When I was a classical guitar major my prof told me that Music Theory was just everyone coming along after Bach and trying to explain what he did by nature.
I grew up in the Soviet Union and studied classical piano between the ages 7-14. Musical school curriculum was quite strict and we had to play this or that composer's works no matter how much we liked it or not. So I had to improvise sometimes and that was not encouraged at all :). Bach was the only composer I practiced without any hesitation, by placing fingers exactly the way it was requested, without any need to change anything. Bach's music was/is so complete, perfect and divine, it had tamed the rebellious teenager in me.
As a cellist I can’t say enough about the Six Solo Suites for Cello. They are the gold standard for cellists. If you can play these works musically and well you can play anything else in the repertoire. These six suites have been the soundtrack of my life expressing the entire range of emotions from deepest grief to absolute exultation and joy.
Whatever, I agree about the minuets in Suite No. 2. I have small hands for a cellist, so yes, learning them was tough…has been learning both bourees in Suite No. 4 and the first gavotte in Suite No. 6.
As an organist myself, having played Bach for over 8 years now... it's just incredible how each and every new piece I hear of him is so different and such a new world. Everytime I want to learn a new piece of him, I discover things where I'm like "wait, he also wrote things like this...?". His Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor is an absolute pinnacle in his repertoire, and is probably the most beautiful and exhilarating masterwork I've ever played.
Nice to hear that as musician you like learn from bach ,who made universal mathematical music creations ,which are the fountain of wisdom of knowledge ! Its so nice that he made such a great dictionary of music styles ,his music its the future lol best of luck and have funPs our generation should sings bachs masterpieces lol
It's so obvious to note the Passacaglia, and yet sometimes a super-famous work is also a legitimately mind-blowing piece of eternity. And this is one such. In general, I find his organ works to be flabbergasting.
Thank you for the nod to the Passacaglia, which is one of my absolute favorite compositions, as well. We are in good company -- when I thanked our church organist for playing it, she confided that it was her favorite, as well.
i love the passacaglia. absolutely amazing. the way he keeps the bass going.. especially during the arpeggios.. its really well done on the Amorbach organ.. the album is on spotify
I play Bach on the guitar almost everyday particularly the lute suites. I named my daughter Anna Magdalena after his wonderful wife. I'm pretty passionate about Bach too. Thanks for this!
Me too. He has penetrated my soul in a way that broke me into pieces and showed me who I really am and who I could become. He is the most generous composer. He wanted to save humanity with his music. I own him my life. ❤
Good choice! Not to mention that Anna Magdalena was more than just his wife. She was an eminent soprano singer and musician and she was involved in the writing of some of his pieces. Also she did a lot of copywork. Many of Bach's original manuscripts have her handwriting on them.
Jack Bruce (lead singer and bass player of Cream) said that " J.S. Bach wrote fabulous bass parts that every bass player should study cause they perfectly illustrate how to be functional and melodic at the same time."
I was in seventh grade, in junior high school in Harlem, and our teacher took us out one night on a 'cultural enrichment field trip' to hear the ballet. I was 12 and not really interested in ballet, but the music for one of the dances caught my ear. I thought to myself "the violins are talking to each other." Later, I looked at the program and it was obvious I'd heard the Concerto for Two Violins. Looking back, I think that moment was the awakening of my musical life.
Are you referring to the Largo movement of Bach's Concerto for Two Violins in D minor? Whenever I hear that piece, I imagine two humpback whales--a mother and its young--swimming together in graceful slow motion, while singing a duet. =D
I had that same moment when I in elementary school at church with my dad at the St. Paul Cathedral. I remember I was fidgeting with the church bulletin at the almost end of mass - I remember fidgeting because of what came next on the organ - "sheep may safely graze." I saw my dad look at me with confusion as stopped to listen what sounds would come next.
I lived for a while three blocks away from the Thomas Kirche in Leipzig, while I was working as a singer in Leipzig’s opera house. Rick, I usually watch your videos because they are very entertaining, and I have to thank you for this one. Especially. I’ve sung many works by Bach, especially Matthäus Passion. Many times. And I love how broad your music palate is. I feel deeply identified with it. Apart from EVERYTHING else, Bach was an incredible melodist, if such a word exists. And he was a man, like you and I. It’s absolutely mind blowing the amount of works with such consistent quality, beauty, inventiveness, etc... that this guy wrote. Never was and never will be something like it. Thank you for this video, man.
1:49 Air on the G String 2:02 Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring 2:29 Well-tempered Clavier 3:29 Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 3:50 Goldberg Variations 4:01 Mass in B Minor 4:23 Cello Suite No. 1 5:04 Art of the Fugue 6:30 Cantata No. 54 7:25 [more of the same?] 8:25 E Major Prelude 10:04 [compare Alan Rawthorne: Oboe Concerto] 11:27 St. John Passion => Watch "A Passionate Life" by Sir John Eliot Gardiner 13:44 (end)
@@freepagan True, Mozart actually said this about Bach's son CPE, who happened to be his teacher and greatest influence. He also adored JC Bach, who later became incredibly successful in London. Mozart wasn't stupid. He knew how much he owed to old Bach. Mozart, as we know him, would be unthinkable without the Bach family.
Beethoven greatly admired Bach. There are lots of letters written by Beethoven filled with superlatives about Bach. In many of his letters Beethoven repeatedly called him "the god of harmony". The letters were written between 1798-1802, more 25 years before Mendelssohn kicked off the Bach renaissance which lasts to the present day. Just like Mozart, he was fully aware of Bach's supreme importance.
@@berndlauert8179 EXACTLY! And "Bach" leans more toward "River Bank" than creek, though is used for both. So glad to see others enjoying the surprisingly delightful sense of humor that Herr Beethoven had. I studied Trombone at the Koelner Musickhochschule in Cologne where the man himself studied and heard several wonderful tales of Beethoven's wry sense of humor from venerable instructors present there in the early 90's. Such a wonderful time in life. Thanks for reminding me of this wonderful gem!
Yes even the non-musicians in my Family (they are few but we have some) can inherently sense in their BONES that these pieces are Epic. My son is in San Diego and recently completed his training as a Combat Medic this month (as you know the Corps pulls their medics from Dept. of Navy) & he's been droppin' little nuggets to the fellas. He doesn't talk a lot....rather shocks the $h!t out of his comrades once you sit him in front of a piano. He's been showing these good men what real music is all about & they say the same as you: I don't know WHY, but this song kicks A$$. Hehe :-)
@@happyhoneybigbear Wow that's amazing. I'm infantry so Corpsman are very high on my favorite people list. God bless your son. Sounds like he's someone with a lot to offer.!
@@USMCArchAngel03 well God bless you all and all the commenters here as well, especially you archangel. Stay frosty, brother. And if you ever meet a medic named Jake Walsh ,that's my son and we are very proud of him.
Composer Johannes Brahms said of Bach’s Chaconne from the D minor partita for solo violin: "The Chaconne is one of the most wonderful, incomprehensible pieces of music. On a single staff, for a small instrument, the man writes a whole world of the deepest thoughts and the most powerful feelings. If I were to imagine how I might have made, conceived the piece, I know for certain that the overwhelming excitement and awe would have driven me mad."
Such a nice quote. The piece is so incredibly stunning, I've played it many times, practiced it for hundreds of hours and still feel like I'm just getting to know it. It's the one piece I know that I'll never be finished with, ever. Beautiful words by Brahms.
And in homage to Bach he went on to write a transcription of the chaconne, to be played on the piano by the left hand alone - completely unlike Busoni's gigantic version for both hands. Why left hand alone? Brahms said he wanted to preserve the difficulty of writing complex contrapuntal music for a fundamentally melodic instrument like the violin.
Haha......wellll the Gospel according to John chap 1 describes the beginning "In the beginning was the word and the word was God and the word was with God. Holistic beginning of all, all meaning, all beauty, all truth, all good, and all matter.
I love how Rick is equally passionate about Alice in Chains and Bach. That’s why this is such a great channel. For anyone new to Bach, I would recommend checking out Sheep May Safely Graze. It may not be Bach’s most complex piece. But it’s stunningly beautiful.
Exactly what I was thinking. There aren't many people who are equally interested in and knowledgeable about both rock and classical music. I learned Sheep May Safely Graze when I was in my teens and I still take great pleasure in playing it 50 years later.
If you ever find yourself asking the question: "If I'm looking up to all these great musicians, then who are all these great musicians looking up to?" The answer is Bach.
@@richardwebb2348 Beethoven did not know the complete works of Bach. Only "Die Kunst der Fuge", no "Goldberg-Variationen", not the "Passionen" not his concerti, nt his organ works...
Bach was actually ‘forgotten’ in the years after his death. His ‘rediscovery’ is attributed to Felix Mendelssohn’s effort to promote his music. And Western music was better because of this. As someone who has played Bach’s music on the keyboard, sang and conducted his choral works, I would say that Bach’s genius lay on his almost unearthly understanding of the transition from modal music to triadic harmonic progression (today’s harmony), and his ability to utilize these into his music. Western music at that time was still moving from modes (it was a long transition since Monteverdi), and Bach was the master who knew how to wield the power of his music writing during these exciting period in history. Thank you Rick for sharing your experiences and knowledge. Leipzig can be a transformative place for a musician who is hungry for understanding.
Not true. He was not forgotten. At least not among musicians. It's just that performing his music, especially his cantatas, which make up the main body of his work, fell out of fashion.
Correct : Mendelssohn revealed Bach's deepness and greatness to the world through "St Mathaüs Passion". Amazing harmonics and complex architecture, event if the artwork didn't come complete because of a lost part.
I teach my middle school students about Bach and his music. By the time we get to the end of our unit on Bach, they have a very good introductory knowledge of his life and music. They could also tell you that Bach is my absolute favorite musician. Let’s face it, we could spend a lifetime pulling apart Bach’s music and still only scratch the surface. Thanks for this great video Rick.
Back in my late teens and early twenties, I sang in church choir. Singing bass was for a lot of the time not very challenging and a bit boring. That is until we sang some Bach. We would all learn our parts by listening to each part played individually on the organ, then sing along with it. Standard practice. At that age, I could sing bass or tenor in full voice and alto in falsetto. With Bach pieces, I sang the three parts in rehearsal just for the joy of it. With Bach, in almost every piece, each part is a complete and beautiful piece of music in and of itself. Then all of these beautiful pieces roll and flip over and blend with each other like no other music. To play a piece on an instrument is one thing. To sing with ones own voice several parts (like multitracking) and to feel the beauty of each and then to sing in the ensemble feeling all the parts is entirely something different. Bach can be movingly beautiful, disturbingly grave and pretty and joyous. Sometimes all at the same time. I know of no other who can do or has done that. Bach still proves that there is such a thing as serious fun. :)
@@Robert_1685 yes. I'll drink to that. He did have his moments for sure. Water Music and Messiah come to mind. But the bass parts aren't quite the goisebump producers that JS created. There really is a lot of great music out there and I guess we can all have our favourites.
