Section 2: The Baroque Period - Bach #2

Well, I figure it's been long enough since I've written another post. This month has been pretty busy, so sorry if I've kept anybody waiting.

We are now ready to move on to Bach's music. I have found that these music sections are somewhat difficult to write. It's hard to find where to start, and when I do find a good place, it's hard to know just how I should go about discussing a particular composer's style.

Especially Bach. Bach is very difficult to compress into a single post. His music was just so vast, and so important. He has managed to live on for centuries, through the impact his music had on later composers, who then impacted later composers, and so on. He had a very great "ripple effect" on music. Obviously, his exact style has now dissipated, but his genius is still felt gently rippling through music today.

Bach's main genius lay in his knowledge of the actual, inner workings of a melody. He had an innate sense about when to write what note, and seemed to understand (here's the genius) why to write what note. He also had knowledge of how a melody reacted when placed over another melody. Simply put, he knew better than anyone ever had, and perhaps ever has, how the little pieces of music fit to make a whole.

But Bach did not limit himself to strict contrapuntal and fugal compositions. That is, he didn't only write very complex, "melody-over-melody" music. Some of his music is, ironically, profoundly simple. Such as a piece we are all familiar with: the Prelude in C Major, from his Well-Tempered Clavier.

This piece never ceases to puzzle me. It's almost too simple, and yet it remains one of Bach's most attractive pieces. I like to place this piece right in the center portion of my art diagram. At its core, it's just a long series broken chords, or arpeggios, changing every measure. But there's much more underneath this piece.

I find there's a certain degree of ambiguity to it. If you were to get sheet music to this piece, you might find (depending on the publisher) that it has no tempo markings, no dynamic markings, no slurs, and no pedal markings. Bach has apparently left the interpretation of his piece completely up to the performer. And the interpretations are certainly varied. Some pianists play it fast, some play it far too slow, in my opinion, others play it staccato, others load it with large amounts of pedal. The search for the correct way to play it almost teases modern pianists, in precisely the same way the Mona Lisa's smile has puzzled people for centuries. It is its innocent insignificance that has caused the most controversy.

The genius of this piece also lies in its underlying premise: one chord leads logically to another. If you want to increase your musical vocabulary, and learn what chords lead to what chords, this is a good piece to check out. All it is is chords leading to chords. Bach just knew what to do next.

And I think another reason (perhaps a more straightforward one) that this piece is popular, lies in its rhythm. It has a lilting, lullaby sound. The chords are always arpeggiated in the same way. Two notes in the left hand, followed by a repeating pattern in the right hand. This eventually gets to be almost hypnotic, in its consistency and swaying motion.

Taking all of this into consideration, I prefer to play this piece at a more relaxed tempo, sort of a walking pace, and never very loud. I feel that the essence of the piece is its enigmatic simplicity, and so I set limits for myself. I only change the tempo very slightly, if ever, and I do not allow myself to go above a certain volume. It's difficult not to accent or bring things out a lot when it gets really beautiful, but I feel this helps preserve the sense that there is something more under the piece that we are not getting.

I am posting a link to a recording of this piece that I like. It took me a while to sift through the ones I didn't like to find it, but here it is. This is the pianist Sviatoslav Richter. Generally, in the pieces I have seen him play, he plays with strength and virtuosity, so it's interesting to hear him do something so intimate. His tempo is a little fast maybe, but his tone is exceptional. It almost sounds like a harp. (This recording also has, after the prelude, the first fugue, and the second prelude and fugue from the Well-Tempered Clavier. The Prelude in C is the first one he plays, but please feel free to listen to the others after it!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0h7UJgVZGk

Now if you did go ahead and listen to all of it, then you got a real treat. The prelude and fugues that followed the first one are just another example of Bach's genius.

Fugal writing was Bach's forte. As I keep saying, he just had an innate, instinctive knowledge of the nature of notes and melodies. I have tried to write a fugue, and it takes a lot of time and thought. I gave up after a while. Bach could improvise them, off the top of his head. They just flowed from him.

And they are works of genius. Each fugue has sometimes several voices, each with its own melodic line. Each line continues through the piece, and the notes weave and mesh together to form the chords, which change and carry the natural flow of the song forward. And its all based on one simple theme.

