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The final movement of Beethoven's 9th Symphony, performed on period instruments, and conducted by John Eliot Gardiner.

I don't know if this is true, but I strikes me that Bach had a broad range. It may be the arrangements and the instrumentation (on the recordings I've been exposed to) coloring things, but you have something the Brandenburg concertos which are really thick and busy, then the cello suites which are quieter and simpler. Doesn't have the passion of Beethoven, but instead of forcing you to feel one way or the other it's more like "hey, see where this takes you." That's my layman's impression anyway.

Bach was from the Baroque period, the music from that period was mechanical and precise and not designed to "feel" - much of it was designed for the church and to introduce royalty as whatever function they happened to be at. The music of that time wasn't so much designed to make you "feel" - although Vivaldi's Four Seasons certainly to me has much of that emotional aspect to it. But alot Bach stuff is just majestic sounding stuff for the King or the heads of church - to make them feel and look majestic. Not all of it but alot of it.

I love the Baroque for that clean, almost mathematically preciseness. I've mentioned it before, I really am freaked out by Bach's fugues. To me the fugues he wrote were like the super duper diabolical Sudoko puzzles - I just don't know how he fit it together but damn he didn't (in every key) and he did it easily. He'd write this stuff out in an hour or two. Check out out this - it's like a handful of notes played over and over and over - with each voice coming in at a different time and just "fitting" perfectly to make music so complex and rich.



Seriously, how the [expletive] did he do that? All of those voices (different colors) are just playing the same thing as the other voices in a different interval. But it's the same. It's amazing, to me anyway.

Probably the math part of my brain kicking in but I just love that [expletive].

jim wrote: I love the Baroque for that clean, almost mathematically preciseness. I've mentioned it before, I really am freaked out by Bach's fugues. To me the fugues he wrote were like the super duper diabolical Sudoko puzzles - I just don't know how he fit it together but damn he didn't (in every key) and he did it easily. He'd write this stuff out in an hour or two. Check out out this - it's like a handful of notes played over and over and over - with each voice coming in at a different time and just "fitting" perfectly to make music so complex and rich.

Seriously, how the [expletive] did he do that? All of those voices (different colors) are just playing the same thing as the other voices in a different interval. But it's the same. It's amazing, to me anyway.

Probably the math part of my brain kicking in but I just love that [expletive].

Bach was an incredible musical / mathematical mind the likes of which, I don't think, has been seen since. Some of those fugues and canons not only repeat the same theme but repeat it backward, upside down, slowed down, and spec up. And he could improvise two and three voice canons on a theme someone gave him at that instant.

Here's a great book I read about him, Peter the Great and The Musical Offering which he wrote for the king after Peter gave him an insanely difficult tune to write a fugue upon. I highly recommend it:


The Musical Offering is a set of 19 pieces all set around the King's theme. It's one of Bach's last works and is incredible for its many riddles and hidden meanings. Here is the opening 6-part fugue that opens the Offering and was a direct challenge from the King for Bach to execute:

I agree that Bach may have been the greatest musical genius of all time. There are so many that easily qualify with that genius level, but J.S. Bach and Mozart stand out to me.

BTW - it's a little expensive (ok alot expensive), but if you really want a great and entertaining lecture series about classical music, check this out:

http://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/ ... ition.html

I had a co-worker who had bought the tapes (long time ago), and at the time I was driving an hour each direction to work. Those tapes made that trip something I looked forward to, just an outstanding presentation of music pretty much starting at the Baroque until modern times. There were several things that shaped my listening from this. It's serious and unpretentious. I highly, highly recommend this.

That's great AD. Hilarious but probably gives a better understanding of the man than what we convey in our imagination. Bach produced so much music because that was how he fed his family. He wanted paid. He wanted his fair share. He did what he had to do. It was easy and lucrative to him, so he wrote music because it paid the bills, and that's probably all there was to it.

Thinking more about the lecture series I recommended above, combined with AD's post. I would have loved to have met some of these jokers in their prime. Haydn was supposed to be just the nicest guy you could ever possibly want to meet, Bach was blue collar - give him money and he would give you music. Otherwise - no music for you. I'm not sure he was an artist in the terms that we understand artists, those driven by their creative instincts. He was driven by money, and happened to be a genius. Mozart would have been impossible to take for more than a few minutes at a time. And believe it or not, this dude got laid all the time:

[SHOW]

Although to be fair he was a pretty good looking guy in his youth:

[SHOW]

Apparently he was quite the performer - the Elvis of his time. He would fake fainting and stuff like that for drama. Women would throw clothes up at him and all of this.

Hector Berlioz's Le Corsaire Overture, inspired by the life of pirates.