BS: Bach, anyone?

Subject: Bach, anyone?
From: CarolC
Date: 30 Sep 00 - 03:21 AM

I know this is terribly brazen of me, but I really need to ask this question. It's not folk. It's classical.

I'm just now watching (and listening to) a televised performance of Bach's Mass in B Minor. Even with the crappy sound my television has, the beauty of this piece is beyond my ability to describe. Let's just say it transports me to heavenly places.

Are there any other Bach lovers around here? If so, which Bach pieces do you particularly love?

(Love the Brandenburg Concertos.)

Carol

Subject: RE: BS: Bach, anyone?
From: Helen
Date: 30 Sep 00 - 03:45 AM

Hi CarolC,

I love Bach too. I was similarly transported by a song from the St Matthew's Passion which was performed by Thijs van Leer (flute player who used to be in the jazz/pop group Focus) and a woman with an amazing voice. That was 25 years ago and I was listening to it on a transistor radio the size of a cigarette packet. I rushed out and bought the album and had to wait a few years to play it because, as a poor student, I couldn't afford a record player then. It was well-worth the wait, but it was the only Bach piece on that record.

I have a book of sheet music called The Well Tempered Clavier, which is music he wrote for his wife when she was learning to play a keyboard instrument. It has Minuet in G (which is the music for Unchained Melody(??) by the Supremes), and some other very nice and often well known pieces.

I also love Vivaldi.

Helen

Subject: RE: BS: Bach, anyone?
From: Dave (the ancient mariner)
Date: 30 Sep 00 - 05:15 AM

Count me in. I love classical music and the Bach family are some of my favourite composers. "And Sheep May Safely Graze" and Wachet Auf... Yours, Aye. Dave

Subject: RE: BS: Bach, anyone?
From: MudGuard
Date: 30 Sep 00 - 08:04 AM

I really love Bach's music - but only the instrumental pieces. I do not like choirs...
I like his Orchestral suites and the Brandenburg Concertos, but also his "Clavierkonzerte" as long as they are played on a Cembalo (not on Pianoforte!).
But many pianists think that clavier at Bach's time ment the same as it means today (i.e. pianoforte)

MudGuard

Subject: RE: BS: Bach, anyone?
From: mrs_zezam
Date: 30 Sep 00 - 08:18 AM

2nd movement of Bach Double Violin Concerto

Subject: RE: BS: Bach, anyone?
From: AllisonA(Animaterra)
Date: 30 Sep 00 - 08:21 AM

I love Bach. I went to a music conservatory for college and we were nursed and weaned on Bach. Favorites? Anything at all by him! The organ fugues, the B Minor Mass, the cantatas, all have something rich and something different. There's a sonata in, I think, D minor for oboe and continuo that can make me cry.

Subject: RE: BS: Bach, anyone?
From: GUEST,Dave Auty
Date: 30 Sep 00 - 09:09 AM

Bach could certainly write a beautiful tune and is my favourite composer, his Partita's for cello etc and his flute compositions "Suite in B minor" to name only one are second to none.

Dave.

Subject: RE: BS: Bach, anyone?
From: Mbo
Date: 30 Sep 00 - 09:17 AM

WHoa Helen! Here's the scoop! The Well Tempered Clavier Part I & II were written as studies for the clavier. The Prelude No.1 in C from this opus was combined by Charles Gounod with his own melody, to form "Ave Maria".

The famous "Minuet in G" is from The Anna Magdelena Notebook, which is what Bach wrote for his wife, Anna Magdelena, because she was learning the harpsichord. The "Minuet in G" was used as the tune for the 60's song "Lover's Concerto". "Unchained Melody" is by the Righteous Brothers and has a tune that is it's own, and not Bach's.

I'd have to say my favorite Bach work is Brandenburg Concerto No.3.

Subject: RE: BS: Bach, anyone?
From: pastorpest
Date: 30 Sep 00 - 09:35 AM

I am a Bach fan as well. Picking out even one piece as favourite is impossible. I have paged through "simple" Bach chorales looking at the four parts and realizing that every part has its own melody and that the four parts together are much more again. I know nothing about counterpoint, but I can look at the notation and wonder how it was even possible to think it and compose it in the first place. He wrote at a furious pace because so much music was required of him in his work.

In the end, for me he pours out the glory of God in ways that are no longer seem possible in our age.

Being a recorder player, Brandenburg 2 & 4 are favourites to listen to. Favourite Bach recordings include Glen Gould playing the Goldberg Variations, the 1981 recording that is re-released by Sony on CD and Paul Tortelier's recording of the six solo cello suites, which is a double EMI re-release.

