Thanks to Dan Moller for sponsoring this video with his book "The Way Of Bach". It's available in both hardback and eBook here: www.amazon.com/Way-Bach-Three-Years-Music/dp/1643135805
I'm not a music person and I don't understand this musical terminology discussed in the video, but to see all these intricate details of how melodies are constructed is truly amazing. I've learnt that there's another world outside my own world.
Before knowing ANYTHING about music theory or even playing bass there was always something about Bach that enthralled me, my absolute favourite composer
Bach didn't invent what you describe as the "vertical axis of music = harmony, horizontal axis of music = melody." That began around 1600, generations before Bach was born. It's called the Baroque.
He also used chords which were - allegedly - ahead of his time. These juicy jazz chords last favour in the truly classical period sadly, but were revived by Delius, et al
@@padrepatta5535 Although, this video was okay. I was disappointed that only mentioned "mainstream" Bach pieces. He should've shown Bach's Saint Matthew Passion.
"When Carl Sagan was chairing the committee of distinguished scientists and thinkers assembled by NASA to determine which sounds and information should be included on the Golden Record, the topic of music came up. The group felt that if an alien species came across the record and could listen to it, they should hear some of Earth's music. One of the scientists on the committee - I can't remember specifically, I think it was one of the biologists in the group - said, "Hey, we should include the complete works of J.S. Bach." And then he thought a little bit and said, "No wait. That would be bragging." - from John Eliot Gardiner's Bach biography "Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven "
@@winterdesert1I have a «complete» set of Bach’s music on CDs, which has a limit of about 80 minutes per disc, way more than what’s possible to fit onto an LP (which is about 56 minutes if you don’t care about sound quality) and the set is on 172 CDs.
Bach’s emotional composing is also some of the best I’ve heard/played. The prelude from English Suite 2 in a minor for example contains an exceptionally well paced build up to several “chorus” or “drop” type moments where the main theme is played, only this time with an beautifully theatric left hand that transforms the theme with harmony into something truly hair raising. It’s absolutely amazing how someone can create something that emotive with only 2 voices.
'Several "chorus" or "drop" type moments where the main theme is played'? Are those terms from pop music? When you say "main theme"? Don't you mean ritornello? The prelude is structured like a movement from an Italian concerto.
Astonishing pieces. Virtuosic, mathematically intricate but still musical and with a sense of taking the listener on a difficult journey to a satisfying resolution.
If you like these Puzzle Canons you need to check out the Videos "BWV 1087 - 14 Canons" and "BWV 769: Vom Himmel hoch da komm’ ich her (Deconstruction)" on the Channel "gerubach". Believe me, your Mind will be blown.
That is the essence of Bach. Mathematics and music combined, the height of intellect and emotion together. His music may lack the full-on drama of later composers, but it is pretty dramatic within its constraint.
Bach, in his writing, is tapping into the Universal harmony that is found both horizontally and vertically as a simultaneous experience. We can find "fugues" in the forests and fields, in the streams and the ocean. In a snowflake or a rain drop. The Universal music is always present for anyone to hear. But most are too distracted with pedestrian, rote, predictable boring noise. Bach knew how to listen. His rewards are obvious. And great.
Quite honestly, you could have chosen _any_ of the canons and fugues from The Musical Offering to make the point. The 6-part fugue (ricercar, for the pedants) is particularly astonishing. Also, one of the last melodies he wrote, in The Art of Fugue, contains the sequence B♭-A-C-B. However, Bach was German, so he would have spelled it B-A-C-H...
It more than a sequence... it is the last subject we have of the last Contrapunctus ! But it is not the last. The first subjects fits with the other three and would likely have been the fourth subject of that fugue. Sadly, it unfinished, but, the more I look at that fugue, the more it looks like a puzzle you have to finish... Quaerendo invenietis.
Bach was a musical genius, but not because he composed canons and fugues and not because he composed a fugue based on a subject (not a "sequence") derived from his name. You're confusing ingenuity with genius. Renaissance composers were writing complex canons and ingenious ricercars more than a century before Bach was born. BTW, the 6-part Ricercar is composed in the style of Frescobaldi.
If you think about it they are hugely influential. Take a melody, repeat it, transpose it, reverse it shorten it , use different instruments to play it. You could see it as the building blocks of modern pop
“Beethoven tells you what it's like to be Beethoven and Mozart tells you what it's like to be human. Bach tells you what it's like to be the universe.” - Douglas Adams
Even without anybody telling me how great Bach was, I already got acquainted with his music in the late 1990s as a teenager and immediately knew he was like no other ordinary composers!
Bach's C# minor prelude and fugue from Book I of the 48 never fail to send chills down my spine; their profundity and beauty are magnificent. As Sir John Eliot-Gardiner rightly says, Bach is the composer's composer. He simply has no parallel in the history of music.
Breaking the rules as some more modern composers did is not so difficult, after all. Everybody can write a dissonant chord....the unmatchable greatness of Bach's music is to be so amazingly rich and complex while strictly following the rules
It's really not about following rules. It's about musical imagination. The rules were based on creations by people with imagination, and codified for the use of lesser mortals and students.
He created the "rules" for all without specifically intending it: The 371 Chorales for the Lutheran Church became the basis for Common Practice music simply because Bach was so consistent, especially in use of leading tone.
Bach's work is where many of these "rules" are derived. Often, the measure of how well a piece fits into the baroque style is a measure of how it relates to Bach's work. (Obviously there are other great baroque composers too) but Bach is certainly the figurehead. While you can sort of say that Bach invented the rules, he also broke them. Frequently. As someone who has studied classical and baroque harmony, Bach's works can be quite baffling. Sure, I can follow voice leading rules and conventional harmonic structure and end up with something that sounds decent, but Bach is the master. Simultaneously, he accomplishes amazing feats within this framework, while also knowing when he can break out of it and still have his composition sound pristine. Not only does he master all the rules, he also knows every exception and every way to break and bend the rules to create a masterpiece. Truly Bach is one of the greatest human minds to ever have lived on this planet.
Well, Bach was Chopin's, Beethoven's, Mozart's, Brahms', Liszt's, Mendelssohn's, Schumann's, Debussy's, Verdi's and Wagner's favourite composer, so you're in good company I guess.
@@publiovirgilio2238 How is it an objective fact? You can't "prove" some music is better than other music. Musical preference is biased by nature, although that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with it (I love Bach too!)
Bach's music is the only thing in the world that can make me weep like a crazy man for maybe 5 minutes non stop. He opens gates in your soul and lets some divine spirit flow into it
I do agree. Bach's music remains a total mystery to me. It combines beauty, harmonic complexity and depth. It does things to me that no other music does. Makes me feel humble, full of hope and often enough sends tears to my eyes. He is the master of all masters.
Check out Agnus Dei as sung by Andreas Scholl. Best music I've ever heard - over and over and over. Even though I'm an atheist - lol. And even though we had to say those words in Catholic church. I know what they mean and I don't care. I translate it as "humans are broken beings" which is generally on point.
I have to think that the greatest tribute to Bach's genius has to be the fact that there's stuff he wrote that everyone agrees works musically, but nobody agrees on *why* it works. He'll put in harmonies that the theorists can't explain, at all, centuries later, but there they are fitting in wonderfully.
It's also fascinating that modern tonal harmony was developed only at about the time Bach was born, by Corelli, as was tempering, which made possible the 24 keys. So with the arsenal that was invented just previous to his maturity, Bach was already going into distant keys and exotic chords, far from the original key a piece was in, that are more sophisticated than almost any tonal composer who came after him.
It’s amazing too think this music is hundreds of years old. I adore Bach. I love so much classical and started listening to it at around 4 years old. I enjoy an awful lot of music, but this stuff is the work.
When i listen to Bach, scenes/pictures come fast and easier to me. His music helps me create pictures in my head more than any other artist. Can't explain why.
Three phenomenal pieces, and yet not even the tip of the iceberg of this composer's genius. Great, effective explanation of how these pieces work. Awesome channel, keep up the great work!