Carl Sagen asked what should be included on the famous Voyager golden disk, physicist Freeman Dyson said, "I'd send just Bach ... but that would be showing off."
The version I heard decades ago (also in paraphrase) had to do with what we should broadcast into space to try to connect with other intelligent beings. What I remember was "We should broadcast Bach, all of it. And risk being seen as boastful!" richard hargrove -- "La musique est une science qui veut qu'on rit et chant et danse." (Music is a science that would have one laugh and sing and dance.) -- Guillaume de Machaut (1300-77)
That's excellent! I can't believe I hadn't heard that one before. And so true then, when we were emerging from the disco 70's and into the "me, me, ME!" 80's. But compared to now, then was nothing. Given our (the United States) current sad state of affairs, just one measure of Bach is showing off. Humanity is saying more and more each day that we simply aren't worthy of many of the masterpieces of our culture. Our greed makes us unworthy. T As the greedy at the top undermine the foundations of society, our humanity suffers. We can no longer pursue the higher pursuits and are instead left to scratch and claw for the basic necessities. What has been true in the third world for generations is now becoming true in much of the developed world as well. The US is leading the way on devolution of society. Tax cuts don't create prosperity for a country, they only enrich the few at the top - those with all the power simply attaining more. So yes, sending Bach is showing off. Because if an intelligent life form found us - and almost by definition they'd be FAR MORE advanced than us - they'd discover a smouldering mass that lives far, FAR below the genius exhibited by Bach and our other truly shining stars of humanity. Shame on us. Shame on us all.
Rick..here’s my story : i was a mailman for thirty years and during my time I met a guy who plays in the symphony and loves to fish and I was was really new to the guitar but I was really into ..so I asked one day if he wanted to go fishing on the big lake eire and ,we went and on the way he explained how Bach harmonized all his music back then for the whole ride out there for a hour and half .. I never said more than that’s cool wow that entire 1.5 hrs their ...that’s was 8 year ago and we’re still great friends even when he’s half my age @62...soooo ur story of JSB WASSSS SOOOO GOOOD .. thanks for ur lessons and ur utube friends ...u all know who you are and thanks for sharing
I just cannot wrap my head around the fact that one man composed so much wonderful music. To say that Bach was a prolific composer would not do the man justice.
Mr. Rick Beato, this is your best take on any one musician. I never thought I would ever like classical, but Bach pushed me over the edge. I listen to all genre of music. Bach checks all the boxes for me for what I like in classical; just like how Django Reinhardt & Vince Guaraldi does it for me for jazz.
Your channel is absolutely fantastic. Here are no limits. Everything Music is well named in deed. It makes you dream, it makes you travel, it makes you go out of your boundaries, it educates you... I also greatly appreciate the fact that you respect your audience and the musicians you talk about. Clean channel here. Yet, you talk freely, boldly. Your channel is an invitation to love music, to love it more and more.
Bach was a machine. The guy turned out so much music and had to work so quickly to keep up with his schedule. And yet his music was of such consistent superior quality. Thanks Rick, I love your subjects!
Aristotle said that quality comes with quantity, like a habit. And not viceversa (viceversa as in quantity prevents quality and quality is inversely proportional to quantity), like many use to think.
i think many pieces, intricate though they are, are just snapshots of ever evolving improvising material. i bet that's why he comes across so jazzy lol.
You do not have to publish everything you write. You practice, you write hundreds of hours of music and then publish a single hour worth of music, which is a masterpiece. Then you will have small quantity of exceedingly high quality. That is Gauss and Riemann versus Cauchy and indeed Euler in mathematics.
@@u.v.s.5583 if u ever had a looked at eulers opera omnia, u know, those big ole tomes. if u did, you'd know that quality vs quantity argument is bullshit. lol. as for cauchy vs gauss, that metaphor is off quite a bit too. ;)
Bach's contemporary Telemann wrote even more music than Bach did -I believe Telemann was the most prolific composer who ever lived -to a non-musician like me Telemann's music sounds as good as Bachs but experts say it's not -it was not as complicated but does music always have to be complicated?
Bach was sent from heaven to unfold music! He was sent to compose and create sounds that will stand till the end of time! Bach was an inspired man! His sounds are so angelic!
Among many, many other things , What makes Beato Great is his love for ALL kinds of music, other from the ones inside his field of expertise. And What makes him extraordinary is how he appreciates Bach's music and recognizes it's influence in his developement as a "modern" musician.
Thanks so much for being one of his patrons. I can't speak for everyone, but I am grateful beyond belief for his content, especially something like this.
There's so much that makes Bach great! If you listen to 30 main stream pop song, you probably hear almost the same thing 30 times. If you listen to the same Bach piece 30 times, you'll hear something new all 30 times. Bach's music is packed with gold. You can't just appreciate all of it if you only listen a few times. I've been playing Bach's Lute music on guitar for about 40 year now, and still I find new details, pieces of gold, like a different way to look at the voicings, or the harmonies. It just keeps challenging and inspiring. I don't there's any other composer like that.
This is true! There are pieces I've listened to and played for over 50 years and I STILL discover new things I hadn't noticed before. None of it ever gets old.
@Camille Desmoulins He wrote over 1.000 works, some of them over 2 hours long. I have no idea, but If you put them all together, you'd probably had 4 weeks of Musik non-stop.
A fantastic video and hommage to J.S. Bach. Thank you so much! I'm 56 now. J.S. Bach's music has been a huge part of my life since early teens. His music is such a comfort. Way better than any therapist! :-)
When my younger daughter was about three years old, John Eliot Gardiner's first B-minor Mass recording caught her ear. The first notes of the Credo grabbed her and she couldn't let go. Then she saw the cover art-the Lamb Triumphant from the Ghent Altarpiece-and asked what all that was about. From then on, whenever she wanted to hear the music, she would say, "Papa, play 'the Lamb,'" and I would put the disks on. Since then, as a church musician and music teacher, she's continued to get what she can out of Herr Bach and to give him back what she can. I marvel at how he took that brutally difficult theme that he received from Frederick the Great-possibly a sequence written by his son CPE that he and the ruler thought to use to embarrass the elder Bach-that he turned into the genius of the Musical Offering.
Well, you know you can't limit Bach's greatness to "Eight major works." But even so, how could anyone leave out the Chaconne? I'll let Brahms speak for me: "On one stave, for a small instrument, the man writes a whole world of the deepest thoughts and most powerful feelings. If I imagined that I could have created, even conceived the piece, I am quite certain that the excess of excitement and earth-shattering experience would have driven me out of my mind." - Johannes Brahms about Bach's Chaconne
Incidentally, the Chaconne written for the left hand by Brahms on the theme by Bach is featured in an old 1940’s movie with Peter Lorre: “The Beast with 5 Fingers.” The plot is stupid since it makes reference that the composition was composed by the fictional character in the movie.
By far, my most favorite Composer of all time. The body of work he left behind is phenomenal in its scope, depth and complexity. I spent a number of years just studying his reharmonizations of hymns, and just scratched the surface. Thank you Rick. In my humble opinion, this is probably one of the most important educational videos you've done to date.
On one of BBC's Sky at Night when they invite Brian May, one of the co-hosts said: "I've never seen a scientist having so much resemblance with Isaac Newton to Brian May". At that time he has got his PhD.
I love Bach's music ! And in my mind I often thank my piano teacher who made me love bach's music. Her key sentence was : "Dans Bach il n'y a pas la mélodie et l'accompagnement, dans Bach tout chante ! " (in Bach's music there is not the melody and the support, in Bach's music everything is singing !" Thank you Mr Beato ! Alexis (from Nantes, France)
After 40 years of teaching music and the muisic of Bach, I've learned one thing is certain: the genius of Bach at it's most sublime can NEVER be put into words.
The tears started popping out at that chunk of St. John's Passion. What a sublime composer (and presentation). Thanks for the recognition/appreciation of his greatness.
One aspect why Bach's music is still great is that it's still alive and even a mediocre singer like me can participate. I live in Lueneburg, a town close to Hamburg, where Bach finished his education as a "Kantor" as a young man. He sang in the choir of my church and now I can sing his Cantatas and large choir works. We have 3 large church choirs in our town and there is a tradititon that his oratories sort of rotate over the years from one church to the other. So you can listen to the christmas oratory every year. And this is good practise in almost every town and city in Germany. Well, not this year, because of Covid-19 all concerts are cancelled.
I have that grin starting when I listen or look at Bach’s music. Absolutely elegant, but a juggernaut of musical movement. I love the quote about him better at music than anyone else has been at anything. I’ve never heard that one before!
Just gratified to hear a bit of Jesu, Meine Freude in there. That's my sentimental favorite. Just love that. I named my eldest son after JS Bach, so my admiration for him is fairly unbounded. Thanks for doing your part to get more people interested in diving into Bach.
@@effiemars_ Well, 'father' of music would also imply that it was his child, something that came from him. You knew what point the person was trying to make, stop being needlessly pedantic.
It took me many years to understand what it means to appreciate Bach. You hear some of his pieces so often that you take him for granted. Until you let yourself either sit and take it in, or something grabs you, you'll never really get it I don't think. But I can hear the range of emotions in his works, and am thankful for what he gave to us.
"Bach, left a legacy that musicians and music historians will be delving into for centuries to come. His limitless musical exploration expressed the order of the physical and biological universe in exquisite mathematical precision in detail. His music was written to express and define beauty in all creation, and his influence on all successive composers is unparalleled and remains so to this day." Rick Beato Wow!!
Oh man. That moment in the St. Johns Passion where the chorus enters. BOOM! It's a simple I(minor) triad, but all the meanderings and complications in the orchestra before that give it such force and presence.
Totally agree. Just like the beginning of the Mass in B Minor when the orchestra and choir enter together. Imagine hearing that in a church with the sun coming through the stained glass of the cavernous interior for the urgent full throated cry of Kyrie Eleison.
I can recall it being said by my music teachers over and over in the earliest years of of my life in public school. "Johan Sebastian Bach was the most important and influential musician / composer who ever lived!". Back in those long gone days we had music classes as part of our regular class schedule. For many of us, we gained a life long appreciation for all forms of music. Thank you JSB! And even though it was difficult to grasp many of the complexities and nuances of classical music in particular, it became a large part of our lives without us even realizing it. Thank you again JSB. I wish that music was still a regular part of education. Music can have an effect on the essence of our very souls and can have a profound effect on who we are as beings. Thank you yet again JSB.
