Why is Bach so great and IMPORTANT?

[musicioso]

Hallo everyone..

I read and heard many many times that Bach is probably most important composer in the history of western music and that without him things would be different and many musical ideas wouldnt even exist now.


Can you guys explain to me why is Bach so special? I mean works of Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, Rachmaninoff etc. are much more difficult to play. Then why is Bach considered the father of western classical music?

Can you also name some of Bachs most important pieces and tell me why they are so valuable?

[lontano]

Hallo everyone..

I read and heard many many times that Bach is probably most important composer in the history of western music and that without him things would be different and many musical ideas wouldnt even exist now.


Can you guys explain to me why is Bach so special? I mean works of Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, Rachmaninoff etc. are much more difficult to play. Then why is Bach considered the father of western classical music?

Can you also name some of Bachs most important pieces and tell me why they are so valuable?

What a question! Read a biography of Bach. Get to know some of his music and gradually try to put together a musical image of who Bach was and what he contributed to most of the music that followed him. Having died in 1750, he is considered to be the last, and greatest, of the Baroque composers, and was even looked on with a bit of disdain in his later years. He created the "Well-Tempered" tuning method that has been in use ever since, and used that method to create his genius works that make up the "Great 48 preludes and fugues". His mastery of counterpoint is unique. And the vast number of works, from the simplest lute piece to his wonderful Cantatas and on to the massive Passions and Masses profess the enormous genius. It is true that his music fell out of favor after his passing, but a few decades later we find the great composers from Beethoven through Liszt (and many more) being greatly influenced by the master Bach.

I believe it was earlier this year that a collection of psychologists, mathematicians & psychiatrists unanimously proclaimed J.S.Bach a true genius based on the supreme excellence of his compositional technique.

And remember that J. S. Bach fathered 20 children  all of whom received musical education. Keep in mind that if Bach was not the master he was, many of his keyboard works would not be mandatory learning for aspiring pianists.

L.

[presto agitato]

I read and heard many many times that Bach is probably most important composer in the history of western music and that without him things would be different and many musical ideas wouldnt even exist now.

I don't know, that is a "dangerous" statement. Vivaldi and Corelli were amazing composers and they began to compose very important music years before Bach. Even Beethoven said that Handel was the best composer of the baroque era.

JS Bach might have been the most important keyboard (not piano) composer. The Well Tempered Clavier is one of the pillars of keyboard composition but let us not forget that Domenico Scarlatti wrote more than 500  keyboard sonatas.

Can you guys explain to me why is Bach so special? I mean works of Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, Rachmaninoff etc. are much more difficult to play. Then why is Bach considered the father of western classical music?

The works of the composers you mention are as hard as Bach's works. His pieces require a very good finger independence technique, clear tone, legato (without pedal), cerebral difficulty (fugues). Have you ever listened to his six keyboard partitas? Goldberg variations?

Can you also name some of Bachs most important pieces and tell me why they are so valuable?

Golberg variations, Italian concerto, Six partitas and TWTC
Needless to say, you need to listen to them in order to assimilate their greatness.

[stevebob]

He created the "Well-Tempered" tuning method that has been in use ever since ....

One small clarification:  well temperaments haven't been employed continuously on keyboard instruments since Bach's time.  Well temperament demonstrated a tuning in which all key signatures could be usable, but it isn't quite the same as equal temperament we now take for granted.

[keyboardclass]

A lot of it is puff.  After his death he was set up by a number of scholars as the originator of the German Keyboard School - and it stuck.  Bach was indeed the greatest musical mind of his age but there is so much great Baroque music apart from the usual suspects, it's a shame they over-shadow.    

[pianist1976]

I really love this question because I agree with the most part of it: Bach probably is, with Beethoven and very few others, one of the most influential composer in western music.

- During Bach lifetime he wasn't worldwide known, his fame was restricted to northern Germany but he had a good friendship (by letter) with another great composers of his time. One of his best letter friends was the also great Francois Couperin. They may had been influenced to each other. It's a pity that, as I know, most of this correspondence is lost.

- Bach music is a compendium of his past and contemporary music. He learned from the scores (and also transcribing concerts) of masters such as Schutz, Buxtehude, Froberger, Frescobaldi and also Vivaldi, Corelli, Telemann and Händel.

- He was a humble an generous musician. He admired a lot both to contemporaries and past masters.

