# How did Bach even do this?



## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Just listened to Bach's Prelude and Fugue 22 in B-flat minor, Well-Tempered Clavier Book II. This is one of those illuminated score postings. I'm not sure the performance is at the top of the heap, but OMG is this music even possible to write? I'm shaking my head over the prelude, and then the fugue comes along. OMG cubed! Was Bach even a normal garden-variety human being???


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

"I was obliged to be industrious. Whoever is equally industrious will succeed equally well." -J.S. Bach


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## pianozach (May 21, 2018)

*Douglas Adams*, in his detective novel *Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency*, has a theory that *JS Bach* is actually fictional, and the music attributed to him was actually from an alien computer program aboard a spaceship in orbit around the Earth.

Adams also wrote _this_: *"Beethoven tells you what it's like to be Beethoven and Mozart tells you what it's like to be human. Bach tells you what it's like to be the universe."*


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## BachIsBest (Feb 17, 2018)

KenOC said:


> Just listened to Bach's Prelude and Fugue 22 in B-flat minor, Well-Tempered Clavier Book II. This is one of those illuminated score postings. I'm not sure the performance is at the top of the heap, but OMG is this music even possible to write? I'm shaking my head over the prelude, and then the fugue comes along. OMG cubed! Was Bach even a normal garden-variety human being???


No.

(unnecessary characters)


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## Animal the Drummer (Nov 14, 2015)

I've played the piano for six decades and this Prelude is one of the pieces which have been in my repertoire the longest. More recently I added the fugue and enjoy that too, but the prelude in particular is simply miraculous.


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## Eclectic Al (Apr 23, 2020)

Animal the Drummer said:


> I've played the piano for six decades and this Prelude is one of the pieces which have been in my repertoire the longest. More recently I added the fugue and enjoy that too, but the prelude in particular is simply miraculous.


Yes. I'm a bad pianist, and the amazing thing about Bach is that so many pieces (including very much this prelude in particular) are both great and playable. (Whether I can play any of them well is another question. )

Too many composers for piano had an obsession with making their pieces difficult to play!


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

I read somewhere, that Bach used to transcribe/copy many notes as a youth. And that he recommended his pupils to do the same, because he got a feel for the notes that way. So maybe he composed in such a manner, that he did not "hear" the notes, but "see" the notes. He might have had a unique talent to see patterns in the written notes. He also encoded many mathematical relationships into his works, which is another hint, that he composed that way (and not by way of hearing the music)
https://interlude.hk/deconstructing-the-genius-of-bach/


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## mikeh375 (Sep 7, 2017)

^^Jacck, there is no doubt he had an unerring ability to "see" latent patterns and their combinations and was a brilliant manipulator, but he will have, first and foremost, heard and more especially "felt" music. His genius lay in his ability to fuse his patterns (motivic work) with the most utterly beautiful and moving sense of line and harmonic innovation. One does not get to write in such a way without hearing as much as seeing.

It's perhaps worth also mentioning that the technical and the musical are not mutually exclusive, rather they are dependant upon one another and in Bach's music, one hears the highest pinnacle of achievement possible in musical expression because of the perfect fusion of art and artifice imv.


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## Fabulin (Jun 10, 2019)

pianozach said:


> *Douglas Adams*, in his detective novel *Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency*, has a theory that *JS Bach* is actually fictional, and the music attributed to him was actually from an alien computer program aboard a spaceship in orbit around the Earth.
> 
> Adams also wrote _this_: *"Beethoven tells you what it's like to be Beethoven and Mozart tells you what it's like to be human. Bach tells you what it's like to be the universe."*


Ohh... so whole this time this "Douglas Adams" of the big three quote was not the music analyst Doug Adams, but some British fiction writer?


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

KenOC said:


> Was Bach even a normal garden-variety human being???





hammeredklavier said:


> "I was obliged to be industrious. Whoever is equally industrious will succeed equally well." -J.S. Bach


The WTC is the end point of Bach's keyboard course starting with the inventions and sinfonias and moving through the suites. For example, Prelude 8 in book 1 is similar to a sarabande and follows naturally from the sarabande in the third English suite.

If you start at the end, it looks incredible. If you start at the beginning, you can see the development. Bach's pedagogy was not just about keyboard playing but also about composition, harmony, theory and counterpoint.

However you look at it, it's beautiful music.


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## Ariasexta (Jul 3, 2010)

A composer is supposed to imagine the music from reading the notes, of course JS Bach knew how would this piece sound while writing it down, maybe he was sitting at the harpsichord as writing down the music. I am so at home to know this piece being so many peoples notable. This piece starts off beautifully as stating the theme, and then comes the contrasts between the high and low pitches of the short cadences. It is a moving painting, like Michelangelos sculptures and paintings in motion. 

JS Bach was more conservative than most of his contemporaries, at the same time he was avid to discover shining spots of the other composers from the eras preceding and contemporary. JS Bach was a genius of everything before he became a composer, and he invested all his powers into his music.


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## vtpoet (Jan 17, 2019)

hammeredklavier said:


> "I was obliged to be industrious. Whoever is equally industrious will succeed equally well." -J.S. Bach


"Screw you Bach." - Antonio Salieri


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

How? Likely decided to write a fugue with multiple possibilities for stretto and designed the subject while simultaneously verifying step by step that it combined with itself at a one beat interval inverted, mirrored, and mirrored in thirds. For the overall design and arrangement of the resulting materials, he fused a standard progression of related keys with a sequence of stretti arranged from more obvious to more clever or complex.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

KenOC said:


> Just listened to Bach's Prelude and Fugue 22 in B-flat minor, Well-Tempered Clavier Book II. This is one of those illuminated score postings. I'm not sure the performance is at the top of the heap, but OMG is this music even possible to write? I'm shaking my head over the prelude, and then the fugue comes along. OMG cubed! Was Bach even a normal garden-variety human being???


What do you think of it on organ?


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## BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist (Jan 13, 2019)

This is one of the P/F's that I'm less familiar with. I just realized something: the figure at 0:28 in the OP in the soprano line (appears first at 0:14 in the alto) is the main motif from the B-flat minor prelude of WTC I. Hard to imagine that Bach wasn't conscious of that, and perhaps it is even a deliberate allusion. Are there any other instances of these "cross-book" connections?


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## pianozach (May 21, 2018)

Funny. Pick any *P&F* from *WTC I *or *II*, and it sounds great on harpsichord, clavichord, piano, organ, two guitars, string quartet, woodwind quartet, orchestra, moog, whatever.

