A Complete Introduction to J.S. Bach

johann sebastian bach is now known as one of the greatest most prolific and most ingenious composers of all time he wrote a huge amount of music for organ keyboard the piano hadn't been invented yet as well as solo works orchestral works and vocal works he was an undisputed master of writing in counterpoint that's where there are lots of independent musical lines playing at the same time working cleverly around each other to form a complex and engaging musical texture something like this [Music] beyond that bark explored virtually every major style form and musical genre of his time except for opera he developed all these styles pushed them forwards and blended them together in new ways his compositions are particularly remarkable for the way that they combine the emotional with the intellectual and we'll talk more about that later on by his death he had completed well over 1,000 compositions he wasn't just a prolific musician he was also very Randy he fathered twenty children seven with his first wife and thirteen with his second only ten survived until adulthood but the barks were very much known as a musical family and many of your hand Sebastian's children went on to be big-name composers themselves after johann sebastian s death his music fell into obscurity and it wasn't really fully revived until the 19th century particularly by composers such as Mendelssohn and Brahms since then Barr has been regarded as one of the greatest if not the greatest Western composer who ever lived perhaps I can share some of the reasons why in this video I'll talk first about his life's work and then a bit about the quality of his music afterwards though to be honest I can barely scratch the surface in a single video Bach's accomplishments were truly gargantuan and his musical qualities are so varied from work to work so first let's talk about barks life and works bark was a working musician throughout his life a church organist a teacher a director of local orchestras church choirs and so on so most of the music that he wrote was produced specifically for the jobs that he held when he was an organist he composed a lot of organ music when he was a court music director he wrote a lot of music for court and domestic entertainment when he was director of music at four churches in Leipzig he wrote a huge number of cantatas and other church pieces and so on we might remember that a composer was particularly bound by duty in those days they did not have the same freedoms that we enjoy today in fact at one point bark wanted to move from vemma to curtain to start a new job because bark was such a great musician the Duke of vimar refused to let him leave and put him in prison for an entire month so let's quickly overview the different genres and styles that bark worked in and revolutionized it'll have to be quick because he wrote such a huge amount of music first organ music bark worked as a church musician and so much of his music is based around the German Lutheran Service he wrote many chorale settings over 200 in fact and chorale preludes which are based on lutheran him tunes he also wrote a great deal of organ takata's Fantasia's preludes and fugues a notable organ work is his or gobu Kline or little organ book which consists of 45 short chorale preludes this book also gives guidance in how to develop a chorale yourself and how to improve your organ pedal technique bark often used the organ pedals to create an extra independent line in the music the book is therefore an instructive tool and not just a book of music for keyboard he wrote a number of suites showing the influence of different national styles six english suites six french suites and six party tours however these Suites also have many German and Italian characteristics his best-known keyboard works are probably his two volumes of the well-tempered clavier each book contains 24 preludes and fugues one for every possible key major and minor arranged in ascending order from C up to B I've made a video on fugues and Prelude before if you want to learn more about them these books are also somewhat educational they demonstrate the possibility of playing music in every single key on the keyboard which was unusual at the time and they also use many different styles of writing and different levels of complexity he also wrote the Goldberg Variations you might recognize its main theme [Music] there are 30 variations on this theme every third variation is a cannon the first is a cannon at the unison the next is a cannon of the second and it goes on and on until he writes a cannon at the ninth so it's showing the potential for counterpoint and barks genius with counterpoint the other variations take all sorts of forms including fugue French overture slow Aria bravura and so on it's like an expert summary of the different kinds of music of his time meanwhile the art of fugue systematically demonstrates all kinds of fugle writing 18 canons and fugues in the strictest style all based on one subject and its transformations the book is very much structured in order of increasing complexity the last few which bark didn't finish before he died has four subjects including one which spells out barks own name be ACH so by structuring his music from simplest to most complex you could see how this is not only a masterpiece but a kind of instructive textbook on fugle writing on to chamber music he wrote 15 sonatas for solo instruments with harpsichord that's six for violin six for flute and three for viola da gamba a kind of precursor to the cello he also wrote some for unaccompanied instruments six sonatas and partitas for violin six cello suites and a partita for flute to make these sono pieces work well he developed a style of writing where the melody also suggests harmony so that it doesn't need to be accompanied by another instrument for an example of this you may recognise the beginning of his first cello suite [Music] he wrote orchestral music - famously his six Brandenburg Concertos generally these adopted the Italian structure of three movements fast slow fast and Italian styles - but it also has original surprises like in the fifth concerto where there's an incredible cadenza for harpsichord an instrument which would normally only underpin the harmony and finally there's his vocal music his cantatas were written for church services and are a sort of dramatic presentation of religious texts the church calendar in Leipzig required 58 cantatas per year as well as passion music for Good Friday some magnificat and other music - for special