I’m a jazz musician that’s digging into Bach, Mozart, Chopin and Scott Joplin pieces. Each one of those composers is having a profound impact on my playing and improvising. Especially Bach! Just on my 6th piece out of WTC book 1
I’d say it has to be his. You hear notes in it that aren’t written or played but exist in the interplay between overtones - and that came out of his head...
@@thatellipsisguy8984 I've thought that myself. Bach played with his fugues as a way to teach or illustrate the Art of Fugue. I can't think that "simplicity" would be an argument against a fugue being Bach's... it was part of his approach to and fun with music.
I got high on the roof of the electronics factory I worked at in 1976 (I was 21), then put on my headphones and started assembling audio equipment, when Bach's Concerto for for Two Keyboards in C Major came on the radio, and I was astounded and hooked! He is my favorite composer of all time, and ever will be. I liked Rick's take on this, as it is always the incredibly harmonically dense and varied territory that Bach's music travels through that gets me. I greatly enjoy many other baroque composers as well, but Bach's music is something special.
Rick, I discovered your channel and I am compelled to write you a comment. Very rarely do I find someone online that is as spot on with music as you are. And this Bach video just confirmed EVERYTHING. I have much respect for you and your work. Keep on making these great videos and educating the people on "what makes music great." We need more of this in our insane world.
I think the Well Tempered Clavichord was written to demonstrate the advantages of tuning the instrument in a specific way -- well tempered and not even tempered. The pitch increases by the twelfth root of two each step up the chromatic scale, but that is an irrational number, so you have to fudge it somehow. The different methods of fudging are called temperaments. Bach put lots of fancy chords into the piece to show his method was best. But of course, it had to be beautiful to have any value as a demonstration. So in a way there is as much science as art in it. You can think of a keyboard as a digital slide rule. Moving up one octave, which is twelve steps, doubles the frequency of the tone. Moving half that is increasing by the square root of two. So if middle C is one, F# above it is the square root of two. G is 3/2, which is 1.5, according to Pythagoras, but it is actually seven steps up the chromatic scale, or 2^(7/12), which is about 1.498. That is why you have to fudge. E is supposed to be 5/4, 1.25, but it is actually 2^(4/12), the cube root of two, roughly 1.2599. Here's how you use a keyboard to calculate the square root of three: If G above middle C is 3/2, then G an octave higher is three, nineteen steps up the chromatic scale. Half that is about nine steps up from middle C, which is A. Follow the circle of fifths and you get C->G->D->A, which is (3/2)^3, or 27/8. But that A is an octave too high, so the A about middle C is half that, 27/16, or 1.6875. The square root of three is 1.732, only about 3% higher. Getting good approximations translates into having an instrument that sounds like it is in tune. It has to work for lots of different cases, meaning lots of different chords. That is the problem Bach was wrestling with.
Thanks for your comment, man! Though i'm struggling to fully understand all of this! What would you recommend me to read to achieve that understanding? Thanks again!
Not only is Bach’s music the most spiritually and intellectually rewarding in the Western canon, from the perspective of sound; it’s also remarkably beautiful on paper. Every Bach score is a visual masterpiece - perhaps that’s harder for non-musicians to appreciate, but look at a full score of, say, the opening of the B Minor Mass or, (and far more condensed), the Adagio-Fugue from the first (G Minor) Sonata for solo violin. Both are so gorgeous to look at that, even if you didn’t realize that the black and white dots and lines encoded instructions for translation into sound, you could hang the printed music on your wall and just stand in awe. And Bach’s own autograph scores are even more beautiful than print.
Peter Shoobridge Absolutely! After 4 years of playing the violin I started to study the 6 Sonatas and Partitas. My teacher recommended that I should buy the IMC edition. Having done that I was surprised to find a facsimile of the autograph manuscript at the back of that edition. For 40 years this continues to be my most precious music edition and I regularly present Bach‘s heavenly aesthetic score to friends of mine.
I really like all your shows but this one struck me especially on an inspirational note. Love the video scenes in Leipzig. It's beautiful to see how truly you appreciate music and history. In my eyes you're a maestro 👏👏👊
Maybe Bach is the most influential musician ever. I love Gould playing Bach. His Toccata and Fugue in D Minor for organ is very famous, too, what an intro!
Absolutely one of your top videos. It has the polish of a top class production, done with authority and reverence. The best tribute to a giant amongst musical icons, as relevant to millennials as rockers like me
Imagine walking into an 18th Century cathedral on Sunday morning and hearing Toccata & Fugue on the pipe organ...or walking back out into the world after hearing Prelude #1. In addition to the mathematical genius of his music and the monumental nature of his repertoire...the man could set a mood!!!
Congratulations and grateful thanks, Rick, for an informative and deeply respectful tribute to, arguably, the greatest musical genius ever to emerge in Western music. All the more remarkable is the fact that Bach, himself, appears to have been a very humble man, was considered to be little more than a servant/artisan by his employers, and went out of fashion in his own lifetime and for a considerable time afterwards. I think that we have a great debt to pay to another genius, Felix Mendelssohn, for his enthusiasm and insight applied in bringing JSB back to the notice and appreciation of the music-loving public.
@Rob Draper First, there's no "if" about it. I have a keyboard I bought in Kurdistan that can play quarter tones. They are also used in India and China. Second, I agree with you, mostly, about infrastructure etc., in the modern era. And that's a pretty big caveat. We simply don't know what was going on in India and China when they were more advanced than us, and given that both had foolish technology-suppressing leadership in the fifteenth century--the new Chinese emperor recalled its 300-yard ship fleet that had reached East Africa, burned the ships, and destroyed the blueprints--we can't make the assumption that all of their composers' works survived the coming cataclysms. I will also admit that the variety and flexibility of the symphony is unknown to the rest of world music, SO FAR AS I KNOW, which is not completely.
@@promerops The only non-Western composer I am aware of who was so prolific in his work and has had such a huge influence as Bach is Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), who himself practically wrote the entirety of Bengali classical music and also many plays, poems and books (perhaps a bit like Shakespeare and Bach combined), as well as composing the Indian national anthem and founding a famous school and university and school of music which is still highly reputable today. He was awarded a knighthood (which he later gave up on moral grounds due to political events at the time) and a Nobel prize. Such was his influence that his music still has a huge fan base in India almost eighty years after his death. I like his literature, which is vaguely similar to that of Charles Dickens in general nature, although since I have grown up in a Western music environment, I much prefer Bach in terms of music, since Indian music doesn't really focus on harmonies. However, if I listen carefully to Tagore music sung by a proficient singer, I can often hear voice frequency modulations that don't really exist in Western music, which I find interesting.
Bach is overwhelmingly awesome, this year I had the pleasure of learning one of his preludes and fugues, only four pages and yet it took me over 7 months to finish it and to be able to play it decently. I do not quite understand everything that is going on in the fugue, but god! It sounds so nice, and the act of playing turns into a mathematical and logical puzzle that you not only have to solve but also have to communicate that puzzle in the language of arts. I get lost everytime I play that piece, and it's amazing.
Excellent video Rick, Thanks, My first education in music, when I was a kid, was classical and I tried harder and harder to play those baroque scores on my guitar (classical guitar at that time). Now, as rock musician and composer, I fell that full immersion in the baroque, in particular Bach, marked my musical life forever. It teach me that you can flow from simplicity to complexity in a smooth and natural way. You do not need to challenge yourself with lots of random signature changes to be complex, in fact, Bach compositions respect strictly the signatures and tempos defined for each movements on his times, the mastery is to fit those simple counterpoints motives together in such a beautiful way that reach an harmonic complexity never seen before the Baroque period (at least in western music).
I took a college class on Bach that really just scratched the surface. If this video motivates even one person to start listening to Back then Rick has done a great service.
Rick, THANK YOU for having the decency and passion for music that you do to cover the topic of Bach. I would ask that you please cover more of the giants of Classical music if you are able. Their work laid the foundation for literally every pop, rock, country, hip-hop, R&B, et al artist working today. Aside from music, my second passion is History. It is so important that all musicians, producers, and writers have at least a pedestrian familiarity with the Great Composers and their contributions to our shared musical passion. I never miss an episode of your show and have learned so much. Sorry such a long comment. V/R Bren, [Nashville singer-songwriter/engineer/US Army Veteran]
All right, I'm going to finally post this anecdote. I had a very Germanic "Current Events" teacher in HS (11th grade). Every so often, he would regale the students on stories of things outside of class. For some reason, one today he brought up Bach. Now, he had a very, um, artistic or a dramatic way of saying JS's name. It had a lot of flourish to it, sorta "baaak" or "baaa-ck" with a crisp sound at the end. A bit fancy but I was in the HS band and took some introductory Music Appreciation/Theory that made me know immediately who he meant. Wasn't sure if he was more authentic or what but since he enjoyed the name and the man's music, I had no issue. This female student sitting in front of me did. She had a very nasal, monotone voice. I will never forget this as long as I live (cause I have laughed about it for decades. Puzzled, she asked (I forget if she raised her hand, probably did): why do you call him that. Isn't it BATCH? I kid you not. She called him BATCH. (Think of it in the most nasal annoying tone of female voice too.) I was so wigged out I couldn't even laugh then.
@Deborahbonjour deborah. vous devez etre sensible à la beauté de sa musique pour dire ça. car nos avis se rejoignent. j' aime généralement moins la musique religieuse de Bach , mais je suis du même avis : l' ouverture de la passion selon saint matthieu est d' une immense beauté, plus profonde que celle selon st Jean.
To me, J.S. Bach can be summed up by one word: "DIVINE". Air on the G String (Suite in D Major, BWV 1068) as played by Jonathan Scott on the grandiose pipe organ of Whitworth Hall, University of Manchester UK is the most MOVING music performance I've ever heard! It's on YT, go check it out yourselves! The composition and Jonathan's performance and the heavenly sound of that powerful organ is so hauntingly beautiful, it's simply magnificent! It literally moved me to tears! To me the composition conveys profound sadness, but simultaneously eternal glory, elation and celebration! Only a genius could achieve that and J.S. Bach WAS a musical genius! That term is thrown around so recklessly these days, but Bach was the real deal.
Not sure how far through you are but I'd recommend the d minor (no. 4 I think) and the c minor as being particularly good. Of course all the rest are good too!
His sheer output, quality, and variety - choral, orchestral, organ, chamber, solo instrumental, keyboard. Mind boggling. Perhaps the greatest European composer and maybe the best of all time. I love Beethoven and Mozart but Bach is best.
Bach was surrounded by beauty, natural and man made.. the prevailing culture of the day was being aware of being a creature and there is a Creator.. the culture also placed emphasis on achievement, beauty, ambition.. his work as a composer of church music probably drove him to create an impression of the divine and man's place in the world/universe...