Subject: RE: BS: Bach, anyone?
From: Lepus Rex
Date: 30 Sep 00 - 09:37 AM

No, thank you:)

---Lepus Rex

Subject: RE: BS: Bach, anyone?
From: GUEST,Terry Allan Hall (a guest?...I'm honored!)
Date: 30 Sep 00 - 09:38 AM

"Toccata & Fugue in D Minor" (Think "Phantom of the Opera") and "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" are likely my favorites, although I've never heard a Bach piece that I didn't like...

Subject: RE: BS: Bach, anyone?
From: IvanB
Date: 30 Sep 00 - 11:28 AM

When I lived in another city, I sang in the chorus for the annual Bach Festival. We did one of the 'major' choral works (Bm Mass, St. Matthew's and St. John's Passions) each year, and I loved them all. I also love the cantatas and instrumental works. I guess I have to agree - I don't think there's ever been a Bach work performed that I didn't enjoy, assuming the performer(s) didn't trash it altogether.

Subject: RE: BS: Bach, anyone?
From: Rick Fielding
Date: 30 Sep 00 - 11:50 AM

Great thread Carol. I use a heck of a lot of Bach lines while teaching my students about folkie lead guitar! Rachmaninov as well.

Rick

Subject: RE: BS: Bach, anyone?
From: Morticia
Date: 30 Sep 00 - 01:20 PM

I love J.S. ( much to Micca's disgust)......and I guess Jesu Joy is probably one of my favourites......which considering how hard the choirmaster worked to get us to sing it, is surprising really.......I couldn't separate out one concerto from another, I love all of them.

Subject: RE: BS: Bach, anyone?
From: p.j.
Date: 30 Sep 00 - 02:29 PM

As a teenager the first record album I ever saved up to buy was a classical guitar recording called Parkening Plays Bach. Wore the grooves clean through that vinyl. (Clearly a misspent youth.) A couple of years ago I bought it again on CD and found it to be as moving as ever. If you love Bach but have never heard it on classical guitar, do yourself a favor and indulge.

pj

Subject: RE: BS: Bach, anyone?
From: AllisonA(Animaterra)
Date: 30 Sep 00 - 02:34 PM

This may be an overstatement, but at the conservatory we were told that if it weren't for Bach, harmony would not be what it is today.

Subject: RE: BS: Bach, anyone?
From: GUEST,Flexor
Date: 30 Sep 00 - 06:54 PM

"Air". Definitely one of my favorites (Although I'm not sure if I'm miscrediting someone).

Subject: RE: BS: Bach, anyone?
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 30 Sep 00 - 07:13 PM

Strangely enough, Bach was not outstandingly original. What he did was, he took everything that was being done at the time, tied it up, and did it BETTER than anybody else could. He integrated.

Yes, he has a large number of good tunes, but many of them were not his originals; again, he just had the genius to DO IT BETTER!

If a given musician would be his guest, or in town available to play with the local musicians, he'd think nothing of recasting an earlier composition to fit the new combination of instruments, and probably to feature the visiting fireman's instrument, probably for a single performance. Or even for a private play-through that was not a public performance.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: Bach, anyone?
From: Mbo
Date: 30 Sep 00 - 07:20 PM

And like the archetypal folkie, he was relatively unknown in his own time.

Subject: RE: BS: Bach, anyone?
From: GUEST,Greyeyes
Date: 30 Sep 00 - 07:24 PM

This reminds me of the time I was working in the music department in Salisbury Library & a borrower came in to request the Brandenburg Concertos. I pointed out she had not filled in the composer on her reservation card and she replied "well presumably it was Brandenburg". (true story, honest.)

Subject: RE: BS: Bach, anyone?
From: DougR
Date: 30 Sep 00 - 07:31 PM

I like almost anything by Bach.

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: Bach, anyone?
From: Joe Offer
Date: 30 Sep 00 - 07:44 PM

Bach's Fugue in G Minor ("The Little") is my idea of the perfect organ piece. It always gives me a feeling of joy and well-being.
I guess Toccata and Fugue in D Minor ("The Great") is more popular because of its dramatic tone. I like it, but it's not music that makes me feel particularly joyful.
And for me, Bach's music is primarily organ music. The other stuff is fine, but Bach is best on a big pipe organ. Now, if you don't mind getting your Bach by electronic means, click here or here (www.bachcentral.com).
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: BS: Bach, anyone?
From: Helen
Date: 30 Sep 00 - 07:47 PM

Thanks Mbo. I haven't hunted out my sheet music book but it isn't called Anna Magdelena Notebook although the introduction refers to that. It may be a combination of pieces from both sets.

