Posts Tagged ‘Bach’
“There’s nothing remarkable about it. All one has to do is hit the right keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself.”*…
There was, of course, a flurry of silliness on April Fools Day. Now the dust has settled; we can identify a winner, found by the polymathic Ethan Iverson (a composer, performer, and piano teacher at the New England Conservatory of Music; see also here)…
Marc-André Hamelin is a renowned pianist and composer (as the New York Times puts it, “A performer of near-superhuman technical prowess”). Charles-Louis Hanon was a 19th century composer and piano teacher best remembered for The Virtuoso Pianist in 60 Exercises, still in use.
As Iverson observes: “Part of the joke is how musically Hamelin plays the exercises. A god among pianists, truly…”
Hamelin recorded the spoof in the studios of GBH in Boston, where his wife, Cathy Fuller, is a producer and host at Classical WCRB.
* Johann Sebastian Bach
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As we tickle the ivories, we might spare a thought for Johannes Brahms; he died on this date in 1897. A composer, pianist, and conductor of the mid-Romantic period, he composed for symphony orchestra, chamber ensembles, piano, organ, voice, and chorus. A virtuoso pianist, he premiered many of his own works.
Considered both a traditionalist and an innovator by his contemporaries and by later writers, his music is rooted in the structures and compositional techniques of the Classical masters; at the same time, it embeds Romantic motifs. It is a measure of the esteem in which his work is held that Brahms is often grouped with Bach and Beethoven as one of the “Three Bs” of music (a comment originally made by the nineteenth-century conductor Hans von Bülow).
Consider (all joking aside) this marvelous example:
“It is the special province of music to move the heart”*…
From the estimable Ted Gioia…
Here’s one of the best music videos you will see this year.
Bach’s score for The Art of Fugue—perhaps his last work—does not specify the instrumentation, thus giving later musicians tremendous creative latitude. It’s based on [the motif pictured above].
This new video performance, released last week by the Netherlands Bach Society, features an impressive range of settings—starting with solo voices, and working through combinations of a dozen other instruments…
Bach– as Wagner proclaimed, “the most stupendous miracle in all music!”: The Art of the Fugue
* Johann Sebastian Bach
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As we appreciate patterns, we might recall that it was on this date in 1738 that Handel, Bach’s contemporary (he, Bach, and Domenico Scarlatti were all born in 1685), finished his his oratorio Saul and starts Israel in Egypt.
“A nice blend of prediction and surprise seem to be at the heart of the best art”*…
Walter, later Wendy, Carlos was a pioneer of electronic music, a collaborator with Robert Moog in developing the Moog Synthesizer that changed music forever (among other things, she convinced Moog to add a touch-sensitive device, allowing greater musical dynamics) and a performer/recording artist who popularized the instrument. In 1970, she did an explainer for the BBC…
We can break popular music into two periods: before the Moog and after the Moog. Upon its debut in 1964, that synthesizer made a big splash in the small but long-established electronic-music world by, among other innovative qualities, being smaller than an entire room. Over the next few years, inventor Bob Moog (whose previous line was in theremins) refined his eponymous brainchild to the point that it became accessible to composers not already on the cutting edge of music technology. But for Wendy Carlos, the cutting edge of music technology was where she’d spent most of her life; hence her ability to create the first bestselling all-Moog album, 1968’s Switched-On Bach…
She even plays a bit of the second movement of Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto #4, Carlos’ rendition of which on Switched-On Bach‘s follow-up The Well-Tempered Synthesizer moved no less an authority than Glenn Gould to call it “the finest performance of any of the Brandenburgs — live, canned, or intuited — I’ve ever heard.”…
A titan of electronic music breaks it down: “Wendy Carlos Demonstrates the Moog Synthesizer on the BBC (1970),” from Colin Marshall (@colinmarshall) in @openculture.
* Wendy Carlos
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As we plug in, we might recall that it was on this date in 1956 that Chuck Berry recorded “Roll Over Beethoven” for Chess Records. It was released the following month and peaked at number 2 on the Billboard R&B chart and number 29 on the pop chart. “Roll Over Beethoven” is one of the most widely covered songs in popular music – “a staple of rock and roll bands”, according to Cub Koda of AllMusic– with famous versions by Jerry Lee Lewis, the Beatles, Carl Perkins, and Electric Light Orchestra. In 2003 it was was one of 50 recordings chosen by the Library of Congress to be added to the National Recording Registry.