One of the most impressive thing is also that after a few seconds and sometimes even simply at the 2 or 3 first notes you know that it's Bach without hesitation
I find the best thing about bach is that no matter how complicated or clever his pieces are, they never become unlistenable or boring. He always seemed to remember that he was writing music, not just exercises. This is a true mark of genius.
But when I was, like, 8 I still liked to read the dialogs at the start of each chapter. I didn't read the rest of it -- much more dense! -- until later.
I've long loved what Beethoven had to say about Bach. Doing a pun in the name "Bach," which is the German word for "brook," Beethoven said of Bach, "He should not have been called Brook, but Ocean!"
The interesting twist in that story was Beethoven was referring to CPE Bach, who was JS Bach's son. Not the composer of the B minor mass and the art of fugue!
@@sgwinenoob2115 And your source for this claim is? I can only find sources that say Beethoven was referencing JSB... and in fact no original source for Beethoven's remark that may put it into context - or even authenticate that it was actually made by Beethoven.
My skills as a musician and a musical scholar are amateur-level at best, but I've performed enough Bach (largely choir, some on piano) to be constantly amazed by his ability to connect things both horizontally and vertically.
Counterpoint isn't hard to learn, but it's 1000% hard to master. I've been studying it for several years and although I would say I'm good, I am nowhere near the level of Bach. I simply do not have his intellect and ingenuity!
You should do a video on the Passacaglia in C minor (especially on the fugue itself with the beginning pedal-theme being split and put on top of each other). Great video!
Full story will baffle you: Friederich II of Prussia was an enthusiastic and very well player of the traverse flute. Friederich was also a supporter of the then-new style Empfindsamkeit, which Bach disliked for it broke some principles of pure Baroque music (the handling of the "affects") So, during Bach's visit, Friederich asked JSBach to improvise on Friederich's (imho temporal strange) theme Friederich played a moment before. A musical provocation. JSBach immediately improvised on 3 voices, and even refined the material. A masterful reply. Then, Friederich asked for a 6 voiced fugue on the theme (an awful challenge; instant six-voiced fuges are a complete overkill and unheard of), which Bach wasn't able to produce immediately, but promised to think about it. After returning home, Bach crafted the Musical Offering on the theme, and sent it to Friederich. The Musical Offering is tainted for Friederich, specifically: It includes a technically absolutel challenging voice for the traverse flute., which was playable by 2-3 players in Europe only, including most likely Quantz, Friederich's flute teacher but certainly not by Friederich, himself. So, Friederich was able to read and understand the Offering, he was able to hear it (from Quantz), but he wasn't able to play it. Go to a life concert of the Musical Offering - you'll get the point. And it's marvellous. But they are very rare, because it's really challenging. Bach's biography also is pretty entertaining. He was one of a kind.
@@glenncater1 In 1705, a 20-year-old Bach walked an arduous, 250 mile (400 km) journey ON FOOT from Arnstadt to Lübeck, to hear the music of master organist Dietrich Buxtehude.
“All the good music has already been written by people with wigs and stuff.” Frank Zappa. You can surely say, Frank was talking about Bach. One genius talking about another.
@@rufoscar3 Zappa was a cool guy, and a lot of his appeal was his cynical attitude towards others. That being said, I don’t think he even breaks the top 20 composers of his time. He wrote music that was interesting, but much of it is unpleasant to listen to. I actually enjoy the way he composes, and he always makes unexpected decisions, but I don’t think he is even in the same league as Beatles, Zeppelin, Floyd, or Queen
@@TheJoyrunners I believe Zappa’s in a completely league composition-wise... Beatles, Zeppelin, Floyd and Queen made hits. GREAT pop hits. But it really doesn’t compare to Zappas most intricate works. My opinion, though.
6:10 although the Answer has the theme played up a fifth, it is not in g minor - it stays in c minor for the first bar. This is called a "Tonal" answer and usually requires a slight adjustment of the melody. In this case, the fourth note of the theme (as played in the Answer) is a C, not a D which is what it should be if the theme was literally shifted up a fifth. If it was an exact copy shifted up a fifth it would be called a "Real" Answer. Probably more detail than you wanted to include in this short video.
I'm certain that Bach would have won 'Who Wants to be a Millionaire', 'University Challenge', 'Mastermind' and 'Brain of Germany' - and all on the same evening! I'm an organist and think I remember thinking that JSB was special when I was about 9 years old. I didn't know why though. It's amazing to think that many of Bach's friends and colleagues thought that he was just an ordinary bloke. (I wonder why no one has yet made a Blockbuster Movie of Bach? Tchaikovsky, Grieg, Mozart, Chopin and even Stravinsky were featured in movies.) Come on Steven Spielberg! 'Bach To The Future' would be fantastic!
Douglas Hofstadters Book „Gödel Escher Bach“ sets this genius in relation to self referential art (M.C. Escher), mathematics (Kurt Gödel) and, ultimately, the very nature of the human mind… a great read even over 40 years after it first being published!
@@pierreyveshuet1763 I hate to break this to you, but you will need to read GEB again when you get to the end, to get all the self-references, puns and wordplay that you missed the first time through. I recommend a pencil and notebook...
Yes! GEB changed my life when I randomly found it in a friend’s attic years ago. It’s deep and yeah, you might call it pretentious from just looking at the contents but it’s written with a sense of playfulness. It’s a fun read. I owe a lot of my sense of self today to it.
Bach wrote a ton of pieces based on popular dances. Pop standards sure have changed through the centuries. Do not expect to find any virtuosity in today’s poptarts, trailer and ghetto “queens”, rappers, regaettoners and such similar fauna 🤣🤣🤣 Pop music is utterly mediocre garbage for uneducated ears, nothing else.
I only know 2 fugues in pop music. The first is the Carnival Fugue by Focus, and On Reflection by Gentle Giant. However the Focus fugue is more leant on baroque music (chromaticism, etc.), is the Gentle Giant one more modal and thus fitting in the 20th century. You gotta check this 2 bands out.
The crazy thing about Bach’s music is it transcends technology. If you imagine a super advanced alien civilization somehow hearing his music for the first time, you have to think they would be astonished. They would laugh at our space flight abilities and our computing power, but they would revere the mind of Bach. No matter how advanced we get, his music will always be high above it still. The beauty of how his counterpoint lines connect harmonically is something to be marvelled at. He could apparently completely improvise these fugues in 4 parts. Let that sink in. When great improvisers In the jazz world like Bird and Powell improvise they are playing over an established structure and harmonic roadmap. Bach completely improvised the harmony while improvising 4 separate melodies at the same time. Come to think of it, Bach might have been an alien 🤔
Thank you very much, dear David Bennett, I ordered the Dan Moller-Bach-Book. Very interested to play his violin-Sonatas and lute-Sonatas and will again play it on a viola. Up to now I love very much Albert Schweitzers Bach-Book. (Also his other theological books are brilliant.) Playing Bach on guitar is not too bad. But the sound of a baroque-lute is for this music in my ears ideal. And if you are lucky enough to play a baroque violin, happy man.
I love solving mathematical puzzles and I love playing music - however to do both simultaneously surpasses my human capabilities - Oh my dear J.S. Bach, we are only human - I am not worthy ! 🙂 BTW, one of the great things about Bach is that not only are his complex compositions great - but even his simple stuff is great - plenty of classic hummable melodies.
Then there another facet of his unfathomable genius: his output in the Leipzig years. All those cantatas, passions, and the rest, in addition to all the teaching, “babysitting”, performing, and familial stuff. A f8cking masterpiece every damn week; those cantatas!! His impeccable craft, and operatic expression and drama. Think about the tasks and timeline for each: compose, orchestrate, copy, rehearse….
I have thought on this for years. Unparalleled genius,. How on earth did he get time to sleep? Did he have a little Bach factory in his wine cellar with fifty students working around the clock copying? I jest of course... or, maybe he did! Anyway, for me the voice of heaven, if there is such a place, is embodied in his work without doubt.
I'm told that Handel wrote his Messiah in 24 hours - the same time it takes a qualified writer to copy the sheet music. In other words, he was literally inspired. Maybe Bach was as well ?
The editor might have mentioned that "the king of Prussia" was the exceptional Frederick the Great, a true genius in his own right, baroque composer, flautist and one of history's great generals.