Always quality, yup, but this one was beautiful, the footage from inside the church is extraordinary, looks an overwhelming place. Well worth the wait on this.
True. The only way to understand why Bach is great, is to listen to all his works. As Beethoven himself once said, his name shouldn't be Back (creek in German) but Meer (ocean).
Whenever I went to organ concerts in the church back in the 80's I never looked in the program before after the concerts. But somehow my body always reacted with gooseskin and higher energy whenever Bach's preludes and fugues were played. Bach's music is in a higher spiritual level. The essence of confidence.
Rick, many thanks for this beautiful and insightful short summary of Bach and his work. It is an immensely good invitation for all people who do not yet know Bach so well. I have known "my" Bach for 50 years, I am 61 now and live in Cologne, Germany. I just have a slightly different opinion when it comes to Bach's harmonics. You are right, of course. It is very impressive what chords and sounds Bach has already used. But I sometimes think he didn't yet could have the ears for his own music, as we hear it 300 years later. We are delighted and we listen to Bach on the basis of our listening experience...from Ravel to Bill Evans and many other composers and musicians. I believe that some of Bach's visibly avant-garde harmonies were created under the logical flow of his vocal lines. For example, I think he could not associate a major7 with the sound we have in our minds today...after all the decades of jazz chords. Bach's major7 must have had perhaps a different meaning for him than for us. The chord was created and developed from the logic of Bach's line construction. On the other hand...when I hear, for example, the beginning of the St. John Passion, I experience such an emotionally strong Bach and then I think he felt this music exactly the way we do today. Rick, your channel is a jewel! Because you know and can do such a wide range of musical directions. And your inner emotional enthusiasm radiates to me and certainly to all the other channel viewer. Thank you very much for that, and please keep up the good work. Heinz in Cologne.
Bach - the love of my life. I was born and raised in a village near to the birthplace Eisenach, I love his way of using its melody of every piece he wrote. In my childhood, i loved to play A.D. 1602 which used his brandenburg concerto 4 as one of its soundtracks. This music I didn't recognized as Bachs music I discovered with the age of 20. I socked up every little piece of him and still can't get enough. I'm not a christian, but like to sing every song of him. If I would convered to christianitiy, it would be because of his music he wrote.
Thanks Rick, nice to see you take a diversion into my favourite composer. I play his 'cello suites often. Imagining a world without his music, would be like living in a world without flowers or sunsets. Great art should effect you emotionally, and boy Johann Sebastian could do that in spades 😊
I started to listen to Classical Music in my teens and Bach was one of the composers that I loved to listed too and as the years have gone by the more in awe of his Genius I have become.
And by the Way Leipzig is an amazing place from a Musical point of view. Not only did Bach Work there but also Teleman, Schuman and Mendelsohn. Wagner Was born there and three major Music Publishing firms were founded there, Hofmeister, C.F. Peters and Breitkopf. Gewandhouse Orchestra was founded there and still works there and they also play in the Leipzig Opera. It has the second largest Music Library in Germany (Munich has the largest) and it has the Largest Musical Instruments Museum in Germany, so for a lover of Classical Music it's a great place to visit.
It is very strange. I've now played Bach at the piano for 30 years and still find new perpectives. If you look closely, you will find one bar with the same structure as the others but with a mind-boggling dissonance that is out of this world, adding mysticism to the piece. The dissonances are essential and there with a specific purpose. They are not random. Bach will be with me until the end.
Keep in mind the tuning would have been different back then, and people still argue over what kind of tuning Bach used. This is pretty much true for all composers up until equal temperament became the standard piano tuning. What sounds pure or dissonant in modern tuning may have sounded much different in whatever tuning the composer was originally using.
@@matthewtrout1440 Speaking of tuning, you reminded me of a quote from no less than András Schiff as to how he practices everyday. His answer was simple as it was profund: he simply picks two, or three, out of the '48', and that's it; to paraphrase him 'everything you need to know about how to play the piano is there in both books. I have no need for anything else'. For me, that says it all; yes, one can argue at what pitch A, for instance, was tuned at (and probably not at 440Hz ...), but irrespective of that, the Well-Tempered and the Goldberg Variations are, like the Cello Concertos, the K2 of any music; there are pieces which are more like Mt. Everest, but K2 is recognized as technically the far more challenging, despite being lower in altitude. Hence why I think music can indeed be seperated into two periods BB (Before JSB) and AB (After); even if we simply have had the Cantatas (which I haven't even yet begun to listen to in any depth), his music legacy would still be enormous. However, what we have is music that will surely still be played well into the next millennium ...
@@nigelft Matthew Trout is referring to the tuning of the intervals, not if A was at 440 or not. For example. The Well-Tempered Clavier was in a temperament called Werkmeister III. In the Key of C, the 3rds would be almost pure while the Key of F-sharp is much more dissonant.
You just won me over. I'm new to your channel and I thought it was just about rock and pop. This gives it a whole other dimension! I could throw out all the music I have ever bought, except for the Goldbergs with Gould. Listening to that for the rest of my life would be just fine.
I love Bach. His music is uplifting and sooo elegant! It makes you feel like walking on air. God bless this musical genius and all creative geniuses that ever existed!
Peter Ustinov said: Bach's music is so beautiful that it diminishes one's fear of death by virtue of its serene attachment to life.
When I was a classical guitar major my prof told me that Music Theory was just everyone coming along after Bach and trying to explain what he did by nature.
Love this
Same here.
Mine told me the same
Amen 🙏
So true! I have learned about retrograde motion in music theory class but never saw anyone really use it prominently, until I came across Bach....
I grew up in the Soviet Union and studied classical piano between the ages 7-14. Musical school curriculum was quite strict and we had to play this or that composer's works no matter how much we liked it or not. So I had to improvise sometimes and that was not encouraged at all :). Bach was the only composer I practiced without any hesitation, by placing fingers exactly the way it was requested, without any need to change anything. Bach's music was/is so complete, perfect and divine, it had tamed the rebellious teenager in me.
As a cellist I can’t say enough about the Six Solo Suites for Cello. They are the gold standard for cellists. If you can play these works musically and well you can play anything else in the repertoire. These six suites have been the soundtrack of my life expressing the entire range of emotions from deepest grief to absolute exultation and joy.
The greatest music ever written for the instrument.
SAME. My life
As a cellist I was told the suites ramp up in difficulty. But then when I started working on the 2nd suite, fucking menuet throws a curve ball at me.
Whatever, I agree about the minuets in Suite No. 2. I have small hands for a cellist, so yes, learning them was tough…has been learning both bourees in Suite No. 4 and the first gavotte in Suite No. 6.
@@monicacall7532 Oh suite #4 is definitely not kind to people with small hands.
As an organist myself, having played Bach for over 8 years now... it's just incredible how each and every new piece I hear of him is so different and such a new world. Everytime I want to learn a new piece of him, I discover things where I'm like "wait, he also wrote things like this...?". His Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor is an absolute pinnacle in his repertoire, and is probably the most beautiful and exhilarating masterwork I've ever played.
Nice to hear that as musician you like learn from bach ,who made universal mathematical music creations ,which are the fountain of wisdom of knowledge ! Its so nice that he made such a great dictionary of music styles ,his music its the future lol best of luck and have funPs our generation should sings bachs masterpieces lol
It is also quite stunning on pedal harpsichord
It's so obvious to note the Passacaglia, and yet sometimes a super-famous work is also a legitimately mind-blowing piece of eternity. And this is one such.
In general, I find his organ works to be flabbergasting.
Thank you for the nod to the Passacaglia, which is one of my absolute favorite compositions, as well. We are in good company -- when I thanked our church organist for playing it, she confided that it was her favorite, as well.
i love the passacaglia. absolutely amazing. the way he keeps the bass going.. especially during the arpeggios.. its really well done on the Amorbach organ.. the album is on spotify
I play Bach on the guitar almost everyday particularly the lute suites. I named my daughter Anna Magdalena after his wonderful wife. I'm pretty passionate about Bach too. Thanks for this!
Me too. He has penetrated my soul in a way that broke me into pieces and showed me who I really am and who I could become. He is the most generous composer. He wanted to save humanity with his music. I own him my life. ❤
john williams' performance of the gigue from 996 is the single greatest guitar performance of all time.
I'm so glad there are so many of us who put Bach into our lives everyday. Bach + Guitar = Heaven!
Good choice! Not to mention that Anna Magdalena was more than just his wife. She was an eminent soprano singer and musician and she was involved in the writing of some of his pieces. Also she did a lot of copywork.
Many of Bach's original manuscripts have her handwriting on them.
@@jaikee9477 Indeed. She was a great musician and copyist. We may not have some of his pieces today without her.
Jack Bruce (lead singer and bass player of Cream) said that " J.S. Bach wrote fabulous bass parts that every bass player should study cause they perfectly illustrate how to be functional and melodic at the same time."
I'ma study that bass in in Fugue in G minor
Jack Bruce studied classical cello and bass at a conservatory before he picked up electric bass guitar.
Bach practically invented the bassline. We owe him everything.
L learned (at the Bach museum in Eisenach, his birthplace) that he wrote the baseline first
“The aim and final end of all music should be none other than the glory of God and the refreshment of the soul.” - Johann Sebastian Bach
I was in seventh grade, in junior high school in Harlem, and our teacher took us out one night on a 'cultural enrichment field trip' to hear the ballet. I was 12 and not really interested in ballet, but the music for one of the dances caught my ear. I thought to myself "the violins are talking to each other." Later, I looked at the program and it was obvious I'd heard the Concerto for Two Violins. Looking back, I think that moment was the awakening of my musical life.
Are you referring to the Largo movement of Bach's Concerto for Two Violins in D minor? Whenever I hear that piece, I imagine two humpback whales--a mother and its young--swimming together in graceful slow motion, while singing a duet. =D
this is a very beautiful story
fugue in g minor is my favorite one by him
I had that same moment when I in elementary school at church with my dad at the St. Paul Cathedral. I remember I was fidgeting with the church bulletin at the almost end of mass - I remember fidgeting because of what came next on the organ - "sheep may safely graze." I saw my dad look at me with confusion as stopped to listen what sounds would come next.
This is what great teachers do, they point you in a direction and watch you run with whatever catches your eye.
I lived for a while three blocks away from the Thomas Kirche in Leipzig, while I was working as a singer in Leipzig’s opera house.
Rick, I usually watch your videos because they are very entertaining, and I have to thank you for this one. Especially. I’ve sung many works by Bach, especially Matthäus Passion. Many times. And I love how broad your music palate is. I feel deeply identified with it.
