# J.S. Bach - Conservative or Progressive?



## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

Ok, I realize Bach composed in a fairly conservative musical style and was generally seen as a little old-fashioned in his day, when composers were moving more and more in the direction of Classicism. 

However, having done some recent reading on the subject some interesting facts have come to light that have given me a broader perspective: 

1) While other composers of the day such as Handel were using standard dance forms for movements of their suites J.S. Bach often used free forms with titles like Allegro or Adagio - these movements owed nothing to traditional dance forms. (though Bach also used traditional forms)

2) The D major prelude of the Well-Tempered Clavier Book II uses the Sonata form later used by Haydn and Mozart in the Classical era. 

3) Bach's use of harmony was uncharacteristic of other composers in the Baroque era and there are not really other close parallels until Chopin and Wagner. 

4) There are instances such as in the Credo of the Mass in B minor where Bach uses a series of chords and harmonies that are not clearly related to any single key note. (ie - a small 'atonal' section)

So to sum up in Bach's music we can find:

-Sonata form (Classical era) 
-Romantic harmonic language (Romantic era)
-Free forms/No formal structure (Modern era)
-Flashes of atonality (Modern/Post-Modern era)

So, I'm interested in additional views and perspectives here - what do you think? 

Do you consider Bach more of a conservative as a composer, or progressive? Somewhere in between?


----------



## Epilogue (Sep 20, 2015)

The answer is yes.


----------



## Epilogue (Sep 20, 2015)

Of course, there's really no such thing as a great composer who is exclusively conservative. They're all either radicals or simultaneously radical and conservative.


----------



## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

He was conservative in many sense out of motivation (inspired also by religion) but thoroughly innovative (hence progressive) with his musical objectives when committing quill to sheets. Therefore Bach was both conservative and progressive - a true genius. No question.


----------



## Epilogue (Sep 20, 2015)

Considering the Pietist slant of the texts he set for most of his career, it seems to me that religion was more likely a progressivizing than conservatizing force in his art - at least in the 1720s (it was old fashioned by the middle of the century).


----------



## Ariasexta (Jul 3, 2010)

Sonata for keyboard was not so new, Dominico Scarlatti used this format extensively. Bach valued counterpoint skills over free expression, I do not see such as romantic harmony thing in Bachs music, maybe flashes, but never count. Dissonance skill was also not new in baroque, the marigalists used it to enhance poignancy like Carlo Gesualdo, that little episode is not atonality like the case of romantic harmony. Also Bach dislike pianoforte, his music is entirely free of this new invention, Bach is conservative and reflective of all music before and contemporary to him.


----------



## Andolink (Oct 29, 2012)

There are both progressive and conservative aspects to Bach's art. His abiding love of complex polyphony was certainly out of step with the progressive trends of his time which were, of course, in the opposite direction. But his highly advanced/sophisticated use of harmony, as the OP points out, prefigured Beethoven, Wagner and later developments. Even the complex polyphony of Bach resurfaces in Brahms and then in the Second Viennese School composers of the 20th century.


----------



## Epilogue (Sep 20, 2015)

And then he was on the cutting edge with his interest in Vivaldi in the early 1710s - in that respect, more so than Handel - Italian comic intermezzi in the 1730s, and Pergolesi's religious music in the 1740s, and if he disliked the piano, he still wrote parts of _The Musical Offering_ for it.


----------



## Ariasexta (Jul 3, 2010)

Epilogue said:


> And then he was on the cutting edge with his interest in Vivaldi in the early 1710s - in that respect, more so than Handel - Italian comic intermezzi in the 1730s, and Pergolesi's religious music in the 1740s, and if he disliked the piano, he still wrote parts of _The Musical Offering_ for it.


All keyboard works are for organ or harpsichord or clavichord. You are correct that Bach was more italianated than Handel, Bach got the latest italian trends, which are reflected in his harmonic language in keyboard, orchestral, religious works. Especially the descriptive themes which I think most people considered as innovative. The descriptive themes are also evident in Franssois Couperin`s music, which was influenced by Lully. Also Vivaldi`s Four Seasons, these are good examples of descriptive themes development. This trend abandoned virtuosic counterpoint(those works like Heinrich Biber`s), and goes for simpler descriptive rhythms(those works like Franssois Couperin), but it does not really foreshadowing classical era. One another good example of the climax of descriptive music is Leopold Mozart, Wolfgang Mozart`s father, his symphonies use real sounds of the toys, guns, in respectively titled symphonies, like symphony of toy. However, you know that Wolfgang Mozart`s music is greatly different from that of his father.