David, I appreciate your obvious knowledge and theory on the subject. I had little formal training but, as an adult, sat down and taught myself to play a couple of Bach pieces I was in love with: keyboard part of the 5th Brandenburg Concerto (for that amazing 3-minute solo part) and the Italian Concerto (because everyone with some chops eventually plays that one). If ever you wanted to make a follow-up to this video, and were looking for source material from Bach, I'd love to see you address either or both of these.
I'm a Lutheran pastor, and in addition to proudly calling Bach one of our own, we call him the 5th evangelist (after Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) for the way he proclaimed God's word through his many compositions of sacred music.
@@hoon_sol G'day, Hoon Sol! I can fairly certainly surmise that Bach would have wanted you to discover the God he worshipped through his music. I would recommend getting a Bible and reading the 4 evangelists' gospels and listening to Bach's cantatas, St. Matthew Passion, and St. John Passion.
@@davidp.andersonpianorecordings Really? Seems like a rather modest assertion to say Bach intended for his music to evangelize the Christian faith. Bach was, after all, highly devout. I believe he even taught one of the Lutheran catechisms.
This first piece must have been recognized not only because it reflects logical beauty but because it symbolyzes or tells the story behind philosophical ideas developed at Bach's time: coincidentia oppositorum (idea that all opposite things can exist only when they are united: "yes" has no meaning if we do not understand "no", mirror reflects only if one side of it is dark (Jacob Boehme) etc. It was important religiously (God not above but within the world and nature, Spinoza) and politically (Leibniz, lived at times of Bach, developed an idea about substance that equally material and ideal and Rene Descates tried to explain simultaneous duality of the two totally opposite substances). It would be interesting to know if that musical masterpiece was a symbolic message to politician that he must be closer to people... Not being above something that is below, to avoid opposites...
Great vid. I'm starting to think that Bach, about whom I know very little, and Coltrane, about whom I know a lot, were musical brothers. Both seem to have been maximalists: Faster! More notes! Louder! Make it more complicated, more intricate. They both displayed virtuosity and beauty at the same time. Sometimes their musical ideas were games or experiments, but hardly ever at the cost of sloppiness or self-indulgence. They were absolute pros, after all. Spirituality too links them, in particular the spirit as a means of musical discovery and self-actualisation. I can feel Bach tickling me the same way Coltrane does.
They taught that in music GCSE but I’ve already forgotten their characteristics. Maybe a video which explains genres like canon, concerto, sonata, etude, etc.
When I learned from my Music History master in Year 4 (aged 8) that JS Bach had over 20 children, my first reaction was to ask at class how this preeminent Baroque composer still had the time and energy to write so much great music. It amused me greatly when my 9-year old grandson asked me precisely the same question just last year. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose!
I know that Bach was a genius after playing his music on a piano for 55 years. Even now I am still discovering new amazing musical achievements and structures in his music. In some keyboard pieces even just playing the bass clef alone is beautiful. What is also amazing is how quickly he wrote his music with lovely harmonic lines. I have loved his music since I was 12 years old and he is my fave!
Mr David Benett, thank you very much for sharing this rare musical interpretation that which would have or is resting safely in some music scholar's mind or would have gone unnoticed. The world is better now, after your sharing.
In Gödel, Escher, Bach, Douglas Hofstatter shows that Bach's fugues also contain patterns of fractal geometry, centuries before fractals were discovered - as opposed to Escher's graphic works which play with fractals around the time when mathematicians were trying to figure out fractal geometry and just couldn't crack it because they didn't have computers. Escher was just a tiny bit ahead of his time, while Bach was centuries ahead.
Most interesting and edifying. Question were other composers, in JS Bach's time of composing, doing the same things? I'd love to learn if he was alone in these composing "ways" or not.
The chorus of "Soak up the Sun" by Sheryl Crow relies on a four-bar chord progression. The first bar uses the I chord, the second bar uses the V chord, the third bar climbs from the ii chord to the iii chord to the IV chord, and finally the fourth bar uses the IV chord again. This chord progression doesn't sound too uncommon. Are there any other songs like that? If so, which ones?
I didn't know that song, so for a fresh ear it reminds me a little bit the chorus from "Tonight" by Seether. I'm not sure is this the same/similar chord progression but sound like that to me
Like a rolling stone by Bob Dylan is very close to this. It uses the exact same progression, but skips the V chord in the second bar. It does the same sort of walk up the scale with the chords. I’m sure there are plenty of other examples, but that’s just off the top of my head. That being said, I think this is a cool progression because it takes two common chords progressions and combines them into one interesting progression.
Thank you for giving some insight into The Master's capacity and way of work for this Bach _dilettante._ His music has been able to move me unlike any other, and it gives great reassurance understanding some methods that have kept his pieces close to my heart. Counterpoint and its mechanism I was familiar with, but wasn't aware of the mind-boggling extent this system of music was built into. Figures that a Baroque master composer would work via sophisticated, mathematical answers and counters, all the while creating harmonious flow - every chord with a purpose. As said in the video, logical and (because of that) beautiful!
You will find the genius of J.S. Bach in his piano partitas, and his Prelude in C Major (That prelude sounds like early impressionist music, but you must remember that the Prelude dates all the way back to the ancient baroque era. That's how advanced J.S. Bach was with his music. Chopin literally made his Etude Op. 10 No. 1 based on Bach's Prelude in C Major). He was way ahead of his times, he experimented with many different forms, techniques, ideas and counterpoint. He composed over 1,000 pieces, and a few of them were lost or unfinished. J.S. Bach revolutioned chorales too. He studied the art of church cantatas from the ancient German times. J.S. Bach was the one who came up with the term "improvisation." To learn music, he copied manuscripts from other composers and then implemented his own ideas. Later composers such as Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, Rachmaninoff, and even Ravel were all influenced by this idea of improvisation, even jazz musicians up to this day use that concept very heavily. J.S. Bach is the godfather of every single music genre, and he is often overlooked.
@@ethandeister6567: To the contrary, the diametric opposite is the truth: it's gotten more and more simplistic. I haven't seen any composer after Bach (or before him, for that matter) reach even remotely the same level of harmonic complexity that he achieved in some of his works.
@@ethandeister6567: None of those have ever come even close to achieving the same harmonic complexity as Bach. Just smashing together a lot of notes in a completely disharmonious way does not harmonic complexity make. Whenever those composers you just mentioned actually used complex harmonic movement in a successful manner, it was never anywhere remotely as great as what Bach did effortlessly. Stravinsky was decent, I'll give him that, probably the second best composer of all time, but a very distant second at that.
You only showcased the fugues and canons with the musical feats. Hope next time you would showcase more profound and intellectual fugues like the C# minor Triple Fugue and B minor Fugue from Well-Tempered Clavier book 1!
Got introduced to Bach very early on, as the basis for the main music in my favorite video game “Gyruss” (on Commodore 64) was Toccata and Fugue in D minor.
I believe Bach is one of the best composer of western music, but for people who might not know a lot about the Baroque era, Bach’s music wasn’t anything special, in fact it was considered outdated, he never had any real popularity like his son JC Bach. The first piece in the video is from the Musical Offering. The theme David talks about has a deeper story. One of the king’s men was one of Bach’s sons. The king knew about his father and wanted to see his improv skill. The theme was considered unable to be harmonized. So they were setting Bach up to fail. Instead, Bach improvises a 3 voice fugue on the spot. Today that piece is copper plated at the palace
This is a delightful way to express these complex musical concepts. How ironic that the ad inserted was for Grammerly software. One tiny correction: the answer is not a direct copy of the fugue subject because of the 'prominent dominant' requiring a tonal versus a real answer.
Among other aspects of Bach's genius is the inspiration and influence manifested in the kind of brilliance we get in David Bennett's videos! Thank you so much to both!! Bach's genius was so fertile, creating directly and indirectly truly inestimable, mind-boggling subsequent generations of creativity and insight, across so many genres and cultures. In piano pedagogy, you might say Nadia Boulanger (who required all students to learn the Well Tempered Clavier thoroughly) was a microcosm to Bach's macrocosm. Look at Boulanger's musical career, and exponentially multiply it. That would be a hint of what Bach was.
