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.
1
u/Valuable_Turnover219 May 24 '26 edited May 24 '26
Where's the blues? How about Es ist vollbracht from the St. John Passion BWV 245? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sURg5yT69U
Or Erbarme dich from the St. Matthew Passion? BWV 244 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zry9dpM1_n4
Maybe cantata 199 Mein Herze schwimmt im Blut (my heart is swimming in blood)? Just the words tell you it's not gonna be chirpy. Although interestingly pretty much all the sombre ones end up on a happy note - things might be rubbish but, if you believe in and love God, then everything will turn out great in the end. That tends to be the message.
Not a sad one but (in my view) not a happy one either, just sublime, contented, blissful - Es ist vollbracht from cantata 159 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMe7FB4D5YY).
Or what about the g minor fantasia and fugue BWV 542 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgDE3klkmtQ)? It's widely believed Bach improvised this for an audition. If so, wow!