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Two recently found works of J.S. Bach presented in Leipzig [video]

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Re: Two recently found works of J.S. Bach presented in Leipzig [video]

#81
post #7

Bach is the greatest composer and perhaps the greatest artist in human history. Full stop. He is able to condense so much complexity into his works, and he speaks to the heart as equally as he speaks to the intellect. He is proof that the mind and the heart do not have to be at cross purposes, but can be wholly engaged together when stimulated by sublime works of art.

Do you have any particular pieces in mind when you wrote this? Bach is impressive, no doubt, but to each their own perhaps. I acknowledge that I have not received the appropriate training to fully appreciate the complexity in his works, so I wish I could hear what you do. To my ear, (and this isn't a novel opinion in the slightest), I think the Baroque era was more limited in expression due to the inherent limitation…

I would highly recommend listening to any of his fugues. The great thing about them is you do not need any training to appreciate the complexity. All you need to do is listen to the starting melody.

That melody will repeat itself again and again, if you listen closely. It will harmonize with itself as more voices are added. It will be modulated into different keys and durations.

In a way, you can kind of think of Bach as the first electronic musician, in the sense that his works consist of "discrete tracks" that get layered on to each other. I'm sure there are youtube videos out there that demonstrate this visually.

Re: Two recently found works of J.S. Bach presented in Leipzig [video]

#82
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See, music isn’t just math, it’s feel. I guess that’s why I dislike him the way I do. It’s too robotic. Truth is, they were ALL Justin Bieber. It’s all pop music of the time.

Ahh yes, so robotic https://youtu.be/_1xJoVzoIQg?list=RD_1xJoVzoIQg Also they were not all justin beiber. Bach was a working church musician when mozart was out touring europe getting drunk and shitting on women. Only one of them was in it for the fame. In fact you could say that mozart and liszt were 2 of the first "pop stars" because that archetype didn't exist before them. There was basically no "beatlesmania" ove…

> Bach was a working church musician when mozart was out touring europe getting drunk and shitting on women

Bach died 6 years before Mozart was born.

Re: Two recently found works of J.S. Bach presented in Leipzig [video]

#83
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Danse macabre is a true masterpiece. Incredible composer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ce8CDz9PUfs

This performance is also very great (No. 1 only, not the whole concerto): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcsfDxojdV8

Re: Two recently found works of J.S. Bach presented in Leipzig [video]

#84
post #7

Bach is the greatest composer and perhaps the greatest artist in human history. Full stop. He is able to condense so much complexity into his works, and he speaks to the heart as equally as he speaks to the intellect. He is proof that the mind and the heart do not have to be at cross purposes, but can be wholly engaged together when stimulated by sublime works of art.

I can agree that Bach is the greatest, but Beethoven will always be the original rockstar in my mind, and I don’t have a favorite between them.

Re: Two recently found works of J.S. Bach presented in Leipzig [video]

#85
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s debatable. Mozart was good too. But my real OG is Camille Saint-Saens. You want dark and moody? Light and fluffy? Dazzles and sparkles? He’s your man.

Nah Bach shits on Mozart. Mozart make extremely catchy music like Justin Beiber. I seriously do love mozart, but he merely wrote music. Bach weaved math into his music more than anyone before or after. His music sounds dense and more multi dimensional than mozart or saint saens. It really doesn't sound like he was trying to write beautiful music ( even though it is ) , it sounds like he was solving an equation and ju…

> Mozart make extremely catchy music like Justin Beiber.

Mozart was the quintessential "Dark Forest" composer, hiding musical sentience in plain sight of light classical period textures.

Here he is with 2 measures of a simple major key "Justin Bieber" clarinet sequence interleaved with 2 measures from the strings that keep modulating to minor keys:

https://youtu.be/xdVo0MsJMOc?t=1074

Keep listening to the section marked "Tutti" in the score for a re-orchestration and reharmonization of that same clarinet sequence, but now in a surprisingly lush, chromatic style similar to Wagner or Brahms. It quickly disappears, too.