That says, Bach is not progressive like foreshadowing classical era, at least one thing is sure, he never intended to be. It is not contradicting to say abandoning virtuosity in counterpoint and prefering counterpoint against free expression.

Bach still used strict counterpoints, just less elaborate, sometimes combined strict counterpoints with descriptive themes making music warmer like later period. Bach`s counterpoint is still austere, but no elaborate like that of Heinrich Biber`s .This is where Bach departed from the older school of counterpoint writings.


----------



## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

At the end of his life, he was really very actively engaged in a synthesis of galant and contrapuntal styles. One key work to think about here is the canonic variations on Vom Himmel Hoch. In my opinion they amalgamate both the complex, sometimes dissonant, counterpoint of traditional North German music, and the more beautiful and hummable foot-tappable galant style that was increasingly perceived as enlightened. 

You know, I expect, that he came under considerable attack because some people said his music was esoteric, unenlightened, occult, hermetic, unnatural and ugly. He never responded to these attacks in his own name in printed words, though IMO you can see Clavier Uebung 3 as a as an exploration of old and new musical ideas. The F major duet is particularly interesting in this respect.


----------



## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

tdc said:


> 3) Bach's use of harmony was uncharacteristic of other composers in the Baroque era and there are not really other close parallels until Chopin and Wagner.


Can you or someone else else develop this a bit more, or comment on it?


----------



## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Ariasexta said:


> Bach still used strict counterpoints, just less elaborate, sometimes combined strict counterpoints with descriptive themes making music warmer like later period. Bach`s counterpoint is still austere, but no elaborate like that of Heinrich Biber`s .This is where Bach departed from the older school of counterpoint writings.


Well clearly he was engaged in writing elaborate canons all his life.


----------



## Epilogue (Sep 20, 2015)

Ariasexta said:


> All keyboard works are for organ or harpsichord or clavichord.


How do you figure? He sent the _Musical Offering_ to the king after having tried playing, on the request of the same, on the new fortepiano, and Charles Rosen for one thought that some of the passages for keyboard in that work imply the sonority of the piano.



Ariasexta said:


> You are correct that Bach was more italianated than Handel


I didn't say that. Handel seems to have ignored Vivaldi in his own concertante works, but he certainly didn't ignore Corelli, to say nothing of opera.


----------



## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

Mandryka said:


> Can you or someone else else develop this a bit more, or comment on it?


Well, this is something I have suspected and commented on in other threads before in reference to a lot of Bach's works, from large scale religious works to the Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor. The book I was recently reading (_The Growth of Music _I - Colles) used the example of Prelude no. 8 in Book I of the WTC:

"Twelve bars before the end the piece seems to be about to close with a cadence but is interrupted with a powerful discord, and the melody is continued until four bars from the end a similar point is reached. Again, however, the close is avoided by a strong chord of the seventh, as though Bach could not bear to leave so lovely an idea. This way of expressing deep feeling by means of poignant harmonies was rare. It was undreamt-of by the older writers and even Handel rarely tried it, but it is one which later writers, especially Chopin and Wagner, adopted with wonderful results." 
(Examples - Chopin's Prelude in E minor, No. 4, and Wagner's Prelude to Tristan.)


----------



## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Epilogue said:


> How do you figure? He sent the _Musical Offering_ to the king after having tried playing, on the request of the same, on the new fortepiano, and Charles Rosen for one thought that some of the passages for keyboard in that work imply the sonority of the piano.


Passages in the ricercar à 3 or elsewhere?