I have told you that Bach was influential. But you might be wondering how. Fugues are rarely written like Bach's anymore, and he didn't create any new styles of music necessarily. Well I think we see a little glimpse of his influence in what other composers said about him. It is said that Mozart was once shown one of Bach's motets, after which he exclaimed, "Now here is something one can learn from!", and proceeded to look through every available score of Bach's music. Beethoven once called Bach "the original father of harmony". That's interesting. Beethoven and Mozart found that Bach was a sea of knowledge when it came to harmony.

This all goes back to what I said before, about the Baroque period's musical style being horizontal. Bach, it seems, played an enormous role in this shift from horizontal to vertical. Through his knowledge of melody and chords, he composed the summit of Baroque music, and paved the way for later composers, like Mozart, to form the next period of music.

And Bach is still studied today. I recently read an article about jazz music, and the author stated that the best way to learn to write great bass lines was to study the bass lines of Bach. I thought that was interesting.

And lastly, Bach's music was great because he understood the spiritual side of music. He saw the greater circle enclosing the diagram. Many of his scores bear the initials SDG, or Soli Deo Gloria: Only for the glory of God. He did not find himself to be a genius by his own work, and did not wish any of the glory for his compositions to go to himself, but rather, he recognized his gift was from God, and gave Him the glory. Just another reason Bach was great.

Well, that about wraps up our look at some of Bach's music, and of the Baroque period as a whole. I hope this has been as informative so far that is has been for me. :) As I said, Baroque really is not my favorite style, even though a lot was changing in music during the time period. But next post, we get to start heading into another great period of change and development: the Classical period. We'll get to see about composers like Mozart and Beethoven and Schubert. Great composers, who, like Bach, took the music of their day, raised it to another level, and through their influence, opened the door to the next style. I'm excited already.

Section 2: The Baroque Period - Bach #1

I told you a couple posts ago that the year 1685 was an important one in Baroque music because in that year two of the period's greatest composers were born. And I've told you about Handel, so it's now time to move on to the other composer: Johann Sebastian Bach.

No discussion of the Baroque period would ever be complete or even really any good without at least a mention of Bach. Bach is widely considered to be the greatest Baroque composer, and one of the greatest composers of all time. He was a true genius. He took everything that had been happening and stirring throughout the Baroque period and finally brought it to full bloom. Baroque music reached its pinnacle in Bach.

Bach was born in Germany just one month after Handel, on March 31, to a family of musicians. His father was the director of a group of town musicians, his uncles were composers, and his brother was the organist at a church in Ohrdruf. This family appreciation for the art meant he had a much easier time studying music than Handel. Bach's own father taught him to play the violin and harpsichord.

When he was 10, his father died, and Bach set out to Ohrdruf to live with his oldest brother, Johann Christoph. His brother taught him to play the clavichord (an early type of piano), and Bach also had the chance to study his brother's organ music. He would often sit and copy the scores his brother had, and learned much of the organ from this exercise. His brother also introduced him to the many popular musical styles of the day.

When he was 14, Bach set out with a friend on a long journey to the city of Luneburg, where he was to study and sing in the a cappella choir at St. Michael's School. Here again, Bach was exposed to music and culture. He studied math and science, learned French and Italian, and probably played on the famous organ at the Church of St. John. Bach was also just beginning to make a name for himself among musicians due to his apparently innate sense of the organ, and of music in general.

In 1703, when Bach was 17, he accepted the position of organist at St. Boniface's Church in Arnstadt. Word of his skill at the keyboard had spread, and he was already starting to compose complex preludes for the organ. As time wore on, however, Bach began to feel his musical skills were being stifled in Arnstadt. He constantly complained of the choir's lack of talent, and tensions mounted between Bach and the authorities when he took an unannounced trip of many months to visit Buxtehude, the famous German organist whom Bach idolized.

Finally, in 1706, Bach was offered (and quickly accepted) a far better position; one with a fine salary, and a fine choir besides. He was now the organist at St. Blasius's Church in Muhlhausen. Here Bach was offered a far greater chance to stretch his compositional skills than at Arnstadt. The church even agreed to do an expensive repair of the organ at his bidding. Bach also married Maria Barbara Bach, his second cousin, in Muhlhausen. Together they had seven children. Three of them died before reaching adulthood, but two of the remaining four, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, and Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, became famous composers later.

After just a year in Muhlhausen, Bach was once again offered another job. The salary was better still, and instead of being simply the organist, Bach would become the Duke of Weimar's concertmaster, head over a large group of professionally trained musicians. The offer was too good to pass up, and in 1708, Bach moved his family to Weimar.

