For some reason, I was thinking about all the dramatically different<\/p>\n
ways in which people have seen and admired J.S. Bach since his own day.<\/p>\n
down at a keyboard and swiftly invent a multi-part fugue on any<\/p>\n
theme. This is Bach as forerunner of a jazz musician, an exciting<\/p>\n
live performer.<\/li>\n
were much more successful than himself and who wrote great instructional<\/p>\n
works such as the "Well-Tempered Clavier." These musical<\/p>\n
texts have been consistently consulted by composers even when Bach’s<\/p>\n
other works were forgotten (for instance, in Mozart’s time).<\/li>\n
the author of great narrative choral works such as the Passions,<\/p>\n
which realistically depict human emotions in relation to God’s providence.<\/p>\n
This is the Bach whom the Romantics admired most. They even disparaged<\/p>\n
the "Christmas Oratorio" because it recycled music from<\/p>\n
secular works—so it couldn’t be spiritually inspired.<\/li>\n
Whereas Romantic musical geniuses were supposed to be free of all<\/p>\n
worldly motives and inspired only by Art, Bach happily turned out<\/p>\n
church music for every Sunday, often re-using material, borrowing<\/p>\n
from other sources, and making do with amateur performers. For this,<\/p>\n
he was admired by leftish anti-Romantics such as Paul Hindemith.<\/p>\n
If I recall correctly, Bertold Brecht used to call himself a Schreiber<\/em>,<\/p>\n not a Dichter<\/em>—someone who makes his living by writing,<\/p>\n not a literary Artist. The same could be said of Bach.<\/li>\n formally complex instrumental works, especially the "Musical<\/p>\n Offering," that seem as other-wordly as mathematical proofs.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n After writing a list like this, one is expected to say, "Of<\/p>\n course, Bach was all of<\/em> these things, and that’s why he is<\/p>\n so great." I’m going to be a little less predictable and say<\/p>\n that Bach was <\/em>all of these things, of course, but he was<\/p>\n at his greatest as the composer of narrative works that were grounded<\/p>\n in his understanding of human life and emotion.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fine-arts"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4290"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4290\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"