Apart from EVERYTHING else, Bach was an incredible melodist, if such a word exists. And he was a man, like you and I. It’s absolutely mind blowing the amount of works with such consistent quality, beauty, inventiveness, etc... that this guy wrote. Never was and never will be something like it.
Thank you for this video, man.
1:49 Air on the G String
2:02 Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring
2:29 Well-tempered Clavier
3:29 Brandenburg Concerto No. 3
3:50 Goldberg Variations
4:01 Mass in B Minor
4:23 Cello Suite No. 1
5:04 Art of the Fugue
6:30 Cantata No. 54
7:25 [more of the same?]
8:25 E Major Prelude
10:04 [compare Alan Rawthorne: Oboe Concerto]
11:27 St. John Passion
=> Watch "A Passionate Life" by Sir John Eliot Gardiner
13:44 (end)
Cantata 54 😍😍😍😍😍😍😍🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰
7:25 Motet Jesu, meine freude BWV 227
@@Moksi-iq7pl THANK YOU!
@@Moksi-iq7pl one of his greatest works also un my ooinion
obligatory air on the g string joke
"Now _there_ is music from which a man can learn something."
- W. A. Mozart (on hearing Bach motets in Leipzig)
If Mozart said that, who am I to disagree?
Wrong Bach!
@@freepagan True, Mozart actually said this about Bach's son CPE, who happened to be his teacher and greatest influence. He also adored JC Bach, who later became incredibly successful in London. Mozart wasn't stupid. He knew how much he owed to old Bach. Mozart, as we know him, would be unthinkable without the Bach family.
No mention of counterpoint? How bizarre
@@jaikee9477 And funnily, the Bach family probably wouldn't have been possible without Pachelbel.
The word "Bach" means "creek" in German. So Beethoven once said "Bach? Ocean is what he should have been called..."
It says „Nicht Bach, sondern Meer sollte er heißen“
Meer means sea, and is also pronounced the same as mehr meaning more.
So it is a double-pun
Beethoven greatly admired Bach. There are lots of letters written by Beethoven filled with superlatives about Bach. In many of his letters Beethoven repeatedly called him "the god of harmony". The letters were written between 1798-1802, more 25 years before Mendelssohn kicked off the Bach renaissance which lasts to the present day.
Just like Mozart, he was fully aware of Bach's supreme importance.
SO, WHEN HE DIED, MUSIC WENT UP THE BACH ?
@@berndlauert8179 EXACTLY! And "Bach" leans more toward "River Bank" than creek, though is used for both. So glad to see others enjoying the surprisingly delightful sense of humor that Herr Beethoven had. I studied Trombone at the Koelner Musickhochschule in Cologne where the man himself studied and heard several wonderful tales of Beethoven's wry sense of humor from venerable instructors present there in the early 90's. Such a wonderful time in life. Thanks for reminding me of this wonderful gem!
My name roughly translates to "low water crossing" I like to say.
A wonderful thing about classical music is you can feel that these pieces are amazing, even if you have no idea why.
I completely agree !
Yes even the non-musicians in my Family (they are few but we have some) can inherently sense in their BONES that these pieces are Epic. My son is in San Diego and recently completed his training as a Combat Medic this month (as you know the Corps pulls their medics from Dept. of Navy) & he's been droppin' little nuggets to the fellas. He doesn't talk a lot....rather shocks the $h!t out of his comrades once you sit him in front of a piano. He's been showing these good men what real music is all about & they say the same as you: I don't know WHY, but this song kicks A$$. Hehe :-)
@@happyhoneybigbear Wow that's amazing. I'm infantry so Corpsman are very high on my favorite people list. God bless your son. Sounds like he's someone with a lot to offer.!
Absolutely
@@USMCArchAngel03 well God bless you all and all the commenters here as well, especially you archangel. Stay frosty, brother. And if you ever meet a medic named Jake Walsh ,that's my son and we are very proud of him.
Composer Johannes Brahms said of Bach’s Chaconne from the D minor partita for solo violin: "The Chaconne is one of the most wonderful, incomprehensible pieces of music. On a single staff, for a small instrument, the man writes a whole world of the deepest thoughts and the most powerful feelings. If I were to imagine how I might have made, conceived the piece, I know for certain that the overwhelming excitement and awe would have driven me mad."
Such a nice quote. The piece is so incredibly stunning, I've played it many times, practiced it for hundreds of hours and still feel like I'm just getting to know it.
It's the one piece I know that I'll never be finished with, ever.
Beautiful words by Brahms.
And in homage to Bach he went on to write a transcription of the chaconne, to be played on the piano by the left hand alone - completely unlike Busoni's gigantic version for both hands. Why left hand alone? Brahms said he wanted to preserve the difficulty of writing complex contrapuntal music for a fundamentally melodic instrument like the violin.
When life is crashing down all around me I listen to JS Bach to make things feel more ordered and calm. Bach's music is healing.
I listen to Kamala Harris.
@@johnboettger864 begone troll
St John's passion sounds like the soundtrack of the beginning of our universe .
Haha......wellll the Gospel according to John chap 1 describes the beginning
"In the beginning was the word and the word was God and the word was with God. Holistic beginning of all, all meaning, all beauty, all truth, all good, and all matter.
..or "something is about to happen here - and it is NOT going to be peaceful!"
St Matthew Passion is heart rending beauty; used to great effect by Martin Scorcese in "Casino"
I love how Rick is equally passionate about Alice in Chains and Bach. That’s why this is such a great channel. For anyone new to Bach, I would recommend checking out Sheep May Safely Graze. It may not be Bach’s most complex piece. But it’s stunningly beautiful.
I did. Beautiful. Although, had I listened without video, I would have never tied the piece with sheep (though it's pacific).
Exactly what I was thinking. There aren't many people who are equally interested in and knowledgeable about both rock and classical music. I learned Sheep May Safely Graze when I was in my teens and I still take great pleasure in playing it 50 years later.
That's just your opinion. There's no need for you to attack other people's interests. Just stop.
Great Destroyer : better at concertos. But not better at heroin... I mean rock music.
@Great Destroyer
I'm not attacking your interests. I'm trying to stop you from attacking other people's interests.
If you ever find yourself asking the question: "If I'm looking up to all these great musicians, then who are all these great musicians looking up to?"
The answer is Bach.
Tal Moore Great sentence. So it is.
Exactly.
@@richardwebb2348 "Not Brook but Ocean should be his name.
" - Ludwig Van Beethoven ("Bach" is the German word for "brook")
@@richardwebb2348 Beethoven did not know the complete works of Bach. Only "Die Kunst der Fuge", no "Goldberg-Variationen", not the "Passionen" not his concerti, nt his organ works...
And guess who Bach looked up to... Yup, you guessed it...
"The aim and final end of all music should be none other than the glory of God and the refreshment of the soul." J.S.Bach
Bach music certainly refreshes my soul!
Souls and god don't exist.
@@pcuimac I'm an atheist too but you don't have to be this edgy in a youtube comments section lmao
@@pcuimac 1 - You can't prove that God exist BUT you also can't prove that God doesn't exist.
2 - you're edgy.
The polar opposite of hip hop. Yes, I am judging.
Bach was actually ‘forgotten’ in the years after his death. His ‘rediscovery’ is attributed to Felix Mendelssohn’s effort to promote his music. And Western music was better because of this.
As someone who has played Bach’s music on the keyboard, sang and conducted his choral works, I would say that Bach’s genius lay on his almost unearthly understanding of the transition from modal music to triadic harmonic progression (today’s harmony), and his ability to utilize these into his music. Western music at that time was still moving from modes (it was a long transition since Monteverdi), and Bach was the master who knew how to wield the power of his music writing during these exciting period in history. Thank you Rick for sharing your experiences and knowledge. Leipzig can be a transformative place for a musician who is hungry for understanding.
Not true. He was not forgotten. At least not among musicians.
It's just that performing his music, especially his cantatas, which make up the main body of his work, fell out of fashion.
Correct : Mendelssohn revealed Bach's deepness and greatness to the world through "St Mathaüs Passion". Amazing harmonics and complex architecture, event if the artwork didn't come complete because of a lost part.
@@Quotenwagnerianer or more aptly, he was resented, because he was just so darn good. Later composers didn't want to be compared to him.
He was not forgotten...that is a myth.
Yes, he definitely was a visionary.
Bach is one of those very rare individuals who actually is as good as the "hype".
Or even exceeds the hype?
Bach - yeah - believe the hype...
He really exceeds the hype, not to mention that Mozart, Chopin, Beethoven, etc would totally agree with this statement.
good to know that he passed your test
I don't think there are "hypes" in classical music overall. The composers have well passed the test of time.
After watching your Sting/Dominic Miller interview, I decided to revisit Bach after decades, and I end up right back here on your channel. :-)
Yep, that's what UA-cam suggested to me too.
My favorite composer of all. When I hear one of his pieces I can't believe how he came up with his notes. As I play them it just blows my mind.
I teach my middle school students about Bach and his music. By the time we get to the end of our unit on Bach, they have a very good introductory knowledge of his life and music. They could also tell you that Bach is my absolute favorite musician. Let’s face it, we could spend a lifetime pulling apart Bach’s music and still only scratch the surface. Thanks for this great video Rick.
Its impossible to define Bachs greatness,it is beyond definition.
"Bach is like an astronomer who, with help from ciphers, finds the most wonderful stars!"
-- Frederic Chopin
Back in my late teens and early twenties, I sang in church choir. Singing bass was for a lot of the time not very challenging and a bit boring. That is until we sang some Bach.
We would all learn our parts by listening to each part played individually on the organ, then sing along with it. Standard practice.
At that age, I could sing bass or tenor in full voice and alto in falsetto. With Bach pieces, I sang the three parts in rehearsal just for the joy of it.
With Bach, in almost every piece, each part is a complete and beautiful piece of music in and of itself. Then all of these beautiful pieces roll and flip over and blend with each other like no other music.
To play a piece on an instrument is one thing. To sing with ones own voice several parts (like multitracking) and to feel the beauty of each and then to sing in the ensemble feeling all the parts is entirely something different.
Bach can be movingly beautiful, disturbingly grave and pretty and joyous. Sometimes all at the same time.
I know of no other who can do or has done that.
Bach still proves that there is such a thing as serious fun. :)
Actually, G.F. Händel certainly comes close.
@@Robert_1685 yes. I'll drink to that. He did have his moments for sure. Water Music and Messiah come to mind.
But the bass parts aren't quite the goisebump producers that JS created.
There really is a lot of great music out there and I guess we can all have our favourites.
Carl Sagen asked what should be included on the famous Voyager golden disk, physicist Freeman Dyson said, "I'd send just Bach ... but that would be showing off."