You can score it for almost any combination of instruments and it still sounds fabulous.

9 years ago I recorded a cover of a *Bach* fugue (The *Toccata in D minor, BWV 913, II. Thema (fugue)*) merely substituting the voices for piano, organ, electric bass, and electric guitar. Inappropriate? Yep. Is it still genius? Yes!


__
https://soundcloud.com/pianozach%2Ftocatta-in-d-minor-ii-thema


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

pianozach said:


> Funny. Pick any *P&F* from *WTC I *or *II*, and it sounds great on harpsichord, clavichord, piano, organ, two guitars, string quartet, woodwind quartet, orchestra, moog, whatever.


I cannot agree Bach sounds good on the modern piano.



hammeredklavier said:


> I can't stand performances where they play pre-Romantic keyboard music at mezzo-piano on the modern grand (especially in the bass) thinking that it can successfully emulate the harpsichord or fortepiano sonorities.
> These lecture videos pretty much sum up the "issues" I have with them:
> 
> 
> ...





hammeredklavier said:


> The "negative attributes" of the modern grand in pre-Romantic music performance are still an "elephant in the room":
> 1. Crossed-strung bass muddy, lacks clarity and focus.
> 2. Equal distribution of voices creates unpleasant, confusing sound picture.
> 3. Favors legato and staccato touch, limits in-between lengths
> ...


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## Animal the Drummer (Nov 14, 2015)

Depends how one defines "sounds good". If (as those quotes suggest) what's meant is "sounds just like it would have sounded in Bach's day" then no, it can't. If one simply means "is enjoyable" without further qualification, I respectfully disagree. Bach himself was an enthusiast for early pianos, which were different from anything he'd have known or played for most of his life, and I've always wondered how a more purist view can be squared with that.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

pianozach said:


> Funny. Pick any *P&F* from *WTC I *or *II*, and it sounds great on harpsichord, clavichord, piano, organ, two guitars, string quartet, woodwind quartet, orchestra, moog, whatever.
> 
> You can score it for almost any combination of instruments and it still sounds fabulous.
> 
> ...


Well look, "sounds great" is just saying you like it, you can see someone piped up straight away to say he doesn't like it on piano and why, you do like it on piano, there's not anything interesting being said really, just people saying what they like or don't.

But there is another question which I think goes a bit deeper into the music. Is there anything in the writing of the pieces in WTC which makes one more suitable for one instrument, another more suitable for another. For example, do some benefit from long sustained notes, or from some dynamic variation, or from some rapid leaping cut and thrust?


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## pianozach (May 21, 2018)

Mandryka said:


> Well look, "sounds great" is just saying you like it, you can see someone piped up straight away to say he doesn't like it on piano and why, you do like it on piano, there's not anything interesting being said really, just people saying what they like or don't.
> 
> But there is another question which I think goes a bit deeper into the music. Is there anything in the writing of the pieces in WTC which makes one more suitable for one instrument, another more suitable for another. For example, do some benefit from long sustained notes, or from some dynamic variation, or from some rapid leaping cut and thrust?


Well, obviously the WTC is best suited for a keyboardist to play. Intent.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

pianozach said:


> Well, obviously the WTC is best suited for a keyboardist to play. Intent.


It's not so simple because there are many different types of keyboards with very different sound capabilities. And WTC is made up of different pieces, with different characters. So even if you limit yourself to keyboard you need to explore whether there's something in a piece which makes it particularly suitable for, for example, an organ or a clavichord or a piano or a lute harpsichord or whatever.

So, for example, this thread was about the b flat minor of WTC 2 and IMO the prelude really sounds good with the sustain of an organ.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

KenOC said:


> Just listened to Bach's Prelude and Fugue 22 in B-flat minor, Well-Tempered Clavier Book II. This is one of those illuminated score postings. I'm not sure the performance is at the top of the heap, but OMG is this music even possible to write? I'm shaking my head over the prelude, and then the fugue comes along. OMG cubed! Was Bach even a normal garden-variety human being???


Bach did not invent the fugue, he came after Buxtehude and many other composers, all who were masters at contrapuntal writing and accomplished organists. Handel, also wrote keyboard music, as well as oratorios and operas.

Bach was great, but he was a product of his time, for which contrapuntal writing was as natural for them as writing a 32-bar popular song has been for us.


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## BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist (Jan 13, 2019)

BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist said:


> This is one of the P/F's that I'm less familiar with. I just realized something: the figure at 0:28 in the OP in the soprano line (appears first at 0:14 in the alto) is the main motif from the B-flat minor prelude of WTC I. Hard to imagine that Bach wasn't conscious of that, and perhaps it is even a deliberate allusion. Are there any other instances of these "cross-book" connections?


Bumping my own post


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

To my ear, Bach may have been the least idiomatic of composers. Almost anything he wrote sounds great (well, at least okay) on almost any instrument(s). That in itself is remarkable.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist said:


> This is one of the P/F's that I'm less familiar with. I just realized something: the figure at 0:28 in the OP in the soprano line (appears first at 0:14 in the alto) is the main motif from the B-flat minor prelude of WTC I. Hard to imagine that Bach wasn't conscious of that, and perhaps it is even a deliberate allusion. Are there any other instances of these "cross-book" connections?


I have a book which is very strong on these types of intertextual references: _Bach's Well Tempered Clavier _by Marjorie Wornell Engels. For example re the D minor fugue of Bk 2 she says



> It is intriguing that the first half of the melody of the subject of this fugue is intimately related to the theme of the D minor fugue of Book 1. Not only do both themes begin with the same four notes of the rising scale, but most of the theme of the Book 1 fugue is woven into this melody


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## vtpoet (Jan 17, 2019)

hammeredklavier said:


> I cannot agree Bach sounds good on the modern piano.


For me? Depends on the performer. I don't like lugubrious, Mozartish, or Romanticized Performances of WTC (or any Bach for that matter) on a modern grand-specifically, I don't like pianists who emphasize the melody over the counterpoint, blend the voices, or add dynamics that bear no reflection as to Bach's intentions. To date, the only two pianists who I can return to repeatedly are Andras Schiff and Glenn Gould. The sustaining pedal is an instant turn off. The foot should never touch the pedals when playing Bach IMHO.

