Bach and his Successors

A LIFE Institute CourseBob FabianFall 2014

[LIFEcourses.ca]

About Me

● Choice in high school● Conservatory or Institute of Technology

● Degrees in math, on to computing, on to management, on to 3rd Age

● Bach has always been at the top of my list of great composers

● Course is opportunity to explore an early and abiding love – the music of J. S. Bach

Course Objectives

● First: Learn to better appreciate Bach's music● Second: Understand the context, then and now,

of Bach's compositions

● Important Detail– Not enough time to play complete compositions

– Play excepts (~ 10 min), point to YouTube source

You ...

● What kind of background do you have?● What prompted you to sign up for this course?● What do you hope can be accomplished?● How to recognize the course as successful?

● No “right” answers!

Six Session Plan

● Introduction (Art of Fugue)● Rediscovery (Cello Suites, Goldberg Variations)● Music for Hire (Preludes & Fugues, Magnificat)● “Authentic” (Concertos)● Immediately After (CPE, JC, JS – Magnificat)● 20th Century (24 Preludes & Fugues)

Today's Agenda

● J. S. Bach – Basic Facts● The Power of Bach's Music

● Video (full view at your leisure)

● Seeing the Lines in a Fugue● Short video

● The Art of Fugue - Basic Facts● Two snippets & an excerpt

● Glenn Gould● New Saxophone Quartet● Concerto Koln

Bach's Life

● The “facts” about Bach's life are largely drawn from public records

● That portrait is one of only two verified images, with no more youthful images

● We have almost no personal information, very few letters from Bach

● And very few original manuscripts exist for his compositions

● … part of the mystery, and fascination?

Johann Sebastian Bach

● Born March 21, 1685 (old calendar)● Early 1695-1708 – church organist● Weimar 1708-1717 – court + church● Cothen (to Leipzig) 1717-1729 – transition● Leipzig, Part I 1729-1739 – church + town● Leipzig, Part II 1739-1750 – town + church

● The Creative Development of J S Bach, R, D. P. Jones2007 & 2013

Saxony in Bach's Time

● Thirty Years' War – ended in 1648, massive destruction● Lutheran Saxony, more important than Prussia

economically, but not militarily (no “Germany”)● Music played a special part in commercial, Lutheran

Saxony● Saxony gloried in court splendor, with the Lutheran church glorying

in sacred, engaging music

● A time of fundamental change, … in society and in music

● Several generations of musicians named Bach came before Sebastian Bach (many named Johann)

What's So Great?

● Two common answers:– The marriage of words, with the meaning of those

words, with the emotional content of the music

– Interwoven musical lines form a kind of sound tapestry that echoes the rich tapestry of life

● Albert Schweitzer gave the first answer in his monumental, two volume study of Bach

● I'm more persuaded by the second answer, … perhaps it's my math background?

BBC Great Composers

● The full video is available on YouTube– https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OvzStZfeBg

● We'll listen to the first 10 minutes (of a 60 minute program)

● This is an attempt to present a balanced view of Bach's music.

● It's not wrong, but I find an architectural view more compelling

My Preferred View

● Our life can be thought of as a line● Humanity is an interwoven tapestry of lines● Bach's music fits together multiple musical lines

– And grows from a basic invention

● But it's so rich we can't hear everything at once– We hear different aspects each time

● His music's architecture strongly echoes humanity's rich interwoven fabric

Life is Lines

● Lines, a brief history, by Tim Ingold (2007)– “What do walking, weaving, observing, storeytelling,

singing, drawing and writing have in common?“The answer is that they all proceed along lines. In this extraordinary book Tim Ingold imagines a world in which everyone and everything consists of interwoven or interconnected lines and lays the foundation for a completely new discipline: the anthropological archaeology of the line.”

– Front Matter

Experience

● Our awareness is rooted in the line which is our life-world. That's the basis for our entire awareness.