I couldn't think of the name Lover's Concerto but there is a stream of consciousness connection between that name and Unchained Melody. Neither song, as I recall it, have the title mentioned in the lyrics, so I can never conjure up the name of either song without a great deal of difficulty.

Helen

Subject: RE: BS: Bach, anyone?
From: Joe Offer
Date: 30 Sep 00 - 07:57 PM

Hi, Helen - "Lover's Concerto is Bach's Minuet in G (click). Pretty, eh?

I don't think "Unchained Melody" came from a classical piece, but I may be wrong about that. It was written by Hy Zaret (words) and Alex North (music) for the 1955 movie Unchained. It was revived by the Righteous Brothers in 1965.
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: BS: Bach, anyone?
From: Escamillo
Date: 30 Sep 00 - 11:37 PM

I'm a fan of Bach too. He was probably the most important musician of all times, not only for his inspiration but also for his ability to understand and master all tendencies and then establish the Harmony as we know it.

Since my main musical activity is as a tenor in a large choral group (this year I reached the top for a non-professional, the Wagnerian Association of Buenos Aires), I have had the great pleasure of participating in the Passions, the Magnificat as chorist and soloist, and many other works. Bach is THE music. Agreeing with Terry and Ivan, I can't tell a single work from Bach that I don't find admirable. Might he have lived 300 years!

Un abrazo - Andrés

Subject: RE: BS: Bach, anyone?
From: Oversoul
Date: 30 Sep 00 - 11:44 PM

The 'cello suites, especially played on the viola!

Subject: RE: BS: Bach, anyone?
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 01 Oct 00 - 10:49 AM

BACH ON THE BANJO! No, I'm not kidding, nor have I taken leave of my senses.

Michael Miles, a wonderful banjo player from Chicago, has transcribed three cello suites for banjo with taste and musicianship, and plays them with more of the same on his CD, American Bach. No less well-informed a critic than Janos Starker, the great, great cellist, has said glowing words about Miles's treatment. Lest you think, "Blasphemy!" I point out that banjo is a member of the lute family, and also that Bach himself treated instruments pretty interchangeably, recasting for this or that instrument according as the occasion or the available artists required. And more: Bach was a great material-thief himself, fueling that fantastic productivity in part with the music of other composers. In this case, however, Miles doesn't rewrite Bach; he transcribes and plays Bach in a straightforward Bachian way.

Also on the CD is Miles's own composition, Suite for the Americas. This is a suite in the tradition of Bach, a string of dances, but dances of the Western Hemisphere, of today. Good, good stuff!

The CD is available, among other places, at Elderly instruments, URL www.elderly.com. HIGHLY recommended!

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: Bach, anyone?
From: wysiwyg
Date: 01 Oct 00 - 01:15 PM

I love Bach Massively, But in a minor way.

~S~

Subject: RE: BS: Bach, anyone?
From: GUEST,Sheila
Date: 01 Oct 00 - 02:53 PM

There is NO-ONE to match Bach! His chords of antiphony and harmony are as alive today as 350 years ago! How remarkable to think of what we may have lost had Felix Mendelssohn not "discovered" Bach in an attic trunk!!! The first choral piece I ever sung was "Wachet Auf!" Whether solo or orchestral, he did it all!!! Sheila PS-Air on a G String can make a sensitive listener, cry!

Subject: RE: BS: Bach, anyone?
From: CarolC
Date: 02 Oct 00 - 02:53 AM

Beautiful music...beautiful people...beautiful thread.

Thanks everybody,

Carol

Subject: RE: BS: Bach, anyone?
From: Barbara Shaw
Date: 02 Oct 00 - 08:04 AM

I really love Bach minuets and bourrees. Read somewhere recently an article about YoYo Ma, Edgar Meyer and Mark O'Connor that compared Bach and bluegrass. The styles are similar in terms of fugues vs improvised breaks (classical musicians used to improvise, too) and in terms of the artistry and skills required to play both.

Subject: RE: BS: Bach, anyone?
From: Whistle Stop
Date: 02 Oct 00 - 09:18 AM

As others have said, I have never heard anything by Bach that I didn't like. I was going to put in a plug for Parkening Plays Bach, but p.j. beat me to it.

I find nothing wrong with discussing Bach on this forum. He is one of the true masters of music, and his work has informed a wide range of styles beyond the baroque style that he made his own.

Subject: RE: BS: Bach, anyone?
From: GUEST,Pete Peterson
Date: 02 Oct 00 - 11:36 AM

I really like the comment from Dave O that Bach was not particularly original just did it better than anybody else! that makes a lot of sense, he was just SO prolific; well,there were more pretty combinations of notes still undiscovered in those days.
Some of my own favorites: this one number from the beginning of the St. John Passion where a soprano and a flute are echoing each other back and forth, almost the whole Trauer-Ode, all the Brandenburg Concerti, . . . hard to know where to stop!

