Bach is the very best composer.

[Handel]

Well, for each definition of "the very best", we will have a different composer, so I think that question is not pertinent.

[MN Dave]

"Talking about music is like dancing about architecture." -- Whoever

[Opus106]

Well, for each definition of "the very best", we will have a different composer, so I think that question is not pertinent.

You must be new here.

[Chaszz]

Naturally if you could only listen to one composer you'd choose one who wrote a great deal of music. However, interminable Bach would drive me nutty: for me it would have to be Schubert.

The Columbia University student station in New York WKCR-FM broadcasts a solid ten 24-hour days of Bach every Christmas season. (This festival can also be heard on the web at wkcr.org.) Not just his religious but his secular music also. My reaction to this concentrated listening starts out delighted. After two or three days of intermittent listening I get bored and start switching it off and on. After five or six days, I feel myself on a higher spiritual plane and listen mostly uninterruptedly (when I'm awake and at home or in the car) the rest of the time. It begins to wash over me and float me as if on the ocean. It's as if I'm having a Buddhist experience, and I have penetrated through the music itself into the vast mind of a great spiritual seer. This quality in Bach can be apprehended at times in shorter listening to individual works, and makes him unlike any other composer. The WKCR broadcast brings it to the fore and maintains it there for days on end.

[Clever Hans]

I think one can say at least that Bach, more than any other composer, achieved total compositional mastery over every instrument available to him. 

Perhaps not the most charismatic of all composers, however.

[Chaszz]

It's not like that they knew that.

Bach was aware of the early Gallant style - his sons were among those bringing it about and he kept in touch with them., e.g. his visit to Frederick the Great's palace where Emmanuel was capellmeister - and probably knew his kind of music was going out of fashion. Beethoven as he grew older thought his compositions were out of fashion, and he heard and was irritated by the relative breakdown of Classical harmony in early Romantic music. He may have hoped that the Classical style would continue anyway. Or he may have realized it would not and disapproved.

[karlhenning]

I think one can say at least that Bach, more than any other composer, achieved total compositional mastery over every instrument available to him.

Why do you say this?  I don't think for a minute that Bach wrote idiomatically for the violin to anything like the degree that (say) Berlioz or Stravinsky did.

[Chaszz]

Why do you say this?  I don't think for a minute that Bach wrote idiomatically for the violin to anything like the degree that (say) Berlioz or Stravinsky did.

Not sure what you mean. Could you clarify? Re technical mastery, what about the Partitas and Sonatas, especially the Chaconne where the four strongs sound like a whole orchestra?
 

[Chaszz]

Saul, let me remind you that all of human history has been a spiral of alternating order and disorder.  Nations and kingdoms and empires rise and fall, as do musical styles.  Wars and disorder have characterized humanity much more than peace and order.

The so-called "laws of music" had been revised several times before JSB came along.  The Baroque harmonic system itself was pretty new in historical terms, having been developed on the ashes of the earlier Medieval/Renaissnace modes, which had been explored to their limits by such as Palestrina, Gesualdo, and the early Monteverdi--and Monteverdi himself was one of the principal designers of the new Baroque system of tonality.  This was not a change from order to increasing disorder, but rather from what was itself becoming somewhat disorderly to a new kind of order.

Bach himself was not averse to "breaking" a few "laws."  Theorists who have analyzed Bach's fugues extensively--as I have not--say that not one of them is a "textbook" fugue; there's always some brilliant irregularity.

LIkewise the change from Baroque to Classical was a change from one kind of order to a new one that allowed for dramatic conflict and resolution within a single movement, thus expanding composers' "black bag" of compositional brilliance.

As for the atonal "revolution," it was only the final step in the dissolution of the tonal system first developed in the Baroque period.  (Yes, that system still has power to move, as witnessed by the many compositions that still use it, but that doesn't invalidate my point.)  And almost immediately, atonality's principal practitioner, Schoenberg, realized that this new system was prone to disorder.  That is why he developed 12-tone serialism, to impose order where there was none.

So your saying that earlier composers and peoples lived in a "more ordered" world is somewhat disingenuous.  It's more accurate to say that it was differently ordered.

Good post.

[karlhenning]

Not sure what you mean. Could you clarify? Re technical mastery, what about the Partitas and Sonatas, especially the Chaconne where the four strongs sound like a whole orchestra?

Berlioz and Stravinsky made use of techniques which Bach didn't, particularly, such as col legno, playing sul ponticello, spiccato, &c.  As technical use of the instruments evolves over time, older composers are retroactively seen as more "limited" in certain ways . . . no actual "flaw" in Bach's music, of course, only it strikes me as strange for that reason to claim any composer from 300 years ago as having "completely mastered" the technique of his instruments. (Heck, Bach didn't even use his thumbs at the console . . . .)

Sure, the Chaconne is a very impressive achievement, and displays high mastery.  Still doesn't quite make one violin sound like a whole orchestra (even the small orchestra of Bach's day) . . . nothing wrong with admiring it, of course.

