Is Bach considered technically hard or musically hard?

[future_maestro]

Yes I know its hard to make a bach invention have musicality, but what about all those little technical trills and stuff like that? Miss one note, and the whole audience will know.

[quantum]

I find your sig provides an intriguing commentary on your inquiry.

If one plays enough of Bach, one will begin to recognize the technical and musical challenges and solutions that may be applied.  

IMO, one of  the more pressing problems stems from the stratification with which many view Bach's music.  This idolization causes people to listen differently, or probably better put - listen less to the actual music while allowing the glamor of the figure to skew their aural pathways.  

[cbreemer]

Bach at his best is either musically hard or technically hard, or both. Luckily he never makes things harder than they need to be. He was never out to make performers' lives difficult, but he certainly did not spare them either.

As quantum says, a big part of the difficulty is that people listen extremely critically, more often than not get their Urtext out and check every note you play. More so than with any composer, even Mozart, you can't really afford any mistakes or flaws. It is both educating and frustrating.
I've played and recorded a lot of Bach but it seems to get harder instead of easier over time.
No better composer to develop self-criticism and a sense of humility. Having said that, everybody
should play Bach - as much as humanly possible. Because it develops technique and musicality
like no other music can.

[awesom_o]

Is Bach considered technically hard or musically hard?

Yes.

[flashyfingers]

Both?

[piano4567]

Both, but for me it's harder musically. I find the multiple lines in each hand very hard to follow, sometimes you have 12 different parts going on! It's extremely frustrating to practice but well worth it imo. Learning Bach well greatly improves your skills as a pianist I think.

[dcstudio]

Bach was the only composer we were required to play each semester at music school. yes Bach is very difficult. 

[iansinclair]

Both.  However, as cbreemer so accurately noted, he never made things harder than they needed to be for the music he wanted to write.  This is, actually, one of the reasons he can be technically hard -- there aren't any extra notes.  Not even the ornaments are extra or optional, and he didn't write them in a trivial way.  If he meant a trill, that's what he meant.  If he meant a turn, he said so.  And so on.  So mistakes are much harder to miss.  Perhaps that is why some feel that listeners tend to be extra critical when listening to Bach.

That said, some of Bach's music is not technically really difficult at all -- the French suites, for instance.  Most of the so-called "eight little" preludes and fugues for organ (they aren't so little, but that's irrelevant).  Some of the Orgelbuchlein (again, organ music).  On the other hand, some of the Orgelbuchlein pieces are fiendishly difficult!

To make such exacting music sound musical, though, is even harder in some cases.  For one thing, you are dealing with a somewhat limited (at least by piano standards) palette; no gradual volume changes (except in the orchestral and vocal music, and even there only with great discretion) for instance.  In listening to musicians with real skill at Bach (or, for that matter, other Baroque and Renaissance music) one finds that very slight shifts in tempo are very important in bringing out lines (it is possible to have moderately large tempo changes, too -- but Bach usually made those explicit).  In music for organ, the exact choice of registration for each line of the music is very important and can be very useful.  It can be overdone, however, very easily.

So... bottom line.  Bach can be either rather simple or ferociously difficult technically, and requires real discretion and thought musically.  And amply repays the work you put in!

[gr8ape]

I guess its like mozart, play like a robot and it will sound dull and boring. But thats true of all music so.....