Videos like this make a big difference. So much information at our finger tips. Back then you had to be rich to learn something. Unless your family had a trade.
When I was in music school I wrote a 12 bar chorale, in the style of Bach, based on Protestant hymns as the cantus firmus every day. I still do them as fun puzzles for the classical guitar. No easy task….
Great work David! Excellent graphics with clear and precise descriptions of imitative counterpoint - so hard to do well. Although he wrote dozens of memorable melodies, Bach's preferred style of writing didn't become popular during his lifetime, or long afterwards, maybe because it had an academic and austere quality which made it less accessible to casual listeners. Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven greatly admired and respected Bach and in one his greatest works, the Jupiter Symphony, Mozart demonstrated how deeply he had absorbed Bach's techniques. Richard Atkinson's wonderful RUclips channel contains detailed analyses of counterpart in the major works of Bach and the great composers, but I think even Richard would be impressed by the clarity of your explanation and graphics. I hope you will get eventually have the opportunity to show how Radiohead and other modern musicians occasionally dip into Bach's bag of tricks.
This is a video that will find many people with great knowledge closely examining every word said. The bar is high. Thank you all … that’s why this jazz woodwind guy loves RUclips. 📣🎷
Merci. That was a great visual that you did at the end with the harmony and melody. I've been playing piano for only four months and am trying to learn music theory, and that was a lightbulb moment for me. I've heard the words but hadn't really grasped their meaning. I know music nerds (all those people that went to band camp) will laugh at this, but it is a completely different language.
Bach's music has such a technical and mathematical elegance about it that many performers (like Glenn Gould) end up sounding robotic playing it. It's why I really appreciate performers like Andras Schiff who can make Bach's music emote and sing.
To be fair, back in Bach’s day, there was only the harpsichord, which can be very mechanical sounding. Music today also has different meaning to us than it did for people back then. But I prefer a more emotional performance like you said, truth is we don’t know exactly how this music would of been performed
@@felipecortegana3209 WRONG. There were other keyboard instruments in the Bach's time besides the harpsichord. You forget the organ, clavichord and fortepiano. Bach's preferred instrument for private expression was the clavichord. Most people in Bach's time who played his keyboard music played it on clavichord rather than harpsichord, unless. of course, a harpsichord or organ was required. ALL keyboard instruments are "mechanical sounding." The very means by which, say, a pianist plays the piano involves mechanical connections between the keys and the strings and between the dampers and the strings. And you're forgetting that Bach didn't just compose for the keyboard.
What you really mean is that you prefer Bach's keyboard music be played s-l-o-w-l-y and with the drunken rubato that has become fashionable of late. Gould plays BWV 891: ruclips.net/video/vXrG1z-Ke9U/видео.html ruclips.net/video/uoMXBhzyQMM/видео.html Schiff's performance of the same work is BORING.
@@herrickinman9303 Nope, I just like someone who knows how to bring expression to a piano. And if you don't want to discuss the matter civilly, kindly go away.
Yeah totally. I had the same thought after listening to Bach. I heard he wrote a piece called "Two Claviers and a Harpsichord" back in the day. Big influence on Beck for sure.
Thanks to Dan Moller for sponsoring this video with his book "The Way Of Bach". It's available in both hardback and eBook here: www.amazon.com/Way-Bach-Three-Years-Music/dp/1643135805
Thanks!!!!
Thank you for a lucid and very entertaining presentation. It was over all too soon.
Bach was the best. Interesting a big teacher
and Bach said, let there be God ...
I'm not a music person and I don't understand this musical terminology discussed in the video, but to see all these intricate details of how melodies are constructed is truly amazing. I've learnt that there's another world outside my own world.
An Awakening for you.
kind of like atheists not knowing there is a world that exists with God.
You are a very sensible and teachable person. That's to be commended!
Bach seems like the Leonardo da Vinci of music. . . . .
@@adrianjohnson7920 He had a gift for very pretty melodies that few if any of his contemporaries had.
Before knowing ANYTHING about music theory or even playing bass there was always something about Bach that enthralled me, my absolute favourite composer
Same here
What a brilliantly simple but elegant idea: vertical axis of music = harmony, horizontal axis of music = melody. I love it!
It's a notion implicit in the idea of tonality itself. A chord is a verticalized arpeggio, and an arpeggio is a chord spelled out horizontally.
Bach didn't invent what you describe as the "vertical axis of music = harmony, horizontal axis of music = melody." That began around 1600, generations before Bach was born. It's called the Baroque.
@@herrickinman9303 I didn't claim Bach *did* invent it, and it was David Bennett who described it, not me...
He also used chords which were - allegedly - ahead of his time. These juicy jazz chords last favour in the truly classical period sadly, but were revived by Delius, et al
The first piece in the video is actually a concerto composed by Vivaldi that was transcribed by Bach for 4 harpsichords
Was about to comment this
I thought the same, not exactly "the" piece to present for Bach's ingenuity
Yes, the Concerto for 4 violins in B minor from L'estro armonico... one of the greatest examples of the Concerto grosso form.
Only advance level Bach fans can differentiate Vivaldi from Bach!
@@padrepatta5535 Although, this video was okay. I was disappointed that only mentioned "mainstream" Bach pieces. He should've shown Bach's Saint Matthew Passion.
"When Carl Sagan was chairing the committee of distinguished scientists and thinkers assembled by NASA to determine which sounds and information should be included on the Golden Record, the topic of music came up. The group felt that if an alien species came across the record and could listen to it, they should hear some of Earth's music.
One of the scientists on the committee - I can't remember specifically, I think it was one of the biologists in the group - said, "Hey, we should include the complete works of J.S. Bach." And then he thought a little bit and said, "No wait. That would be bragging."
- from John Eliot Gardiner's Bach biography "Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven "
I'm thinking the "Golden Record" in 1977 had very limited space. In 1977 all of Bach's works probably would have been over 100 records or more!
If I well remember a WTC book II prelude by Gleen Gould is included
What a lovely anecdote! Thanks
Ha ha! Yes, it would be bragging indeed. But then why shouldn't we brag? We humans did some incredible stuff, some of us.
@@winterdesert1I have a «complete» set of Bach’s music on CDs, which has a limit of about 80 minutes per disc, way more than what’s possible to fit onto an LP (which is about 56 minutes if you don’t care about sound quality) and the set is on 172 CDs.
Bach’s emotional composing is also some of the best I’ve heard/played. The prelude from English Suite 2 in a minor for example contains an exceptionally well paced build up to several “chorus” or “drop” type moments where the main theme is played, only this time with an beautifully theatric left hand that transforms the theme with harmony into something truly hair raising. It’s absolutely amazing how someone can create something that emotive with only 2 voices.
'Several "chorus" or "drop" type moments where the main theme is played'? Are those terms from pop music? When you say "main theme"? Don't you mean ritornello? The prelude is structured like a movement from an Italian concerto.
Perfect timing! I'm in the middle of Hofstadter's book "Gödel Escher Bach" and just discovered the trick in the canon cancrizan.
8:58 I love that you put the prelude in C minor in the outro after talking about the fugue. What a nice touch!
Bach says "coda", not outro. Outro was a joke on intro...but no such thing as an outroduction.
Astonishing pieces. Virtuosic, mathematically intricate but still musical and with a sense of taking the listener on a difficult journey to a satisfying resolution.
If you like these Puzzle Canons you need to check out the Videos "BWV 1087 - 14 Canons" and
"BWV 769: Vom Himmel hoch da komm’ ich her (Deconstruction)" on the Channel "gerubach".
Believe me, your Mind will be blown.
@@rudigerk Thanks, I will.
In fact, while you’re there, watch every single video by gerubach! He is not an absolute legend for nothing ;)
Explain how Bach's music is "mathematically intricate." What does "mathematically intricate" even mean?
That is the essence of Bach. Mathematics and music combined, the height of intellect and emotion together. His music may lack the full-on drama of later composers, but it is pretty dramatic within its constraint.