When comparing performances of the WTC on Spotify, my habit is to go straight to the fugue of BWV 892. That tells me everything I need to know about the rest of their performance. Gould, to me, really gets it. It turns it into a kind of dance, gives it a beautiful and sparkling swing:






Compared to the dirge-like pace nearly every other keyboardist employs. Heidrun Holtman does a nice job with this fugue.






But too plodding for my taste. And if Dina Ugorskaja played it any slower time would flow backwards:






And Andras Schiff:






A good pace but nearly commits a criminal offence by his use of rubato during the climax of the fugue.

All my subjective opinions of course.


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## vtpoet (Jan 17, 2019)

SanAntone said:


> Bach did not invent the fugue, he came after Buxtehude and many other composers, all who were masters at contrapuntal writing and accomplished organists. Handel, also wrote keyboard music, as well as oratorios and operas.
> 
> Bach was great, but he was a product of his time, for which contrapuntal writing was as natural for them as writing a 32-bar popular song has been for us.


Yeah, but I think your comment somewhat(?) too glibly compares Bach's contrapuntal skills to that of his peers. He was more than the product of his time. He was the final word and summation of baroque counterpoint. Händel, Telemann and Buxtehude were "Masters", but I can't think of a canon by any of them that rose above a dry species of counterpoint. I could listen to Bach's Goldberg Canons BWV 1087, a hundred times over and not be sick of them.






Or:


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

vtpoet said:


> Händel, Telemann and Buxtehude were "Masters", but I can't think of a canon by any of them that rose above a dry species of counterpoint.


I know nothing about Handel and Telemann, but I think you're being unfair to Buxtehude.


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## BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist (Jan 13, 2019)

Mandryka said:


> I have a book which is very strong on these types of intertextual references: _Bach's Well Tempered Clavier _by Marjorie Wornell Engels. For example re the D minor fugue of Bk 2 she says:
> 
> 
> 
> > It is intriguing that the first half of the melody of the subject of this fugue is intimately related to the theme of the D minor fugue of Book 1. Not only do both themes begin with the same four notes of the rising scale, but most of the theme of the Book 1 fugue is woven into this melody


This one's not as clear to me. Sure, I can hear the similarities, but a rising scale is hardly a distinctive motif, and while harmonic outline and the motifs present in the Book I theme do seem to appear in the Bk II fugue, this could simply be a matter of coincidence; they resemble pretty common archetypal Baroque contrapuntal "stock gestures". One might as well say that the countersubject of the D minor Book II fugue is exactly the inversion of the subject from the B Major Prelude in Book I, but I don't think that was a deliberate (and perhaps not even a conscious) connection. But maybe I'll look into her claim a bit more (does she elaborate on it further?). Thanks for recommending the book 

However, this shared motif (melodically and rhythmically) in the B-flat minor preludes is remarkable, to me at least. It seems there must be something to it...


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## Grimalkin (Nov 12, 2020)

Unsolved mistery


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist said:


> This one's not as clear to me. Sure, I can hear the similarities, but a rising scale is hardly a distinctive motif, and while harmonic outline and the motifs present in the Book I theme do seem to appear in the Bk II fugue, this could simply be a matter of coincidence; they resemble pretty common archetypal Baroque contrapuntal "stock gestures". One might as well say that the countersubject of the D minor Book II fugue is exactly the inversion of the subject from the B Major Prelude in Book I, but I don't think that was a deliberate (and perhaps not even a conscious) connection. But maybe I'll look into her claim a bit more (does she elaborate on it further?). Thanks for recommending the book
> 
> However, this shared motif (melodically and rhythmically) in the B-flat minor preludes is remarkable, to me at least. It seems there must be something to it...


I think one instance is the B minor fugues from both books. They're very different of course, but I hear a theme in the Book II fugue that was also used in fugue 24 of Book I. It might've been deliberate...? Also the C# major prelude from Book II is similar to the C major one in Book I. I think I've read somewhere that Bach originally intended for the C# major p/f to lead off Book II, but apparently changed his mind because of the similarities to the C major from Book I.

Fugue 22 from Book II seems similar in feel to me to some parts of Art of Fugue.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

consuono said:


> Also the C# major prelude from Book II is similar to the C major one in Book I. I think I've read somewhere that Bach originally intended for the C# major p/f to lead off Book II, but apparently changed his mind because of the similarities to the C major from Book I.


Cause they're Baroque figuration preludes, they can resemble other figuration preludes like the one that opens cello suite in G major in a similar way French overtures can resemble each other.






*[ 7:24 ]*


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## NoCoPilot (Nov 9, 2020)

I have often heard Bach's music compared to mathematics. At the advanced end of mathematics it is said mathematicians visualize the world differently that we mere mortals, that they can see proofs and theorems years before they can actually prove them. 

Bach's music is like that, I think.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

SanAntone said:


> Bach did not invent the fugue, he came after Buxtehude and many other composers, all who were masters at contrapuntal writing and accomplished organists. Handel, also wrote keyboard music, as well as oratorios and operas.
> Bach was great, but he was a product of his time, for which contrapuntal writing was as natural for them as writing a 32-bar popular song has been for us.


What's also interesting to me is that, post-Bach composers of church music, such as J.E. Eberlin (1702~1762), J.A. Hasse (1699~1783), L. Mozart (1719~1787), G.V. Pasterwitz (1730~1803), M. Haydn (1737~1806) kept composing numerous fugues and other forms of strict counterpoint even after Bach died. I'm also curious to know how well they were acquainted with Bach (in person) and his work, and also how they shaped the course of classical music history. (I know Hasse was friends with Bach though)


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## vtpoet (Jan 17, 2019)

Mandryka said:


> I know nothing about Handel and Telemann, but I think you're being unfair to Buxtehude.


I love Buxtehude. Have Koopman's complete works and listen to him regularly. He wasn't the contrapuntist that Bach was (but then no composer ever was) but Buxthude was an older generation than Bach. I do think Buxtehude was the finest of his generation. Does that make the hurt any better?