Similarly, Bach's own output is encoded inside Mozart's. E.g., the coda of the Rondo in A Minor doubles as a two-part invention, complete with invertible counterpoint between left- and right-hand.

He also built a nifty hash table that could be used to efficiently generate and stream music over the internet. (Unfortunately, he didn't live long enough to patent and sell it to Yahoo for 6 billion dollars.)

Re: Two recently found works of J.S. Bach presented in Leipzig [video]

#86
post #67
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ahh yes, so robotic https://youtu.be/_1xJoVzoIQg?list=RD_1xJoVzoIQg Also they were not all justin beiber. Bach was a working church musician when mozart was out touring europe getting drunk and shitting on women. Only one of them was in it for the fame. In fact you could say that mozart and liszt were 2 of the first "pop stars" because that archetype didn't exist before them. There was basically no "beatlesmania" ove…

Did not expect one of the most unhinged discussions on HN to start over classical music but aight.

I have to say, I enjoyed "Nah Bach shits on Mozart" much more than I should have.

Re: Two recently found works of J.S. Bach presented in Leipzig [video]

#87
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bach is the greatest composer and perhaps the greatest artist in human history. Full stop. He's aight. Obviously you enjoy his music and that's fine. But have you experienced all the art from all cultures through all human history to make such authorative statements on such subjective matters?

This is a riposte at the level of "Then name all composers. Nanananana." Obviously, the answer to your question is going to be "no," but really a great amount of music is available to us, and everything that came before the Renaissance was, crudely put, simple music. So the commenter can be considered to be able to weigh Bach's merits against those of other artists'. IMO too, Bach is the greatest. There's really no-o…

> So the commenter can be considered to be able to weigh Bach's merits against those of other artists'.

Unless they are an active scholar in pre-Baroque era music I'd question that. There are just too many cultural cues for common practice music (i.e., from Bach to Mahler) and too few for everything before. It's almost a certainty that the commenter will prefer the music with forms and harmony baked into them that hold the most cultural significance.

E.g., if an action filmscore has Berlioz-style brass and a big field drum, everyone is instantly on board. What about if you play the L'homme armé tune that Renaissance composers went gaga over?

Those composers would take that tune, stretched it out into really long held pitches, and then write entire sections of the mass around it with faster moving melodies. Was it just a trend like the vocoder? Did monks get psyched when they heard it embedded in the mass? I know a lot of those masses, but I honestly have no idea.

Re: Two recently found works of J.S. Bach presented in Leipzig [video]

#88
post #7

Bach is the greatest composer and perhaps the greatest artist in human history. Full stop. He is able to condense so much complexity into his works, and he speaks to the heart as equally as he speaks to the intellect. He is proof that the mind and the heart do not have to be at cross purposes, but can be wholly engaged together when stimulated by sublime works of art.

I would describe Prelude in C as having one of the highest “simplicity to depth” ratios of any piece I’ve played. I wonder if anyone else has any they’d suggest as being incredibly simple while also being incredibly deep. (I get this is pretty subjective but I think you know what I mean)

Chopin's 4th Prelude. Very simple harmonically and just about the easiest piece he ever composed. Listening to it one understands how appropriate it was for it to be played at his funeral.

Re: Two recently found works of J.S. Bach presented in Leipzig [video]

#89
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did not expect one of the most unhinged discussions on HN to start over classical music but aight.

When someone gushes over Bach, I tend to go off. Glad that others are just as knowledgeable as I am in Baroque.

Don't give up on him. You may surprise yourself one day.

Re: Two recently found works of J.S. Bach presented in Leipzig [video]

#90
post #86
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did not expect one of the most unhinged discussions on HN to start over classical music but aight.

I have to say, I enjoyed "Nah Bach shits on Mozart" much more than I should have.

Is that because there is some more depth to the joke, that Mozart did this for real "when mozart was out touring europe getting drunk and shitting on women" - "shit on women"? So Bach metaphorically shits on Mozart for being the greater composer who was in it for the music and now gets more fame?

Because I was rather appalled by that language, but maybe lack background context.

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