Bach, in his writing, is tapping into the Universal harmony that is found both horizontally and vertically as a simultaneous experience. We can find "fugues" in the forests and fields, in the streams and the ocean. In a snowflake or a rain drop. The Universal music is always present for anyone to hear. But most are too distracted with pedestrian, rote, predictable boring noise. Bach knew how to listen. His rewards are obvious. And great.
Quite honestly, you could have chosen _any_ of the canons and fugues from The Musical Offering to make the point. The 6-part fugue (ricercar, for the pedants) is particularly astonishing.
Also, one of the last melodies he wrote, in The Art of Fugue, contains the sequence B♭-A-C-B. However, Bach was German, so he would have spelled it B-A-C-H...
For those who don't know, B natural is synonymous with H in German.
It more than a sequence... it is the last subject we have of the last Contrapunctus ! But it is not the last. The first subjects fits with the other three and would likely have been the fourth subject of that fugue. Sadly, it unfinished, but, the more I look at that fugue, the more it looks like a puzzle you have to finish... Quaerendo invenietis.
He uses his BACH theme in a lot of his pieces, usually in the climax of the piece, as a kind of signature
Yea he loved to write his name in his later works
Bach was a musical genius, but not because he composed canons and fugues and not because he composed a fugue based on a subject (not a "sequence") derived from his name. You're confusing ingenuity with genius. Renaissance composers were writing complex canons and ingenious ricercars more than a century before Bach was born. BTW, the 6-part Ricercar is composed in the style of Frescobaldi.
I’ve always loved Bach. Counterpoint is fabulous. Fugues are probably my favorite musical form.
If you think about it they are hugely influential. Take a melody, repeat it, transpose it, reverse it shorten it , use different instruments to play it. You could see it as the building blocks of modern pop
So you never get fatigued of fugues?
@@andyharman3022 Fugues fascinate me fully. Of course, I take a break from them but keep coming back. Also, I've written a few myself.
@@quailstudios:
_Contrapunctus VIII_ is the single greatest musical composition ever devised.
Did you mean Favourite?
“Beethoven tells you what it's like to be Beethoven and Mozart tells you what it's like to be human. Bach tells you what it's like to be the universe.” - Douglas Adams
Even without anybody telling me how great Bach was, I already got acquainted with his music in the late 1990s as a teenager and immediately knew he was like no other ordinary composers!
RIGHT? Me too. Wanted to learn to play piano. Got various books, learned to sight-read - JSBach spoke to me like no other music.
Bach's C# minor prelude and fugue from Book I of the 48 never fail to send chills down my spine; their profundity and beauty are magnificent. As Sir John Eliot-Gardiner rightly says, Bach is the composer's composer. He simply has no parallel in the history of music.
His son CPE is a better composer, more exciting, original and dramatic.
yes, imo the best fugue by Bach! I love the richter recording. Very romantic but so gooood
You always do such a stellar job of illustrating the concepts you're explaining.
Breaking the rules as some more modern composers did is not so difficult, after all. Everybody can write a dissonant chord....the unmatchable greatness of Bach's music is to be so amazingly rich and complex while strictly following the rules
It's really not about following rules. It's about musical imagination. The rules were based on creations by people with imagination, and codified for the use of lesser mortals and students.
He created the "rules" for all without specifically intending it: The 371 Chorales for the Lutheran Church became the basis for Common Practice music simply because Bach was so consistent, especially in use of leading tone.
Bach's work is where many of these "rules" are derived. Often, the measure of how well a piece fits into the baroque style is a measure of how it relates to Bach's work. (Obviously there are other great baroque composers too) but Bach is certainly the figurehead. While you can sort of say that Bach invented the rules, he also broke them. Frequently. As someone who has studied classical and baroque harmony, Bach's works can be quite baffling. Sure, I can follow voice leading rules and conventional harmonic structure and end up with something that sounds decent, but Bach is the master. Simultaneously, he accomplishes amazing feats within this framework, while also knowing when he can break out of it and still have his composition sound pristine. Not only does he master all the rules, he also knows every exception and every way to break and bend the rules to create a masterpiece.
Truly Bach is one of the greatest human minds to ever have lived on this planet.
I’m heavily biased, but, Bach is my favourite composer of all time!
Same here!
Well, Bach was Chopin's, Beethoven's, Mozart's, Brahms', Liszt's, Mendelssohn's, Schumann's, Debussy's, Verdi's and Wagner's favourite composer, so you're in good company I guess.
I don't see any bias at stating and objective fact. Thouhg it is not my favorite, but he is the best, godlike.
@@publiovirgilio2238 How is it an objective fact? You can't "prove" some music is better than other music. Musical preference is biased by nature, although that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with it (I love Bach too!)
I also love Ravel (master of orchestration), Debussy and Delius.
Bach's music is the only thing in the world that can make me weep like a crazy man for maybe 5 minutes non stop. He opens gates in your soul and lets some divine spirit flow into it
Any piece(s) in particular?
@@pweidinger the last one that did it for me was this:
ruclips.net/video/quBYEomIAZM/видео.html
I do agree. Bach's music remains a total mystery to me. It combines beauty, harmonic complexity and depth. It does things to me that no other music does. Makes me feel humble, full of hope and often enough sends tears to my eyes. He is the master of all masters.
His music comes from an unearthly place.
@@bernios3446
Agree
i, as an experimental rocker think that Bach is truly the best musician that will ever be.
Almighty Bach
Check out Agnus Dei as sung by Andreas Scholl. Best music I've ever heard - over and over and over. Even though I'm an atheist - lol. And even though we had to say those words in Catholic church. I know what they mean and I don't care. I translate it as "humans are broken beings" which is generally on point.
Lil wayne>>>>bach
«Ever» is a pretty long time, but so far, I’m totally with you.
Bach was not only a musical and also textual genius, but he wrote the rules. He plays with music possibilities in an incredible and overwhelming way
Loved this video, great job...would love to see more classical analysis like this
I have to think that the greatest tribute to Bach's genius has to be the fact that there's stuff he wrote that everyone agrees works musically, but nobody agrees on *why* it works. He'll put in harmonies that the theorists can't explain, at all, centuries later, but there they are fitting in wonderfully.
It's also fascinating that modern tonal harmony was developed only at about the time Bach was born, by Corelli, as was tempering, which made possible the 24 keys. So with the arsenal that was invented just previous to his maturity, Bach was already going into distant keys and exotic chords, far from the original key a piece was in, that are more sophisticated than almost any tonal composer who came after him.
It’s amazing too think this music is hundreds of years old. I adore Bach. I love so much classical and started listening to it at around 4 years old. I enjoy an awful lot of music, but this stuff is the work.
Bach 😇
When i listen to Bach, scenes/pictures come fast and easier to me. His music helps me create pictures in my head more than any other artist. Can't explain why.
Because Bach didn't just make the music sing... he made the music tell a story.
Three phenomenal pieces, and yet not even the tip of the iceberg of this composer's genius. Great, effective explanation of how these pieces work. Awesome channel, keep up the great work!
One of the most impressive thing is also that after a few seconds and sometimes even simply at the 2 or 3 first notes you know that it's Bach without hesitation
I find the best thing about bach is that no matter how complicated or clever his pieces are, they never become unlistenable or boring. He always seemed to remember that he was writing music, not just exercises. This is a true mark of genius.
Bach is so boring sometimes, his son CPE wrote music that is so much more exciting, original and dramatic.
i have listened to G air 1000 times and I will listen to it next 1000 times
@@Alix777. Yet, no one agrees with you. ;)
@@MarcioSilva-ssiillvvaa I don't care b****, CPE is the best, that's it.
This made me think of the book: Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter. It is a very deep and challenging read.
I have this book sitting my desk right now! Very awesome
But when I was, like, 8 I still liked to read the dialogs at the start of each chapter. I didn't read the rest of it -- much more dense! -- until later.
Yes - an eternal golden braid! Bach shows us that truth is beauty, and beauty, truth.
I tried that book like 20 years ago and couldn't get it. I'm finally ready to try it again!
@@akeithing1841 Most people I know who have read that book have not read all of it. Good luck on your second try!
I've long loved what Beethoven had to say about Bach. Doing a pun in the name "Bach," which is the German word for "brook," Beethoven said of Bach, "He should not have been called Brook, but Ocean!"
