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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 spea

• hodgehog11 11mo ago
  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 limitations in the instruments and consequent styles at the time. Within those constraints, calling Bach an absolute titan of composition would be an understatement. But one wonders what he could have made without those constraints.
  • mitthrowaway2 11mo ago
    I'm not the GP but I can recommend Bach's Partita in D minor, said to have been composed after returning from travel to find that his wife had died and been buried in his absence. https://youtu.be/VfwVim0EybY https://youtu.be/VfwVim0EybY Brahms said of it: "On one stave, for a small instrument, the man writes a whole world of the deepest thoughts and most powerful feelings. If I imagined that I could have created, even conceived the piece, I am quite certain that the excess of excitement and earth-shattering experience would have driven me out of my mind."
    • cons0le 11mo ago
      best version here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZFOhkGGr8A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZFOhkGGr8A
      • mitthrowaway2 11mo ago
        That's a completely different piece, but also beautiful!
  • poly2it 11mo ago
    You should listen to Hilary Hahn's renditions of Bach's partitas and sonatas. She brings out the subtleties of Bach's composing beautifully, and the purity of his music is easy to appreciate in these solo pieces. https://inv.nadeko.net/playlist?list=PLor_18TcpRrxQmne5_SKRyMvrLD74j-K5 https://inv.nadeko.net/playlist?list=PLor_18TcpRrxQmne5_SKRy... (YouTube proxy)
    • cons0le 11mo ago
      Lately lots of japanese players have been tearing it up https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZFOhkGGr8A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZFOhkGGr8A
    • scns 11mo ago
      > You should listen to Hilary Hahn's Absolutely > renditions of Bach's partitas and sonatas. Don't think so. Her recordings of his violin concerts on the other hand are able to clearly show his genius due to the more complex orchestration and interplay between the different instruments.
      • poly2it 11mo ago
        I mean, I enjoy them too. Good mention. I had a feeling the parent wasn't a fan of the baroque counterpoint, and the violin concertos feature more of that.
  • lordleft 11mo ago
    Sure! When I think of why I love Bach, I often think of works where he demonstrates an ability to express often conflicting emotions at the same time. For example, in St. Mathew’s Passion, there’s a famous piece entitled “Mache Dich, Mein Herze” — it’s sung at a part where the followers of Christ are laying his body to rest, and somehow merges genuine despair with hope, representing the promise of resurrection. I think his ability to represent despair and hope at the same time is pretty extraordinary. Other pieces I love are the 3rd and 5th Brandenburg concertos, as well as “Wachet Auf”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgXL_wrSPF0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgXL_wrSPF0 No shade if he still doesn’t click with you. I’m just particularly ardent on the subject of Bach and baroque music!
    • lo_zamoyski 11mo ago
      I presume you know Zelenka as well, a contemporary of Bach's (both knew each other and respected each other as composers).
      • 1718627440 11mo ago
        There were a lot of these components in middle Germany at that time. Basically every reigning dynasty employed one, and there were a lot of those. They aren't famous now, but Bach wasn't famous at that time either. That he is famous now, is due to Mendelsohn.
        • 1718627440 11mo ago
          s/components/composers/
      • inglor_cz 11mo ago
        Jan Dismas Zelenka wrote for the Saxon king, and many of his works were never released as a result. Then, they burnt to ashes in 1945. The only extant copies were caught in the bombing of Dresden. We tend to think of "lost works" as something that happened in Antiquity. Nope.
        • 11mo ago
  • thinkingtoilet 11mo ago
    This is only scratching the surface but I will present one of his most famous pieces to people who might ask why something like this is said. Keep in mind this was written 300 years ago. That's 300. fucking. years. ago. Think about how dated something from the 80s might sound. How modern does this sound? How completely universal is it's beauty? To me, this could have been written today and still sound fresh and beautiful. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWoI8vmE8bI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWoI8vmE8bI This piece is still deeply moving despite centuries of tastes changing. This is only barely scratching the surface of Bach. As a musician, when I listen to other great musicians speak, they all speak about Bach as the best. Of course that's subjective, and there are no 'wrong' answers on who is your favorite, but when the feeling is so nearly unanimous amount people who are often, frankly, contrarian and counter culture it says something.