- He perfected the tonal harmony system. He used many apoggiaturas, harmonic delays, enriched chords (7ths, 9ths, 2ths), modulations, far tonal regions and secondary dominants that were unknown at his time. This harmonic revolution had a greater impact several years after his death, when the adult Mozart and the young Beethoven played The Well Tempered Clavier. Of course this influence was notably increased withing the next generations of composers. Many of the audacious harmony discoverings of Bach can be found on the scores of Chopin, Schumann and even Wagner and, in a lesser way, of course, later composers as Debussy. Even Stravinsky had a neo-clasical composition period in which he looked back to Bach.

- He was one of the very few great composers who cultivated all the genres (except for the opera but we have some profane cantatas like "Coffee Cantata" with a structure similar to a little opera). He excelled both in instrumental, chamber, orchestra and choral music.

- His polyphonic mind and music imagination never was scared by the theoretical limits of the instrument: we do find some amazing examples in the cello and violin suites and partitas (and many other pieces for other instruments).

- He was a master of the music form (just a little example among many: think of the revolutionary development of Brandemburg Concert no. 2 which looks like a big sonata/symphony development). He also had a very imaginative music mind that helped him to write the melodies and he also was a true master of the counterpoint.

- Although his immediate influence was rather limited in his lifetime, he influenced a lot on the next generations indirectly: two of his sons established a lot of the basis of the new artistic movement called to substitute the Baroque: the Classicism. Both Carl Phillip Emmanuel and Johan Christian Bach were very valued composers on his time, being admired by great composers such as Haydn and Mozart.

Can you guys explain to me why is Bach so special? I mean works of Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, Rachmaninoff etc. are much more difficult to play. Then why is Bach considered the father of western classical music?

Without the direct or indirect influence of Bach, the works of the artists above mentioned would be written probably in another very different way. Please, don't underestimate the difficulty of Bach's works. Bach is one of the most delicate and difficult composers to play (in my opinion). And he's also one of the most difficult composers to master. I think, for example, in Two parts Invention no. 4. Apparently not very difficult, just two printed pages, only two voices, no hand crossing, one voice per hand. Hundreds of thousands of piano students (or maybe millions...) plays this work right now. How many play it well? Who of them do a real dialog between the tow voices? How many of them makes singing the piano (in the case they are pianists)? How many of them plays equally and evenly both hands? The answer is... just take a tour on Youtube and judge by yourselves

Of course you can also think on the extreme difficulty of some Bach works such as Goldberg's, partitas 4 & 6, some of the WTK preludes and fugues that are as, in my opinion, as difficult as Chopin etudes...

[ahinton]

This thread has been running for almost a day and a half now, yet gep has still not responded; come on, gep - where are you when your input is needed?(!)...

In the interim, may I merely throw in Mauricio Kagel's remark that, although not all musicians believe in God, "they all believe in J S Bach!" - with which, I submit, it would be impossible to argue other than on the grounds that God and Bach are one and the same (and if member pianistimo still posted here she would doubtless give us a lengthy screed on this one!). Personally, I thought that God was one of Bach's students, but then I could be wrong about that, I suppose...

Best,

Alistair

[musicioso]

Woow...a lot of information here! Thank you very much people.
I read them all, and i will read them many more times for sure, to understand all this stuff.

[keyboardclass]

Please, don't underestimate the difficulty of Bach's works. Bach is one of the most delicate and difficult composers to play (in my opinion). And he's also one of the most difficult composers to master. I think, for example, in Two parts Invention no. 4. Apparently not very difficult, just two printed pages, only two voices, no hand crossing, one voice per hand. Hundreds of thousands of piano students (or maybe millions...) plays this work right now. How many play it well? Who of them do a real dialog between the tow voices? How many of them makes singing the piano (in the case they are pianists)? How many of them plays equally and evenly both hands? The answer is... just take a tour on Youtube and judge by yourselves

No need to tour.  We bring it to your doorstep!

[gep]