The interesting twist in that story was Beethoven was referring to CPE Bach, who was JS Bach's son. Not the composer of the B minor mass and the art of fugue!
@@sgwinenoob2115 And your source for this claim is? I can only find sources that say Beethoven was referencing JSB... and in fact no original source for Beethoven's remark that may put it into context - or even authenticate that it was actually made by Beethoven.
@@dlevi67 This was once revealed to me in a dream
@@sgwinenoob2115 Oh, I see. I believe, as revealed to me in a dream tonight, that your dream got the initials wrong. It wasn't JSB or CPE; it was PDQ.
"The great Bach" for Mozart and Beethoven was actually CPE Bach, who was such a better composer than his father.
The phrase horizontal melody, vertical harmony is a stroke of genius.
My skills as a musician and a musical scholar are amateur-level at best, but I've performed enough Bach (largely choir, some on piano) to be constantly amazed by his ability to connect things both horizontally and vertically.
Counterpoint isn't hard to learn, but it's 1000% hard to master. I've been studying it for several years and although I would say I'm good, I am nowhere near the level of Bach. I simply do not have his intellect and ingenuity!
You should do a video on the Passacaglia in C minor (especially on the fugue itself with the beginning pedal-theme being split and put on top of each other). Great video!
the "musical offering" composed by him is already out of this world, he's more than a genius
If I'm not mistaken, Bach improvised some of these contrapuntal "exercises" at the keyboard on the fly... further proof of his genius.
Full story will baffle you:
Friederich II of Prussia was an enthusiastic and very well player of the traverse flute.
Friederich was also a supporter of the then-new style Empfindsamkeit, which Bach disliked for it broke some principles of pure Baroque music (the handling of the "affects")
So, during Bach's visit, Friederich asked JSBach to improvise on Friederich's (imho temporal strange) theme Friederich played a moment before. A musical provocation.
JSBach immediately improvised on 3 voices, and even refined the material. A masterful reply.
Then, Friederich asked for a 6 voiced fugue on the theme (an awful challenge; instant six-voiced fuges are a complete overkill and unheard of), which Bach wasn't able to produce immediately, but promised to think about it.
After returning home, Bach crafted the Musical Offering on the theme, and sent it to Friederich.
The Musical Offering is tainted for Friederich, specifically: It includes a technically absolutel challenging voice for the traverse flute., which was playable by 2-3 players in Europe only, including most likely Quantz, Friederich's flute teacher but certainly not by Friederich, himself.
So, Friederich was able to read and understand the Offering, he was able to hear it (from Quantz), but he wasn't able to play it.
Go to a life concert of the Musical Offering - you'll get the point. And it's marvellous.
But they are very rare, because it's really challenging.
Bach's biography also is pretty entertaining.
He was one of a kind.
BACH WASNT A GENIUS! HE WAS A SAVANT !! HE KNEW MUSIC BUT COULD NOT FIND HIS WAY HOME.
@@glenncater1 There is a difference between patriotism, and chauvinism. Considering your name,...
@@glenncater1 In 1705, a 20-year-old Bach walked an arduous, 250 mile (400 km) journey ON FOOT from Arnstadt to Lübeck, to hear the music of master organist Dietrich Buxtehude.
@@FancyNoises YES HE DID !! BUT WHEN HE WENT HOME HE COULDN'T FIND IT !!
That Prelude and Fugue in C Minor is one of my favorite works I've ever played. It's really fun to play.
“All the good music has already been written by people with wigs and stuff.” Frank Zappa.
You can surely say, Frank was talking about Bach. One genius talking about another.
Zappa was a great player but I think the quote was made to deflect from the fact that others in his generation were better at composition.
@@rufoscar3 Zappa was a cool guy, and a lot of his appeal was his cynical attitude towards others. That being said, I don’t think he even breaks the top 20 composers of his time. He wrote music that was interesting, but much of it is unpleasant to listen to. I actually enjoy the way he composes, and he always makes unexpected decisions, but I don’t think he is even in the same league as Beatles, Zeppelin, Floyd, or Queen
To equate Zappa with Bach is beyond ridiculous, and Zappa himself was too smart to have even thought something that stupid.
As someone said here on youtube, compared to Bach we all suck. Zappa is one of the suckers no doubt.
@@TheJoyrunners I believe Zappa’s in a completely league composition-wise... Beatles, Zeppelin, Floyd and Queen made hits. GREAT pop hits. But it really doesn’t compare to Zappas most intricate works. My opinion, though.
6:10 although the Answer has the theme played up a fifth, it is not in g minor - it stays in c minor for the first bar. This is called a "Tonal" answer and usually requires a slight adjustment of the melody. In this case, the fourth note of the theme (as played in the Answer) is a C, not a D which is what it should be if the theme was literally shifted up a fifth. If it was an exact copy shifted up a fifth it would be called a "Real" Answer. Probably more detail than you wanted to include in this short video.
No. I was interested to read your comment. Thank you. I'm going to go back and reread it now.
I'm certain that Bach would have won 'Who Wants to be a Millionaire', 'University Challenge', 'Mastermind' and 'Brain of Germany' - and all on the same evening! I'm an organist and think I remember thinking that JSB was special when I was about 9 years old. I didn't know why though. It's amazing to think that many of Bach's friends and colleagues thought that he was just an ordinary bloke. (I wonder why no one has yet made a Blockbuster Movie of Bach? Tchaikovsky, Grieg, Mozart, Chopin and even Stravinsky were featured in movies.) Come on Steven Spielberg! 'Bach To The Future' would be fantastic!
those shows all frequently feature questions about events that happened after his death, he'd perform terribly
Nailed it...
It is a wonder and a mystery to me, how much I love the music of a German man who died 272 years ago. He is still the best.
Your mum the best last night
Douglas Hofstadters Book „Gödel Escher Bach“ sets this genius in relation to self referential art (M.C. Escher), mathematics (Kurt Gödel) and, ultimately, the very nature of the human mind… a great read even over 40 years after it first being published!
I'm in the middle of this book right now and I discover more and more about Bach genius
I'm still reading ...
@@pierreyveshuet1763 I hate to break this to you, but you will need to read GEB again when you get to the end, to get all the self-references, puns and wordplay that you missed the first time through. I recommend a pencil and notebook...
Sounds like pretentious and BS and I'm a mathematician
Yes! GEB changed my life when I randomly found it in a friend’s attic years ago. It’s deep and yeah, you might call it pretentious from just looking at the contents but it’s written with a sense of playfulness. It’s a fun read. I owe a lot of my sense of self today to it.
Very cool! I would be down to see a video on these techniques (canon, fugue, etc.) being used in popular music, though.
Bach wrote a ton of pieces based on popular dances. Pop standards sure have changed through the centuries. Do not expect to find any virtuosity in today’s poptarts, trailer and ghetto “queens”, rappers, regaettoners and such similar fauna 🤣🤣🤣
Pop music is utterly mediocre garbage for uneducated ears, nothing else.
Popular music rarely gets that complex. Apples and... synthetic apple flavouring
@@thebestspork Wdym I - I -I -I - IV - V -I isn't complex?
I only know 2 fugues in pop music. The first is the Carnival Fugue by Focus, and On Reflection by Gentle Giant. However the Focus fugue is more leant on baroque music (chromaticism, etc.), is the Gentle Giant one more modal and thus fitting in the 20th century. You gotta check this 2 bands out.
What an amazing video. Bach has always been my #1 composer, but after watching this vid I love his music even more.
The crazy thing about Bach’s music is it transcends technology. If you imagine a super advanced alien civilization somehow hearing his music for the first time, you have to think they would be astonished.
They would laugh at our space flight abilities and our computing power, but they would revere the mind of Bach. No matter how advanced we get, his music will always be high above it still.
The beauty of how his counterpoint lines connect harmonically is something to be marvelled at. He could apparently completely improvise these fugues in 4 parts. Let that sink in. When great improvisers In the jazz world like Bird and Powell improvise they are playing over an established structure and harmonic roadmap. Bach completely improvised the harmony while improvising 4 separate melodies at the same time. Come to think of it, Bach might have been an alien 🤔
No, a superior advanced alien species would either have better music than this or something better than music.
