The Best of Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach, the greatest composer of all time. No, I don’t accept any discussion(

First of all, he is just a master of musical language. He could do anything he wanted with music. He had the capacity to express the widest range of emotions, even in the same piece of music (e.g. Partita for violin solo No. 2). More than any romantic. He is the most expressive musician that existed.

Second, the deepness of his music. I’ll give an example to ilustrate this. Some time ago I was listening almost exclusively to Bach’s music. I spent almost two months listening and exploring Bach’s inmense catalogue. Then, one day, I found in my music library Mozart’s piano concerto No. 27. I gave it a listen, and Mozart is always a pleasure. But a thought came into my head, it was (this is without any means an offense) “this music sounds like pop music compared to Bach’s”. It was easy listening music (this doesn’t mean bad). There was a huge difference between the two:

Bach’s pieces, not matter which, are full of musical ideas that you can’t get at a first listen. You listen to a piece again and again, and they are always new, you can always get something new from it. Some will say that the same occur with other composers. But I think is different with Bach. In Mozart’s music, one or two themes are presented and developed. In contrast, Bach uses and develop melodies in his counterpoint that alone could have been the main idea of another piece, and this happen simultaneously. To sum up to this, apart from the singular beauty of each melodic line, it has the allure of the dense counterpoint that is what most captivates the ear.

Well, I don’t remember in which number I was. I’ll continue without enumerating.

His work is huge! Although baroque composers used to be very prolific, with his contemporary Georg Philipp Telemann writing over 3000 compositions. But Bach had more quality that quantity. Seriously speaking, I haven’t listened to a piece by Bach, of the more than 1000, that doesn’t appeal to me.

Next, his mastery of musical forms. He has masterpieces in every musical genre that existed in his lifetime (except opera, although the St. Matthew Passion could be considered a somewhat operatic work).

Contrary to popular beleive, where he is depicted as the epitome of “musical conservatism”, he didn’t only mastered the existing musical forms, he invented some of his own. Most notably, he is the first to compose keyboard concertos, his Brandenburg concerto No. 5 beeing the first example. This form later evolved into the classical era piano concerti of Mozart and Beethoven.

Next, a very subjective point. His humility. He considered himself just one more Bach (a family that had 5 generations of musicians, his father and his uncles were all professional musicians). He just did his work, make music to please God. And what a piece of work he left us.

To finish, I’d like to quote this short paragraph, that sums up very well the main reasons why we admire them: "Those of us who admire Bach and his work the most find in his work perfect unity and balance of emotional subtlety and depth with an awesome, unrivaled depth of technical means and architecture by which they are achieved. While Bach's work can and should be admired for its unmatched beauty and emotional power alone, careful study reveals a use of complex, formal, technical means and structures from which Bach brings forth that height of human feelings in a way that reveals the workings of one of the supreme intellects of all time." Copyright © Bernard S. Greenberg

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