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## vtpoet (Jan 17, 2019)

hammeredklavier said:


> What's also interesting to me is that, post-Bach composers of church music, such as J.E. Eberlin (1702~1762), J.A. Hasse (1699~1783), L. Mozart (1719~1787), G.V. Pasterwitz (1730~1803), M. Haydn (1737~1806) kept composing numerous fugues and other forms of strict counterpoint even after Bach died. I'm also curious to know how well they were acquainted with Bach (in person) and his work, and also how they shaped the course of classical music history. (I know Hasse was friends with Bach though)


Inasmuch as they all had their students and admirers, they surely shaped classical music's development, but I'd have to wonder whether their continued use of counterpoint in liturgy really had any influence. King Frederick wanted nothing whatsoever to do with churchy counterpoint and forbid its use; and that was a considerable influence on tastes considering that nearly all of the most notable composers, of that era, were in and out of Berlin. CPE Bach only re-introduced counterpoint when he'd escaped to Hamburg---and that was limited to his liturgical works (still somewhat daring). M Haydn, as far as I know, might have been the first to introduce the fugal finale in the symphony and J Haydn, one might say, gradually resurrected it in his String Quartets. What do you think?


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

vtpoet said:


> Inasmuch as they all had their students and admirers, they surely shaped classical music's development, but I'd have to wonder whether their continued use of counterpoint in liturgy really had any influence.


For example, 
Leopold admonished his son openly in 1777 that he not forget to make public demonstration of his abilities in "fugue, canon, and contrapunctus." http://mrc.hanyang.ac.kr/wp-content/jspm/20/jspm_2006_20_10.pdf#page=8


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

*[ 5:50 ]*










"Gregorian melodies, of course, continued to be used in the Mass throughout the eighteenth century; but by Beethoven's time they were relatively rare, especially in orchestral Masses. The one composer who still used them extensively is Michael Haydn, in his a cappella Masses for Advent and Lent. It is significant that in some of these he limits the borrowed melody to the Incarnatus and expressly labels it "Corale." In the Missa dolorum B. M. V. (1762) it is set in the style of a harmonized chorale, in the Missa tempore Qudragesima of 1794 note against note, with the Gregorian melody (Credo IV of the Liber Usualis) appearing in the soprano. I have little doubt that Beethoven knew such works of Michael Haydn, at that time the most popular composer of sacred music in Austria."
< Beethoven , By Michael Spitzer , Pg. 123 ~ 124 >

also compare the "crucifixus" [ 6:22 ] of Michael's Missa Sti. Gabrielis with that of:

*[ 6:29 ]*





"Michael's influence on Romanticism is also reflected in the writings of E. T. A. Hoffmann, who praised Michael's sacred music above that of older brother Joseph's. Franz Schubert is known to have visited the grave of Michael Haydn in order to gain inspiration for writing sacred music." https://www.classical915.org/post/happy-birthday-michael-haydn


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## vtpoet (Jan 17, 2019)

hammeredklavier said:


> For example,
> Leopold admonished his son openly in 1777 that he not forget to make public demonstration of his abilities in "fugue, canon, and contrapunctus."


Yes, and Mozart's wife clearly had a taste for baroque music and we have the Mass in c, the fugue, and the unfinished Suite K 399 to thank her for. Apparently she wanted him to improvise fugues for her. And yet Mozart always seemed like a reluctant schoolboy doing his lessons. The fact that he could barely finish, and mostly didn't, these pieces for Nannerl says something. His father's advice was probably dated and we know that Mozart wasn't as easily impressed as his father. I think there was a certain indulgence in the younger Mozart's response. We know that Mozart wasn't impressed with Eberlin, as you yourself have pointed out. When Mozart really perked up was when he was exposed to Bach, at Leipzig and later with the Baron von Swieten [sic?]. The same goes for Haydn, possibly, who we know was mightily impressed with Bach's Mass in B minor. I don't know that Mozart ever saw the Mass.

My reading is that counterpoint's rediscovery was through the appreciation of professional musicians of JS Bach (and his "rediscovery") rather than through the liturgical compositions of a fading tradition. Your thoughts?


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## vtpoet (Jan 17, 2019)

hammeredklavier said:


>


I'm really disappointed by the lack of vibrato in this recording.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

vtpoet said:


> My reading is that counterpoint's rediscovery was through the appreciation of professional musicians (and the "rediscovery"of JS Bach) rather than through the liturgical compositions of a fading tradition. Your thoughts?


I can see your point, - Wolfgang in his late years probably thought that Sebastian had more creative, elaborate solutions than other masters Wolfgang had encountered in his youth. But I also want to challenge the notion that "there's only Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and no one else" during those periods of Baroque/Classical, since I think it's a narrow-minded, limited way to view the history/practice/tradition. There were other influential composers besides those three, you know.


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## vtpoet (Jan 17, 2019)

hammeredklavier said:


> I can see your point, - Wolfgang in his late years probably thought that Sebastian had more creative, elaborate solutions than other masters Wolfgang had encountered in his youth. But also challenge the notion that "there's only Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and no one else" during those periods of Baroque/Classical, since I think it's a narrow-minded, limited way to view the history/practice/tradition. There were other influential composers besides those three, you know.


Yes, there were absolutely other influential composers (I for one love the period between the baroque and classical) but I would be skeptical that they wielded any influence as a result of their use of counterpoint in liturgical compositions. That ship had sailed. For a time the most influential composers were also the virtuosos, especially of the violin and piano. The Bendas for example.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

vtpoet said:


> We know that Mozart wasn't impressed with Eberlin,


"Both Leopold and his son thought highly of Eberlin's ability; from their testimony and from other evidence it appears that Eberlin's reputation was primarily based on his contrapuntal works. Wolfgang Mozart's remarks are significant: while eventually he modified his high opinion of Eberlin's keyboard works (the only works to be published during the composer's lifetime) *he continued to esteem his vocal writing.*" Johann Ernst Eberlin


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## vtpoet (Jan 17, 2019)

hammeredklavier said:


> "Both Leopold and his son thought highly of Eberlin's ability; from their testimony and from other evidence it appears that Eberlin's reputation was primarily based on his contrapuntal works. Wolfgang Mozart's remarks are significant: while eventually he modified his high opinion of Eberlin's keyboard works (the only works to be published during the composer's lifetime) *he continued to esteem his vocal writing.*" Johann Ernst Eberlin


Thanks for the correction.


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

hammeredklavier said:


> Cause they're Baroque figuration preludes, they can resemble other figuration preludes like the one that opens cello suite in G major in a similar way French overtures can resemble each other.
> ...


Well yeah, but sometimes the resemblance is closer than others. That's like saying every piece in sonata form resembles every other piece in sonata form. Well, sure, but...