Why is Bach so great and important…

Hmm, difficult question to answer. One could say that he was both the pinnacle of the development of music up to his time, and the foundation of much that came after him. You could say he was a “hinge” in musical history, not unlike Monteverdi before him, or Beethoven after him.
Why was (and is, and will remain) he great? Hmm, some random and quick thoughts:
1)   His music is always recognisable from the onset, in each and every piece, and usually within a bar or even less. To be able to do so in a huge body of works in all shapes, sizes and forms and even in the very simplest ones is something only the very greatest of composers manage, and even then not as consistently as Bach.
2)   All his music is of high, higher or even highest quality, written with full attention to each detail (no matter how small) and purpose; no run-of-the-mill works one even finds in Beethoven and Mozart.
3)   The unsurpassed, and probably unsurpassable, ability to write music that is always fresh, always new. There is not a single work that ever gets boring.
4)   The great emotional content, that is never a mere effect, but neither ever an “ego-document”, so that his music can speak to the emotions of people of all kinds and backgrounds. His music is clean of any personal input (i.e. you can never tell how Bach felt personally at the moment he was writing this or that music), never about his own “ego” (as is Mahler’s or Beethoven’s), yet always humane. Especially in his vocal music the emotional content is always precisely cut to the textual intent (the “affect” if you want) that is always completely natural, open and honest. Rather to the contrary of much music of his contemporaries, where the affect is mostly effect (if, in the good ones, to considerable effect!). Though this, one can always relate to the music, despite the temporal and cultural distance between Bach and us. (One more reason why his music is always new and fresh!). Bach’s music doesn’t express emotion, or emulate it. His music IS the emotion!
5)   His music is always “exactly right”. You cannot alter one note, let alone add of remove one, without deteriorating the music. As such, his music is the most perfect I know. Most composers who compulsory want to “perfect” their music write music that is, to greater or lesser degree, stiff and unnatural. Bach’s is perfect naturally, as if it could not be different. Yet compare that to the fact that Bach often used the same music in various guises (for ex, transcribe a violin concerto for harpsichord), and both versions sound perfect. In all other composers adaptations sound like adaptations.
6)   His supreme mastery in each and every field he worked in. Be it church cantata (which was a “public work”), abstract composition (such as the Partitas and Suites), educational works (such as the Notenbüchlein), grand vocal/orchestral works (the High Mass), whatever keyboard or instrument and even dramatic works (the “Secular Cantatas”). Play a Bach Violin Concerto and a Vivaldi one. Play a Bach Cantata and a Telemann one. Etc., etc..  No other composer was ever so completely successful in every field they worked. In Bach’s days, all composers were expected to work in every field; the result is that every composer displays stronger and weaker abilities, some were better in Concertos, some better in vocal works. Bach is strong in every field (barring opera, which he didn’t write; I have no doubt he would have excelled there too). Later composers started focussing on their “strong points”, and avoided their weak points. Hence no Brahms Opera or Mahler Concerto.


Personally, I can only say Bach is so great because he wrote as Bach. And he is important to my mind just as eating and drinking is to my body: ultimate sustenance. Only yesterday evening, after a rather unusual troublesome day, I listened to his Sonata no. 3 for Solo Violin (played by the incomparable Johanna Martzy). The power of that music! Truly when listening to that I could say that, for as long as the music played, “Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen”. Few other composers manage that so fully!

As to Alistair’s comparison, I one heard a musician say that for him, if Bach wasn’t in Heaven performing, he had no intention of going there. And that if Heaven exists, Bach has been the one composer who listened under the window. Can’t argue with that!

Just some random thoughts, written quickly. Add more if you want.

This thread has been running for almost a day and a half now, yet gep has still not responded; come on, gep - where are you when your input is needed?(!)...
Best,

Alistair

I hope this suffices, for now!

All best,
gep

[ahinton]

Why is Bach so great and important…

Hmm, difficult question to answer. One could say that he was both the pinnacle of the development of music up to his time, and the foundation of much that came after him. You could say he was a “hinge” in musical history, not unlike Monteverdi before him, or Beethoven after him.
Why was (and is, and will remain) he great? Hmm, some random and quick thoughts:
1)   His music is always recognisable from the onset, in each and every piece, and usually within a bar or even less. To be able to do so in a huge body of works in all shapes, sizes and forms and even in the very simplest ones is something only the very greatest of composers manage, and even then not as consistently as Bach.
2)   All his music is of high, higher or even highest quality, written with full attention to each detail (no matter how small) and purpose; no run-of-the-mill works one even finds in Beethoven and Mozart.
3)   The unsurpassed, and probably unsurpassable, ability to write music that is always fresh, always new. There is not a single work that ever gets boring.
4)   The great emotional content, that is never a mere effect, but neither ever an “ego-document”, so that his music can speak to the emotions of people of all kinds and backgrounds. His music is clean of any personal input (i.e. you can never tell how Bach felt personally at the moment he was writing this or that music), never about his own “ego” (as is Mahler’s or Beethoven’s), yet always humane. Especially in his vocal music the emotional content is always precisely cut to the textual intent (the “affect” if you want) that is always completely natural, open and honest. Rather to the contrary of much music of his contemporaries, where the affect is mostly effect (if, in the good ones, to considerable effect!). Though this, one can always relate to the music, despite the temporal and cultural distance between Bach and us. (One more reason why his music is always new and fresh!). Bach’s music doesn’t express emotion, or emulate it. His music IS the emotion!
5)   His music is always “exactly right”. You cannot alter one note, let alone add of remove one, without deteriorating the music. As such, his music is the most perfect I know. Most composers who compulsory want to “perfect” their music write music that is, to greater or lesser degree, stiff and unnatural. Bach’s is perfect naturally, as if it could not be different. Yet compare that to the fact that Bach often used the same music in various guises (for ex, transcribe a violin concerto for harpsichord), and both versions sound perfect. In all other composers adaptations sound like adaptations.
6)   His supreme mastery in each and every field he worked in. Be it church cantata (which was a “public work”), abstract composition (such as the Partitas and Suites), educational works (such as the Notenbüchlein), grand vocal/orchestral works (the High Mass), whatever keyboard or instrument and even dramatic works (the “Secular Cantatas”). Play a Bach Violin Concerto and a Vivaldi one. Play a Bach Cantata and a Telemann one. Etc., etc..  No other composer was ever so completely successful in every field they worked. In Bach’s days, all composers were expected to work in every field; the result is that every composer displays stronger and weaker abilities, some were better in Concertos, some better in vocal works. Bach is strong in every field (barring opera, which he didn’t write; I have no doubt he would have excelled there too). Later composers started focussing on their “strong points”, and avoided their weak points. Hence no Brahms Opera or Mahler Concerto.