The version I heard decades ago (also in paraphrase) had to do with what we should broadcast into space to try to connect with other intelligent beings. What I remember was "We should broadcast Bach, all of it. And risk being seen as boastful!"
richard hargrove
--
"La musique est une science qui veut qu'on rit et chant et danse."
(Music is a science that would have one laugh and sing and dance.)
-- Guillaume de Machaut (1300-77)
That's excellent! I can't believe I hadn't heard that one before. And so true then, when we were emerging from the disco 70's and into the "me, me, ME!" 80's. But compared to now, then was nothing. Given our (the United States) current sad state of affairs, just one measure of Bach is showing off. Humanity is saying more and more each day that we simply aren't worthy of many of the masterpieces of our culture. Our greed makes us unworthy. T
As the greedy at the top undermine the foundations of society, our humanity suffers. We can no longer pursue the higher pursuits and are instead left to scratch and claw for the basic necessities. What has been true in the third world for generations is now becoming true in much of the developed world as well. The US is leading the way on devolution of society. Tax cuts don't create prosperity for a country, they only enrich the few at the top - those with all the power simply attaining more.
So yes, sending Bach is showing off. Because if an intelligent life form found us - and almost by definition they'd be FAR MORE advanced than us - they'd discover a smouldering mass that lives far, FAR below the genius exhibited by Bach and our other truly shining stars of humanity.
Shame on us. Shame on us all.
@Dude On Bike. Do you feel better now?
@daAnder71 yeah and It wasn't even Freeman Dyson, but the biologist Luis Thomas who said that.
It was Thomas Lewis that said that.
Rick..here’s my story : i was a mailman for thirty years and during my time I met a guy who plays in the symphony and loves to fish and I was was really new to the guitar but I was really into ..so I asked one day if he wanted to go fishing on the big lake eire and ,we went and on the way he explained how Bach harmonized all his music back then for the whole ride out there for a hour and half .. I never said more than that’s cool wow that entire 1.5 hrs their ...that’s was 8 year ago and we’re still great friends even when he’s half my age @62...soooo ur story of JSB WASSSS SOOOO GOOOD .. thanks for ur lessons and ur utube friends ...u all know who you are and thanks for sharing
Ron T wait, you’re 124??!
I just cannot wrap my head around the fact that one man composed so much wonderful music. To say that Bach was a prolific composer would not do the man justice.
Mr. Rick Beato, this is your best take on any one musician. I never thought I would ever like classical, but Bach pushed me over the edge. I listen to all genre of music. Bach checks all the boxes for me for what I like in classical; just like how Django Reinhardt & Vince Guaraldi does it for me for jazz.
Your channel is absolutely fantastic. Here are no limits. Everything Music is well named in deed.
It makes you dream, it makes you travel, it makes you go out of your boundaries, it educates you...
I also greatly appreciate the fact that you respect your audience and the musicians you talk about. Clean channel here.
Yet, you talk freely, boldly.
Your channel is an invitation to love music, to love it more and more.
Thank you.
@@RickBeato you're so welcome. And thank YOU!
Salut de Paris! 🤗🎸🎷🎶🎵🎼📯🎤🎹📣🎻🥁🎺
Avi Elkharrat That’s exactly how I feel too. Great channel!
agree
Bach was a machine. The guy turned out so much music and had to work so quickly to keep up with his schedule. And yet his music was of such consistent superior quality. Thanks Rick, I love your subjects!
Aristotle said that quality comes with quantity, like a habit. And not viceversa (viceversa as in quantity prevents quality and quality is inversely proportional to quantity), like many use to think.
i think many pieces, intricate though they are, are just snapshots of ever evolving improvising material. i bet that's why he comes across so jazzy lol.
You do not have to publish everything you write. You practice, you write hundreds of hours of music and then publish a single hour worth of music, which is a masterpiece. Then you will have small quantity of exceedingly high quality. That is Gauss and Riemann versus Cauchy and indeed Euler in mathematics.
@@u.v.s.5583 if u ever had a looked at eulers opera omnia, u know, those big ole tomes. if u did, you'd know that quality vs quantity argument is bullshit. lol. as for cauchy vs gauss, that metaphor is off quite a bit too. ;)
Bach's contemporary Telemann wrote even more music than Bach did -I believe Telemann was the most prolific composer who ever lived -to a non-musician like me Telemann's music sounds as good as Bachs but experts say it's not -it was not as complicated but does music always have to be complicated?
Bach was sent from heaven to unfold music! He was sent to compose and create sounds that will stand till the end of time! Bach was an inspired man! His sounds are so angelic!
xolanimtha amen
Among many, many other things , What makes Beato Great is his love for ALL kinds of music, other from the ones inside his field of expertise.
And What makes him extraordinary is how he appreciates Bach's music and recognizes it's influence in his developement as a "modern" musician.
I am so glad that my Beato Club dues go towards producing this kind of content. Thanks Rick.
Thanks so much for being one of his patrons. I can't speak for everyone, but I am grateful beyond belief for his content, especially something like this.
Its awesome!
There's so much that makes Bach great! If you listen to 30 main stream pop song, you probably hear almost the same thing 30 times. If you listen to the same Bach piece 30 times, you'll hear something new all 30 times. Bach's music is packed with gold. You can't just appreciate all of it if you only listen a few times. I've been playing Bach's Lute music on guitar for about 40 year now, and still I find new details, pieces of gold, like a different way to look at the voicings, or the harmonies. It just keeps challenging and inspiring. I don't there's any other composer like that.
This is true! There are pieces I've listened to and played for over 50 years and I STILL discover new things I hadn't noticed before. None of it ever gets old.
@Camille Desmoulins He wrote over 1.000 works, some of them over 2 hours long. I have no idea, but If you put them all together, you'd probably had 4 weeks of Musik non-stop.
A fantastic video and hommage to J.S. Bach. Thank you so much! I'm 56 now. J.S. Bach's music has been a huge part of my life since early teens. His music is such a comfort. Way better than any therapist! :-)
Same here.
Visited Leipzig, Thomas kirche Had an opportunity to pay my homage to Bach - finally.
When my younger daughter was about three years old, John Eliot Gardiner's first B-minor Mass recording caught her ear. The first notes of the Credo grabbed her and she couldn't let go. Then she saw the cover art-the Lamb Triumphant from the Ghent Altarpiece-and asked what all that was about. From then on, whenever she wanted to hear the music, she would say, "Papa, play 'the Lamb,'" and I would put the disks on. Since then, as a church musician and music teacher, she's continued to get what she can out of Herr Bach and to give him back what she can. I marvel at how he took that brutally difficult theme that he received from Frederick the Great-possibly a sequence written by his son CPE that he and the ruler thought to use to embarrass the elder Bach-that he turned into the genius of the Musical Offering.
I love John elliot gardiner. his recording of beethovens eroica is incredible and easily my favorite
Well, you know you can't limit Bach's greatness to "Eight major works." But even so, how could anyone leave out the Chaconne? I'll let Brahms speak for me:
"On one stave, for a small instrument, the man writes a whole world of the deepest thoughts and most powerful feelings. If I imagined that I could have created, even conceived the piece, I am quite certain that the excess of excitement and earth-shattering experience would have driven me out of my mind." - Johannes Brahms about Bach's Chaconne
Look what Einstein did with chalk and a blackboard.
He also left out the musical offering... Bach wrote a lot of titanic works
Incidentally, the Chaconne written for the left hand by Brahms on the theme by Bach is featured in an old 1940’s movie with Peter Lorre: “The Beast with 5 Fingers.” The plot is stupid since it makes reference that the composition was composed by the fictional character in the movie.
I cannot agree more...
Keep in mind, Brahms was also a notorious perfectionist
This is like heaven after watching a video of a man spending a week in VR headset.
Thank goodness for Bach.
Bach is simply magnificent. Bach wrote music in a divine way never equalled by any other composer ever. He managed to be the real voice of God.
Except for Toccata and Fugue in D Minor...the voice of The Devil. I love it.
@@Torgo1969
yes, just 1 minute before he sinned and was thrown down
By far, my most favorite Composer of all time. The body of work he left behind is phenomenal in its scope, depth and complexity. I spent a number of years just studying his reharmonizations of hymns, and just scratched the surface.
Thank you Rick. In my humble opinion, this is probably one of the most important educational videos you've done to date.
Brian May likes Bach so much, he adapted his hair-style.
Since he also has an advanced science degree, I'm sure he's happy with the Bach / Newton thing going on.
On one of BBC's Sky at Night when they invite Brian May, one of the co-hosts said: "I've never seen a scientist having so much resemblance with Isaac Newton to Brian May". At that time he has got his PhD.
You mean issac newton
Brian May sucks
Shockheadd45 hey, didn’t ask
No need to block any of Ricks videos. The man is a legend
I love Bach's music ! And in my mind I often thank my piano teacher who made me love bach's music. Her key sentence was : "Dans Bach il n'y a pas la mélodie et l'accompagnement, dans Bach tout chante ! " (in Bach's music there is not the melody and the support, in Bach's music everything is singing !"
Thank you Mr Beato !
Alexis (from Nantes, France)
After 40 years of teaching music and the muisic of Bach, I've learned one thing is certain: the genius of Bach at it's most sublime can NEVER be put into words.
One thing is certain, the rest is lies. The flower that once has blown, forever dies.
The tears started popping out at that chunk of St. John's Passion. What a sublime composer (and presentation). Thanks for the recognition/appreciation of his greatness.
This has to be the 10 time I watch this.... probably couse its the CLEAREST explanation of Bach's magic I have ever seen... GREAT work Rick...!
I have listened to Bach’s works for 40 yrs or so, and do not pretend to know much about it other than it moves me like no other music can 🤷♂️
I give it a "7", it's easy to Waltz to...
Steven M. That is good enough. Music like his means civilization is worth saving
One aspect why Bach's music is still great is that it's still alive and even a mediocre singer like me can participate. I live in Lueneburg, a town close to Hamburg, where Bach finished his education as a "Kantor" as a young man. He sang in the choir of my church and now I can sing his Cantatas and large choir works. We have 3 large church choirs in our town and there is a tradititon that his oratories sort of rotate over the years from one church to the other. So you can listen to the christmas oratory every year. And this is good practise in almost every town and city in Germany. Well, not this year, because of Covid-19 all concerts are cancelled.
🥰
More evidence that the planned’demic was truly Satan’s working. In Bach I trust.
I have that grin starting when I listen or look at Bach’s music. Absolutely elegant, but a juggernaut of musical movement. I love the quote about him better at music than anyone else has been at anything. I’ve never heard that one before!
Just gratified to hear a bit of Jesu, Meine Freude in there. That's my sentimental favorite. Just love that. I named my eldest son after JS Bach, so my admiration for him is fairly unbounded. Thanks for doing your part to get more people interested in diving into Bach.