During the next several years in Weimar, Bach's true genius began to show. Given the opportunity to work with the Duke's musicians, Bach began to compose large-scale orchestral works, as well as volumes of works for the keyboard. He music was a combination of the popular Italian music of the day and his own German styles; he also furiously began his massive output of fugues. Some of his most well-known and well-loved works were written here in Weimar: The Well-Tempered Clavier, a set of preludes and fugues in every key on the keyboard, and the Little Organ Book, a book of popular hymns set in virtuostic settings, to aid practicing organists.

For whatever reason, Bach eventually found himself clashing once again with his employers, and in 1717 (the same year Handel was composing his Water Music), Bach left Weimar to work for Leopold, Prince of Kothen. Prince Leopold gave him far more musical freedom than the others had, although their religious differences (Leopold was a Calvinist, and Bach was a Lutheran) meant Bach wrote more secular works, such as the famous Brandenburg Concertos, during his time in Kothen.

In 1720, Bach's wife, Anna Barbara, died suddenly while he was away. The next year, however, Bach met Anna Magdalena Wilcke. She was a very talented soprano who worked at the court; she was also 17 years younger than Bach. But they married, and had thirteen children, six of whom made it to adulthood, and of those six, three became famous musicians.

In 1723, Bach was made Cantor of Thomasschule and Director of Music over several churches in Leipzig. He managed to hold on to this position for the rest of his life, although there was some friction once or twice between Bach and his employers. A constant source of irritation for the composer was that the Council would only pay for 8 permanent musicians, and if he wanted more, Bach himself had to hire them from the nearby university.

At the school, Bach was in charge of teaching the students to sing, and for the churches he was required to provide weekly music. This meant his output of religious works increased, and this period in his life saw the composition of numerous cantatas and motets.

In addition to his liturgical works, Bach broadened his musical repertoire even more when, in 1729, he became director of the Collegium Musicum, a group of university musicians who, twice a week, provided concerts at Zimmerman's Coffeehouse near the marketplace. Bach composed several works for the ensemble to perform during his relationship with them.

In 1733, Bach wrote a Kyrie and a Gloria (usual components of a Mass), and eventually combined them with pieces of previous cantatas to form his monumental work Mass in B Minor. This is widely considered to be one of the finest works of the Baroque period, and among the greatest choral works ever written. The exact reasons why Bach, being a Lutheran, would compose a Mass remain unknown, and are often debated. But whatever the reasons, the contribution the work has made to music is undisputed.

By this time in his life, Bach had fully made himself known to be the emperor of fugue. His knowledge of contrapuntal music was, and still is, unparalleled among composers. In 1747, Bach visited King Frederick II of Prussia. The king proudly showed Bach his newly acquired instrument, a piano, the keyboard instrument that was just beginning to gain popularity. As a test of his skills, Frederick played a small tune for Bach on the piano and challenged him to compose a three-voice fugue based on the theme. Bach sat down and played one on the spot. The king, not to be outdone so easily, then challenged Bach to expand his work into a six-voice fugue. Such a work would be hugely complex and intricate. Bach replied that he would need some time.

Two months later he published a large work entitled The Musical Offering, a collection of two fugues (one of which had the requested six voices), ten canons (a work similar to a round, like "Row, Row, Row Your Boat") and a four-movement trio, all based on a slightly modified version of the king's theme. The work contains several examples of Bach's wit and of his genius. Many of the canons are written to be played over themselves upside-down, backwards, transposed, and even combinations of the three.

Another highly important work composed (but never finished) during these last years of Bach's life was The Art of Fugue. It contains 18 fugues and canons on one single theme, and is often viewed as the peak of contrapuntal writing.

Bach's health had been declining. By 1749, he was fast becoming blind, and agreed to have eye surgery. The surgery was performed by John Taylor, who would later perform a similar surgery on Handel. In both cases, the surgery was unsuccessful, and vision was lost.

Bach, now on his deathbed, dictated his last complete work to his son-in-law. Vor deinen Thron tret ich hiermit or Before Thy throne I now appear is often played at the end of concerts to complete the unfinished Art of Fugue. The final three notes of the piece, when counted and mapped out into the Roman alphabet, state the initials: J S B. He died on July 28, 1750, at the age of 65.

So that's the life of Johann Sebastian Bach. As I said, he is perhaps the greatest composer to grace to Baroque age, and among the greatest of all time, as far as his sheer musical genius is concerned. His instinct with music was unmatched. But I don't want to get too far ahead of myself. That's all for the next post...