Musician's were employees paid to do a job. It was a vocation and as you study Bach you will see his life was not a bowl full of cherr Bach was not famous nor proclaimed a genius in his day.
Now, you ask why is Bach considered a genius today? You also have to remember that from a music theory point of view, much of Bach's music was quite innovative.
The Brandenburg Concerti, particularly the Fifth with its harpsichord solo, were really the first modern concerti as we know the genre. He pushed the fugue to its outer limits. He was also not only a great organist but probably the reigning expert on the organ, which, at the time, was the most complicated machine that existed. If you were having a new organ installed, it basically was not acceptable until Bach had kicked its tires, run it through its paces, and pronounced it acceptable.
Watch the whole thing; it demonstrates that the little piece is like a palindrome, on two axis I understand that Bach used "cutting edge" theory in his music. The concept of tuning an instrument to itself was still very new. But tuning and fugues were happening despite Bach's influence, not because of it. My point with art music was that Beethoven basically created that schism between art music and popular music; a huge historical feat.
Bach was famous enough in his day. This was due to a good job with the Church and his skill on the organ. The man was unquestionably good at his job. He worked his way up to a position that made him a recognizable face. Years of practice made him good at the organ. His compositions will sometimes have interesting features to it such as the palindrome or spelling his name with the notes, indicating that he enjoyed messing around a little.
I would call all of these things part of a successful career, not the result of abnormal brain size or being a genetic freak. That is a great video, Laurie.
If I had a thousand years, my brain couldn't come up with a composition like that. That is a great video, Laurie! Thank you for posting! The analysis is nearly as ingeious as the composition. I think it's good to question these kind of assumptions, because in our new millenium notions of human intelligence including complex brain functions like musical creativity will come into sharp focus.
There are two lines of fairly intense research on a global scale that will eventually combine - reverse engineering the brain at the level of neurons, and the engineering of a general artificial intelligence.
There isn't a single music centre in the brain - musical creativity and genius will be of special interest to science just because it engages and orchestrates so many diverse areas of the brain to somehow becomes much more than the sum of their parts.
It also takes a very uncommonly flexible and powerful mind to improvise 4, 5 and 6 part fugues, and many other conceptually complex feats that are attributed to him. His playing is mathematical and exquisitely precise. In the background, you can hear him humming along. It is this gorgeous interplay of that barely audible hum and that almost clinical precision - the right brain and the left - that embodies what I like about Gould and also Bach himself. Bach is a strange mixture of the meta-physical and the emotional, a fitting father-figure to classical music.
Grounded in the old-world picture, drawn to the music of the spheres, he produced oratorios and passions of profoundly human dimensions, but his music also seems - and I say this in spite of my own rationalism - to point beyond, nowhere more so than in his greatest fugues where emotion and the cosmic achieve a thrilling synthesis. I was brought up in a family that listened to classical music only now and again, and went to schools where musical appreciation focused on things like the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy.
So I didn't start listening to Bach seriously until I reached my 20s - and immediately took him to heart. Twenty-odd years later, when I fell seriously ill and spent a long time recovering, he became the composer I love above all others. It wasn't just that I didn't seem to have room in my head for big Romantic orchestral sounds. It had - and still has - more to do with the extraordinary mixture of intense organisation and great lyrical beauty.
It's rare for a day to pass without me listening to something from his enormous, thank goodness catalogue - a solo instrument if I want to dance on the head of a pin, a choral work if I feel more expansive. And thanks to the wonderful Bach Cantata Pilgrimage series, masterminded and conducted by John Eliot Gardiner, the expansive days seem to be on the increase.
So what's so good about Bach then? For some it is the mathematical precision of his compositions. For others it is the passionate cry of his soul infusing the music. Here, some famous fans say why they love JSB. Andrew Marr Broadcaster Bach has been in the background for most of my life, one way or another - the Brandenburg concertos in my parents' record collection when I was a boy; the Christmas music at school; and I remember being stunned when, as a teenager, a friend played me the solo violin sonatas and partitas in a double record set.
Emmanuelle Haim Conductor I love Bach's music because it is so comforting. Alain de Botton Philosopher Most contemporary music is about love between two people. Germaine Greer Writer "So what's so good about Bach? And I was going to say, how about the Double Violin Concerto, second movement? But maybe it should be the Violin and Oboe Concerto second movement instead? Definitely listen to the St Matthew Passion — at least the opening; and from the St John — this chorus.
And obviously the Sanctus from the B Minor Mass. Oh, but what about this Brandenburg concerto? Then we would need, of course, this prelude and fugue from the Well-Tempered Klavier. And what about the fact that there are countless wondrous interpretations from across the ages of each of these pieces?
I give up. Go listen, play, love, revere — and be changed for always. If you would like to comment on this story or anything else you have seen on BBC Culture, head over to our Facebook page or message us on Twitter. Counterpoint Classical music. Can any composer equal Bach?
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