about half of Bach's works were lost -- that's another thousand BWV numbers! Lots of cantatas, for sure, and lots more as well.


I think that is sadly true. What a loss for music!

Of course not everything he wrote was a masterpiece. Same with every composer. Even the greatest. Given that he wrote so many works under huge pressure the quality of his output is formidable. At its best it is among the greatest music ever written.
But Bach is not all great. I remember hearing the Musical Offering in concert and finding it quite tedious by the end.


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## Geo Dude (May 22, 2013)

A resident Bach expert at a board I used to visit commented that any complete box set of Bach's organ works was by necessity an inefficient way of collecting his organ works because roughly half of them were juvenilia and not up to his usual standards of quality.

Mind you, I've never made my way straight through either of my boxes of his complete organ works from end to end, but I've yet to hear anything that qualified as anything short of _damn fine_ juvenilia.


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

I'm sure most people think he did some music that isn't worth listening to, only the absolute fanboys/girls would say otherwise, same with other composers. The problem is to find what isn't worth listening to you have to hear it first.

And of course there's always a matter of preference which can skew how people view a composer. So a big supporter of Bach may like his style enough to enjoy some earlier things that someone else might dismiss. This isn't necessarily wrong, same with others like Mozart. These composers did do some fine early works, but of course they did some weaker stuff as well. So it's a balance of not just taking the minimal standard you could say bluffer's guide approach and just concentrate on what are considered the most ambitious and mature pieces, while also not just liking everything just because it's in a style you like.


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

I have nearly the whole of Bach's oeuvre. Without a doubt, some of the works are better than others, but as has been already suggested, they are all worth listening to. There is such an incredible wealth to be found in the cantatas, the large choral works, the solo keyboard works etc... as to wholly undermine the notion that a large body of his works were nothing but mechanical exercises.


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## nightscape (Jun 22, 2013)

I think it's important to differentiate "worth listening to" and "bad music". You could probably make an argument that it's technically good music, inoffensive, generic, but I would argue that it's quite a different feat to convince me that every second of music that Bach ever wrote is actually worth listening to.

Because of the way composers worked back then, straight through the Classical period, if a composer was on the hook by the court or church to write a certain amount of music for an event, or mass, etc, then it's more or less improbable that everything they touched was so inspired that it could not be missed.


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## Borodin (Apr 8, 2013)

Slightly off topic, I wish I knew how to invent a composing robot.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Borodin said:


> Slightly off topic, I wish I knew how to invent a composing robot.


It's been done, but it always reflects the personal taste of its programmer. If the programmer gives the computer Bach's work as a model, then it produces imitative counterpoint. If Mozart, then transparent classical textures, and so forth.


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## realdealblues (Mar 3, 2010)

Mahlerian said:


> It's been done, but it always reflects the personal taste of its programmer. If the programmer gives the computer Bach's work as a model, then it produces imitative counterpoint. If Mozart, then transparent classical textures, and so forth.


I want to know what would happen if you give it multiple works as a model? Say, your favorite 3 composers? Do you get a work of Romantic Counterpoint with Classical Textures or do you end up with something more Avant Garde?


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

realdealblues said:


> I want to know what would happen if you give it multiple works as a model? Say, your favorite 3 composers? Do you get a work of Romantic Counterpoint with Classical Textures or do you end up with something more Avant Garde?


You would have to give it some rules as to what should be emphasized, but I think most of these programs have more than one composer's work fed to them. You wouldn't get something avant-garde unless you gave it avant-garde works. I don't believe that Schoenberg can be created from mixing together Bach, Wagner, and Beethoven any more than I believe Bach can be created by mixing together Monteverdi, Telemann, and Frescobaldi, or Debussy from Glinka, Wagner, and Grieg. The best art always supersedes the past in unexpected ways.

There is a possibility that haphazardly throwing Bruckner, Strauss, and Bax into a blender could get you Havergal Brian, though...


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## HaydnBearstheClock (Jul 6, 2013)

Argus said:


> That depends on how much you like J.S. Bach.
> 
> Personally, I think there is far too much music floating about out there to devote thousands of hours listening time to quite similar sounding music by one individual.


nice picture of Tony Iommi - a great guitarist!


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## BurningDesire (Jul 15, 2012)

I personally find Bach to be overrated. He was really great, and I love his music, I haven't heard anything by him that I didn't like. I especially love his music for harpsichord and organ, and his orchestral suites. I just find anybody who is treated with that absurd, religious sort of reverence to be over-rated. When somebody is called "teh graetest composr of all tiem!!one", thats a ridiculous claim, especially when that composer was confined to singular idiom and musical style. It would be like calling Debussy the greatest composer of all time, when, while his music is amazing, gorgeous, colorful, imaginative... there's so much more out there than just what he did, and I find that to be the same case with Bach. I don't count that as a strike against him at all. Its just the same problem I have with people raising Mozart on this pedestal as some untouchable god of music, or even somebody like Beethoven, who is one of my personal musical heroes. There's just too much different music out there, too many things that are amazing yet completely different to put that much praise on one person.

tldr: Bach is awesome, but its silly to call him (or anyone) the best ever.