Thank you very much, dear David Bennett, I ordered the Dan Moller-Bach-Book. Very interested to play his violin-Sonatas and lute-Sonatas and will again play it on a viola. Up to now I love very much Albert Schweitzers Bach-Book. (Also his other theological books are brilliant.) Playing Bach on guitar is not too bad. But the sound of a baroque-lute is for this music in my ears ideal. And if you are lucky enough to play a baroque violin, happy man.
I love solving mathematical puzzles and I love playing music - however to do both simultaneously surpasses my human capabilities - Oh my dear J.S. Bach, we are only human - I am not worthy ! 🙂
BTW, one of the great things about Bach is that not only are his complex compositions great - but even his simple stuff is great - plenty of classic hummable melodies.
Indeed. Bach was a supreme melodist.
simple stuff isn't so simple
So true! I find myself often humming his Brandenburg Concerto.
Then there another facet of his unfathomable genius: his output in the Leipzig years. All those cantatas, passions, and the rest, in addition to all the teaching, “babysitting”, performing, and familial stuff. A f8cking masterpiece every damn week; those cantatas!! His impeccable craft, and operatic expression and drama. Think about the tasks and timeline for each: compose, orchestrate, copy, rehearse….
I have thought on this for years. Unparalleled genius,. How on earth did he get time to sleep? Did he have a little Bach factory in his wine cellar with fifty students working around the clock copying? I jest of course... or, maybe he did! Anyway, for me the voice of heaven, if there is such a place, is embodied in his work without doubt.
I'm told that Handel wrote his Messiah in 24 hours - the same time it takes a qualified writer to copy the sheet music. In other words, he was literally inspired. Maybe Bach was as well ?
The editor might have mentioned that "the king of Prussia" was the exceptional Frederick the Great, a true genius in his own right, baroque composer, flautist and one of history's great generals.
Also, JS's son, CPE Bach, was the court composer/keyboardist. Quantz was also there in Frederick's musical group.
David, I appreciate your obvious knowledge and theory on the subject. I had little formal training but, as an adult, sat down and taught myself to play a couple of Bach pieces I was in love with: keyboard part of the 5th Brandenburg Concerto (for that amazing 3-minute solo part) and the Italian Concerto (because everyone with some chops eventually plays that one). If ever you wanted to make a follow-up to this video, and were looking for source material from Bach, I'd love to see you address either or both of these.
I'm a Lutheran pastor, and in addition to proudly calling Bach one of our own, we call him the 5th evangelist (after Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) for the way he proclaimed God's word through his many compositions of sacred music.
As a non-Christian, Bach is my one and only evangelist.
@@hoon_sol G'day, Hoon Sol! I can fairly certainly surmise that Bach would have wanted you to discover the God he worshipped through his music. I would recommend getting a Bible and reading the 4 evangelists' gospels and listening to Bach's cantatas, St. Matthew Passion, and St. John Passion.
@@lindacowles756 It must be stressful for half your brain to confidently assert something that the other half knows to be false.
"The Fifth Evangelist" I love that!! And so right too.
@@davidp.andersonpianorecordings Really? Seems like a rather modest assertion to say Bach intended for his music to evangelize the Christian faith. Bach was, after all, highly devout. I believe he even taught one of the Lutheran catechisms.
Congratulations for the video! Very well done that shows some of Bach composition skill! Bravo!
Thank you 😊
Bach is by far and beyond my favorite.
Such a fascinating and informative video - I'll certainly have a read of Dan Moller's book. Bach's music will always be timeless.
This first piece must have been recognized not only because it reflects logical beauty but because it symbolyzes or tells the story behind philosophical ideas developed at Bach's time: coincidentia oppositorum (idea that all opposite things can exist only when they are united: "yes" has no meaning if we do not understand "no", mirror reflects only if one side of it is dark (Jacob Boehme) etc. It was important religiously (God not above but within the world and nature, Spinoza) and politically (Leibniz, lived at times of Bach, developed an idea about substance that equally material and ideal and Rene Descates tried to explain simultaneous duality of the two totally opposite substances). It would be interesting to know if that musical masterpiece was a symbolic message to politician that he must be closer to people... Not being above something that is below, to avoid opposites...
Great vid. I'm starting to think that Bach, about whom I know very little, and Coltrane, about whom I know a lot, were musical brothers. Both seem to have been maximalists: Faster! More notes! Louder! Make it more complicated, more intricate. They both displayed virtuosity and beauty at the same time. Sometimes their musical ideas were games or experiments, but hardly ever at the cost of sloppiness or self-indulgence. They were absolute pros, after all. Spirituality too links them, in particular the spirit as a means of musical discovery and self-actualisation. I can feel Bach tickling me the same way Coltrane does.
Can you also make a video on how to differentiate Baroque, Classical, and Romantic eras of western classical music?
They taught that in music GCSE but I’ve already forgotten their characteristics. Maybe a video which explains genres like canon, concerto, sonata, etude, etc.
Thank you for the effort that went into this video
A very interesting and informative video, thank you, David.
Thanks Peter 😀😀
currently learning prelude 2 in c minor, the song used here in the outro and its so satisfying. never get tired of bach
When I learned from my Music History master in Year 4 (aged 8) that JS Bach had over 20 children, my first reaction was to ask at class how this preeminent Baroque composer still had the time and energy to write so much great music. It amused me greatly when my 9-year old grandson asked me precisely the same question just last year. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose!
4:35 sounds like the best Shostacovich piece I ever heard.
I know that Bach was a genius after playing his music on a piano for 55 years. Even now I am still discovering new amazing musical achievements and structures in his music. In some keyboard pieces even just playing the bass clef alone is beautiful. What is also amazing is how quickly he wrote his music with lovely harmonic lines. I have loved his music since I was 12 years old and he is my fave!
Mr David Benett, thank you very much for sharing this rare musical interpretation that which would have or is resting safely in some music scholar's mind or would have gone unnoticed. The world is better now, after your sharing.
In Gödel, Escher, Bach, Douglas Hofstatter shows that Bach's fugues also contain patterns of fractal geometry, centuries before fractals were discovered - as opposed to Escher's graphic works which play with fractals around the time when mathematicians were trying to figure out fractal geometry and just couldn't crack it because they didn't have computers. Escher was just a tiny bit ahead of his time, while Bach was centuries ahead.
Most interesting and edifying. Question were other composers, in JS Bach's time of composing, doing the same things? I'd love to learn if he was alone in these composing "ways" or not.
The chorus of "Soak up the Sun" by Sheryl Crow relies on a four-bar chord progression. The first bar uses the I chord, the second bar uses the V chord, the third bar climbs from the ii chord to the iii chord to the IV chord, and finally the fourth bar uses the IV chord again.
This chord progression doesn't sound too uncommon. Are there any other songs like that? If so, which ones?
I didn't know that song, so for a fresh ear it reminds me a little bit the chorus from "Tonight" by Seether. I'm not sure is this the same/similar chord progression but sound like that to me
Like a rolling stone by Bob Dylan is very close to this. It uses the exact same progression, but skips the V chord in the second bar. It does the same sort of walk up the scale with the chords. I’m sure there are plenty of other examples, but that’s just off the top of my head. That being said, I think this is a cool progression because it takes two common chords progressions and combines them into one interesting progression.
Thank you for giving some insight into The Master's capacity and way of work for this Bach _dilettante._ His music has been able to move me unlike any other, and it gives great reassurance understanding some methods that have kept his pieces close to my heart. Counterpoint and its mechanism I was familiar with, but wasn't aware of the mind-boggling extent this system of music was built into.
Figures that a Baroque master composer would work via sophisticated, mathematical answers and counters, all the while creating harmonious flow - every chord with a purpose. As said in the video, logical and (because of that) beautiful!
Love all the people bringing up Gödel, Escher, Bach here! I’m working my way through it right now; maybe I should go attempt another chapter today.
given how people butcher the pronunciation of Bach’s name, I don’t even want to hear what they make of Gödel…
Bravo! Great video! I played c minor prelude and fugue in the university. Very complex and gave me much stress to complete it.