----------



## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

tdc said:


> Well, this is something I have suspected and commented on in other threads before in reference to a lot of Bach's works, from large scale religious works to the Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor. The book I was recently reading (_The Growth of Music _I - Colles) used the example of Prelude no. 8 in Book I of the WTC:
> 
> "Twelve bars before the end the piece seems to be about to close with a cadence but is interrupted with a powerful discord, and the melody is continued until four bars from the end a similar point is reached. Again, however, the close is avoided by a strong chord of the seventh, as though Bach could not bear to leave so lovely an idea. This way of expressing deep feeling by means of poignant harmonies was rare. It was undreamt-of by the older writers and even Handel rarely tried it, but it is one which later writers, especially Chopin and Wagner, adopted with wonderful results."
> (Examples - Chopin's Prelude in E minor, No. 4, and Wagner's Prelude to Tristan.)


OK, thanks. Are there any more examples?

The whole issue of harmony is interesting in some of the keyboard work because of the organ tuning he may have been expecting.


----------



## Epilogue (Sep 20, 2015)

Mandryka said:


> Passages in the ricercar à 3 or elsewhere?


I don't think he specified.


----------



## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Epilogue said:


> I don't think he specified.


The ricercar à 3 is more modern sounding to me, so I guess it was written for a modern instrument (piano)


----------



## Richannes Wrahms (Jan 6, 2014)

He was a congressive proservative.


----------



## Ilarion (May 22, 2015)

JSBach is all that and so much more - But why should we have to pigeon-hole the GrandMaster?Pigeonholeing the GrandMaster is like installing an air-cooled Volkswagen Beetle motor from 1950 into the latest Ferrari chassis and expecting it to traverse the Nurnburgring in 3 minutes flat! It ain't going to happen!!!


----------



## Dim7 (Apr 24, 2009)

Richannes Wrahms said:


> He was a congressive proservative.


And Schoenberg was a Wrahmsian.


----------



## Asterix77 (Oct 17, 2015)

Bach was seen as old fashioned in his own time, so in that respect he was conservative. Although he knew the new galant style and proved he could compose in this style. A lot of times this whole progressive/conservative question is used to express the importance of a composer. Progressive composers are seen as the ones who opened doors to new styles, hence they must have been influantial and so they are more important then others.

And yet, Bach is one of the most influential composers in Western music......maybe it is an interesting question for scholars, but I don't think Bach could care less


----------



## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

He was so conservative that he was not even in favor of the use of condoms.


----------



## Muse Wanderer (Feb 16, 2014)

In my opinion, Johann Sebastian Bach clearly defies categorisation.

His harmonic movements were simply inconceivable at the time.

Furthermore his use of dissonance was an inspiration to composers of the modern era.

As an example, there is a beautiful dissonance moment at measure 10 in Bach's Partita No. 5 in G Major, BWV 829: II. Allemande .

The allemande has a piece when both hands move widely out in different directions until they reach a climactic moment with such spicy brutally ugly and marvellous dissonance drama that completely dislodges the harmonic structure with great effect.

Greenberg explains this in further detail in his highly recommended lecture series 'Bach and the High Baroque' where he explains that '"Bb" verses "A" dissonance at measure 10 as both hands move in opposite directions to a wide separation.'


----------



## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

Mandryka said:


> OK, thanks. Are there any more examples?
> 
> The whole issue of harmony is interesting in some of the keyboard work because of the organ tuning he may have been expecting.


Have you listened to the Trio-Sonatas (BWV 525-530)? Definitely some interesting stuff going on in there harmonically. Examples like this are not rare in his output though.


----------



## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Yes I know the trio sonatas and the partitas, what I'm not sure of is how innovative the harmonies are. It's a technical question in the history of music I suppose -- I'm just not able to say whether/how his use of harmony extends Buxtehude's for example, or Bohm's or Sweelinck's or Grigny's or Clerambault's or Frescobaldi's or DeMage's or Froberger's . . .

Let me just say something about Bach which is on my mind a bit, since I guess the people who are interested in his music are here on this thread. The thing that astonishes me is the way his music is so often read as expressing ideas. Like in that F Major duet from CU 3 I mentioned, where the contrapuntal central section has been read as a musical argument for the shallowness of galant style (not my argument, it's from David Yearsley's book) There's loads of stuff like this around from serious music academics.

