Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Is Bach the greatest achiever of all time?

marginalrevolution.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 107 posts

Re: Is Bach the greatest achiever of all time?

#5

Post by lordnacho »

I feel like I have to channel my old math teacher.

It was Euler.

He also lived without electricity, and went blind too. And yet he figured out a huge amount of interesting stuff, roughly corresponding with high school math. Euler also moved across countries.

Re: Is Bach the greatest achiever of all time?

#6

Post by tmtvl »

lordnacho wrote: post #5

I feel like I have to channel my old math teacher. It was Euler. He also lived without electricity, and went blind too. And yet he figured out a huge amount of interesting stuff, roughly corresponding with high school math. Euler also moved across countries.

How's the saying go, everything that wasn't invented by Euler was invented by Gauss?

Re: Is Bach the greatest achiever of all time?

#7

Post by dakial1 »

timost wrote: post #3

I'm not affiliated or anything but The Great Courses' "Bach and the High Baroque" [0] course is a great Series on Bach (Robert Greenbert's courses are great overall). 0: https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/bach-and-the-high-ba...

Not ready to throw 300usd on audio. Is there any good podcast with the history of music?

Re: Is Bach the greatest achiever of all time?

#8

Post by throw0101b »

Around the year 2000, amongst the other things that were going on, it was also the 250th anniversary of Bach's death. Someone at the record label Teldec got the bright idea to release the entirely of Bach's work, and so a 153-disc box set was produced:

* https://www.gramophone.co.uk/features/article/the-complete-b...

* https://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2013/Apr13/B...

* https://www.amazon.com/Bach-2000-Johann-Sebastian/dp/B00001I...

A few years later they released a digital copy, with all the music made MP3s on a USB stick, with PDFs of the booklets:

* https://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/apr/17/complete-bach-...

Edit: Somewhat related, is the All of Bach project:

> All of Bach is a project of the Netherlands Bach Society with the aim to perform and record all of Bach's works and share them online with the world for free. With the finest recordings, performed at special locations and with great attention to image and sound. Don't want to miss a recording of All of Bach? Then subscribe to our YouTube channel. If you would like to help us complete All of Bach, please consider a donation.

* https://www.bachvereniging.nl/en/allofbach

* https://www.youtube.com/@bach

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netherlands_Bach_Society

Re: Is Bach the greatest achiever of all time?

#10

Post by eterevsky »

> 9. Never experiencing true defeat or setback

I don't think this is correct. Bach was seeking a position of court composer (like Handel) and even sent his 6 Brandenburg Concertos to Margrave of Brandenburg-Schwedt in 1721. He didn't get the position. Brandenburg Concertos are some of his best works and I can't imagine how much top-quality secular music he could have written if he got the position.

Post reply on HN