[HN Gopher] Beneath the surface of Bach's music is a world of nu...
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Beneath the surface of Bach's music is a world of numerology and
cunning craft
Author : Stratoscope
Score : 47 points
Date : 2021-09-12 04:23 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (aeon.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (aeon.co)
| smy1es wrote:
| I really love this analysis of a Bach prelude. It really brings
| home the complexity that Bach must have deliberately put into the
| piece.
|
| https://youtu.be/l5XJdHfPc5o
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| The Euler of music?
| zw123456 wrote:
| When I was doing my capstone for BSEE back in 1978, I was making
| an IC that would play music (ooohhh weee, ok it was a long time
| ago). But I had very limited die space for rom, but I was taking
| a Music Appreciation class (supposed easy A to fulfill the
| liberal arts requirement). So I told my Music prof about my
| project and explained I had very little memory on the chip and
| could he recommend something.
|
| He got it immediately and he recommended I check into Bach
| especially Fugues, that's when I found our that scary music they
| played in movies was Bach Toccata Fugue in D minor. Fugues are
| perfect because everything repeats just in different keys or
| paces. So I was able to cram it into 256B of ROM (well enough of
| it for everyone to get what song it was).
|
| That's when I first fell in love with Bach.
| motohagiography wrote:
| They mention how much time he spent on Vivaldi scores, which is
| really interesting when you listen to Vivaldi's violin sonatas as
| a Bach fan and hear where Bach added many homages back to Vivaldi
| in his work.
| jancsika wrote:
| It's pretty crazy when you think about how many of Bach's fugue
| subjects are long, sprawling, compound lines.
|
| Most counterpoint students would try as hard as possible to make
| their fugue subjects short, _simple_ and constrained to a very
| small range. Otherwise they 'd risk the overall texture getting
| too thick and the voices jumping around each other and
| accidentally creating an incoherent mess.
|
| Meanwhile, Bach's fugue subjects-- like BWV 542-- are playing the
| lead while accompanying themselves. It's like van Halen's solo in
| Eruption, except Bach copy/pastes his solos on top of each other
| so that they help each other asplode together.
| telesilla wrote:
| Bach is beyond sublime and I am not a poet, my words are
| insufficient to offer praise of suitable depth. And I wonder,
| there are so many good writers and poets among us so why, on
| earth, have we yet to have a blockbuster biography of his, or
| celebrated film or TV series? We have them all of Beethoven,
| Mozart, even Mahler and Chopin. Is it because he's just too big
| to tackle? Jan Swafford--you mastered the other two, where are
| you?
| xkeysc0re wrote:
| Check out "The Loser" by Thomas Bernhard. Not a biography, but
| an excellent novel inspired by Bach
| marton78 wrote:
| Oh, "Der Untergeher". Read it in German, if you can. It's...
| memorable.
| bane wrote:
| An absolutely fantastic scene about Bach was in the East-
| German/Hungarian co-production: Johann Sebastian Bach
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdmcabpiGYU
|
| In it he meets Frederick the Great, King of Prussia, then one
| of the world's superpowers.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_the_Great
| jan_Inkepa wrote:
| I dunno - he was as far as I know (a medium amount but not a
| lot) a pretty normal person and...his personality comes much
| less to the fore in his work compared to later era composers.
| I've tried reading his letters - they're strictly business. He
| was in many ways a consummate professional of the pre-
| personality-cult era. Though there's something nice about that
| in and of itself.
| DennisP wrote:
| These snippets from the article hint at some entertaining
| possibilities:
|
| > Bach was crafty both in his music and life, and he adored
| puzzles, games and general inventive mischief.
|
| > walking 280 miles just to watch one organist perform
|
| > a dizzying array of professional demands, awkward
| taskmasters, petulant critics, vain royalty and personal
| tragedies.
|
| Also worth noting "the violent, thuggish world of the young
| JS Bach":
| https://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/sep/21/secret-bach-
| te...
| telesilla wrote:
| This article is heartbreaking. I'm not sure I'll listen to
| his Passions again the same way.
| bcatanzaro wrote:
| It's not a blockbuster but I really do love "Music in the
| Castle of Heaven" by John Eliot Gardiner. Maybe a little
| academic - but the drama!
| zwieback wrote:
| I suspect his personal life is just not colorful enough to make
| for interesting viewing.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| I recall there was a teenage knife fight
| zwieback wrote:
| Had to google that - with a bassoonist! That explains a
| lot...
| _Gyan_ wrote:
| Don't think that's the main reason. Hollywood has no
| compunction or lack of skill to embellish or dramatize a
| mundane life if they need to.
|
| I suspect Bach's place at the top is received rather than
| recognized, which is not to say he doesn't deserve it. His
| skill lays in counterpoint and other facets of harmony. His
| music has structural elegance and ornamental beauty, not the
| full orchestral rabble rousing of Beethoven or delicate
| pianism of Chopin. Not exactly directly translatable to a
| poster or trailer.
| quercusa wrote:
| Do people still read _Godel, Escher, Bach_?
| nixpulvis wrote:
| I'm on page 159 and moving pretty slowly.
|
| So far, learning about "canons" has been pretty impactful,
| along with the enjoyable storytelling.
| liorben-david wrote:
| Absolutely. Me and other teenagers interested in Math all
| attempt to get through it
| quercusa wrote:
| For those who are not up to reading music at Bach's level,
| Stephen Malinowski's Musical Animation videos are eye-opening,
| e.g., from the _Musical Offering_ mentioned in the article:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYouXtuk0T8
|
| Toccata and Fugue in Dmin:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipzR9bhei_o
|
| I was directed to Malinowski's work by Edward Tufte (you may be
| able to figure out why) and feel I should pass it on.
| dvh wrote:
| Bach is too funerally for me.
| pohl wrote:
| How much of his ouvre have you taken in? I could understand
| hearing something like Toccata and Fugue in D on an organ, and
| coming away with that impression.
|
| My favorites are the small pieces in the Well Tempered Clavier
| I & II.* The Art of the Fugue is also worth checking out.
|
| * see also Shostakovich's cycle of preludes & fugues that it
| inspired.
| srcreigh wrote:
| I'm no Bach expect, but this piece [0] is anything but
| funerally. Maybe you will appreciate it.
|
| [0]: Keyboard Partita No.1 in B-flat Major, BWV 825
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JF3YzTG7lU
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(page generated 2021-09-13 23:02 UTC)