Personally, I can only say Bach is so great because he wrote as Bach. And he is important to my mind just as eating and drinking is to my body: ultimate sustenance. Only yesterday evening, after a rather unusual troublesome day, I listened to his Sonata no. 3 for Solo Violin (played by the incomparable Johanna Martzy). The power of that music! Truly when listening to that I could say that, for as long as the music played, “Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen”. Few other composers manage that so fully!

As to Alistair’s comparison, I one heard a musician say that for him, if Bach wasn’t in Heaven performing, he had no intention of going there. And that if Heaven exists, Bach has been the one composer who listened under the window. Can’t argue with that!

Just some random thoughts, written quickly. Add more if you want.

I hope this suffices, for now!

All best,
gep

I couldn't have put this better myself. In fact, I couldn't have put it as well myself!

Best,

Alistair

[thalbergmad]

Don't forget J C. He was pretty important as well.

This makes J S even more important, as obviously we would not have had J C if it were not for J S.

Thal

[keyboardclass]

Hey, and WF!

and CPE!

[ahinton]

Sure - as has been noted here, J S was prolific in fathering Bachs just as he was in fathering pieces, but I suppose the honest and literal answer to the question has to be "because he is!" - how anyone could achieve what he did to the extent that he did and as consistently as he did is quite beyond me - and, as another slant on this greatness and importance, a pianist known to members of this forum and who puts in occasional appearances here has said that he has yet to encounter problems in any of the music that he is preparing that are not amenable to solutions that can be found in the keyboard works of Bach and Chopin.

Best,

Alistair

[djealnla]

His music is always “exactly right”. You cannot alter one note, let alone add of remove one, without deteriorating the music.

I've actually improved the Art of the Fugue.   

Sure - as has been noted here, J S was prolific in fathering Bachs just as he was in fathering pieces, but I suppose the honest and literal answer to the question has to be "because he is!" - how anyone could achieve what he did to the extent that he did and as consistently as he did is quite beyond me - and, as another slant on this greatness and importance, a pianist known to members of this forum and who puts in occasional appearances here has said that he has yet to encounter problems in any of the music that he is preparing that are not amenable to solutions that can be found in the keyboard works of Bach and Chopin.

Best,

Alistair

Where's Jonathan Powell?   

Best,

Johann Sebastian

[gep]

I've actually improved the Art of the Fugue.   

Somehow I doubt that....

Where's Jonathan Powell?   

Best,

Johann Sebastian

To my knowledge, still touring and no doubt being a  huge success at it. Unless he's already back, of course!

all best
gep

[sashaco]

I can't imagine why anyone would think that the "difficulty" of pieces should have anything to do with their quality or ability to influence the course of music history in more than a superficial way.

In answering the question "What makes Bach the FATHER of classical music" I believe the key element is the demonstration that he offers of the pallate available in the tonal system.  Others have pointed out above how he explored the posibilities in modulations to distant keys, used secondary dominants and enriched chords in previously unimagined ways.  When we teach Western harmony we teach Bach, plain and simple.  Contrapuntally he's equally inventive. Some of his counterpoint when described formally, sounds as if it constitutes some sort of puzzle challenge no human being could solve.

