The integrated wholeness and organic unity of his music gives it an essential rightness, a sense that each note follows logically from the last. Instead of the drama of opposing forces, we experience in Bach a steady state in which musical bounty unfolds, presided over by a rational order that could be likened to divine providence. A single movement in a Bach composition is “about” one thing only once the initial idea has been stated, the rest consists of elaboration or spinning out of that idea in more beautiful and glittering forms. Bach deals with one affect or mood at a time, without the dramatic contrast that we find in later music. This sense of eternity and divinity in Bach’s music comes partly its unity.
In this way Bach’s music expresses a sense of eternity yet also a sense of precisely observed time. A good example is the Christe eleison from the B-minor Mass, where, as the orchestra unfolds its intricately detailed network of sixteenth notes, there is a feeling that the music could spin itself out to infinity. Musicologists speak of his technique of Fortspinnung, the fertile spinning out of small musical motifs into longer phrases. Using the term genius in connection with music emphasizes that music is an expression of mind, a rational ordering of sound, and I would say that Bach’s unique genius consists in the way his music expresses a sense of cosmic order, analogous to Creation.
Bach is the composer’s composer par excellence, a model of musical craft and intellectual genius. His work is considered to possess an absolute technical purity, perfection, and finish. A provincial church musician who never traveled outside Germany, he wrote music for his community and for the glory of God, and his immense significance was not recognized until after his death. Bach’s high status has made him seem more rarefied and remote than Mozart or Beethoven, his nearest peers in the composers’ pantheon (and who also recognized Bach as supreme). It is commonly held that Bach summed up the course of music until his time-the first half of the 18 th century-and that the subsequent history of music stems from him. “To strip human nature until its divine attributes are made clear, to inform ordinary activities with spiritual fervor, to give wings of eternity to that which is most ephemeral to make divine things human and human things divine such is Bach, the greatest and purest moment in music of all time.” -Pablo CasalsĪmong the great creators of Western classical music, Johann Sebastian Bach has long held the most exalted place.
#Bach compositions meanings full
Full of relationships that stimulate the ear and the mind, it expresses the multifold splendor of creation itself. In its complex richness and wholeness his music suggests the unity of faith and reason, science, and imagination. And, for pure virtuosity, try the brilliant No.5 in which flute, violin and harpsichord steal the limelight.Johann Sebastian Bach shows how mind and soul, spirit and body connect. So we leap from the dizzying heights of the outlandishly difficult trumpet-writing that colours the second Brandenburg Concerto, to No.6, which gets its dark shades from the lack of violins. Many Baroque composers wrote dozens, or even hundreds, of concertos but Bach managed to sum up the entire genre with only six, each featuring a different line-up of soloists with a wide range of moods and even structures (shocking in an era when concertos were supposed to have three movements: fast-slow-fast). Listen to the best of Bach on Apple Music and Spotify. He said, “Music’s only purpose should be the glory of God and the recreation of the human spirit.” Scroll down to discover our selection of the best Bach works featuring 10 masterpieces by the great composer. Bach composed for every musical genre of his time, apart from opera, and ultimately his aim was to glorify God. Yet, when it came to the quality of his work, he produced more jewels than Bvlgari.
In his own day, he was famed chiefly for his keyboard skills, and much of his time was spent writing for the churches where he worked. Johann Sebastian Bach would probably be astounded at his reputation as one of the greatest composers – perhaps the greatest composer – of all time.
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