● Everything can be thought of as having its own line (life-world)

● Humanity is the interweaving of the lines of everything in our experienced world

● Humanity, therefore, is best appreciated as a tapestry of interwoven lines

Interwoven Lines

● We can be emotionally aware of life as interwoven lines.

● The deepest, richest music provides a kind of parallel interweaving of musical lines.

● Bach was the supreme master at weaving together related and independent musical lines.

● The fugue is the place to start ...

The Fugue

● One melodic line pays against another, which it turn plays against yet another, which can play against another, perhaps a restatement or inversion of the original melodic line, which …

● Watch: Video of Bach's Little Fugue in G minorhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddbxFi3-UO4

Rosalyn Tureck - 1947

● “If anyone says that Bach is dry, mathematical, or dull you my be sure that the person giving the opinion has never really heard Bach. He may have listened to Bach's music; he may even have tried to play it – but he has not truly heard it. An understanding of Bach requires an understanding of the contrapuntal movement of his lines. Now, a perception of the lines in Bach has become obscured to listeners through a habit of listening to music of harmonic tradition, in which melodic line moving horizontally is set above a harmonic accompaniment.”

Never the Same

● We can hear two interwoven musical lines● We can, with effort, hear three interwoven

musical lines● Few, if any, are able to hear four or more

interwoven musical lines● Thus, we “hear” a different combination of lines

each time we listen to a four part fugue● Reference: Voice Denumerability in Polyphonic Music of

Homogeneous Timbers, Music Perception, 1989

The Role of God

● Bach was a man of his time and place– He was a devout Lutheran

● For much of his life, his job (calling) was to write music that helped the congregation better recognize their God– Music helped bridge the gap between congregant

and his God

● What was the role of Bach's faith in his musical compositions?

Numerology

● "B-A-C-H" In mystical numerology, B is 2, A is 1, C is 3 and H is 8. The total is 14. 14, and its mirror, 41, were among Bach's favorite numbers. Scholars have found these numbers hidden countless times within the notes and musical structure of Bach's music. [http://www.spiritsound.com/bachbits.html]

● The patterns can be found everywhere ● Was it intentional? ● Does it matter?

The Art of Fugue

● Published in 1751 by CPE Bach● So little sales that the copper plates were offered as

scrap in 1756

● Published as open score, with practically no performance clues

● Can't be performed by a single piano player

● Source of endless study and speculation, and transcriptions, and orchestrations

● Not performed until the 20th century, now frequently performed, and recorded

Final Page

Unfinished?

● Note, in German, at the end of the open score:"At the point where the composer introduces the name BACH [for which the English notation would be B –A–♭C–B ] in the countersubject to this fugue, the ♮composer died."

● Not literally true, he lived several months more● Did Sebastian Bach intend this to be a puzzle for future

musicians to recognize or solve? ● At least one Ph.D. thesis was based on such a premise● And there have been multiple completions invented

Basic

● Die Kunst der Fuge, BWV 1080, is an incomplete [?] work of unspecified instrumentation by Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750). Written [mostly] in the last decade of his life, The Art of Fugue is the culmination of Bach's experimentation with monothematic instrumental works. It consists of 14 fugues and 4 canons, each using some variation of a single principal subject, and generally ordered to increase in complexity.

● "The governing idea of the work", as put by Bach specialist Christoph Wolff, "was an exploration in depth of the contrapuntal possibilities inherent in a single musical subject."

Wikipedia 2014.10.02

Three Versions

● Glenn Gould – on piano, late in life● https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uX-5HOx2Wc

● New Century Saxophone Quartet – demo● https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbcUI1G0O0Q

● Musica Antiqua Köln – full orchestration● https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqXZtGyFyDo

● It's the architecture, not the orchestration!

Next Session

● Sebastian Bach is rediscovered (reinvented?) with each passing generation

● Examples:– The Cello Suites

● Pablo Cassals brought them to our attention in the period between the World Wars

– The Goldberg Variations● Glenn Gould with his 1955 recording revealed a new view

of Bach's music