Yet you never see it, or I never see it, for other composers -- for Buxtehude for example, who left a lot of fine music. Or for Sweelinck. 

Is it that people have focused more on JSB because his reputation so far exceeds the others, like Shakespare?


----------



## Muse Wanderer (Feb 16, 2014)

Bach's Violin Concerto in E major BWV1042 is also an example of the drastic shifts in harmony he is renowned for presaging the late romantics works.

The developmental section in the allegro has incredibly shocking harmonic shifts to darker, minor keys, eventually bringing us to an F-double-sharp diminished chord, leading to G-sharp Minor.

The Da Capo (return to the beginning) features a stunning return to D Major, using a pivot modulation on the common tones (G-sharp and B) of G-sharp Minor and E Major. (This can be found if you jump at 5min 30 sec of the linked video).

Bach plunges my mind into the extreme darkness of the night within milliseconds of the brightest light imaginable.

No words can describe such subtle yet monumental musical events.


----------



## Muse Wanderer (Feb 16, 2014)

Bach's remarkable use of forms defies belief.

Going back to his Partita in G Major BWV829, the Gigue is in fact a Double Fugue, in dance form, Gigue meter, and Gigue tempo.

A double fugue in a dance form!


----------



## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

tdc said:


> Well, this is something I have suspected and commented on in other threads before in reference to a lot of Bach's works, from large scale religious works to the Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor. The book I was recently reading (_The Growth of Music _I - Colles) used the example of Prelude no. 8 in Book I of the WTC:
> 
> "Twelve bars before the end the piece seems to be about to close with a cadence but is interrupted with a powerful discord, and the melody is continued until four bars from the end a similar point is reached. Again, however, the close is avoided by a strong chord of the seventh, as though Bach could not bear to leave so lovely an idea. This way of expressing deep feeling by means of poignant harmonies was rare. It was undreamt-of by the older writers and even Handel rarely tried it, but it is one which later writers, especially Chopin and Wagner, adopted with wonderful results."
> (Examples - Chopin's Prelude in E minor, No. 4, and Wagner's Prelude to Tristan.)


Colles is a bit misguided here because he is putting too much emphasis on harmony. The harmonic language _per se_ isn't all that complicated or interesting. Rather, it is the contrapuntal writing and in particular the use of non-harmonic tones that is striking. For example, the first passage he mentions (12 from the end, m. 30) is simply a deceptive cadence on iv6, the discordant B-flat a suspension from the previous chord. In describing the second passage ("strong chord of the seventh") he misses the fact that the last four measures are just the elaboration of a tonic pedal tone, the E-flat in the bass. The chord he mentions is another deceptive resolution - sort of - but it is really just linear motion over the pedal tone. All kinds of dissonance is routinely tolerated over final tonic (and dominant) pedals in the Baroque. Think of the final cadences of some of the organ fugues. So, to me, these passages are, primarily, another illustration of Bach's supreme contrapuntal skill rather than harbingers of modern harmony.

Interestingly, Walter Piston quotes both of these passages in his _Harmony_ to illustrate deceptive cadences.

As for the OP question: Sometimes pushing an older style to its fullest implications, as Bach did, although a conservative impulse from his contemporarys' perspective, is heard as progressive by later generations because of a paradigm shift, in this case, because later composers (and writers like Colles) heard his work in harmonic terms rather than in the contrapuntal terms in which he conceived it.


----------



## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

Mandryka said:


> Yes I know the trio sonatas and the partitas, what I'm not sure of is how innovative the harmonies are. It's a technical question in the history of music I suppose -- I'm just not able to say whether/how his use of harmony extends Buxtehude's for example, or Bohm's or Sweelinck's or Grigny's or Clerambault's or Frescobaldi's or DeMage's or Froberger's . . .
> 
> I never see it, for other composers -- for Buxtehude for example, who left a lot of fine music. Or for Sweelinck.
> 
> Is it that people have focused more on JSB because his reputation so far exceeds the others, like Shakespare?


Personally I don't think so. I just can't think of examples that are similar to the ones I've described from many other Baroque composers. Can you give some specific examples of pieces by these other composers that you think are similarly advanced from a harmonic perspective?


