# Bach and acoustics



## kangxi (Jan 24, 2014)

I once heard an anecdote of J S Bach, but now I try to verify it I can't find it anywhere. It's not in The Bach Reader (Mendel & Mendel) which has gathered together all contemporary documentation of and about Bach, & the internet yields nothing. 
I read somewhere that Bach, who had a second occupation of test driving organs, especially new ones, went to a church to put a new organ through its paces. The results were disappointing: the sound from the organ seemed dead. Bach walked around the church, thought a bit, and recommended that the height of the ceiling should be altered by a foot or so (raised or lowered I don't know). The alterations were made (I have a vague idea that the church itself was new) and on his return Bach found the sound of the organ to be magnificent. It seemed he had an innate understanding of acoustics, buildings and spaces, a discipline which these days needs highly trained scientists to achieve the same result.
Has anyone heard this before? Can you point me to the source?


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

Sounds like an apocryphal story to me, I haven't heard this before. Not much is known of Bach's life and if this was verified it would likely be widely circulated.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

I'd think that in a major 18th-century German church -- major enough to have a significant organ anyway -- raising or lowering the roof wouldn't really be an option without rebuilding the church. Anyway, I've never heard that story.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

The pipe organ sounds much better inside a church than nay recording. So yes, Bach's music would be affected.


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## kangxi (Jan 24, 2014)

Thanks for the answers folks: I rather suspected this might be apocryphal The tale is now relegated in my mind to the rubbish bin. Now to figure out how and when a false memory was implanted in my mind. I suspect the Illuminati, with the Freemasons a strong second and contrail conspiracy theorists an outsider at third.


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## Joe B (Aug 10, 2017)

kangxi said:


> Thanks for the answers folks: I rather suspected this might be apocryphal The tale is now relegated in my mind to the rubbish bin. Now to figure out how and when a false memory was implanted in my mind. I suspect the Illuminati, with the Freemasons a strong second and contrail conspiracy theorists an outsider at third.


Just chalk it up to another case of "alternative facts."


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## Triplets (Sep 4, 2014)

I heard that Bach preferred tubed amps and that he abhorred Class D. He also was an early adopter of MQA, but only because he thought those were the initials of one of his offspring that he had neglected


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## kangxi (Jan 24, 2014)

Joe B: I have a feeling that is the closest Bach and any minion from the Trump swarm are likely to come to each other. I have absolutely no interest at all in the musical tastes of the Orange Faced Loon himself except to speculate he's never even heard of Bach unless it's in the context of a seagull.

Triplets: MQA Bach, eh? Schickele claimed that PDQ was "the last and least" of Bach's children but I don't see why we shouldn't squeeze in another one. (I now have a mental picture of the Bach mass production line, with Maria Barbara and Ann Magdalene squeezing them out at one and and talkclassical & Peter Schickele squeezing them in at the other.)


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