Bach's melodies

[Maestro]

It has been observed that Bach's melodies are harmonically conceived and his harmonies melodically conceived. This is a pithy way of saying that the music of Johann Sebastian Bach is the culmination of not only the Baroque era, but the Renaissance as well. The Baroque era began as a reaction against the highly refined and intellectual Flemish contrapuntal style that is the essence of the high Renaissance. Early Baroque opera led to our modern concept http://www.classicalarchives.com/bios/gif/bach_birthplace.jpg of harmony by declaring the primacy of a single melodic line supported by chords designated by a figured bass. The concept of melody with harmonic accompaniment was the beginning of thinking about harmony and harmonic progressions as an important entity and not just the by-product of intersecting lines. Two hundred and fifty years later, Schumann, great student of Bach that he was, would declare that in the chess game of music melody is the queen but the game depends on harmony, the king.

Bach's music reconciles these two aspects; the horizontal (melodic) and the vertical (harmonic) in complete balance. While his music often has the linear complexity of Renaissance polyphony, it also has a sure and inevitable harmonic architecture that always gives the music a sense of solid form and direction. For instance, in the great Preludium (http://www.classicalarchives.com/m/prs/part3emj.mid) of the Partita for Solo Violin, the constant stream of sixteenth notes reach important arrival and departure points on E, c#, A, f#, B, and back to E. The descending thirds give us a large structural I, ii, V, I cadential progression that girds the entire piece.

Bach's music also synthesizes the prevailing French and Italian styles that dominated the Baroque era. The Italian style, with its emphasis on operatic singing and string playing, tends to be more rhythmically straight forward, emotionally extroverted, and prone to the use of repeating harmonic sequences. French music, on the other hand, grows out of a love for wind instruments and dancing, and the emotional quality is often subtle and less overt. One need look no further than any of the Bach keyboard suites - the so-called French Suites (such as the French Suite No.4 in Eb, BMV.815 (http://www.classicalarchives.com/m/4/french4.mid)), English Suites (for example, the English Suite No.3 in G: 1.Prélude (http://www.classicalarchives.com/m/5/bjseng31.mid); 2.Allemande (http://www.classicalarchives.com/m/5/bjseng32.mid); 3.Courante (http://www.classicalarchives.com/m/5/bjseng33.mid); 4.Sarabande (http://www.classicalarchives.com/m/5/bjseng34.mid); 5.Gavottes I and II (http://www.classicalarchives.com/m/5/bjseng35.mid); 6.Gigue (http://www.classicalarchives.com/m/5/bjseng36.mid)), and the Partitas (No.1 in Bb (http://www.classicalarchives.com/m/b/bwv825.mid); No.2 in C (http://www.classicalarchives.com/m/b/bwv826.mid); No.3 in A (http://www.classicalarchives.com/m/b/bwv827.mid); No.4 in D (http://www.classicalarchives.com/m/b/bwv828.mid); No.5 in g (http://www.classicalarchives.com/m/b/bwv829.mid); and the No.6 in E (http://www.classicalarchives.com/m/b/bwv830.mid)) to see the comfortable juxtaposition of a French Allemande with an Italian Corrente, followed by a French Saraband overlaid with flamboyant, Italian operatic ornamentation.

Bach's cosmopolitan style belies the fact that he travelled so little, although in his youth he did famously walk 200 miles to hear Buxtehude play the organ. Unlike Handel, who studied in Italy, Bach absorbed much of his Italian influence by copying out large amounts of Vivaldi. http://www.classicalarchives.com/bios/gif/bach_manuscript.jpg From Froberger, a German harpsichordist who lived in France, he assimilated the French keyboard style. The latter was in turn influenced by the "broken style" of the French lutenists who found a way to suggest more than one part within a single line. This is an important feature of Bach's melodic style and even the single subject of a fugue will contain contrapuntal elements within it. This ability is also what allowed Bach to write his solo violin and cello sonatas, partitas and suites where a single voiced instrument weaves a tapestry of contrapuntal implications.

Most of Bach's working life was spent as a Kapellmeister of various important churches, where he was responsible for the music performed at weekly Sunday services, in addition to such onerous activities as teaching Latin (which he regularly complained about). In his own life Bach was known more as a virtuoso organist and improviser and he was considered learned but eccentrically old fashioned as a composer what with his obsessions with arcania such as fugue and ricercar. His sons (J.C., W.F. and C.P.E. Bach) were much more up to date. It should be mentioned that in addition to his large and uniformly high level musical output, he had twenty children by two wives.

