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The most highly entertaining and informative documentary on JS Bach I have yet discovered.

George J

Herefordshire member
I have never thought of Bach as a dour or excessively serious composer in most of his music, though he could be absolutely serious sometimes. Mostly, I think his music is joyous, like that of Haydn.

This video is about an hour long and the pace never lets up right until the end.

It poses some interesting questions even now about "how" Bach's music "goes" and how it might usefully be approached in forming a clear and expressive interpretation for performance. If you notice the influences on Bach from the [at the time] conventionality of his Saint Anne Prelude and Fugue [in E flat played in part in the film at about halfway, BWV 552] based as it is in the tradition shown a generation earlier by Buxterhude, though the transcriptions of many Vivaldi Concertos [and though not mentioned], also at least one by Marcello and others by other contemporaries, one is struck by Bach's ability to synthesise the olden style and the modern styles of his day into something fresh and still vibrant today.

Then comes very sane observations about how the dance roots found in so many Bach compositions really relate to the formal courtly dances of the time and even folk elements in dance.

In this way it is possible to give the uplift [rhythmically] that brings the sunlight out - even where simply reading the printed score does not make it all that obvious on first reading.

Really a fascinating and un-usual approach that is more about the music than the usual Bach biography that is shown to us, and sometimes rather emphasises the perhaps misplaced view that Bach is the most serious of all composers, as well as a technical genius, perhaps yet unparalleled in Western music. Nobody would doubt that Bach's technique and genius in handling almost impossibly complex musical structures in counterpoint places him in a rank above all but a handful of Western composers since, but his real brilliance is diminished without a comprehension of his mastery of the light touch even in moments of his most serious compositions such as the Chaconne in D minor.


I hope some will enjoy this musically intelligent presentation that also has considerable fun along the way that is completely the opposite of attempting to dumb down, but rather should serve to intensify our affection for the music.

Best wishes from George
 
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Dear Electrostat,

[I have one ESL!].

Yes, I watched the Gardiner Documentary on Youtube years ago. Without assuming to be a worthy critic of such things, I can easily say that I enjoyed it very much. However where Scott Yoo wins for me at least is his delving into how the music really "goes" quite as much as the history and biography of my hero, JS Bach.

As for Gardener, the musician, I am a sideline admirer. I have his recording of the Saint John Passion, but prefer Leonhardt in the Saint Matthew. And prefer HM Linde in Brandenburg Concertos.

My favourite Bachians are Adolf Busch and Helmut Walcha ...

I stumbled on the film in the opening post from the Youtube recommendations, and I suppose YT must have fairly accurate impression of my interests by now! Music, especially Bach, push-bikes, classic cars, stationary engines, stream engines, steam locomotives, Mathematical puzzles, Hubnut [car channel for ancient simple cars], Jay Leno's Garage [for all sorts of cars and m/cycles], Furious Driving [for crumbling mostly British cars], Mark Felton [for War history Documentaries], The History Guy [for anything out of the way in recent and older history], etc., etc., ... I am sure M15 and the CIA must consider me an eccentric!

Best wishes from George
 
I really enjoyed this but then again I am a Bach freakazoid. Sure I can say that I've long recognized clear dance style music in a lot of Bach, but there's something about what J.S. adds that takes me the furthest away from dance music. I can't describe this in technical/theoretical language because I am not a musician. Bach can take dance melodies and make them so involving and sophisticated far beyond what I would consider dances, but I definitely hear them. Not sure if that makes sense.
 
Dear Frank,

Everything that Bach uses in his music is very much made his own in a unique synthesis, and as you rightly [IMHO] say, the result is so often very far removed from the commonplace of the time.

It is fascinating that when Bach takes an already existing Chorale melody [by someone else], when he has woven it into his own music, it seems to so assimilated that it is hardly heard in "quotation marks," but seems as if it is all Bach's original inspiration. The same with the dance elements. They remain dances of feel, but hardly for dancing to as such. But the point Scott Yoo makes is that realising a performance the dance lift - the swing implied in the dance rhythms - remains an important stylistic reference.

Here is an example of the great Bachian organist, Helmut Walcha giving a very gentle sway to the Prelude in C [BWV 547], that brings a real warmth and light to the music. Some have said that Walcha could be called, "Mr Rhythm," which this rather wonderful performance completely dispels!


In this light of heart rendition, he seems a good generation ahead of his time. Many of the old school organ performances [of Bach] up to the 1950s were deadly serious and rather literal as well being on unsuitably huge romantic style organs. [Think of Albert Schweitzer for example].

After the gentle Prelude comes a deceptively cool and calm introduction to one of really great Bach Fugues. An analysis of this music could fill a chapter of a book, so amazingly complex is the actual counterpoint, and yet all the while the emotional effect is rather a simple one. That of ever growing strength and power in what goes from a deceptively quiet start to massive optimism and uplift.

Best wishes from George
 
Sorry mate, you’re behind the times will all this talk of J S Bach. 2020 is the year of PPE Bach


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Dear Frank,

Everything that Bach uses in his music is very much made his own in a unique synthesis, and as you rightly [IMHO] say, the result is so often very far removed from the commonplace of the time.

It is fascinating that when Bach takes an already existing Chorale melody [by someone else], when he has woven it into his own music, it seems to so assimilated that it is hardly heard in "quotation marks," but seems as if it is all Bach's original inspiration. The same with the dance elements. They remain dances of feel, but hardly for dancing to as such. But the point Scott Yoo makes is that realising a performance the dance lift - the swing implied in the dance rhythms - remains an important stylistic reference.

Here is an example of the great Bachian organist, Helmut Walcha giving a very gentle sway to the Prelude in C [BWV 547], that brings a real warmth and light to the music. Some have said that Walcha could be called, "Mr Rhythm," which this rather wonderful performance completely dispels!


In this light of heart rendition, he seems a good generation ahead of his time. Many of the old school organ performances [of Bach] up to the 1950s were deadly serious and rather literal as well being on unsuitably huge romantic style organs. [Think of Albert Schweitzer for example].

After the gentle Prelude comes a deceptively cool and calm introduction to one of really great Bach Fugues. An analysis of this music could fill a chapter of a book, so amazingly complex is the actual counterpoint, and yet all the while the emotional effect is rather a simple one. That of ever growing strength and power in what goes from a deceptively quiet start to massive optimism and uplift.

Best wishes from George

BWV 547 is my favourite prelude and fugue, I would like it played at my funeral. And no one I’ve heard does better than Walcha. The only question is whether the second recording is even better than the first - I like the second set very much, I like the Alkmaar organ and I like the calm gravitas of the mature Walcha.

BWV 547 always makes me think of the wedding march from Figaro. I don’t know why, the music has nothing in common.

I’m sorry I haven’t had time to listen to the video - that’s ridiculous I know, but I keep forgetting, and in truth, I’m listening to other composers right now - 21st century music.

Tonight!
 


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