[Scarpia]

Berlioz and Stravinsky made use of techniques which Bach didn't, particularly, such as col legno, playing sul ponticello, spiccato, &c.  As technical use of the instruments evolves over time, older composers are retroactively seen as more "limited" in certain ways . . . no actual "flaw" in Bach's music, of course, only it strikes me as strange for that reason to claim any composer from 300 years ago as having "completely mastered" the technique of his instruments. (Heck, Bach didn't even use his thumbs at the console . . . .)

I think there is a difficulty with the definition of "idiomatic."  All those oddball techniques such as col legno, etc, strike me as anti-idiomatic.   Idiomatic, for me, means laying well and taking full advantage of the timbre and tone production of the instrument.  Nothing can be more idiomatic to the violin than Bach's violin concerto in E.  Not a virtuoso piece (well, what do I know, I don't play the violin) but seems to flow so naturally from the instrument.  (I'm thinking of Grumiaux's recording.)

[Clever Hans]

Why do you say this?  I don't think for a minute that Bach wrote idiomatically for the violin to anything like the degree that (say) Berlioz or Stravinsky did.

I'm not sure I can address what you really mean by idiomatic, but let me try to respond with some explanation.

There were technical and formal innovations after Bach, but he explored basically all instruments and timbres available to him and often pushed them to new formal limits.
The violin sonatas and partitas, as an example, made use of more or less all the technical developments of his time from Biber, Westhoff, etc toward solo pieces that are still an epitome of the type.

The same could be said of his keyboard/organ works (WTC, suites, partitas, variations, AOF...), cello suites, lute suites, concertos and cantatas.
As for opera, the Matthew Passion may not have been staged by him but it is essentially a sacred opera.

No other composer I can think of tackled everything available to him/her on a small and large scale so completely and successfully, with equal exploration of solo instruments, obbligato and orchestral/choral works.

[jochanaan]

...Beethoven as he grew older thought his compositions were out of fashion, and he heard and was irritated by the relative breakdown of Classical harmony in early Romantic music. He may have hoped that the Classical style would continue anyway. Or he may have realized it would not and disapproved.

That's a very strange statement, since Beethoven was at the forefront of what you call "the relative breakdown of Classical harmony in early Romantic music" and I call developing new tonal resources.

[jochanaan]

...All those oddball techniques such as col legno, etc, strike me as anti-idiomatic.   Idiomatic, for me, means laying well and taking full advantage of the timbre and tone production of the instrument...

There's an internal contradiction here.  What could be more idiomatic and take better advantage of tone production than using tones and techniques available to no other instrument?

Besides, these questions have been around at least since Claudio Monteverdi, in the early 1600s, asked his string players to do things they refused to do because they were too new and radical, such as pizzicato and tremolo!

[Scarpia]

There's an internal contradiction here.  What could be more idiomatic and take better advantage of tone production than using tones and techniques available to no other instrument?

I don't think these oddball techniques take better advantage of tone production in the violin, they strike me as an attempt at novelty for novelty's sake.

[Chaszz]

...(Heck, Bach didn't even use his thumbs at the console . . . .)

What?!?? Is this true? Does "console" include the harpsichord?

[karlhenning]

"Console" implies the organ keyboard. (Of course, we wouldn't expect an organist to use ihs thumbs on the pedals . . . .)

[mikkeljs]

A classic case of Phase 5.

Don´t think so! Im not the kind of person who tend to cathegorize, or at least I cathegorize really carefully. As a matter of fact I have always been very conservative, and I simply just admire the music, that reflects the greatest potential and most insight. Just because I find the school of John Cage to be genious, I keep going back to all the traditional composers before I make up an opinion. And through my life I have only made a few such composer comparing judgments, which has been all about something very basic and reduced.

Your model suggests that everyone who says something that differs from tradition, they are just not mature? 

[Opus106]

Don´t think so! Im not the kind of person who tend to cathegorize, or at least I cathegorize really carefully. As a matter of fact I have always been very conservative, and I simply just admire the music, that reflects the greatest potential and most insight. Just because I find the school of John Cage to be genious, I keep going back to all the traditional composers before I make up an opinion. And through my life I have only made a few such composer comparing judgments, which has been all about something very basic and reduced.

Your model suggests that everyone who says something that differs from tradition, they are just not mature? 

It's not my "model," -- it [the original article, written by David Hurwitz] is meant to be a joke using stereotypes. I'm sorry if it offended you.

[Josquin des Prez]

Don´t think so! Im not the kind of person who tend to cathegorize, or at least I cathegorize really carefully. As a matter of fact I have always been very conservative, and I simply just admire the music, that reflects the greatest potential and most insight. Just because I find the school of John Cage to be genious, I keep going back to all the traditional composers before I make up an opinion. And through my life I have only made a few such composer comparing judgments, which has been all about something very basic and reduced.

Your model suggests that everyone who says something that differs from tradition, they are just not mature? 

Quit being in denial and start seeking help.