Bach's devout Lutheran faith pervades all his works, be they instrumental or vocal, and one cannot fully understand him without knowing many of the over two hundred sacred cantatas he wrote for Sunday services (such as Christ Lag in Todesbanden (http://www.classicalarchives.com/m/1/bwv4.mid); Mer hahn en neue Oberkeet (http://www.classicalarchives.com/m/1/bwv0212.mid); and Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring (http://www.classicalarchives.com/m/prs/jesu-joy.mid) from "Herz Und Mund Und Tat Und Leben"), or the great masses and passions, such as the Mass in b (excerpts include 1.Kyrie eleison (http://www.classicalarchives.com/m/012/bach_b-1.mid); 11.Cum sancto spiritu (http://www.classicalarchives.com/m/4/bjsbmm11.mid); 23.Dona nobis pacem (http://www.classicalarchives.com/m/3/dona.mid)) and the St. Matthew Passion (excerpts include Herzliebster Jesu (http://www.classicalarchives.com/m/2/herzlieb.mid); Erbarm' dich Mein Gott (http://www.kt.rim.or.jp/~moclin/data/ba_mat39.mid), and O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden (http://www.classicalarchives.com/m/2/o-haupt.mid)), written for Easter and other high holy days. Here one can discover the elaborate use of musical figures employed to express text, which also pervade the purely instrumental music.

http://www.classicalarchives.com/bios/gif/bach_wohltemperiertes_klavier.jpg Throughout his life, Bach seemed to be driven to systematically explore all the possibilities of a given style or genre. In his organized and numerologically based way there are six Brandenburg Concerti - the essence of the Italian style as opposed to the four Orchestral Suites, (including the Allegro from the Brandeburg Concerto No.1 (http://www.classicalarchives.com/m/6/jsbbrc13.mid); the Adagio from No.2 (http://www.classicalarchives.com/m/j/bwv1048b.mid), and the Allegro from No.5 (http://www.classicalarchives.com/m/7/jsbbrc51.mid)), six of each of the keyboard suites mentioned above, six cello suites, six solo violin works, etc. Each of the pieces in these collections explores or emphasizes another possibility within the type. A veritable bible for musicians, the two books of The Well-Tempered Klavier (includes the Prelude and Fugue No.1 in C (http://www.classicalarchives.com/m/b/bwv846.mid) and Prelude and Fugue No.17 in Ab from Book 1 (http://www.classicalarchives.com/m/b/bwv862.mid), and the Prelude and Fugue No.13 in F# from Book 2 (http://www.classicalarchives.com/m/0/wtc2131.mid)) twice present preludes and fugues of every imaginable type in every key. The miracle of these pieces is that the overwhelming intellectual mastery is always in the service of an even higher emotional character and spirit, explored with unending variety. At the end of his life Bach was still exploring the ultimate possibilities of counterpoint in The Art of the Fugue (contains Contrapunctus 12 rectus (http://www.classicalarchives.com/m/8/cp12r.mid) and Contrapunctus 12 inversus (http://www.classicalarchives.com/m/8/cp12i.mid)) and The Musical Offering.

Bach left supreme works in every genre of his age except opera. Ironically this great conservative who really did nothing new, but only better and more completely, is for many musicians the true beginning of modern music. In many works (e.g. the chromatic variations of the Goldberg Variations (http://www.classicalarchives.com/m/1/bwv988.mid)) we can see the harmonic possibilities of the future. Bach's materials are often made from the most basic stuff of music-scales and arpeggios-and this perhaps partly explains the health and solidity of his music. For musicians, it is the universal folk music in which we bathe to purify our souls.


Source taken from classicalarchives.com

[NormanSoldier]

Great interesting article Maestro.I am a fan of Bach music myself. My most favourite are his pieces with harpsichord and violin together.Unfortunatly the links do not work.

[Artist]

For me the music of Bach is so spiritually.

JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH
(1685-1750)


Introduction
(born Eisenach, 21 March 1685; died Leipzig, 28 July 1750)
He was the youngest son of Johann Ambrosius Bach, a town musician, from whom he probably learnt the violin and the rudiments of musical theory. When he was ten he was orphaned and went to live with his elder brother Johann Christoph, organist at St. Michael's Church, Ohrdruf, who gave him lessons in keyboard playing. From 1700 to 1702 he attended St. Michael's School in Lüneburg, where he sang in the church choir and probably came into contact with the organist and composer Georg Böhm. He also visited Hamburg to hear J.A. Reincken at the organ of St. Catherine's Church.

