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> It’s inconceivable that another composer could take Bach’s place in that slot. Even Mozart or Beethoven wouldn’t cut it. I'd pick Mozart. When listeners hea
by jancsika 9y ago
> It’s inconceivable that another composer could take Bach’s place in that slot. Even Mozart or Beethoven wouldn’t cut it.
I'd pick Mozart.
When listeners hear Bach enumerate what seems like every significant variation technique for a given theme, they can quickly attribute mastery upon hearing that one piece.
But someone with Bach's abilities could just as easily have only imagined all those variations as potential music, then chosen only a few excerpts for a lighter, shorter setting.
Now, imagine this alternative-timeline Bach wrote in a late 18th century operatic form. For each aria he a) picks a fitting style (or mashes up fitting/effective styles), b) imagines the set of possible music based on the character of the text, and c) chooses what he thinks is the most fitting from all those possibilities. (Also, throw in a bunch of hidden musical jokes along the way.)
That alternative-timeline Bach would be superior to the real Bach. Because he came after the real Bach his output includes real Bach's mastery of counterpoint (Jupiter Symphony, Intro to Requiem). Also alternative-timeline Bach can imitate real Bach's style at will (two-part invention at the end of Rondo in A minor).
The only difficulty is that the listener has to listen to a lot of alternative-timeline Bach before they start to get a sense of the scope of his mastery.
Well, good thing the slot we're trying to fill gives an audience plenty of time to hear a variety of music from this composer's output.
Bach++ ftw.
- asaph 9y ago> It’s inconceivable that another composer could take Bach’s place... I'd like to put my vote in for Lennon-McCartney. I know we're talking about classical music here and I'm not trolling. I just think they're the toppermost of the poppermost.
- jancsika 9y agoThere's definitely a lot of innovation with them, and not just in songwriting. For example, I can't figure why Helter Skelter has somehow managed to sound like it was recorded yesterday for five decades now. How many other recordings from 1968 sound like that? But I can imagine a world where an alternate Lennon-McCartney arranged all their own string parts, dominated the symphonic world, wrote wildly popular church service music, performed guitar showcase music with prominent (probably improvised) cadenzas, and had multiple hits running on Broadway. I think you could pick any single genre, burn everything else Mozart wrote, and he'd still be regarded as one of the greatest composers of his time. (That doesn't work for Beethoven because of the opera genre.) Rich people at parties are still playing the throw-away background music he probably wrote for a rich person's party. (Btw-- if you listen to the rest of his background music you won't be disappointed.)
- acheron 9y agoI'm only being partially facetious to say that the greatest themes in music are Beethoven's Ode to Joy, the theme from Bach's chaconne for solo violin, and the piccolo trumpet part from Penny Lane. (which was itself inspired by Bach's Brandenburg concerto #2)