----------



## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

EdwardBast said:


> Colles is a bit misguided here because he is putting too much emphasis on harmony. The harmonic language _per se_ isn't all that complicated or interesting. Rather, it is the contrapuntal writing and in particular the use of non-harmonic tones that is striking. For example, the first passage he mentions (12 from the end, m. 30) is simply a deceptive cadence on iv6, the discordant B-flat a suspension from the previous chord. In describing the second passage ("strong chord of the seventh") he misses the fact that the last four measures are just the elaboration of a tonic pedal tone, the E-flat in the bass. The chord he mentions is another deceptive resolution - sort of - but it is really just linear motion over the pedal tone. All kinds of dissonance is routinely tolerated over final tonic (and dominant) pedals in the Baroque. Think of the final cadences of some of the organ fugues. So, to me, these passages are, primarily, another illustration of Bach's supreme contrapuntal skill rather than harbingers of modern harmony.
> 
> Interestingly, Walter Piston quotes both of these passages in his _Harmony_ to illustrate deceptive cadences.
> 
> As for the OP question: Sometimes pushing an older style to its fullest implications, as Bach did, although a conservative impulse from his contemporarys' perspective, is heard as progressive by later generations because of a paradigm shift, in this case, because later composers (and writers like Colles) heard his work in harmonic terms rather than in the contrapuntal terms in which he conceived it.


You bring up some good points on the Colles example, but that is just one of many pieces that explore very interesting harmonic language. Sure there are earlier composers like Gesualdo and some other Baroque music (thinking of Purcell here) that also use some fascinating dissonances, but it is the way in which Bach contrasts these harmonies in the context of the larger form that makes them so effective and I think in general closer to modern harmonic language. Perhaps it is true Bach conceived of these pieces more in contrapuntal terms than harmonic, but that doesn't change the fact those harmonies are there and they are clearly not just placed randomly but in very effective and expressive ways.


----------



## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

tdc said:


> You bring up some good points on the Colles example, but that is just one of many pieces that explore very interesting harmonic language. Sure there are earlier composers like Gesualdo and some other Baroque music (thinking of Purcell here) that also use some fascinating dissonances, but it is the way in which Bach contrasts these harmonies in the context of the larger form that makes them so effective and I think in general closer to modern harmonic language. Perhaps it is true Bach conceived of these pieces more in contrapuntal terms than harmonic, but that doesn't change the fact those harmonies are there and they are clearly not just placed randomly but in very effective and expressive ways.


We aren't disagreeing in substance, tdc. There _are_ fascinating dissonances and they are used in wonderful expressive ways and indeed they are not at all randomly placed. And I agree that his skill in using these dissonances in articulating large form is beyond anything conceived by his predecessors. I'm just saying it isn't really a matter of _harmonic_ language _per se_, not in the modern sense. He is not using any chord types beyond the usual secondary dominants, +6 chords, Neapolitans, and so on. There are uncommon and strikingly dissonant configurations, of course, but they are due to the daring contrapuntal treatment of dissonances, not to anything new in the art of harmonic progression. I think Colles was afflicted with the modern tendency to verticalize such configurations as chords rather than to see them as products of linear coincidence. This is the same impulse that causes people to think the "Tristan chord" was something new, when it is really just a French +6 chord with an appoggiatura. I have no doubt that modern composers could well take inspiration from Bach's dissonance treatment, but if they are understanding these dissonances in harmonic terms, that is, as vertical configurations, they are hearing them anachronistically.


----------



## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

This is touching on precisely one of the things some of Bach's contemporaries found problematic with the music. They accused him of over-valuing contrapuntal ideas, of following counterpoint wherever it took him (in the development of a canon, for example), even when it lead him into writing dissonant (=ugly, unnatural, unenlightened) music.

But I don't think he was alone in this, just one of the last to do it in North Germany.


----------



## gardibolt (May 22, 2015)

aleazk said:


> He was so conservative that he was not even in favor of the use of condoms.


Well, and he had no stops on his organ.


----------



## Ilarion (May 22, 2015)

aleazk said:


> He was so conservative that he was not even in favor of the use of condoms.


