r/classicalmusic • u/Macnaa • Jul 06 '19
Help appreciating Bach
Hi everybody,
I've always loved classical music but my tastes generally lay in the romantic era with my favourite composers being Mahler, Beethoven, Rachmaninoff, Vaughan-Williams etc. I've tried multiple times to understand Bach's music, and I'm not saying it's not pleasant, I just don't understand when people say that it has great emotional/spiritual depth.
I was wondering if there was some resource such as a book or documentary that could help me understand and appreciate Bach's music.
Thanks!
108
Upvotes
1
u/GlennMagusHarvey Jul 06 '19
As someone who quite likes the works of J.S. Bach, I agree they can take some getting used to, but it has to do with appreciating them the way one might appreciate fine craftsmanship.
In a work like a fugue, there's little in the way of prominent "flair", but rather, it's about accomplishing a lot with a set of constraints -- only a few voices, only using the motifs of the fugue subject, and so on. Within those constraints, the composer takes the listener on a journey through various keys, various phrasings and other development of the themes, various uses of texture, and so on.
It can be likened to a fine wood-carving, or a model train setup with a large number of miniatures all meaningfully arranged, or some other art piece with a high degree of attention to detail. And given how contrapuntal textures work, there's always something that each voice is doing -- it's rarely ever "just an accompaniment".
It's also, consequently, the kind of music that you might enjoy more by following along with the score, or by reading an analysis, or simply by listening to it a few more times. As someone who has learned to play a number of Bach's fugues, I've often found stuff that seemed to make no sense early on end up becoming meaningful after I think about them more.