It is hard, but not impossible, to imagine that the course of music would have been very different without this display of the myriad possibilities of the tonal system.  Some  people (even given the variety that stems from Bach) find the composers of modal music sound remarkably fresh to their ears, as though tonal music has somehow staled.  If Baroque music had consisted only of harmonies like those of Handel and Vivaldi, great as they are, the next generation might have started looking for different ways to sound new and fresh.  We can't know, of course.

All the praise of Bach as a composer offered here I'd agree with, of course, but what makes him so important is that he showed possibilities that without him might never have been explored.

(Has anyone read James Thurber's "What if Grant Had Been Drinking at the Battle of Appomatox"?)

[gep]

I can't imagine why anyone would think that the "difficulty" of pieces should have anything to do with their quality or ability to influence the course of music history in more than a superficial way.

So very true, and so very difficult for some people to understand....

In answering the question "What makes Bach the FATHER of classical music" I believe the key element is the demonstration that he offers of the pallate available in the tonal system.  Others have pointed out above how he explored the posibilities in modulations to distant keys, used secondary dominants and enriched chords in previously unimagined ways.  When we teach Western harmony we teach Bach, plain and simple.  Contrapuntally he's equally inventive. Some of his counterpoint when described formally, sounds as if it constitutes some sort of puzzle challenge no human being could solve.

It is hard, but not impossible, to imagine that the course of music would have been very different without this display of the myriad possibilities of the tonal system.  Some  people (even given the variety that stems from Bach) find the composers of modal music sound remarkably fresh to their ears, as though tonal music has somehow staled.  If Baroque music had consisted only of harmonies like those of Handel and Vivaldi, great as they are, the next generation might have started looking for different ways to sound new and fresh.  We can't know, of course.

All the praise of Bach as a composer offered here I'd agree with, of course, but what makes him so important is that he showed possibilities that without him might never have been explored.

I cannot argue with you here! Vivaldi may have his qualities, but play a Vivaldi violin concerto after a Bach violin concerto and your point is proven.
Your remarks here are quite close to the "talent is the abillity to hit a target nobody else can hit, genius is the abillity to hit a target nobody else can see". One might add "Bach had the talent to hit a myriad of targets nobody else could even imagine".

[ahinton]

So very true, and so very difficult for some people to understand....
I cannot argue with you here! Vivaldi may have his qualities, but play a Vivaldi violin concerto after a Bach violin concerto and your point is proven.
Your remarks here are quite close to the "talent is the abillity to hit a target nobody else can hit, genius is the abillity to hit a target nobody else can see". One might add "Bach had the talent to hit a myriad of targets nobody else could even imagine".

Indeed so - yet what makes this so uncomfortable for some of us composers is that Bach set such examples with utter ease (subconsciously, of course) but the rest of us can barely even contemplate how He ever managed to do so, let alone achieve all the things that He did. I suppose that one of the things that continues to amaze me about Bach is not only that He could do what He did but that He could do it with such ridiculous consistency; there are times when I am tempted to think that He ought to have had the human decency to write some comparatively mediocre music from time to time, just to show that He was human and fallible like the rest of us, but this seems to be one thing that He found either very difficult or completely unnecessary or both!

I make no apologies for capitalising the third person singular in the above.

Best,

Alistair

[djealnla]

Deleted

[slow_concert_pianist]

You all seem to be missing the POINT.

The point is without Bach, Bartok would not have produced his repertoire. Some argue that Beethoven's deafness was a mere inconvenience. Bach wrote his most perfect fugues BLIND and he dictated the parts to a scribe. He is and always will be the very essence of music. Bach is the greatest composer, but Beethoven wrote the greatest works.

[sashaco]

Gosh Slow, I thought that was exactly what I said.  I meant to suggest that it is possible that without Bach the entire repertoire might have been very different as composers might not have found so many ways to use the tonal system as we know it.  I don't mind being misunderstood, but I'm not sure why all of us should be snapped at as if we were idiots merely because we expressed opinions that fail to align with yours not only in spirit but in precise articulation.  What's up with that?

[thalbergmad]

I don't mind being misunderstood, but I'm not sure why all of us should be snapped at as if we were idiots merely because we expressed opinions that fail to align with yours not only in spirit but in precise articulation.  What's up with that?

He has a superiority complex.

Thal

[ahinton]

He has a superiority complex.

Well, Bach certainly didn't!

Best,

Alistair

[gyzzzmo]

It is nonsense to claim that Bach is the 'most important composer ever', its just that he was the major composer of the baroque era and therefor influenced alot of later composers with his music.

And please, dont insinuate that the playing-difficulty of a piece has anything to do with the quality of the composer

Gyzzzmo

[orangesodaking]

And don't forget P.D.Q. Bach as well!