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## HaydnBearstheClock (Jul 6, 2013)

BurningDesire said:


> I personally find Bach to be overrated. He was really great, and I love his music, I haven't heard anything by him that I didn't like. I especially love his music for harpsichord and organ, and his orchestral suites. I just find anybody who is treated with that absurd, religious sort of reverence to be over-rated. When somebody is called "teh graetest composr of all tiem!!one", thats a ridiculous claim, especially when that composer was confined to singular idiom and musical style. It would be like calling Debussy the greatest composer of all time, when, while his music is amazing, gorgeous, colorful, imaginative... there's so much more out there than just what he did, and I find that to be the same case with Bach. I don't count that as a strike against him at all. Its just the same problem I have with people raising Mozart on this pedestal as some untouchable god of music, or even somebody like Beethoven, who is one of my personal musical heroes. There's just too much different music out there, too many things that are amazing yet completely different to put that much praise on one person.
> 
> tldr: Bach is awesome, but its silly to call him (or anyone) the best ever.


agreed, I think one can say all the great composers were 'the best', each in their own way and according to their own language.


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## Cosmos (Jun 28, 2013)

There is not a single composer who I would say "You MUST hear EVERYTHING they wrote! It's all amazing!" Why should Bach be an exception?


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## Ondine (Aug 24, 2012)

As a former Bach fan -in my early youth- I loved that music. It become very significant in the context of that time.

Abiding in his fugues for hours helped to develop creative thinking in a time when it was very demanding. 

His music is like a geometrical or fractal progression as happens with a Mandelbrot set or like Gould's 'punctuated equilibrium' or the progression of an algorithm which development resemble a sort of 'hidden order'.

There are many things in Nature that can resemble Bach's fugues progressions and that's awesome. 

On the other hand, his instrumental music resembles, too, exercises for a highly talented student with the addition that they result deeply enjoyable and brilliantly defiant.

I still love it. What can be done?


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## Geo Dude (May 22, 2013)

HaydnBearstheClock said:


> nice picture of Tony Iommi - a great guitarist!


A Haydn nut _and_ an Iommi fan? Clearly you are a man of consistently excellent taste.:tiphat:

Semi-random thought:

When people say that composer X, Y or Z wrote nothing that isn't worth hearing, or so and so never really recorded a bad album, should this statement be read literally? Most people that I've discussed these statements with have not literally heard everything a composer or musician recorded, they tend to mean it is a generalized statement about the quality of their easily accessible work, not the stuff that can only be found in an complete box set or obscurities recorded only once on a long out of print album.


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

If they don't mean it literally they shouldn't really say it, as it would suggest they are just hyping something up because they like it.


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## Celloman (Sep 30, 2006)

Well, if he wrote any music not worth listening to, I haven't heard it yet! I'll let you know as soon as I find any...


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

BurningDesire said:


> tldr: Bach is awesome, but its silly to call him (or anyone) the best ever.


No, it isn't. :3


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## Crudblud (Dec 29, 2011)

Couchie said:


> No, it isn't. :3


It totally is, Couchie. o3o


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

Crudblud said:


> It totally is, Couchie. o3o


That's like saying Jesus isn't the greatest because Buddha also did a lot of great stuff.

You would insult Christians willingly?


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## Geo Dude (May 22, 2013)

Couchie said:


> You would insult Christians willingly?


Says the guy with an avatar featuring a viking helmet....


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## Crudblud (Dec 29, 2011)

Couchie said:


> That's like saying Jesus isn't the greatest because Buddha also did a lot of great stuff.
> 
> You would insult Christians willingly?


I don't see how that would be an insult to Christians, it would barely even be an insult to Jesus himself, and Jesus was a good guy, he would have just taken it on the chin and moved on.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

Crudblud said:


> I don't see how that would be an insult to Christians, it would barely even be an insult to Jesus himself, and Jesus was a good guy, he would have just taken it on the chin and moved on.


I hardly think one should speculate! :S

Well I guess it doesn't matter because Bach is god and god is Bach except for when he was Wagner.


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## IBMchicago (May 16, 2012)

I have listened to most of Bach (over 50%), but not nearly enough and I am eager to hear more. While every composer has their moments of genius and occassional moments of less imagination, I find Bach's music particularly appealing in that there is something utterly _indestructable_ about it. I can't even imagine what music will sound like in 500 years, but Bach will still be ground zero.


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

Couchie said:


> That's like saying Jesus isn't the greatest because Buddha also did a lot of great stuff.
> 
> You would insult Christians willingly?


Why is it like saying that? In what way is liking a composer similar to religious belief?


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