occasions overall bark composed three or even four complete annual cycles of cantatas that's over 200 cantatas they show an ingenious mixture of genres and a great grasp of musical drama barks passions most famously the Matthew Passion and the John passion mix elements from opera cantata and oratorio x' they sort of blend all three to tell the story of Christ's crucifixion here are the first intense notes - barks and John passion [Music] and finally there's his great mass in B minor we can think of this as barks personal compendium of his life's work a great deal of the movement in this are actually rehashes of older works some of his best stuff from earlier cantatas or other pieces and they're brought back here and revamped or rewritten a bit because if you think about it when bark was alive he wouldn't have known that most of his work would survive him they were just random cantatas or orchestral works written for specific services or concerts in his life but by creating a full large-scale mass too large for use in just another church service it was as if he was making a statement this is a collection of my best work I want this work to be immortalized and so we could comfortably argue the bark believed the music in his B minor mass with some of his strongest now let's talk about his musical qualities a little bit I mentioned earlier the bark was a master of all sorts of music and it's important to understand how he blended or transcended different styles both artistic and emotional and intellectual too bark was writing during the baroque and Rococo era of art it's a style based in movement contrast intricate detail color opulence grandeur as well as surprise and drama these are all words that could describe Bach's music too and situate him within this period of art we can hear his long long lines of melody constantly moving exploring developing searching his opulent and decorative textures his love of drama [Music] but his music wasn't just tagging along with stylistic trends above all as with any great art barks music values beauty and truth [Music] but there's another side too barks music for him music was also an opportunity to show great feats of the intellect which was an ideal of the Enlightenment period a prosperous period of science and reason spearheaded by isaac newton's principia mathematica and while i don't have time to go into detail here if you want to learn more about barks intellectual techniques his fugues cannons augmentations do munitions in counterpoint and so on you can see my video on fugues but perhaps all this is why barks music often appeals to the mathematically minded it stimulates the intellectual brain as well as the emotional though as any mathematician knows there is beauty in complexity too in fact sometimes there is beauty because of complexity especially when all these complex pieces fit together so perfectly to take just one example of potentially thousands of bark blending the emotional and the intellectual listen to the qui tollis from his b-minor mass how emotionally expressive it is while also being a perfect uninterrupted canon of v between the two voices [Music] so bark was a master of the Baroque style and of the intellect I used to find barks music difficult to access it didn't resonate with me in the same way that later music did but the more familiar I became with him and his style and the more his world opened up to me the more apparent it became the bark was an undisputed master and has composed some of the most profound and beautiful works in musics history let alone the most ingenious but where to start I'm sure everybody has a different opinion on this but I'll risk offering mine for the emotional perhaps start with barks and John passion which starts right in the thick of the drama and follows the story of Christ's passion follow it through with the text in hand if you can so you can follow what's going on and for the intellect you can try one of his grand summaries of style the Goldberg Variations you can hear this performed on piano harpsichord even the harp there are thirty variations on the beautiful theme and we can think of that as ten sets of three each set of three variations contains a virtuoso piece an emotional piece and a rational piece and as I said every third piece is a cannon first a cannon at the unison and then at the second and then so on up and up and one of my favorite of all pieces has to be the B minor mass though the carry a may be challenging for newcomers the rest of the piece takes you on a whirlwind of musical and emotional content and I might add as an end note I know several people who have complained that Bach's music sounds too old too dusty and boring for them this might be sacrilege but you could try listening to the fantastic orchestral transcriptions of his music Edward Elgar and Arnold Schoenberg have done some amazing transcriptions the notes are exactly the same but they've modernized the instrumentation transforming it [Applause] [Music] or there are stakhovski x' transcriptions bombastic though some of them are or there are even the Swingle Singers Jazza fiying his music some will cry that this is no longer bark but I prefer to think how is it that the music can still sound so fresh so modern so musically strong after two hundred and fifty years we may change the instruments but the notes are still the same the melodies the harmonies the lines of counterpoint and the musical thought and those are the things that are really important in bark so by all means check out these transcriptions and enjoy how bark stimulates your emotions and your intellect I just wanted to say a huge thank you to all my patrons most of my videos actually get demonetised immediately so I'm hugely grateful for any support I get so that I can continue producing videos on classical and film music if this video has been of value to you and you'd like to see me create more then perhaps consider becoming a patron we have forums where I make videos based on your suggestions we have some Q&A s coming up and it's growing to the point now where we can have some great community discussions as always if you enjoyed this then do subscribe share the video like it and thanks for watching

Channel: Inside the Score

Views: 526,285

Keywords: Bach, introduction, music, JS Bach, genius, well tempered clavier, goldberg variations, art of fugue, orgelbuchlein, b minor mass, matthew passion, john passion, cantata, cantatas, brandenburg concerto, brandenburg

Id: rTg9WLz-xBA

Length: 16min 16sec (976 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 16 2019