Many musicians are stars, but Bach is the big bang.
Well, Bach didn't create music but ok
Facu Maresca Though, he is literally called the Father of music
Yeah, not the big bang of it
@@effiemars_ Well, 'father' of music would also imply that it was his child, something that came from him. You knew what point the person was trying to make, stop being needlessly pedantic.
Stop assuming and categorizing me, in any case. Okay so I'm a musician too, and if he's the father of musicians, is Bach my daddy? :$
It took me many years to understand what it means to appreciate Bach. You hear some of his pieces so often that you take him for granted. Until you let yourself either sit and take it in, or something grabs you, you'll never really get it I don't think. But I can hear the range of emotions in his works, and am thankful for what he gave to us.
"Bach, left a legacy that musicians and music historians will be delving into for centuries to come. His limitless musical exploration expressed the order of the physical and biological universe in exquisite mathematical precision in detail. His music was written to express and define beauty in all creation, and his influence on all successive composers is unparalleled and remains so to this day." Rick Beato
Wow!!
Seeing Bach's memorial plaque brings tears to my eyes. Thanks for your wonderful tribute, Rick.
There's no crying in Classical Piano...
@@danielmconnolly7 Gould would hum along, though!
Oh man. That moment in the St. Johns Passion where the chorus enters. BOOM! It's a simple I(minor) triad, but all the meanderings and complications in the orchestra before that give it such force and presence.
Totally agree. Just like the beginning of the Mass in B Minor when the orchestra and choir enter together. Imagine hearing that in a church with the sun coming through the stained glass of the cavernous interior for the urgent full throated cry of Kyrie Eleison.
I can recall it being said by my music teachers over and over in the earliest years of of my life in public school. "Johan Sebastian Bach was the most important and influential musician / composer who ever lived!". Back in those long gone days we had music classes as part of our regular class schedule. For many of us, we gained a life long appreciation for all forms of music. Thank you JSB! And even though it was difficult to grasp many of the complexities and nuances of classical music in particular, it became a large part of our lives without us even realizing it. Thank you again JSB. I wish that music was still a regular part of education. Music can have an effect on the essence of our very souls and can have a profound effect on who we are as beings. Thank you yet again JSB.
I’m a jazz musician that’s digging into Bach, Mozart, Chopin and Scott Joplin pieces. Each one of those composers is having a profound impact on my playing and improvising. Especially Bach! Just on my 6th piece out of WTC book 1
Toccata and Fugue in d minor has been my favorite piece of music since I was a young child, listening to my father play it on pipe organ.
I’d say it has to be his. You hear notes in it that aren’t written or played but exist in the interplay between overtones - and that came out of his head...
@@thatellipsisguy8984
I've thought that myself.
Bach played with his fugues as a way to teach or illustrate the Art of Fugue. I can't think that "simplicity" would be an argument against a fugue being Bach's... it was part of his approach to and fun with music.
Try the Dorian. It will knock your socks off.
Really awful that people now hear the first bar and think "Ew, spooky. Phantom of the Opera. Halloween."
@@scottparis6355
Yes. Very profound.
That is surely not in any way Bach's mindset in that piece.
I got high on the roof of the electronics factory I worked at in 1976 (I was 21), then put on my headphones and started assembling audio equipment, when Bach's Concerto for for Two Keyboards in C Major came on the radio, and I was astounded and hooked! He is my favorite composer of all time, and ever will be. I liked Rick's take on this, as it is always the incredibly harmonically dense and varied territory that Bach's music travels through that gets me. I greatly enjoy many other baroque composers as well, but Bach's music is something special.
I think that there's a certain brain wiring in some of us that causes the instant and lifelong love of his works.
Rick, I discovered your channel and I am compelled to write you a comment. Very rarely do I find someone online that is as spot on with music as you are. And this Bach video just confirmed EVERYTHING. I have much respect for you and your work. Keep on making these great videos and educating the people on "what makes music great." We need more of this in our insane world.
I think the Well Tempered Clavichord was written to demonstrate the advantages of tuning the instrument in a specific way -- well tempered and not even tempered. The pitch increases by the twelfth root of two each step up the chromatic scale, but that is an irrational number, so you have to fudge it somehow. The different methods of fudging are called temperaments.
Bach put lots of fancy chords into the piece to show his method was best. But of course, it had to be beautiful to have any value as a demonstration. So in a way there is as much science as art in it.
You can think of a keyboard as a digital slide rule. Moving up one octave, which is twelve steps, doubles the frequency of the tone. Moving half that is increasing by the square root of two. So if middle C is one, F# above it is the square root of two. G is 3/2, which is 1.5, according to Pythagoras, but it is actually seven steps up the chromatic scale, or 2^(7/12), which is about 1.498. That is why you have to fudge. E is supposed to be 5/4, 1.25, but it is actually 2^(4/12), the cube root of two, roughly 1.2599.
Here's how you use a keyboard to calculate the square root of three: If G above middle C is 3/2, then G an octave higher is three, nineteen steps up the chromatic scale. Half that is about nine steps up from middle C, which is A. Follow the circle of fifths and you get C->G->D->A, which is (3/2)^3, or 27/8. But that A is an octave too high, so the A about middle C is half that, 27/16, or 1.6875. The square root of three is 1.732, only about 3% higher.
Getting good approximations translates into having an instrument that sounds like it is in tune. It has to work for lots of different cases, meaning lots of different chords. That is the problem Bach was wrestling with.
Thanks for your comment, man!
Though i'm struggling to fully understand all of this!
What would you recommend me to read to achieve that understanding?
Thanks again!
Thank for the lesson Sir.
You what ?
Brilliant comment Bernard.
@Doogyrevko wow Not boring; just above your pay grade.
Not only is Bach’s music the most spiritually and intellectually rewarding in the Western canon, from the perspective of sound; it’s also remarkably beautiful on paper. Every Bach score is a visual masterpiece - perhaps that’s harder for non-musicians to appreciate, but look at a full score of, say, the opening of the B Minor Mass or, (and far more condensed), the Adagio-Fugue from the first (G Minor) Sonata for solo violin.
Both are so gorgeous to look at that, even if you didn’t realize that the black and white dots and lines encoded instructions for translation into sound, you could hang the printed music on your wall and just stand in awe.
And Bach’s own autograph scores are even more beautiful than print.
Peter Shoobridge Absolutely! After 4 years of playing the violin I started to study the 6 Sonatas and Partitas. My teacher recommended that I should buy the IMC edition. Having done that I was surprised to find a facsimile of the autograph manuscript at the back of that edition. For 40 years this continues to be my most precious music edition and I regularly present Bach‘s heavenly aesthetic score to friends of mine.
I've had that same thought about the WTC preludes and fugues - each so remarkably different in appearance from the other.
I really like all your shows but this one struck me especially on an inspirational note. Love the video scenes in Leipzig. It's beautiful to see how truly you appreciate music and history. In my eyes you're a maestro 👏👏👊
Maybe Bach is the most influential musician ever. I love Gould playing Bach. His Toccata and Fugue in D Minor for organ is very famous, too, what an intro!
Bach is the greatest of all time! without Bach there wouldn't be Mozart, Beethoven, etc....awesome video
Without Monteverdi, Schütz, Pachelbel, Palestrina, Buxtehude, Couperin and Vivaldi
there would be no Bach.
Absolutely one of your top videos. It has the polish of a top class production, done with authority and reverence. The best tribute to a giant amongst musical icons, as relevant to millennials as rockers like me
you Rick are the greatest gift to musicians on you tube. no one is like you.
Imagine walking into an 18th Century cathedral on Sunday morning and hearing Toccata & Fugue on the pipe organ...or walking back out into the world after hearing Prelude #1.
In addition to the mathematical genius of his music and the monumental nature of his repertoire...the man could set a mood!!!
Congratulations and grateful thanks, Rick, for an informative and deeply respectful tribute to, arguably, the greatest musical genius ever to emerge in Western music. All the more remarkable is the fact that Bach, himself, appears to have been a very humble man, was considered to be little more than a servant/artisan by his employers, and went out of fashion in his own lifetime and for a considerable time afterwards. I think that we have a great debt to pay to another genius, Felix Mendelssohn, for his enthusiasm and insight applied in bringing JSB back to the notice and appreciation of the music-loving public.
@Rob Draper Hi. Not necessarily, I'm just keeping my options open, especially given my very limited knowledge of the non-Western forms!
As I have said, the apex composers were Bach, Handel and Beethoven. I would never choose between them.They also are very different
@Rob Draper ... given that most non-Western music has double the possibilities (quarter tones), it seems at least possible. Possibly even, likely.
@Rob Draper First, there's no "if" about it. I have a keyboard I bought in Kurdistan that can play quarter tones. They are also used in India and China. Second, I agree with you, mostly, about infrastructure etc., in the modern era. And that's a pretty big caveat. We simply don't know what was going on in India and China when they were more advanced than us, and given that both had foolish technology-suppressing leadership in the fifteenth century--the new Chinese emperor recalled its 300-yard ship fleet that had reached East Africa, burned the ships, and destroyed the blueprints--we can't make the assumption that all of their composers' works survived the coming cataclysms. I will also admit that the variety and flexibility of the symphony is unknown to the rest of world music, SO FAR AS I KNOW, which is not completely.
@@promerops The only non-Western composer I am aware of who was so prolific in his work and has had such a huge influence as Bach is Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), who himself practically wrote the entirety of Bengali classical music and also many plays, poems and books (perhaps a bit like Shakespeare and Bach combined), as well as composing the Indian national anthem and founding a famous school and university and school of music which is still highly reputable today. He was awarded a knighthood (which he later gave up on moral grounds due to political events at the time) and a Nobel prize. Such was his influence that his music still has a huge fan base in India almost eighty years after his death. I like his literature, which is vaguely similar to that of Charles Dickens in general nature, although since I have grown up in a Western music environment, I much prefer Bach in terms of music, since Indian music doesn't really focus on harmonies. However, if I listen carefully to Tagore music sung by a proficient singer, I can often hear voice frequency modulations that don't really exist in Western music, which I find interesting.
Bach is overwhelmingly awesome, this year I had the pleasure of learning one of his preludes and fugues, only four pages and yet it took me over 7 months to finish it and to be able to play it decently. I do not quite understand everything that is going on in the fugue, but god! It sounds so nice, and the act of playing turns into a mathematical and logical puzzle that you not only have to solve but also have to communicate that puzzle in the language of arts. I get lost everytime I play that piece, and it's amazing.
this youtube channel....... is addictive!
i'm not a musician, i'm not big into music - but i find this content fascinating
keep it up! : )
Bach's music is the only music that can never bore you
Indeed especially his organ works
amen
Living god tho
It does bore “the ignorant”! Challenging to the limited.
