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September 19, 2003
the many Bachs
For some reason, I was thinking about all the dramatically different ways in which people have seen and admired J.S. Bach since his own day.
- There is Bach as a virtuouso improviser, the man who could sit down at a keyboard and swiftly invent a multi-part fugue on any theme. This is Bach as forerunner of a jazz musician, an exciting live performer.
- There is Bach as pedagogue, the man who taught three sons who were much more successful than himself and who wrote great instructional works such as the "Well-Tempered Clavier." These musical texts have been consistently consulted by composers even when Bach's other works were forgotten (for instance, in Mozart's time).
- There is Bach the profound spiritual master, the Lutheran churchman, the author of great narrative choral works such as the Passions, which realistically depict human emotions in relation to God's providence. This is the Bach whom the Romantics admired most. They even disparaged the "Christmas Oratorio" because it recycled music from secular works—so it couldn't be spiritually inspired.
- There is Bach as an anti-Romantic, an unpretentious musical worker. Whereas Romantic musical geniuses were supposed to be free of all worldly motives and inspired only by Art, Bach happily turned out church music for every Sunday, often re-using material, borrowing from other sources, and making do with amateur performers. For this, he was admired by leftish anti-Romantics such as Paul Hindemith. If I recall correctly, Bertold Brecht used to call himself a Schreiber, not a Dichter—someone who makes his living by writing, not a literary Artist. The same could be said of Bach.
- There is Bach as mathematical genius, author of technically and formally complex instrumental works, especially the "Musical Offering," that seem as other-wordly as mathematical proofs.
After writing a list like this, one is expected to say, "Of course, Bach was all of these things, and that's why he is so great." I'm going to be a little less predictable and say that Bach was all of these things, of course, but he was at his greatest as the composer of narrative works that were grounded in his understanding of human life and emotion.
September 19, 2003 11:46 AM | category: fine arts | Comments
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