Subject: RE: BS: Bach, anyone?
From: M.Ted
Date: 02 Oct 00 - 01:08 PM

Rick, brilliant and insightful as he is in every endeavor, has brought something really important out, when he connected Bach with folk lead guitar, and it ought to be reemphasized-- The melodies that folk musicians work with are the same kind of melodies that Bach worked with, and he took these sort of musical ideas and developed and expanded them in ways that can be easily used in playing folk, rock, blues, and Jazz music.

The odd thing is that folk musicians (who are also composers, because they create a lot of the ideas that they play) can draw much more directly from Bach than classical musicians, because classical composers have another 300 years of musical ideas that they have to deal with--

Subject: RE: BS: Bach, anyone?
From: Lena
Date: 03 Oct 00 - 02:58 AM

Bach lover.Bach lover.Bach lover.I think the Sarabande from the fifth Cello Sonata to be the most beautiful MUSIC ever written.And Herbame Dich,from the Passion after Matthew.

Subject: RE: BS: Bach, anyone?
From: Helen
Date: 03 Oct 00 - 11:27 PM

Lena,

Erbame Dich. That's the one I heard on my transistor radio. Beautiful.

Helen

Subject: RE: BS: Bach, anyone?
From: BigDaddy
Date: 04 Oct 00 - 12:35 AM

Don't forget "Bach Goes To Limerick" thanks to Steeleye Span (Commoner's Crown" LP).

Subject: RE: BS: Bach, anyone?
From: GUEST, Banjo Johnny
Date: 04 Oct 00 - 01:16 AM

I'll have to go with his famous "Concerto for Horn and Hardart" -- sheer genius. It features the hardart, the most difficult instrument to play; and the natural horn, the most difficult instrument to listen to. Got to run now, but see you P.D.Q. == Johnny in O.K.C.

Subject: RE: BS: Bach, anyone?
From: CarolC
Date: 04 Oct 00 - 01:26 AM

(ahem...Johnny...that was the other one. The one the family doesn't like to talk about)

C

Subject: RE: BS: Bach, anyone?
From: Trevor
Date: 04 Oct 00 - 12:03 PM

I sing in a couple of choral groups and, this being a big Bach year, we sang a Cantata at Easter and we're currently rehearsing Magnificat. It's glorious music which is a joy to sing. Hear hear to the Goldberg Variations as well, particularly the Glenn gould recording. (I even like the theme to 'The English Patient')

Subject: RE: BS: Bach, anyone?
From: Escamillo
Date: 04 Oct 00 - 03:33 PM

In case someone is not aware of, I would recall that there are a large number of MIDI versions of Bach works in the net, especially in www.prs.net , including instrumental and choral music. The Passions, Magnificat, Christmas Oratorium, and literally hundreds of pieces are available for students.

We at our choir have had excellent experiences in learning complicated choral works by the method of recording a CD for each voice (one for Soprano 1, one for Soprano 2 ... one for Bass) including all voices but enhancing one in particular, so you can study your part reading the music sheet and listening to your voice well differentiated among the others and the instruments. Many of those versions include all tempo and volume variations (crescendos, diminuendos, stringendos, ritenutos,etc.) and this way you can obtain a fast learning of the notes and rythm, and then dedicate most of the time to polish expression.

Un abrazo - Andrés

Subject: RE: BS: Bach, anyone?
From: GUEST, Banjo Johnny
Date: 05 Oct 00 - 11:52 AM

CarolC -- there's another one??

Subject: RE: BS: Bach, anyone?
From: Lucius
Date: 05 Oct 00 - 11:07 PM

I understand that there is some dispute as to whether Bach ever saw the Anna Magdalena Notebook, or if it was her private collection for teaching her children. Most musicologists agree that the Minuet in G (Lover's Concerto) was actually written by Christian Petzold. Bring back Polyphony!!!

Lucius

Subject: RE: BS: Bach, anyone?
From: Mbo
Date: 05 Oct 00 - 11:09 PM

Yeah, and Hamlet was written by Francis Bacon!

Subject: RE: BS: Bach, anyone?
From: Susan A-R
Date: 05 Oct 00 - 11:19 PM

The Cello Suites, the B minor Mass, the well-tempered Klavier pieces, the brandenbergs, and this guy mainly considered himself a church organist. I find that when I sing Bach, I have to work very hard, and it's absolutely worth the effort.

Subject: RE: BS: Bach, anyone?
From: Lucius
Date: 06 Oct 00 - 06:48 PM

Hey MBO, You yankin' my chain?

Lucius