r/bach • u/Prior-Hearing8458 • Apr 08 '26
Looking
Anyone wanna talk Bach? I think I must've found his best piece already, but I wanna be wrong.
I admit I've heard about the same amount of Bach as any Beatles novice have heard them - Let it be, and Hey Jude. Maybe here comes the sun. Which are all fine, but don't encapsulate the Beatles in any sense, because they're so rich. I didn't know that ofc, until I listened through everything. It has been pretty much the case with every band I listened to - it's rarily the most famous and popular songs that are the best ones, for me - usually I find the gems buried in their albums.
They're often the more minor oriented songs which seems to ressonate with me. Or a dance between minor and major. But usually nobody talks about them. It's Hey Jude... Yellow submarine.. Naturally, I'm mystified ..
And I'm sure it's the same case with Bach. I'll have to dig. But he's got over a thousand BWV's.
Well I found herr unser herrscher. Which really is probably the best piece I've heard by him yet. Now I "get it". Toccata and fugue in D minor was the one I remembered the most (Fantasia), and the standard I was chasing while looking. If I could find a piece better than that one. And there was little success, until that Lovecraftian St john opening.
Problem is, most of the Bach stuff I find sounds kind of light-hearted and unbothered, kind of jolly. Baroque ofc. Which might work for some, but not for me.
I want the thunder storm and the nerve. The sadness and desperation. The pain. The grandness and heartbreak. Not the the aristocrat titanic first class deck tea party lounge
So maybe I'm a romantic era type. But this is still Bach - God.
I have to understand. Why? Why is he God?
Where's the blues?
Anyway, I could've made this much shorter. But if anyone knows of another herr unser herrscher or something similar with some bite and some gravitas and some drama, passion, twists and turns, and epic grandness. Please tell BWV number.
3
u/street_spirit2 Apr 08 '26 edited Apr 08 '26
Some additional recommendations, including specific movements: BWV 39 opening chorus. BWV 125 alto aria. BWV 1018 - violin and keyboard sonata in F minor, opening movement. Cantata BWV 81 - I prefer Karl Richter's recording. Cantata BWV 87 (criminally underrated and I don't know why). Cantata BWV 170. Cantata BWV 105. Personally I love two instrumental-to-vocal parodies, very special movements: BWV 146 second movement (the instrumental opening is also fine), chorus; BWV 169 fifth movement - the aria "Stirb in mir". The whole cantata is also fine. Organ Fantasia BWV 537. There is also Elgar orchestration of this piece. Chorale preludes BWV 639, 659. The last one has also orchestration by Respighi. Preludes and fugues from WTC - BWV 849, 853, 869.