Bach is the most important composer in the music history. He is the golden standard. Thank you for your video.
This feels so elevating! His genuity does not only bach but also has some bites too!
Why did you have to start with a Vivaldi work transcribed by Bach?
Came here to say this ☝
God that prelude at the end. My favorite. Awesome video thanks.
So the Cancrizans piece is just analog backmasking?
And then another one of my favorites:
"A Musical Offering", which overwhelms me every time I listen to it.
You will find the genius of J.S. Bach in his piano partitas, and his Prelude in C Major (That prelude sounds like early impressionist music, but you must remember that the Prelude dates all the way back to the ancient baroque era. That's how advanced J.S. Bach was with his music. Chopin literally made his Etude Op. 10 No. 1 based on Bach's Prelude in C Major). He was way ahead of his times, he experimented with many different forms, techniques, ideas and counterpoint. He composed over 1,000 pieces, and a few of them were lost or unfinished. J.S. Bach revolutioned chorales too. He studied the art of church cantatas from the ancient German times.
J.S. Bach was the one who came up with the term "improvisation." To learn music, he copied manuscripts from other composers and then implemented his own ideas. Later composers such as Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, Rachmaninoff, and even Ravel were all influenced by this idea of improvisation, even jazz musicians up to this day use that concept very heavily. J.S. Bach is the godfather of every single music genre, and he is often overlooked.
There an artist in the 70s(?) who conerted Bach pieces into colors and shapes. The paintings were astounding.
Bach was created by God to remind all other composers how "simple and slow" they are.
definitely for melodic lines but I don't think there's any denying that classical harmony has only gotten more and more complex since Bach's time
@@ethandeister6567:
To the contrary, the diametric opposite is the truth: it's gotten more and more simplistic. I haven't seen any composer after Bach (or before him, for that matter) reach even remotely the same level of harmonic complexity that he achieved in some of his works.
@@hoon_sol You must be looking with your eyes closed then. Shostakovich? Schoenberg? Stravinsky? Any of those names ring a bell?
@@ethandeister6567:
None of those have ever come even close to achieving the same harmonic complexity as Bach. Just smashing together a lot of notes in a completely disharmonious way does not harmonic complexity make. Whenever those composers you just mentioned actually used complex harmonic movement in a successful manner, it was never anywhere remotely as great as what Bach did effortlessly. Stravinsky was decent, I'll give him that, probably the second best composer of all time, but a very distant second at that.
@@hoon_sol And with that you've lost any and all credibility.
I love that you made a video on classical music
You only showcased the fugues and canons with the musical feats. Hope next time you would showcase more profound and intellectual fugues like the C# minor Triple Fugue and B minor Fugue from Well-Tempered Clavier book 1!
Or Contrapunctus 11 from The Art of Fugue
Trying to prove that Bach was a genius is like proving that the sky is blue.
Got introduced to Bach very early on, as the basis for the main music in my favorite video game “Gyruss” (on Commodore 64) was Toccata and Fugue in D minor.
I believe Bach is one of the best composer of western music, but for people who might not know a lot about the Baroque era, Bach’s music wasn’t anything special, in fact it was considered outdated, he never had any real popularity like his son JC Bach. The first piece in the video is from the Musical Offering. The theme David talks about has a deeper story. One of the king’s men was one of Bach’s sons. The king knew about his father and wanted to see his improv skill. The theme was considered unable to be harmonized. So they were setting Bach up to fail. Instead, Bach improvises a 3 voice fugue on the spot. Today that piece is copper plated at the palace
This is a delightful way to express these complex musical concepts. How ironic that the ad inserted was for Grammerly software. One tiny correction: the answer is not a direct copy of the fugue subject because of the 'prominent dominant' requiring a tonal versus a real answer.
So the real question is. Was Bach actually the first guy to spin the record backwards to hear the hidden satanic message?
Among other aspects of Bach's genius is the inspiration and influence manifested in the kind of brilliance we get in David Bennett's videos! Thank you so much to both!! Bach's genius was so fertile, creating directly and indirectly truly inestimable, mind-boggling subsequent generations of creativity and insight, across so many genres and cultures. In piano pedagogy, you might say Nadia Boulanger (who required all students to learn the Well Tempered Clavier thoroughly) was a microcosm to Bach's macrocosm. Look at Boulanger's musical career, and exponentially multiply it. That would be a hint of what Bach was.
Far less distractions and noise in bachs time, his music was as intricate as nature
Videos like this make a big difference. So much information at our finger tips. Back then you had to be rich to learn something. Unless your family had a trade.
When I was in music school I wrote a 12 bar chorale, in the style of Bach, based on Protestant hymns as the cantus firmus every day. I still do them as fun puzzles for the classical guitar. No easy task….
Great work David! Excellent graphics with clear and precise descriptions of imitative counterpoint - so hard to do well.
Although he wrote dozens of memorable melodies, Bach's preferred style of writing didn't become popular during his lifetime, or long afterwards, maybe because it had an academic and austere quality which made it less accessible to casual listeners. Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven greatly admired and respected Bach and in one his greatest works, the Jupiter Symphony, Mozart demonstrated how deeply he had absorbed Bach's techniques.
Richard Atkinson's wonderful RUclips channel contains detailed analyses of counterpart in the major works of Bach and the great composers, but I think even Richard would be impressed by the clarity of your explanation and graphics. I hope you will get eventually have the opportunity to show how Radiohead and other modern musicians occasionally dip into Bach's bag of tricks.
Fact: Bach was created by classical music to see if there’s a component for best classical composer
Mozart enters, carrying a violin, 7 years old. "I compose symphonies!"
@@somestupidwithaflaregun7149 To be fair, a lot of Mozart's early work was taken from other composers. This isn't to say that he wasn't a genius!
This is a video that will find many people with great knowledge closely examining every word said. The bar is high. Thank you all … that’s why this jazz woodwind guy loves RUclips. 📣🎷
Bach's Chaconne in d minor is another example of his genius.
Out of this world. Life changing. Unconditional love.
Merci. That was a great visual that you did at the end with the harmony and melody. I've been playing piano for only four months and am trying to learn music theory, and that was a lightbulb moment for me. I've heard the words but hadn't really grasped their meaning. I know music nerds (all those people that went to band camp) will laugh at this, but it is a completely different language.
Bach's music has such a technical and mathematical elegance about it that many performers (like Glenn Gould) end up sounding robotic playing it. It's why I really appreciate performers like Andras Schiff who can make Bach's music emote and sing.
To be fair, back in Bach’s day, there was only the harpsichord, which can be very mechanical sounding. Music today also has different meaning to us than it did for people back then. But I prefer a more emotional performance like you said, truth is we don’t know exactly how this music would of been performed
How is Bach's music "mathematical"?
@@felipecortegana3209 WRONG. There were other keyboard instruments in the Bach's time besides the harpsichord. You forget the organ, clavichord and fortepiano. Bach's preferred instrument for private expression was the clavichord.
Most people in Bach's time who played his keyboard music played it on clavichord rather than harpsichord, unless. of course, a harpsichord or organ was required.
ALL keyboard instruments are "mechanical sounding." The very means by which, say, a pianist plays the piano involves mechanical connections between the keys and the strings and between the dampers and the strings.
And you're forgetting that Bach didn't just compose for the keyboard.
What you really mean is that you prefer Bach's keyboard music be played s-l-o-w-l-y and with the drunken rubato that has become fashionable of late.
Gould plays BWV 891:
ruclips.net/video/vXrG1z-Ke9U/видео.html
ruclips.net/video/uoMXBhzyQMM/видео.html
Schiff's performance of the same work is BORING.
@@herrickinman9303 Nope, I just like someone who knows how to bring expression to a piano. And if you don't want to discuss the matter civilly, kindly go away.
synapse firing, clear description of whats going on with Bach's compositions... i wish i knew this long ago.
We need to prove that Bach was a genius? It's obvious.
Awesome video. I would love to see a video on Beck in this format
Yeah totally. I had the same thought after listening to Bach. I heard he wrote a piece called "Two Claviers and a Harpsichord" back in the day. Big influence on Beck for sure.
Johann Sebastian Back?