Why did JSBach have so many children? .............I will not print the answer since it is so degrading and inhuman and I wish not to lead astray younger minds who peruse these Fora.


----------



## cna (Nov 9, 2015)

I hated listening to or playing Bach's music when I was little but recently realized why his music is great. I never get tired of listening to his music. And so many different interpretations!! and countless compositions!! Bach apparently gave little indications of how his music should be played. With my wild imagination, I wonder if Bach knew how music would develop in future and didn't want to limit his music within one style/category. He was interested in making of organs (I read this somewhere). So he might have guessed or expected the instruments to change/improve in future. He might have already thinking of a piano that can produce very soft or very loud sounds like what we have now. To me, Bach was an innovator with great imaginations. It is really sad when I hear people say 'J.S. Bach = church music'. On Youtube, there are clips of Andras Schiff and Murray Perahia talking about Bach. So check them out


----------



## MosmanViolinist (Nov 10, 2015)

Bach is by far my favourite, I own four complete sets of Das Orgelwerk, I actually think he was basically conservative. Saying none equaled him in use of harmonies before Chopin/Wagner is interesting.


----------



## violadude (May 2, 2011)

So, here's an interesting thought. Was Bach's harmony really "ahead of its time" or did his influence on later composers. starting with Mozart, just retroactively in a postmortem kind of way, change the direction of music back to his way of doing things?


----------



## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

If we assume that there is such thing as 'ahead' then we are assuming a linear change of methodology in composition, which is not true. There are idiosyncrasies and there are borrowings between various composers, there are trends that are popular among composers of certain geographical regions, there are also contextual influences based on the technology and instruments of the time and also things like the role of the composer in society, class etc. These are things that change. Bach's music fits to his own time and region more than any place or any time else.


----------



## Stirling (Nov 18, 2015)

It is a line, but a circle.


----------



## Scififan (Jun 28, 2015)

Of course Bach is original; all great composers are. Consider the Brandenburg Conceetos; they are astonishingly original and striking in sound and structure. Bach's epic B minor Mass has never been equalled, let alone surpassed, as an amazing synthesis of compositional brilliance and spiritual power. Scholes described it as standing alone "on a solitary and lofty peak". And of course one stands in awe at the amazing variety of the Cantatas as well as his instrumental works.


----------



## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Scififan said:


> Of course Bach is original; all great composers are. Consider the Brandenburg Conceetos; they are astonishingly original and striking in sound and structure. Bach's epic B minor Mass has never been equalled, let alone surpassed, as an amazing synthesis of compositional brilliance and spiritual power. Scholes described it as standing alone "on a solitary and lofty peak". And of course one stands in awe at the amazing variety of the Cantatas as well as his instrumental works.


Completely true. The B minor mass was the first idea of the concert mass too.


----------



## Guest (Nov 18, 2015)

violadude said:


> So, here's an interesting thought. Was Bach's harmony really "ahead of its time" or did his influence on later composers. starting with Mozart, just retroactively in a postmortem kind of way, change the direction of music back to his way of doing things?


Artists are never ahead of their time. But rather, most artists are behind their time. I forget who said that...

Bach, like the other great composers Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Cage, and Stockhausen, was obviously radical by overwhelming evidence. Pure and simple fact.


----------



## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

I agree, the thing about Bach was he pushed all technical boundaries not just for the sake of it because every note present deep emotional content.


----------



## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

I am not really interested what label to put n JSB. I'm just astonished at the music as so many generations of eminent musicians have been. At this years Proms we had the astonishing sight and sound of a single violin holding the entire Albert Hall enraptured two nights in a row with Ibragimona performing the sonatas and partitas. I cannot think of another composer who could have written such astonishing music - even Wolfie and Lvan B. 
When Brahms stumbled upon Bach's "Chaconne" in 1877, he simply couldn't believe his eyes. "On one stave, for a small instrument, the man [Bach] writes a whole world of the deepest thoughts and most powerful feelings. If I imagined that I could have created, even conceived the piece, I am quite certain that the excess of excitement and earth-shattering experience would have driven me out of my mind." Since the piece had already been composed, Brahms did the next best thing and produced a transcription of for piano left-hand.


----------