    • bombcar 11mo ago
      Bach is still found even in modern music - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2puubv2e0L4 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2puubv2e0L4
  • dylan604 11mo ago
    > But one wonders what he could have made without those constraints. I had a friend that said if Mozart/Bach/et al had access to modern music production equipment, they'd all write psytrance. But it is just another example of "take great talent from long ago and put them in modern day" comparisons.
  • PotatoPancakes 11mo ago
    Bach's most approachable music might be his cello suites. But also, I think there are two camps of fans of "classical music" (by which I mean music in the styles: Baroque, Classical, Romantic, Impressionist, etc). There are those who listen to the music, and those who play it. For the most part, those who only listen to music often prefer Romantic and Impressionist styles. From the moody and dramatic to the gentle and contemplative, these styles are very approachable to the untrained ear. But those who play an instrument (or sing in a choir) spend lots of time practicing and rehearsing and interpreting the music as it's written on the page. This extra time makes all of the little nuances of Baroque music truly come to life. The classic example is Bach's Crab Canon, which is a fine little piece of music... but once you realize that the whole thing is a palindrome, and you can actively appreciate how the same parts work in a forward and backward context, it becomes really interesting and pleasant. So if Bach doesn't do it for you, and you play an instrument, try diving into playing it yourself.
    • reactordev 11mo ago
      I cut my teeth on Bach on Cello when I was 7. By the time I was in high school I could play all the instruments. I still don’t consider Bach to be the genius everyone says he was. He was a nepo baby with a big purse. His brothers, his family, all musicians of note for prominent figures of society. However, his leaning on his long history of music within the family helped polish his work as structured which helped sell it. Now, Jean-Babtiste Lully was a character…
      • Aidevah 11mo ago
        >He was a nepo baby with a big purse. Interesting interpretation of "he was orphaned at 10 and left with nothing and had to go and live with his brother".
        • reactordev 11mo ago
          His father had lots of children, 4 of which became musicians, of which JSB was the last child, the baby. Barbara Margaretha tried to take the family purse (having already been twice widowed). JSB was “orphaned” but his older brothers were adults. Let’s be real. (Who gets married and dies 3 months later?)
  • tetraodonpuffer 11mo ago
    when it comes to Bach I am surprised more people don't mention pieces like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsxP-YjDWlQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsxP-YjDWlQ (arioso from the cantata 156, here for oboe) which I think stands up just fine against pretty much any other classical piece baroque or not. Personally I have a very big soft spot for his organ works, as I play (badly) some organ myself, and among those I don't see the trio sonatas recommended nearly often enough (here is a live recital of all of them, which is super impressive) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eK9irE8LMAU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eK9irE8LMAU among those I probably enjoy the most the vivace of BWV 530. Other favorite pieces are the passacaglia and fugue https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVoFLM_BDgs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVoFLM_BDgs the toccata adagio and fugue in C major https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Klh9GiWMc9U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Klh9GiWMc9U (the adagio especially is super nice), but there's so many. Among organists I often come back to Helmut Walcha, and am always amazed at how he was able to learn everything just by listening, him being blind.
    • bathMarm0t 11mo ago
      If you're going to give them the triosonatas, you gotta give them the good one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOTtDYTc5JY&list=PLCDB42413B27B2525 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOTtDYTc5JY&list=PLCDB42413B... Put on a good set of headphones and go sit in the corner. Also obligatory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ah392lnFHxM&list=RDAh392lnFHxM&start_radio=1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ah392lnFHxM&list=RDAh392lnFH... The thing I appericiate most about bach is: you can play it fast. you can play it slow. you can play it with an ensemble of random instruments. you can play a single voicing all by itself. all of it screams "musical". which, if you do play say, Tuba, or one of the larger instruments, is a godsend, as most of your lines in other pieces will bore you to death.
      • Tokkemon 11mo ago
        Nice to see the Zenph recording get some love. It's such a fascinating process they had to do. It's way better than the original Gould recordings with all his singing along.
      • 11mo ago
  • Tokkemon 11mo ago
    The Cantatas. All of them.
  • cons0le 11mo ago
    Try this one on for size https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ce8CDz9PUfs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ce8CDz9PUfs
  • biophysboy 11mo ago
    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.
  • orlp 11mo ago
    > Do you have any particular pieces in mind when you wrote this? (not me, but...) Bach - Passacaglia & Fugue in C minor, BWV 582 > But one wonders what he could have made without those constraints. Bach-Busoni - Chaconne from Partita No. 2 in D minor, BWV 1004
• layer8 11mo ago
  You should be aware that that’s a hugely subjective thing.