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

vtpoet said:


> Yes, and Mozart's wife clearly had a taste for baroque music and we have the Mass in c, the fugue, and the unfinished Suite K 399 to thank her for. Apparently she wanted him to improvise fugues for her. And yet Mozart always seemed like a reluctant schoolboy doing his lessons.


http://mrc.hanyang.ac.kr/wp-content/jspm/20/jspm_2006_20_10.pdf#page=8

Yet, Wolfgang improvised fugues frequently even before his marriage to Constanze (1782). She only scolded him for not writing them down on score. How do you explain why he wrote works like these around 1772~1776:




















hammeredklavier said:


> Mozart wrote this at 10:
> 
> 
> 
> ...





hammeredklavier said:


> I find this to be the most interesting work Mozart wrote at 20.
> It consists of 9 movements, but there are elements of contrast and connections between them:
> _"hostia sancta"_ (9:24), which comes after the dark, solemn _"verbum caro factum"_ (8:03) feels brighter by contrast, but it also has its dark elements of contrast constantly injecting a sense of tension, within itself:
> [10:55]: _"stupendum supra omina miracula"_,
> ...


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

vtpoet said:


> The same goes for Haydn, possibly, who we know was mightily impressed with Bach's Mass in B minor. I don't know that Mozart ever saw the Mass. My reading is that counterpoint's rediscovery was through the appreciation of professional musicians of JS Bach (and his "rediscovery") rather than through the liturgical compositions of a fading tradition. Your thoughts?


This is what I don't get about some classical music fans' "Bach-centric view on classical music history" . It just seems to contradict itself. 
You say that Bach wasn't really officially "rediscovered" until Mendelssohn's revival of his work in the early 19th century, but then how do you explain the existence of all those contrapuntal works by obscure "Classical period" composers? When I listen to masses by the Dresden kapellmeister, J.G. Naumann (1741~1801), I find that he also wrote tons of counterpoint. J.S. Bach (presumably) wasn't known to those composers, so he did not have much influence on them musically, right?

Guys like Michael Haydn kept writing tons of "contrapuntal works" and as I showed, there's evidence he had influence on later generations of composers. Even after coming to know a lot of Bach works, Wolfgang's admiration for Michael didn't wane. He copied out Michael's fugato finales for study (K.291). Also, Michael later taught Weber, whose liturgical works also show Michael's influence.

Georg von Pasterwitz









I don't think counterpoint was ever really "revived" or "rediscovered" by any stretch of the imagination. It was never forgotten in the first place. Even Chopin said in 1849:

"*He said the problem with the way they teach nowadays is that they teach the chords before they teach the movement of voices that creates the chords.* That's the problem, he said, with Berlioz. He applies the chords as a kind of veneer and fills in the gaps the best way he can. Chopin then said that you can get a sense of pure logic in music with fugue and he cited not Bach-though we know that he worshiped Bach-but Mozart. He said, in every one of Mozart's pieces, you feel the counterpoint." <The Art of Tonal Analysis: Twelve Lessons in Schenkerian Theory, By Carl Schachter, Page 57>

But Bach was "forgotten" to many in the late 18th century, right? How do you explain the "decline of counterpoint" (as testified by Chopin) in the early 19th century, the period of major "Bach revival"?
So what I'm asking is, - 1. Was counterpoint ever really "revived", 2. If so, how much did the work of J.S. Bach play a role? - Let's not talk only about Mozart, Joseph Haydn; they aren't the only mid-late 18th century composers. I also don't want to hear _"the other guys wrote crappy counterpoint, only Bach wrote good counterpoint. So the other guys' counterpoint doesn't count."_, a view which I nowadays find rather clichéd and Bach-centrically biased.






"Of the manuscript compositions by Herr Mozart which have become known, numerous contrapuntal and other church pieces are especially noteworthy." https://etd.ohiolink.edu/!etd.send_file?accession=ucin1335462994#page=9
"Leopold Mozart was a talented musician who well understood his craft as a composer....many of his church pieces, of which we find masses, litanies, offertories and many others in considerable number are among the best that he wrote."
-Ernst Fritz Schmid
"As a church composer, Leopold stands at the height of his time."
-Wolfgang Plath
"his liturgical works are of greater worth than his chamber pieces."
-German musicologist Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart

View attachment 145010

http://conquest.imslp.info/files/im...MLP169311-Litaniæ_de_Venerabili_C.pdf#page=42



> liturgical compositions of a fading tradition.


So when baroque-era composers copy off renaissance-era composers, they are not being a "fading tradition". But when classical-era composers copy off baroque-era composers, they are being a "fading tradition"? 
I think general baroque music lacks dramatic use of effect, even in contrapuntal expressions. (I personally think Biber, Zelenka requiems are rather disappointing in this regard). I believe Tchaikovsky and Berlioz opined on this.



> And yet Mozart always seemed like a reluctant schoolboy doing his lessons.


Give me a break please. Baroque composers with their grindy-sounding "sewing machines" look far more pedantic to me. And Mozart finished his K.394 fugue.










"the fact remains that the "Great Fugue" is "a controlled violence without parallel in music before the twentieth century and anticipated only by Mozart in the C minor fugue for two pianos (K.426)"
<Opera's Second Death, By Slavoj Žižek, Mladen Dolar, Page 128>


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

vtpoet said:


> CPE Bach only re-introduced counterpoint when he'd escaped to Hamburg---and that was limited to his liturgical works (still somewhat daring).


I hear more counterpoint in 





than





(Emanuel wrote the Wq.15 concerto in Berlin, 1745).

btw, I also don't hear any "more counterpoint" in say,









than


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## vtpoet (Jan 17, 2019)

So. I gather you have some very strong feelings about this? 

//This is what I don't get about some classical music fans' "Bach-centric view on classical music history" . It just seems to contradict itself. You say that Bach wasn't really officially "rediscovered" until Mendelssohn's revival of his work in the early 19th century, but then how do you explain the existence of all those contrapuntal works by obscure "Classical period" composers? //

I'm not sure what your point is here? It's easy to explain the existence of contrapuntal work in liturgy while still stressing the importance of Bach's place among professional musicians at the time, along with his eventual "rediscovery" (which I leave in quotes because that's qualified). As I wrote earlier, liturgical works (which comprise nearly all of your links) reflected the conservative tastes of those paying for/commissioning the music. Beyond that, it took composers more than a few decades to sort out how they were going to write liturgical works on models other than the baroque. This is commonly understood classical music history. And one will commonly read that Mozart's Requiem was the first liturgical work to make the break. So, I'd tentatively argue that the reason for counterpoint's continued use in liturgy came down to tradition whereas counterpoint's reappearance in non-liturgical compositions might have more to do with the re-emergence or circulation of JS Bach's music among professional musicians (at first) and later among the larger public. This resolves your dichotomy, I think. Also, I had to laugh at your inclusion of CPE Bach. That somewhat undercuts your argument being that he was JS Bach's son and learned just about everything he knew about counterpoint from his father. So, if you're going to trace counterpoint through CPE Bach, then you're going straight back to JS.


