3 pieces that prove Bach was a genius

this video is sponsored by dan muller and his new book the way of bark bark is well known as a composer who wrote music that is simultaneously beautiful and emotive but also deeply logical and intricate simply listening to bark's music is enough to realize his greatness but when you look closely at how his music is constructed it makes you realize the true genius behind it so today i want to show you three pieces of music that really exemplify bark's cleverness as a composer let's start with this piece canon are two kangasans a canon is a piece of music where the first voice introduces our melody [Music] and is soon joined by a second voice which follows the first voice playing an imitation of that melody [Music] now you may have noticed that in canon attu kankrasans better known as the crab cannon the second voice that joins doesn't really sound at all like the main melody even though in a cannon it should it should be almost identical if not the same melody just delayed in time however this second voice is playing the exact same melody as the first voice the only catch is that it's playing it backwards or what we could call retrograde if i arrange the score like this with the second voice moving backwards across the score we can visibly see that these two melody lines are identical [Music] um uh [Music] [Applause] and the best thing about this is that in the original manuscript the original sheet music for this piece bach didn't write it out like this with two staves to make it clear how to play it he literally just wrote one line of music and then slyly put this backwards clef and backwards key signature at the end as a little hint to say you've got to play it backwards at the same time to hear the whole piece the crab cannon is an example of a puzzle cannon or a riddle cannon a piece of music where the performer has to sort of decode what the composer wants in order to perform the music the music isn't written out in a clear fully fledged score it's instead presented in this more compact cryptic way and what's even more amazing about this crab cannon is that it's actually based on a theme a musical theme given to bach by the king of prussia as sort of a challenge a musical challenge so bark didn't only have to create a piece of music that works backwards and forwards at the same time but he had to do it around this pre-existing melody here's another of mark's puzzle cannons cannon a two and this cannon is actually also based on that same royal theme given to him by the king of prussia right here we have this little instruction cuarendo invententus which is latin for seek and you will find so bach is quite literally telling the performer here you're going to have to look at the clues i've given you to play this one mate so what are the clues well the title tells us straight away that the canon is for two players and the two different clefs on the page confirms this you'll notice too that the bass clef is upside down indicating that the second voice will be reading these notes upside down so the first musician will be reading these three notes as c d and e flat on the alto clef but the second player reads it as d c b flat on the bass clef the upside down bass clef now because this is a canon both players don't start at the exact same time the first voice written on the auto clef will begin and then the other player reading the upside down bass clef will have to join at some later point but bark hasn't told us when the second voice should join we instead have to use our knowledge of harmony to work out a logical point for the second voice to join the music we can't start here for example because these notes would clash [Music] but through trial and error the performer will find that the only real logical place to start the second voice is on the fourth bar this is where the interaction between the two voices sounds harmonious and logical and thus we have solved this puzzle cannon [Music] so far we've looked at two cannons but now let's look at a musical form perhaps best associated with bark the fugue much like a cannon a fugue also begins with an initial melody known as the subject [Music] then once that subject has been heard in full a new voice will join imitating the subject but whereas in a canon the second voice will join playing basically the exact same melody just shifted in time and pitch in a fugue the other voices that join will adapt and modify the subject resulting in a very sophisticated intricate piece of counterpoint where all of the lines are related and yet move with their own independence and contour bach wrote literally hundreds of fugal works during his lifetime but let's take a look at his fugue in c minor from book one of the well-tempered clavier this fugue like all fugues begins with the subject the short melody on which the fugue will be built [Music] next the second voice will enter with what's called the answer the answer is typically a direct copy of the subject however it's been modulated upper fifth to the dominant key so in this example whereas the subject is played in the key of c minor the answer is played in the key of g minor and whilst the second voice plays this answer the first voice now continues on what's called the counter subject a new bit of melodic material which will make additional appearances later on [Music] now once the second voice has completed its answer the first voice now gives us this melody here which is actually the first four notes of the subject repeated in sequence in other words with each repetition they're climbing another step up the scale as i mentioned before everything in a fugue is generally related back to that initial subject that we heard at the beginning now whilst this is happening in the first voice the lower voice the second voice is doing this this seemingly new melody is actually still related to stuff we've heard before this is actually the counter subject again but in contrary motion in other words it's going up instead of down [Music] so you can see that even just in those initial six bars of music there is such a intricate and amazing level of interconnection between all of the parts we're hearing here everything is tied in one way to that initial subject in this incredibly clever complex and satisfying way this is why people call bach a genius because he was a master of composing in this intricate sophisticated mathematical counterpoint music which is simultaneously logical and beautiful complex and emotive [Music] now it was actually bark's fugue in c minor that inspired today's sponsor dan muller to learn how to play the piano in his book the way of bark dan describes his experience learning how to play bach it tells his personal story of how having always wanted to learn to play the piano he eventually came to understand the wonders of bark's contrapuntal fuegal textures he discusses how contrapuntal texture is the perfect balance of the horizontal axis of music melody and the vertical axis of music harmony counterpoint is ultimately a set of independent melodies in the horizontal but then in the vertical these melodies are meeting to create rich chords if you're interested the whale park is available in all good bookstores either as a hardback or ebook i've linked it down below [Music] you

Channel: David Bennett Piano

Views: 577,462

Keywords: bach, crab canon, musical offering, fugue, wtc, well tempered clavier, counterpoint, canon, music theory, analysis, explained, retrograde

Id: 5NrUiceLz_s

Length: 9min 41sec (581 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 09 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/ArpSchnigter]

Oh, I've watched that video. It's a good one!