• hearsathought 11mo ago
  > 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?
  • tgv 11mo ago
    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-one who can so seamlessly merge content and form and achieve intellectually, musically and emotionally fulfilling results.
    • jancsika 11mo ago
      > 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.
    • hearsathought 11mo ago
      > This is a riposte at the level of "Then name all composers. Nanananana." It isn't. It's pointing out silly fanboying of silly people. > and everything that came before the Renaissance was, crudely put, simple music. Does "simple" mean worse? Using your logic, then eminem or taylor swift are greater musicians than bach. After all, pre-digital era, music was, crudely put, simple music. But then again, there are dunces who think lord of the rings or harry potter are greater works than the bible, iliad, aeneid, hamlet, etc. > So the commenter can be considered to be able to weigh Bach's merits against those of other artists'. The commenter was not only weighing bach's merits against his contemporary musicians, he was weighing them against all ARTISTS - musicians, poets, dramatists, writers, etc. The commenter claimed bach was the greatest artists. full stop.
• reactordev 11mo ago
  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.
  • dabluecaboose 11mo ago
    Danse macabre is a true masterpiece. Incredible composer.
    • reactordev 11mo ago
      Carnival of the Animals is better… Aquarium was my sons childhood theme song
      • stevage 11mo ago
        Organ symphony and piano concerto for me.
        • reactordev 11mo ago
          Someone yells from the back “What about the cellos?” :D
      • BeFlatXIII 11mo ago
        Carnival of the Animals introduced me to high-effort shitposting. There is no other way to describe the less-famous movements.
    • cons0le 11mo ago
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ce8CDz9PUfs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ce8CDz9PUfs
      • pfcd 11mo ago
        This performance is also very great (No. 1 only, not the whole concerto): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcsfDxojdV8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcsfDxojdV8
• mrbonner 11mo ago
  And if you don't agree with me, I don't have to explain to you!
• xav_authentique 11mo ago
  Interesting to read that the complexity in his music is praised and seen as speaking to the intellect, whereas that is not the case when it comes to complexity in software.
  • sambapa 11mo ago
    Why pay a dominatrix for a flogging when you can just stub your toe
  • pianoben 11mo ago
    complexity in software is invisibly-preceded with "unnecessary", and usually indicates software that is difficult to maintain or even to verify its behavior. A really cool software architecture can scratch a similar itch as a good fugue, but that's not its typical function nor is it the way we usually engage with software professionally. Bach's complexity, incidentally, is seldom "for its own sake" - the pieces all fit together beautifully and without extraneous movement. Contrast that with some lesser works by later composers like Liszt, where you often get the sense that a given passage could be reduced or removed without harming the work.
  • 1718627440 11mo ago
    That kind of complexity, which means attention to detail, quality, concordance and consonance between different components, is also praised in software. This is however not what we mostly think of when talking about complexity in software.
• Waterluvian 11mo ago
  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)
  • maroonblazer 11mo ago
    I picked up a collection of several hundred of his 4-part chorales. I like to flip through the pages and pick one seemingly at random and play it. While some hit me harder than others, nearly all of them express this "simplicity to depth" ratio. My latest favorite: Oh God, Hear My Sighs: https://soundcloud.com/nick66/oh-god-hear-my-sighs-bach https://soundcloud.com/nick66/oh-god-hear-my-sighs-bach
    • sudara 11mo ago
      Love the chorales, thanks for sharing that one.
  • vixen99 11mo ago
    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.
• jancsika 11mo ago
  > 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. Just to add to that-- the complexity of Bach is something like going half-way around the circle of fifths in the middle of a long fugue in G#-minor. And he does this not just for kicks, but because this is one in a 24-part polemic to push other composers/musicians to use his favored equal temperament tuning system. "Using my system, you too can visit foreign keys with confidence and ease! Never sound out of tune again!" That's the whole point of Book II of his Well-Tempered Clavier.[1] Similarly, Mozart's complexity was taking a social issue-- like egalitarianism-- and sneaking it into an opera by quickly composing 3 dances of different classes (and meters!) to be performed concurrently on the stage. Apparently he cued the on-stage musicians for each dance when he conducted the premiere of Don Giovanni. I mention the latter because Bach's favored textures were thick and busy, and Mozart's tended toward light and effervescent. There's a tendency to confuse texture with deeper musical complexity, and that can lead people to overlook Mozart's contributions and/or give Bach credit for the wrong things. 1: Lazy theory-- Bach wrote Book I so the keyboardist could tune first using equal temperament, then choose any key and sound in tune. But most collections of pieces (e.g., dance suites) were all in the same key anyway, so this wasn't much of a practical advantage. However, if he modulated to various keys in a single piece, then those keys would sound poor in just intonation. Then the musician would be forced to use equal temperament to play the piece! Unfortunately, not all of the fugues in Book II are as harmonically adventuresome as the G#-minor fugue, so a lazy theory it remains.
