What is so good about Bach's music?

Question

I love Beethoven and Chopin... I have no idea why Bach's never catch my ears... so I wanted to find out what others like about Bach's music.

Answer 1

You are certainly missing something , no doubt Bach is the TOP greatest composer after Beethoven.

He was unique among all composeres regarding the polyphonic richness in his music , covering huge music composition forms for solo instruments , string orchestra works, choral works , oratorios , cantatas & others.

He wrote compositions for solo violin and organ music that was never done before or after.

These are some recommendations of Bach's works that you should like:

Fantasie & Fuge in G Minor

Toccata & Fuge in D minor

Little Fugue in G Minor

The violin concertos and the double violin concerto.

Suites and partitas for Harpsichord

Violin sonatas with Harpsichord

The piano concertos

Wedding Cantata - 'Sich Uben Im Lieben'

Cantata 147 - Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring

Chorus : Art Thou With Me

Sheep may safely graze.

Air in D for strings.

Answer 2

In Bach, you won't find the mad passion of Beethoven or the detached sentimentality of Chopin. Beethoven transports us to fantastical worlds, and Chopin elevates us to a rarified atmosphere of impossible delicacy. But both of these are experienced on an emotional level.



Bach, on the other hand, is profoundly intellectual. It's "mind music." This is not to say that Bach is heartless, cold and cerebral. In fact, I think you can be just as--or even more--carried away with Bach as with Beethoven or Chopin.



However, before that can happen, there must be an investment of effort. It is Bach's precision and symmetry that is so fascinating--but these qualities are not always apparent on the first listen, or the fourth, or even the fortieth. A Bach fugue constantly unfolds in its complexity.



I think I was able to develop a better appreciation for Bach when I (laboriously) forced myself to learn to play the Book I c-minor fugue from "The Well-Tempered Clavier." Even after many, many repetitions, I was still noticing more and more ways that Bach's principal theme is endlessly reflected, echoed and distorted throughout the entire piece--it's like a hall of mirrors. I think it is by tapping into the human brain's innate talent for pattern recognition that Bach transports the listener--rather than by appealing to the human heart through poetic imagery or atmospheric special-effects.



(BTW, I recommend the Wanda Landowska recording of "The Well-Tempered Clavier"--she scares the hell out of me!)

Answer 3

Bach wrote contrapuntal music: there are at least 2, sometimes 3, sometimes 4, even 5 different voices in his compositions. There is a mathematical perfection to it that occasionally approaches the divine.



To really appreciate Bach, you usually have to give a piece multiple listens when you can devote your full attention to it. It's worth it. The payback is triple the effort you put into it.



You'll also feel a hell of a lot smarter afterward - there's something about Bach that stokes a part of the brain that doesn't get used a lot in these days of short attention spans.

Answer 4

He is a genius and his works display the complexity of his mind.

His pieces are like juggling with 10 different balls at one time and at the end, all those separate pieces come together in a resolution.

This can be shown in Brandenburg concerto No. 3, movt. 3, when the first violin starts w/ the melody, then after a while, the 2nd violin, then the viola, then the cellos. In the end, you see that the music comes into a conclusion tying all those parts together.

His pieces may seem rudimentary and simple, but that's the beauty behind it. His and other people's music during that time period was the foundation that other music from different time periods built upon.

Answer 5

I never really "got" Bach either until I sang my first piece by him. The complexity and thought that goes into every single note is unmatched in music. There is so much going on, and yet you feel that if you were to remove even one note, the entire piece of music would collapse like a house of cards.

Answer 6

lol yea Bach is rather old since he's music is mainly Baroque...but i've come to to enjoy his fugues(i think its on piano right?)but i haven't attempt any yet since im more drawn towards the Romantic Period...his solo pieces for violin are simply amazing...take a look at his Chaconne from partita 2 its really damn nice...