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## vtpoet (Jan 17, 2019)

//Yet, Wolfgang improvised fugues frequently even before his marriage to Constanze (1782). She only scolded him for not writing them down on score. How do you explain why he wrote works like these around 1772~1776//

I'm not sure what pointing to a handful, literally, of fugal works (out of over 600 pieces of music) gets you. I'm still of the opinion, based on Mozart's music, that his was no great love for the old forms of fugue and canon (as distinct from counterpoint). According to what I've read, while Mozart called the organ the King of instruments, he was also no particular fan of the instrument. He was very much a creature of his generation. To be another great and learned German organist had no appeal. I've also read that writing liturgical music was more drudgery, for Mozart, than ambition (regardless of their quality). And yes, as your many samples point out, Mozart wrote a great deal of counterpoint in his liturgical works, but that was to be expected. The reason to think that it was Bach, and also Händel who fired Mozart's imagination in terms of counterpoint in secular work, is his meetings with Baron van Swieten, of which Wikipedia writes:

" I go every Sunday at twelve o'clock to the Baron van Swieten, where nothing is played but Handel and Bach. I am collecting at the moment the fugues of Bach-not only of Sebastian, but also of Emanuel and Friedemann.[28]

Others also attended these gatherings, and van Swieten gave Mozart the task of transcribing a number of fugues for instrumental ensembles so that they could be performed before the assembled company. Mozart also sat at the keyboard and rendered the orchestral scores of Handel's oratorios in a spontaneous keyboard reduction (while, according to Joseph Weigl, also singing one of the choral parts and correcting errors of the other singers).[29]

_It appears that encountering the work of the two great Baroque masters had a very strong effect on Mozart. Olleson suggests that the process took place in two stages. Mozart responded first with rather direct imitations, writing fugues and suites in the style of his models. These works "have the character of studies in contrapuntal technique."[30] Many were left incomplete, and even the completed ones are not often performed today; Olleson suggests they have "a dryness which is absent from most of [Mozart's] music."[30] Later, Mozart assimilated Bach and Handel's music more fully into his own style, where it played a role in the creation of some of his most widely admired works. Of these, Olleson mentions the C minor Mass (1784) and the chorale prelude sung by the two armored men in The Magic Flute (1791).[31] " _


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

vtpoet said:


> The reason to think that it was Bach, and also Händel who fired Mozart's imagination in terms of counterpoint in secular work, is his meetings with Baron van Swieten, of which Wikipedia writes:
> I am collecting at the moment the fugues of Bach-not only of Sebastian, but also of Emanuel and Friedemann.


(now that I have come to know a lot more about Wolfgang's direct predecessors, contemporaries, and his oeuvre), This is the exact sort of view I nowadays find rather outdated and exaggerated (regarding the "alleged" influence of Constanze).

The editors of that wikipedia article probably only know Leopold as a composer of musical sleigh-rides and toy symphonies, and probably have zero knowledge about Ernst Eberlin, or Franz Xaver Richter (1709~1789) of the Mannheim School. 
Wolfgang had known Richter in person from childhood, and Richter came up with "contrapuntal symphonic style" as early as 1760. That's just 1 decade after Bach's death. 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Xaver_Richter#1778_Richter_meets_Mozart
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Xaver_Richter#Early_Symphony













It's interesting that Wolfgang also considered Emanuel and Friedemann's fugues important in his study (as well as Sebastian's). I could have easily included those composers in the list of post-Bach contrapuntal composers in my post, #34.
*You haven't disproved anything I've said.* By the same logic "Sebastian had influence on his sons",- we can assume Leopold Mozart had on his own. I've always been intrigued by the chromatic part-writing in Wolfgang's teenage works, - and when we compare works like Eberlin's Benedixisti domine and Wolfgang's Misericordias domini, the influence is quite obvious. Hence why I said, Eberlin and Leopold, with their sense and skill in "fugal writing", also took part in shaping the course of classical music history, by inspiring Wolfgang or aiding him develop his early talent. While Michael Haydn also influenced Wolfgang, Beethoven, Schubert in use of counterpoint and stile antico. You're just bitter that the facts don't corroborate your extreme Bach-centric worldview.

http://mrc.hanyang.ac.kr/wp-content/jspm/20/jspm_2006_20_10.pdf#page=4
"Mozart wrote to his father on 29 March 1783 about the musical gatherings in the apartments of Baron van Swieten: "we love to amuse ourselves with all kind of masters, ancient and modern." So music was the main object of the other of the composers Mozart and his colleagues studied in these sessions is mentioned in the Mozart correspondence by name: *Johann Ernst Eberlin*, for instance, or Georg Friedrich Handel, or J.S. Bach and his sons Wilhelm Friedemann and Carl Phillip Emmanuel, or *Michael Haydn*."



> I had to laugh at your inclusion of CPE Bach.


You're the one who mentioned Emanuel in the first place, [_" CPE Bach only re-introduced counterpoint when he'd escaped to Hamburg---and that was limited to his liturgical works (still somewhat daring). "_] and I simply disagreed by saying I don't find any less contrapuntal intricacies in Emanuel's Wq.15 concerto (composed in Berlin, 1745) than hundreds of arias and recitatives in Sebastian's cantatas and passions. What's so funny? I don't get it. 
Here are some examples of Mozart's pre-Vienna period secular contrapuntal works:

Galimathias Musicum K.32 (Quodlibet) - Fuga (1766) : 



String Quartet No. 8 in F major K. 168: IV. Allegro (1773) : 



String Quartet No. 14 in D minor K. 173: IV. 1st version: Fugue (1773) : 



String Quartet No. 8 in F major K. 168: II. Andante (1773) : 



Fugue for organ in G minor K.401 (1773) : 




K.201 symphony finale, Paris symphony (K.297) finale, or the Act III quartet from Idomeneo, Posthorn serenade (K.320) finale etc.. 
if these are not "counterpoint" then I don't know what is:

























When did Wolfgang ever say that Sebastian inspired him to write counterpoint in secular works? Never. Even the K.387 string quartet finale shows influence of Michael Haydn's fugal symphonies.

https://books.google.ca/books?id=0wp2CQAAQBAJ&pg=PA64
"In an excess of enthusiasm about Georg Benda's melodramas he wrote in a letter to his father, dated Mannheim 12 November 1778, that this composer was his favorite among all the Lutheran Kapellmeisters."