• dumpsterdiver 11mo ago
  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.
• prmph 11mo ago
  I disagree; I find many of Bach’s compositions to be devoid of heart, just intellectual in some mathematical way. Now don’t get me wrong, I do enjoy many of his compositions for what they are. The thing about music and many other arts is that it is a fools errand to attempt to give them a total ordering; there are things to enjoy about wildly differing styles of music that I think people do a disservice to themselves being restrictive. For example, some don’t like classical music because they say it’s not danceable. Well, duh it’s mostly not, but that’s not the point of it. It about enjoying the melodies and harmony and structure. So one can compare art on specific axes, but to say such and such is the greatest composer is kind of meaningless to me.
  • d-lisp 11mo ago
    What pieces do you know ? I mostly listen violin/lute partitas (I sometimes prefer them transcribed to classical guitars (I really enjoy Vidovic and Bream renditions)). I do really like the simplicity of such pieces, which I find to be very lyrical, of course in a far different manner than e.g. Vivaldi... The chaconne from the 2nd partita in D minor [BWV 1004] I find very powerful; very different from the Brandburg Concertos, which I tend to fancy less. I mean, of course in the thousand of pieces he wrote, there are pieces that you won't like, and "greatest composer" is an impossible and absurd proposition.
    • leephillips 11mo ago
      That chaconne is one of my favorite pieces of all time. I heard it first on guitar, played by Segovia, and, probably because of that, still prefer it on guitar to the original violin. I even used to play it, pretty decently, I think.
      • d-lisp 11mo ago
        I also play the Segovia transcript more than the urtext version (some would argue that this is kitch or innapropriate, but yeah ... why would I care ?) Well, you surely also are a Sonata No.1 [BWV 1001] enjoyer, aren't you ? I find the four movement to be exceptionnally good, and they cover a lot of ground.
• jawilson2 11mo ago
  Something I have always been interested about, but sort of afraid to ask because it is a VERY small jump to unintended racism... Are there any composers from other cultures that come close to doing what Bach (and Mozart, Beethoven, Stravinsky, etc) did? Like, I want to hear the Japanese equivalent of the Brandenburg Concertos or Mass in B Minor, all guns blazing. Don't tell me "well, it's the space between the notes that matter..." just overwhelm me with genius that is self-evident the second the music starts. I have a few theories, but haven't really researched it.
  • digdugdirk 11mo ago
    Just a point of context - you're looking back at Bach from a historical vantage point where he's been gobbled up and lumped together with the entirety of "western culture". To his contemporaries, he was a member of a specific national "culture", and influenced by the greats of other European (and non-European) cultures of the time.
  • cassepipe 11mo ago
    Different cultures have access and then value different cultural expressions. Asking why there isn't the japanese Bach is a bit like asking why there is no spanish Lee Changho You could make the argument of how elaborate is a piece of art but in the case of individuals like that they are so far off from the median person in their culture that it'd be quite hard to see their achievement as coming from their culture instead of their own cognitive abilities. The societies they grew into either fought them or allowed them to strive but that's about it.
  • nobodyandproud 11mo ago
    I’m a poor student of music and history but my opinion: Europe was a civilization in a perpetual state of war with power rarely concentrated, so even concentrated wealth was local and therefor still distributed amongst different kingdoms and nobles. This means more opportunity and support: One village/patron/noble/king doesn’t like your style? Go travel and find someone else to sponsor you. I don’t think this was possible elsewhere. East Asia for example—thanks in part to Confucianism—had China dwarfing most of the region, with a stifling top down meritocracy. And today, China and the United States have incredible sway over the globe I imagine things are stalled.