“Apparently I lack some particular perversion which today’s employer is seeking”*…
A century ago, the economist John Maynard Keynes predicted that by 2030, our workweek would be only 15 hours long. What happened? We’ve crossed all the technological thresholds Keynes identified, so why aren’t we living in the economic promised land? Well, if Keynes were here today, he’d probably blame our unshakeable instinct to work. He believed that human beings are cursed, that we have infinite desires, but there aren’t enough resources to satisfy them. As a result, everything is, by definition, scarce. Today, economists refer to this paradox as the “fundamental economic problem,” and they believe it explains our constant will to work. We make and trade resources as a way to bridge the gap between our infinite desires and our limited means.
That may sound like a reasonable theory, but there’s a problem: It doesn’t square with what we now understand about our hunter-gatherer ancestors. Until the 1960s, anthropologists believed hunter-gatherers led short, difficult lives. Only through incremental advancements in technology, the thinking went, were our ancestors able to secure greater wealth, tranquility, and free time. But when anthropologists began studying the world’s remaining hunter-gatherer societies, they came to a striking conclusion: Hunter-gatherer life wasn’t nearly as bad as everybody thought. One anthropologist, for instance, found a tribe that only spent 30 hours a week hunting and doing chores. The rest of the time, they made music, socialized, gossiped, and relaxed. They didn’t spend all their time working to satisfy their infinite desires. In fact, their desires weren’t infinite at all; they were limited, and easy to satisfy. This revelation suggests that the “fundamental economic problem” is not, as Keynes believed, the eternal struggle of the human race. It’s just an unfortunate recent development…
One of five take-aways from Work: A Deep History, from the Stone Age to the Age of Robots, by James Suzman (@anthrowittering), a social anthropologist based in Cambridge, England, where he directs a think tank called Anthropos that uses anthropological tools to solve economic problems. His first book, Affluence Without Abundance: The Disappearing World of the Bushmen, draws on the three decades he’s spent living with the Ju/’hoansi, one of the oldest hunter-gatherer societies in the world.
More at Next Big Idea Club (@NextBigIdeaClub): “Work: A Deep History, from the Stone Age to the Age of Robots.”
* John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces
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As we rethink the rat race, we might send exquisitely-constructed birthday greetings to a man whose work continues to inspire and amaze, Johann Sebastian Bach; he was born on this date in 1685. Known both for instrumental compositions such as the Brandenburg Concertos and the Goldberg Variations, and for vocal music such as the St Matthew Passion and the Mass in B minor, he sits at the apex of the Baroque period, and is widely regarded as one of the greatest composers of all time.
“Saint: A dead sinner revised and edited”*…
When eminent biologist and author Lewis Thomas was asked what message he would choose to send from Earth into outer space in the Voyager spacecraft, he answered, “I would send the complete works of Johann Sebastian Bach.” After a pause, he added, “But that would be boasting.”
You can hardly find a more sanctioned and orthodox insider than Johann Sebastian Bach, at least as he is typically presented. He is commemorated as the sober bewigged Lutheran who labored for church authorities and nobility, offering up hundreds of cantatas, fugues, orchestral works, and other compositions for the glory of God. Yet the real-life Bach was very different from this cardboard figure. In fact, he provides a striking case study in how prickly dissidents in the history of classical music get transformed into conformist establishment figures by posterity…
Fighting, drinking, organ loft liaisons… and then there’s the music– the subversive practice of a canonical composer: “J.S. Bach the Rebel.”
* Ambrose Bierce
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As we interrogate our idols, we might send harmonic birthday greetings to John Birks “Dizzy” Gillespie; he was born (in Cheraw, S.C.) on this date in 1917. A jazz pioneer– performer, bandleader, composer, and singer– he was a trumpet virtuoso and a style-setting improviser. His combination of musicianship, showmanship, and wit made him (with Charlie Parker) a leading popularizer of (the emerging new music) bebop. His beret and horn-rimmed spectacles, his scat singing, his bent horn, his pouched cheeks, and his light-hearted personality became emblematic of the form.
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