Mozart's enthusiasm for Bach during his Vienna period was only as significant as his enthusiasm for Benda's operas. Saying that Bach inspired Mozart to write counterpoint in any genre is as ridiculous as saying Benda inspired Mozart to write operas. Even if Mozart stayed in Salzburg and hadn't known much of Bach's work, he would still have written counterpoint in all genres as the sonata-form became more and more elaborate.
There was no such thing as the "revival of counterpoint" by any stretch of the imagination. The whole thing is a myth. (And it's not the same thing as the "revival of Bach". Don't confuse the two.)


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## Ethereality (Apr 6, 2019)

The Prelude and Fugue in B-flat minor isn't as impressive as the underlying tools and medium of the form. The prelude is a generated pattern of counting, and part of what makes Bach so great is his faith and dedication with these media.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

vtpoet said:


> Beyond that, it took composers more than a few decades to sort out how they were going to write liturgical works on models other than the baroque. And one will commonly read that Mozart's Requiem was the first liturgical work to make the break.


This is as silly as saying "the Classical sonata form is the same thing as the Baroque binary form". You sound like you've never listened to any of Mozart's liturgical works other than the requiem and the mass in c. 
through-composed movements (thematic connection spans from the beginning to the concluding fugue) in
Missa en honorem sanctissimae trinitatis K.167 (1773):








and disregard for the Baroque Doctrine of the Affections:








The "symphonic mass" style of K.257, or the Pignus futurae gloriae double fugue from Litaniae de venerabili altaris sacramento K.243 (1776) sound *miles different* from anything Bach and Handel wrote. 






> To be another great and learned German organist had no appeal.


"that instrument was my passion." -Mozart
https://books.google.ca/books?id=v0TqudSZBIAC&pg=PT24
The reason why Mozart didn't write much organ music is because public need for written organ music was all time low. (It had nothing to do with Bach whatsoever - stop fantasizing, for god's sake.) Most organ music was improvised at the time. Mozart succeeded A.C. Adlgasser as the organist of the Salzburg cathedral when Adlgasser died in 1777.



vtpoet said:


> writing liturgical music was more drudgery, for Mozart, than ambition (regardless of their quality).


Wrong again..

"Mozart wrote the Vesperae de Dominica in Salzburg in 1779, the same year as the Coronation Mass - a work, which the composer himself held in high esteem. It was no doubt this work that Mozart presented to Baron van Swieten when he later sought to introduce himself to the Viennese musical world as a composer of church music in the serious _stile antico_."






"In April 1791, Mozart applied to become the Kapellmeister at St. Stephen's Cathedral, and was designated by the City Council to take over this job following the death of the then-ailing incumbent, Leopold Hofmann. This never took place, since Mozart died (December 1791) before Hofmann did (1793)".

"Otta Biba has made a strong case that Mozart never lost interest in sacred music and the church style. ... The motet 'Ave verum corpus', K. 618 was written in June 1791 for the feast of Corpus Christi and can be seen as a test for his pending appointment at St Stephen's."





"When exactly it (K.341) was completed is uncertain, but the eminent scholar H. C. Robbins Landon reasons that it was not as late as suggested by those who have called it an "audition" piece for the post of Kapellmeister at Vienna's St. Stephen's Church, which would have been around 1788."



vtpoet said:


> I'm not sure what pointing to a handful, literally, of fugal works (out of over 600 pieces of music) gets you.


This is as silly as saying "I'm not sure what pointing to Beethoven's 9 symphonies out of his hundreds of pieces of music gets you".


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Ethereality said:


> The Prelude and Fugue in B-flat minor isn't as impressive as the underlying tools and medium of the form. The prelude is a generated pattern of counting, and part of what makes Bach so great is his faith and dedication with these media.


Could a machine have composed it?


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## Animal the Drummer (Nov 14, 2015)

Ethereality said:


> The Prelude and Fugue in B-flat minor isn't as impressive as the underlying tools and medium of the form. The prelude is a generated pattern of counting, and part of what makes Bach so great is his faith and dedication with these media.


This is like saying the sight of a beautiful woman is less impressive than the sight of her skeleton would be. Many of us get far more out of the beauty which Bach creates than from the mechanisms he uses as an aid to the creative process.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

vtpoet said:


> writing liturgical music was more drudgery, for Mozart, than ambition (regardless of their quality).


"According to his first biographer, Franz Xaver Niemetschek, who is generally an accurate witness:
Church music . . . was Mozart's favourite form of composition. But he was able to dedicate himself least of all to it." (The Cambridge Companion to Mozart , edited by Simon P. Keefe , Page 127)


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## Ethereality (Apr 6, 2019)

Ethereality said:


> The Prelude and Fugue in B-flat minor isn't as impressive as the underlying tools and medium of the form. The prelude is a generated pattern of counting, and part of what makes Bach so great is his faith and dedication with these media.





Animal the Drummer said:


> This is like saying the sight of a beautiful woman is less impressive than the sight of her skeleton would be. Many of us get far more out of the beauty which Bach creates than from the mechanisms he uses as an aid to the creative process.


To me, saying the opposite shows more degree of indifference towards other works and other composers, for they too incorporated these tools to create grand visions. It's this medium that allows for some more interesting patterns to arise out of artistry. I doubt it's worth getting one's panties so in a bunch over defending a short piece, which is more akin to being an easily satisfied, fed dog all your years and not attuning to the more rewarding, concepts of acquiring food that one already intuitively knows. Not to say I'm not marveled by what Bach does here, but these works are posed similarly to exercises.


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## Animal the Drummer (Nov 14, 2015)

What all that verbiage boils down to is that you primarily derive your musical enjoyment from the framework of a piece as opposed to its content. While I can't begin to comprehend that in the face of beauty such as Bach creates, it's your privilege. What it is not is a reflection of objective fact, as both your last two posts suggest.