Answer 7

hi he was years ahead of his time check out this guy yngwi j malmstein he is a swedish rock guitar player and was influenced by bach he plays bach on a fender strat awsome guitar player

Answer 8

There was an instrumental hit in the 70s called "Joy" by a group named Apollo 100 that was based on "Jesu, joy of man's desiring."

Answer 9

Hello, Piccione!



I am probably looking at Bach's music from a different point of view from yours. I am a would-be composer, and I see that Bach can do many things which I can't do.



I'll take them one by one:



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In "What to Listen for in Music," Aaron Copland wrote that the true test of greatness of a composer is to express a different message in every composition which he or she writes. Copland admitted that Ravel brings his listener to a lovely, ethereal forest, but it's always the same lovely, ethereal forest. Beethoven, on the other hand, expresses a completely different message in every composition he writes.



Copland would likely say the same thing about Bach.



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Very few composers besides Bach can write a composion for an unaccompanied orchestral instrument which cannot be improved by adding an accompaniment. Schumann tried to improve on Bach's sonatas and partitas for unaccompanied violin by adding a piano accompaniment, but the original version still reigns supreme.



Bach seems to be making a recent hit along this line. The trailer for "The Soloist," a recent movie, contains a brief quotation from Bach's unaccompanied cello works. A few people have written to this forum, asking us to identify that quotation.



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Nobody but nobody can harmonize a hymn tune like Bach. At Interlochen, my last assignment in music theory class was to copy a German chorale melody without looking at the Bach harmonization, harmonize it to my best ability, and compare my own harmonization with Bach's harmonization. Humiliating!



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It takes an outstanding composer to compose an entire movement out of one or a few little germ motives. Bach does this extremely well in many of his concertos, notably the a minor and E major violin concertos.



Beethoven does the same thing in his Fifth Symphony, and Janacek does the same thing in his Sinfonietta.



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A few days ago, I entered a question on this forum asking how to write a good prelude. Nobody knew.



Too bad Bach wasn't available to answer the question, because he obviously knew. It is easier to write something containing a nice, long, flowing melody, but composing a prelude does not offer that comfort. On the contrary, composing a prelude requires writing a harmonic progression which holds the listener's interest, and without relying solely on cliches such as the turn-around progression and the descending minor tetrachord.



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Whenever I play a Bach composition in an ensemble, I am always tempted to think I always have the main melody. That is because Bach's countermelodies are almost as melodious as his melodies.



Contrapuntal ingenuity is such a strong trait in Bach's music that I will have to make subcategories:



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For a bad example of two-voice counterpoint, take a look at the easy Handel book published by Alfred Publishing Co. Handel is noted for his magnificent choral works. However, when it comes to limiting himself to two voices, he sometimes comes to dilemmas where he can't keep the harmony and the counterpoint going without sacrificing one for the other. Bach never comes to such dilemmas.



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Every time I compose a fugue, I find myself following the same old blueprint. Not so with Bach, who comes up with something new every time.



The fugal form is so rigid that most composers can't write a fugue which people would enjoy hearing. (A jocular definition of a fugue is "a composition in which the voices come in one by one while the audience goes out one by one.")



A few of Bach's fugues, on the other hand, even get used and abused by the public. Here is one which you may have heard in video games and TV commercials:



http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=LXO71kOgypo



Since Sousa is called the March King and Johann Strauss is called the Waltz King, it seems strange that Bach is never called the Fugue King. But maybe it's just as well.



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You know how to write in double counterpoint? First, you write two melodies in counterpoint with each other. Then, you write the same again, starting on the same pitch, but this time, you write the other melody starting on a DIFFERENT pitch. Or, if you wish, you can write the two melodies in a different key, but they must start at a different interval. And the two should fit as well as they did the first time.



Bach was a whiz of a double contrapuntalist--in fact, the only one I know of. There are oodlums of other examples, but the only one I can come up with off-hand is the Bb major fugue from Book II of the Well-Tempered Clavier. Compare ms. 32-36 with ms. 40-43.



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Bach even outshines composers he pays tribute to. A "chorale prelude" consists of an already existing hymn tu