@@abrahampalmer8761👍🏻
Excellent video Rick, Thanks, My first education in music, when I was a kid, was classical and I tried harder and harder to play those baroque scores on my guitar (classical guitar at that time). Now, as rock musician and composer, I fell that full immersion in the baroque, in particular Bach, marked my musical life forever. It teach me that you can flow from simplicity to complexity in a smooth and natural way. You do not need to challenge yourself with lots of random signature changes to be complex, in fact, Bach compositions respect strictly the signatures and tempos defined for each movements on his times, the mastery is to fit those simple counterpoints motives together in such a beautiful way that reach an harmonic complexity never seen before the Baroque period (at least in western music).
Rick, this video needed to be an hour. 13 minutes just barely gets started :) appreciate your work!
I took a college class on Bach that really just scratched the surface. If this video motivates even one person to start listening to Back then Rick has done a great service.
The sheer sublime beauty of Bach's music is what makes him great; he is the greatest
The intro of the Johannes Passion, as well as Widerstehe doch der Sünde, brings tears of joy to my eyes immediately. It's as simple as that.
Rick, THANK YOU for having the decency and passion for music that you do to cover the topic of Bach. I would ask that you please cover more of the giants of Classical music if you are able. Their work laid the foundation for literally every pop, rock, country, hip-hop, R&B, et al artist working today.
Aside from music, my second passion is History. It is so important that all musicians, producers, and writers have at least a pedestrian familiarity with the Great Composers and their contributions to our shared musical passion.
I never miss an episode of your show and have learned so much.
Sorry such a long comment.
V/R
Bren,
[Nashville singer-songwriter/engineer/US Army Veteran]
All right, I'm going to finally post this anecdote. I had a very Germanic "Current Events" teacher in HS (11th grade). Every so often, he would regale the students on stories of things outside of class. For some reason, one today he brought up Bach. Now, he had a very, um, artistic or a dramatic way of saying JS's name. It had a lot of flourish to it, sorta "baaak" or "baaa-ck" with a crisp sound at the end. A bit fancy but I was in the HS band and took some introductory Music Appreciation/Theory that made me know immediately who he meant. Wasn't sure if he was more authentic or what but since he enjoyed the name and the man's music, I had no issue.
This female student sitting in front of me did. She had a very nasal, monotone voice. I will never forget this as long as I live (cause I have laughed about it for decades. Puzzled, she asked (I forget if she raised her hand, probably did): why do you call him that. Isn't it BATCH? I kid you not. She called him BATCH. (Think of it in the most nasal annoying tone of female voice too.) I was so wigged out I couldn't even laugh then.
Great video! Bach is a marvel. WOW that St. John's passion intro gives chills
@Deborahbonjour deborah. vous devez etre sensible à la beauté de sa musique pour dire ça. car nos avis se rejoignent. j' aime généralement moins la musique religieuse de Bach , mais je suis du même avis : l' ouverture de la passion selon saint matthieu est d' une immense beauté, plus profonde que celle selon st Jean.
To me, J.S. Bach can be summed up by one word: "DIVINE". Air on the G String (Suite in D Major, BWV 1068) as played by Jonathan Scott on the grandiose pipe organ of Whitworth Hall, University of Manchester UK is the most MOVING music performance I've ever heard! It's on YT, go check it out yourselves! The composition and Jonathan's performance and the heavenly sound of that powerful organ is so hauntingly beautiful, it's simply magnificent! It literally moved me to tears! To me the composition conveys profound sadness, but simultaneously eternal glory, elation and celebration! Only a genius could achieve that and J.S. Bach WAS a musical genius! That term is thrown around so recklessly these days, but Bach was the real deal.
RICK. I'M 72 AND AM IN THE PROCESS OF LEARNING HIS 2 PART INVENTIONS.
RICHARD GORDON Right on, man
Not sure how far through you are but I'd recommend the d minor (no. 4 I think) and the c minor as being particularly good. Of course all the rest are good too!
hows it goin man? 19 y.o. here, currently with the well tempered clavier, some of the stuff is bloody hard
Maikind K. There is no better advice than this!
I fell in love with Bach when I was 5 years old. My mother couldn't understand my obsession but thank goodness she indulged it.
😁
His sheer output, quality, and variety - choral, orchestral, organ, chamber, solo instrumental, keyboard. Mind boggling. Perhaps the greatest European composer and maybe the best of all time. I love Beethoven and Mozart but Bach is best.
Bach was surrounded by beauty, natural and man made.. the prevailing culture of the day was being aware of being a creature and there is a Creator.. the culture also placed emphasis on achievement, beauty, ambition.. his work as a composer of church music probably drove him to create an impression of the divine and man's place in the world/universe...
Haha I've been talking about what makes bach great to people who aren't interested for years now, I'm so hyped to see this
What Makes Rick Beato Great?
Quality Videos.
Want some kneepads?
Only if you promise to watch :)
Always quality, yup, but this one was beautiful, the footage from inside the church is extraordinary, looks an overwhelming place. Well worth the wait on this.
Prison Mike.
@@nznegativeions Dude.......I thumbed your comment down 45 times and nothing happened.......bummer.....
No words are great enough to explain what makes Bach great. It simply cannot be explained in mere words.
Nathaniel Rojo nope. That’s why music and art exist.
True. The only way to understand why Bach is great, is to listen to all his works.
As Beethoven himself once said, his name shouldn't be Back (creek in German) but Meer (ocean).
I know, that's why he chose music to express himself, duh~!!!
@Nathaniel Rojo yes, poetry can give us an image of the greatness of bach, but it s not sufficient....
Whenever I went to organ concerts in the church back in the 80's I never looked in the program before after the concerts. But somehow my body always reacted with gooseskin and higher energy whenever Bach's preludes and fugues were played.
Bach's music is in a higher spiritual level.
The essence of confidence.
Rick, many thanks for this beautiful and insightful short summary of Bach and his work. It is an immensely good invitation for all people who do not yet know Bach so well. I have known "my" Bach for 50 years, I am 61 now and live in Cologne, Germany. I just have a slightly different opinion when it comes to Bach's harmonics. You are right, of course. It is very impressive what chords and sounds Bach has already used. But I sometimes think he didn't yet could have the ears for his own music, as we hear it 300 years later. We are delighted and we listen to Bach on the basis of our listening experience...from Ravel to Bill Evans and many other composers and musicians.
I believe that some of Bach's visibly avant-garde harmonies were created under the logical flow of his vocal lines. For example, I think he could not associate a major7 with the sound we have in our minds today...after all the decades of jazz chords. Bach's major7 must have had perhaps a different meaning for him than for us. The chord was created and developed from the logic of Bach's line construction.
On the other hand...when I hear, for example, the beginning of the St. John Passion, I experience such an emotionally strong Bach and then I think he felt this music exactly the way we do today.
Rick, your channel is a jewel! Because you know and can do such a wide range of musical directions. And your inner emotional enthusiasm radiates to me and certainly to all the other channel viewer. Thank you very much for that, and please keep up the good work. Heinz in Cologne.
Bach - the love of my life. I was born and raised in a village near to the birthplace Eisenach, I love his way of using its melody of every piece he wrote. In my childhood, i loved to play A.D. 1602 which used his brandenburg concerto 4 as one of its soundtracks. This music I didn't recognized as Bachs music I discovered with the age of 20. I socked up every little piece of him and still can't get enough. I'm not a christian, but like to sing every song of him. If I would convered to christianitiy, it would be because of his music he wrote.
Nothing brings as much comfort and joy as Bach’s music. Nothing.
Thanks Rick, nice to see you take a diversion into my favourite composer. I play his 'cello suites often. Imagining a world without his music, would be like living in a world without flowers or sunsets. Great art should effect you emotionally, and boy Johann Sebastian could do that in spades 😊
I started to listen to Classical Music in my teens and Bach was one of the composers that I loved to listed too and as the years have gone by the more in awe of his Genius I have become.
And by the Way Leipzig is an amazing place from a Musical point of view. Not only did Bach Work there but also Teleman, Schuman and Mendelsohn. Wagner Was born there and three major Music Publishing firms were founded there, Hofmeister, C.F. Peters and Breitkopf. Gewandhouse Orchestra was founded there and still works there and they also play in the Leipzig Opera. It has the second largest Music Library in Germany (Munich has the largest) and it has the Largest Musical Instruments Museum in Germany, so for a lover of Classical Music it's a great place to visit.
It is very strange. I've now played Bach at the piano for 30 years and still find new perpectives. If you look closely, you will find one bar with the same structure as the others but with a mind-boggling dissonance that is out of this world, adding mysticism to the piece. The dissonances are essential and there with a specific purpose. They are not random. Bach will be with me until the end.
Keep in mind the tuning would have been different back then, and people still argue over what kind of tuning Bach used. This is pretty much true for all composers up until equal temperament became the standard piano tuning. What sounds pure or dissonant in modern tuning may have sounded much different in whatever tuning the composer was originally using.
@@matthewtrout1440
Speaking of tuning, you reminded me of a quote from no less than András Schiff as to how he practices everyday. His answer was simple as it was profund: he simply picks two, or three, out of the '48', and that's it; to paraphrase him 'everything you need to know about how to play the piano is there in both books. I have no need for anything else'.
For me, that says it all; yes, one can argue at what pitch A, for instance, was tuned at (and probably not at 440Hz ...), but irrespective of that, the Well-Tempered and the Goldberg Variations are, like the Cello Concertos, the K2 of any music; there are pieces which are more like Mt. Everest, but K2 is recognized as technically the far more challenging, despite being lower in altitude.
Hence why I think music can indeed be seperated into two periods BB (Before JSB) and AB (After); even if we simply have had the Cantatas (which I haven't even yet begun to listen to in any depth), his music legacy would still be enormous. However, what we have is music that will surely still be played well into the next millennium ...
@Craig Johnson same here; working on just the 2nd and 3rd variation; not easy even these!
Try the harpsichord. Or clavichord.
@@nigelft Matthew Trout is referring to the tuning of the intervals, not if A was at 440 or not. For example. The Well-Tempered Clavier was in a temperament called Werkmeister III. In the Key of C, the 3rds would be almost pure while the Key of F-sharp is much more dissonant.
You just won me over. I'm new to your channel and I thought it was just about rock and pop. This gives it a whole other dimension! I could throw out all the music I have ever bought, except for the Goldbergs with Gould. Listening to that for the rest of my life would be just fine.
I love Bach. His music is uplifting and sooo elegant! It makes you feel like walking on air. God bless this musical genius and all creative geniuses that ever existed!