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## Ethereality (Apr 6, 2019)

Animal the Drummer said:


> While I can't begin to comprehend that in the face of beauty such as Bach creates.


I don't think anyone can simultaneously appreciate the surface of this music without having innate knowledge of its forms. As said above, anyone who loves Bach has an opportunity to attune into his musical framework: the knowledge, the code they already have that lets them hear the beauty in Bach.


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## mikeh375 (Sep 7, 2017)

Ethereality said:


> I don't think anyone can simultaneously appreciate the surface of this music without having innate knowledge of its forms. As said above, anyone who loves Bach has an opportunity to attune into his musical framework: the knowledge, the code they already have that lets them hear the beauty in Bach.


My appreciation of Bach is undoubtedly a mixture of know-how and surface beauty and it is probably enhanced by the know-how, but I also believe one can readily appreciate the surface alone as a lay-listener. There is no need imv for specialist knowledge, just sympathetic ears because the surface speaks for itself regardless of the mechanisms underneath.


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## Handelian (Nov 18, 2020)

hammeredklavier said:


> "I was obliged to be industrious. Whoever is equally industrious will succeed equally well." -J.S. Bach


I heard Martin Lewis, the money adviser, tell young people about the four requirements of success:

Talent
Diligence
Determination
'Luck' - getting the breaks in life

We can see that Bach had the first three in spades but the last appeared to largely elude him throughout his life considering his talent. After his death his music was neglected apart from by a few discerning souls like Mozart and Beethoven until 'lady luck' came to Bach's aid when Felix Mendelssohn prepared an edition of the St Matthew Passion and performed it. This led to a re-assessment of Bach's music. You could say the keyboard music had another stroke of luck when a young Canadian recorded the Goldberg Variations in 1955 and it became a best seller. Then with the HIP movement Bach's music finally began being heard for what it really was!


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## Gallus (Feb 8, 2018)

How about this one?






Miraculous is the right word...


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Handelian said:


> but the last [luck] appeared to largely elude him throughout his life considering his talent.


Why do you say this?


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## Handelian (Nov 18, 2020)

Mandryka said:


> Why do you say this?


One would've thought that one of the most most astounding geniuses in the history of music deserved a better position than he in fact had, with a cramped household and a noisy school of boys next door. Mind you he probably wasn't the only great composer whose genius deserved better, when one thinks of the way (eg) Salzburg celebrates Mozart today and the way it treated him when he was alive.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Handelian said:


> One would've thought that one of the most most astounding geniuses in the history of music deserved a better position than he in fact had, with a cramped household and a noisy school of boys next door. Mind you he probably wasn't the only great composer whose genius deserved better, when one thinks of the way (eg) Salzburg celebrates Mozart today and the way it treated him when he was alive.


I suppose the glamour of the opera house wasn't really available to him, he wasn't a theatrical composer. That aside he did pretty well for himself I think in terms of reception.


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## Handelian (Nov 18, 2020)

Mandryka said:


> I suppose the glamour of the opera house wasn't really available to him, he wasn't a theatrical composer. That aside he did pretty well for himself I think in terms of reception.


The fact was he lived in a day when musicians were considered paid lackeys. So unless you had entrepreneurial skills like Handel (and even he had lean times) or were employed by a rich patron (like Haydn) then composing could be fraught with financial difficulty. When Haydn came to London he was amazed as his (and Handel's) celebrity as he had always been regarded as a mere servant by his patrons.


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## vtpoet (Jan 17, 2019)

hammeredklavier said:


> You're just bitter that the facts don't corroborate your extreme Bach-centric worldview.


You seem to have worked yourself into a lather beating whatever straw man has been tormenting your vision of music history.

If I take on your argument, point by point, I'll spend the next several hours doing it. That's not worth. You seem to be imputing on me (straw man) arguments that you've with others or yourself. Strangely, I largely agree with nearly all of what you've written, but you're take strikes me as so hostile to Bach's influence as to be close minded.

However, if you want to treat this short response as the resounding triumph of your assertions, I'm okay with that. I'm just here to enjoy myself.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Mandryka said:


> I suppose the glamour of the opera house wasn't really available to him, he wasn't a theatrical composer. That aside he did pretty well for himself I think in terms of reception.


I recall reading about old Bach's visit to another city, one with an opera. He was accompanied by a son, to whom he said, "Would you like to stroll over to the opera house and listen to the pretty tunes?" One can imagine the slightly curled lip as he said this... :lol:

But seriously, folks, I watched/listened to this visualization of the D minor "Dorian" Prelude and Fugue tonight, a work that I had never paid much attention to. The prelude -- wow! And the fugue, as they say, ain't chopped liver.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

KenOC said:


> I recall reading about old Bach's visit to another city, one with an opera. He was accompanied by a son, to whom he said, "Would you like to stroll over to the opera house and listen to the pretty tunes?" One can imagine the slightly curled lip as he said this.


"...one of the complaints about Bach was that his cantatas were too operatic. More than any other composer he introduced the Italian opera style into church music, something his predecessor Johann Kuhnau had always resisted." <Bach Cantatas Website: "Bach and Opera">

I think people tend to overlook the fact Bach was interested in bringing operatic elements into other types of music, and was pretty forward-looking in this regard - the development of the "Neapolitan mass", the "stilus ecclesiasticus mixtus" or mixed church style, which combined traditional contrapuntal choruses with coloratura solo arias and ensembles, which theoreticians such as J.J. Fux and M. Spiess opposed.


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## bz3 (Oct 15, 2015)

hammeredklavier said:


> "I was obliged to be industrious. Whoever is equally industrious will succeed equally well." -J.S. Bach


Also a savant of the braggadocio. If it were me I'd just say, 'Get on my level.'


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

Handelian said:


> The fact was he lived in a day when musicians were considered paid lackeys.


Bach in Leipzig was not a lackey but his social status was more similar to a principal of a Latin school, a higher level civil servant or maybe even a university professor (and he had not attended university like those guys would have had). And he was among the 3 to 5 most respected musicians in Germany, so that would be like a professor preeminent in his field. Social status was complex; we should not think of composers as like the footman in Downton Abbey.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

To address the OP again months later: I'd say it's about the control of dissonance. Both prelude and fugue are intensely dissonant, probably more so than your average atonal work of Schoenberg. Crunchy suspensions, appoggiaturas, accented passing tones, etc. on nearly every beat sometimes. Indulging dissonance to the maximum bearable load clears space for the lines to maneuver.


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