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Can any composer equal Bach?

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Re: Can any composer equal Bach?

#121

Post by username223 »

bratsche wrote: post #60
username223 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lute suites are crazy. He didn't play the lute, modern guitars didn't exist when he wrote them, the pieces aren't playable on a guitar without some changes, they sound amazing, and they are brutal to even approximate. He wrote many-voiced ("polyphonic") music for an instrument played by beating two hands on six strings. Not content with that, he wrote fugues for the same instrument, which are polyphonic music tha…

Incidentally one of his lute suites is the same as the c minor cello suite. Except I think on lute it's in either a or e minor, I forget now. I don't know whether the cello suite came first or the lute suite though. But as a violist I found this interesting. I like to play his violin sonatas and partitas but on viola but people have discouraged me from this because it means changing the key and everyone insists that…

G minor, I believe. I personally think it works better on the guitar, and can't imagine trying to do justice to polyphonic music on an instrument where it seems hard to play more than one string at a time. Sort of like the Paganini caprices -- I first heard them played by Eliot Fisk on the guitar, and even if he is sloppy sometimes, it sounds better than any violin recording I've heard.

Re: Can any composer equal Bach?

#122

Post by mercer »

jacquesm wrote: post #117
MrJagil wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Been loving this lately https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eGybwV3U9W8

Thank you both those are beautiful.

Seriously! This is making my Saturday even better than I hoped it would be.

I often forget properly listening, and instead end up having the same bunch of Spotify songs on repeat throughout the week. For all the suggestions in this thread I even dusted off my 'really good but uncomfortable' headphones :).

Re: Can any composer equal Bach?

#123

Post by coldtea »

te0006 wrote: post #109

If you can name a short ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cVSgEdT4KI . Love, loss, despair, grievance, new hope, closure - it's all in there in this single, short, compassionate-but-not-sentimental, solemn-but-not-sad, perfectly balanced, ethereal piece.

Try:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXMVkQ70I88 (Bach)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-Xm7s9eGxU (Satie)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeAc0oh818s (Beethoven)

Re: Can any composer equal Bach?

#124

Post by coldtea »

DubiousPusher wrote: post #11

I first should admit that I'm a 100% self taught appreciator of classical music. I don't have any formal musical education. Nor any formal history of music education. I'm the only person of my family and friends that seeks out and listens to classical music. So, my knowledge is very uneven and I'm a total pedestrian in this realm. Over the years, I've found music by references from fiction, films and criticism. I've…

>but every time I get to Bach, I stop short. I just can't stand the music.

What's not to like in these e.g.?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gv94m_S3QDo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cVSgEdT4KI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9EN27Zh_vg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tv40mcAM1ZA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uzZu9HZBWA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGQLXRTl3Z0

>I understand the music is important historically and that it has a technical beauty

Historically? Technical beauty only? Huh?

Re: Can any composer equal Bach?

#125

Post by internetman55 »

DEbCB wrote: post #77
paulcole wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Go on a pop diet. Cut back on it the way you might sugar or processed foods. Try to spend a year listening to classical music only. Why would anyone do any of these things? Besides the nebulous benefits of realizing how wrong we were for enjoying rap?

Why would anyone read a serious novel, like Crime and Punishment, instead of a comic book? Mozart's Jupiter Symphony will still be performed and appreciated fifty years from now. Can the same be said for your cherished rap/pop songs?

Hundred on the wrist, eighty on the wrist Hundred on the wrist, eighty on the wrist Hundred on the wrist, eighty on the wrist

D rose d rose d rose d rose d rose d rose

Re: Can any composer equal Bach?

#126

Post by te_chris »

A key thing to remember about the baroque period: it was almost all improvised - the original jazz, if you will.

Tonal harmony was one of my favourite papers at music school, learning the rules of harmony to compose pieces like this from scratch. I wasn’t great at it, but it’s an amazing skill to observe in those that can do it. I once had a guitar masterclass and the tutor just stood up, jumped on the piano and improvised a fugue. Our minds were blown.

Re: Can any composer equal Bach?

#127

Post by kenny87 »

te0006 wrote: post #109

If you can name a short ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cVSgEdT4KI . Love, loss, despair, grievance, new hope, closure - it's all in there in this single, short, compassionate-but-not-sentimental, solemn-but-not-sad, perfectly balanced, ethereal piece.

a quite beautiful polyphonic piece: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSPaJLXfd-w. but agreed that some of the most beautiful musical pieces mankind has ever created can be found in the Western classical music tradition. i don't care very much for comparing who is better than whom.

Re: Can any composer equal Bach?

#128

Post by Intermernet »

lmm wrote: post #120
Intermernet wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. And I say this as someone who has been classically trained and absolutely worships the music of Bach (and Mozart for that matter). "The Message" by Grandmaster Flash, A lot of The Beastie Boys, Some Kendrick Lamar, and many other hip-hop tracks and artists will definitely still be played and enjoyed 50 years in the future. There are people who weren't alive at the beginning of hip-hop who are massive fans of the…

> There are people who weren't alive at the beginning of hip-hop who are massive fans of the early artists. They'll be as popular as the greats of early rock, the greats of jazz etc. How many people still listen to even the greatest of Big Band music? Rock and jazz have been passed down one or two generations but it's too soon to conclude they'll live forever.

If Bach could survive without the benefit of recorded media, then rock, jazz, big band and hiphop will survive easily. Maybe not forever, but definitely for hundreds of years.

Re: Can any composer equal Bach?

#129

Post by DanielBMarkham »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #115
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. I hate to be brief, but the key question with Beethoven is what did he want to do ? Beethoven was as much a master of the craft as Bach -- he just lived in transitional times (which he helped bring on.) That makes comparisons a bit superfluous. The problem with comparing great composers is that if they were truly great, they were also iconoclastic, so it's always apples and oranges. The only way I can around…

Beethoven makes me feel like someone yelling "Look at me working so hard to do these amazing things with notes!" Bach feels more like someone saying "Listen to this amazing thing I found inside the music!" They may - arguably - have equal technical skill, but the motivations and musical motivation feel very different.

I don't mean this to be diminutive of Bach, but Bach was a technician, a craftsman. He mastered the art form of his time and was amazing at it. Beethoven was an _artist_ in much more the modern sense, with all that entails. Bach was the guy in the cathedral who just wrote his twentieth amazing piece. Beethoven was the unwashed guy in his apartment with a spittoon by his side tweaking away on the piano. They just don't compare.

But if I had to choose, it'd be Beethoven. His early symphony works illustrated that he certainly knew the current form. He just didn't like it much. And his later string works are some of the best written music ever (from what the pros tell me.)

I sure would have loved to have been a fly on the wall when young Beethoven was being taught by "Papa" Haydn. What a pair that must have been.

Re: Can any composer equal Bach?

#130

Post by bratsche »

username223 wrote: post #121
bratsche wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Incidentally one of his lute suites is the same as the c minor cello suite. Except I think on lute it's in either a or e minor, I forget now. I don't know whether the cello suite came first or the lute suite though. But as a violist I found this interesting. I like to play his violin sonatas and partitas but on viola but people have discouraged me from this because it means changing the key and everyone insists that…

G minor, I believe. I personally think it works better on the guitar, and can't imagine trying to do justice to polyphonic music on an instrument where it seems hard to play more than one string at a time. Sort of like the Paganini caprices -- I first heard them played by Eliot Fisk on the guitar, and even if he is sloppy sometimes, it sounds better than any violin recording I've heard.

I found the one I'm talking about on Apple Music, John Williams playing them on guitar. It's BWV 995 for lute, and it is in a minor.

fwiw on cello it's BWV 1011.

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