After competing unsuccessfully for an organist's post in Sangerhausen in 1702, Bach spent the spring and summer of 1703 as 'lackey' and violinist at the court of Weimar and then took up the post of organist at the Neukirche in Arnstadt. In June 1707 he moved to St. Blasius, Mühlhausen, and four months later married his cousin Maria Barbara Bach in nearby Dornheim. Bach was appointed organist and chamber musician to the Duke of Saxe-Weimar in 1708, and in the next nine years he became known as a leading organist and composed many of his finest works for the instrument. During this time he fathered seven children, including Wilhelm Friedemann and Carl Philipp Emanuel. When, in 1717, Bach was appointed Kapellmeister at Cöthen, he was at first refused permission to leave Weimar and was allowed to do so only after being held prisoner by the duke for almost a month.

Bach's new employer, Prince Leopold, was a talented musician who loved and understood the art. Since the court was Calvinist, Bach had no chapel duties and instead concentrated on instrumental composition. From this period date his violin concertos and the six Brandenburg Concertos, as well as numerous sonalas, suites and keyboard works, including several (e.g. the Inventions and Book I of the '48') intended for instruction. In 1720 Maria Barbara died while Bach was visiting Karlsbad with the prince; in December of the following year Bach married Anna Magdalena Wilcke, daughter of a court trumpeter at Weissenfels. A week later Prince Leopold also married, and his bride's lack of interest in the arts led to a decline in the support given to music at the Cöthen court. In 1722 Bach entered his candidature for the prestigious post of Director musices at Leipzig and Kantor of the Thomasschule there. In April 1723, after the preferred candidates, Telemann and Graupner, had withdrawn, he was offered the post and accepted it.

Bach remained as Thomaskantor in Leipzig for the rest of his life, often in conflict with the authorities, but a happy family man and a proud and caring parent. His duties centred on the Sunday and feastday services at the city's two main churches, and during his early years in Leipzig he composed prodigious quantities of church music, including four or five cantata cycles, the Magnificat and the St. John and St. Matthew Passions. He was by this time renowned as a virtuoso organist and in constant demand as a teacher and an expert in organ construction and design. His fame as a composer gradually spread more widely when, from 1726 onwards, he began to bring out published editions of some of his keyboard and organ music.

From about 1729 Bach's interest in composing church music sharply declined, and most of his sacred works after that date, including the b Minor Mass and the Christmas Oratorio, consist mainly of 'parodies' or arrangements of earlier music. At the same time he took over the direction of the collegium musicum that Telemann had founded in Leipzig in 1702 - a mainly amateur society which gave regular public concerts. For these Bach arranged harpsichord concertos and composed several large-scale cantatas, or serenatas, to impress the Elector of Saxony, by whom he was granted the courtesy title of Hofcompositeur in 1736.

Among the 13 children born to Anna Magdalena at Leipzig was Bach's youngest son, Johann Christian, in 1735. In 1744 Bach's second son, Emanuel, was married, and three years later Bach visited the couple and their son (his first grandchild) at Potsdam, where Emanuel was employed as harpsichordist by Frederick the Great. At Potsdam Bach improvised on a theme given to him by the king, and this led to the composition of the Musical Offering, a compendium of fugue, canon, and sonata based on the royal theme. Contrapuntal artifice predominates in the work of Bach's last decade, during which his membership (from 1747) of Lorenz Mizler's learned Society of Musical Sciences profoundly affected his musical thinking. The Canonic Variations for organ was one of the works Bach presented to the society, and the unfinished Art of Fugue may also have been intended for distribution among its members.

Bach's eyesight began to deteriorate during his last year and in March and April 1750 he was twice operated on by the itinerant English oculist John Taylor. The operations and the treatment that followed them may have hastened Bach's death. He took final communion on 22 July and died six days later. On 31 July he was buried at St. John's cemetery. His widow survived him for ten years, dying in poverty in 1760.

Bach's output embraces practically every musical genre of his time except for the dramatic ones of opera and oratorio (his three 'oratorios' being oratorios only in a special sense). He opened up new dimensions in virtually every department of creative work to which he turned, in format, musical quality and technical demands. As was normal at the time, his creative production was mostly bound up with the extemal factors of his places of work and his employers, but the density and complexity of his music are such that analysts and commentators have uncovered in it layers of religious and numerological significance rarely to be found in the music of other composers. Many of his contemporaries, notably the critic J.A. Scheibe, found his music too involved and lacking in immediate melodic appeal, but his chorale harmonizations and fugal works were soon adopted as models for new generations of musicians. The course of Bach's musical development was undeflected (though not entirely uninfluenced) by the changes in musical style taking place around him. Together with his great contemporary Handel (whom chance prevented his ever meeting), Bach was the last great representative of the Baroque era in an age which was already rejecting the Baroque aesthetic in favour of a new,'enlightened'one.

Extracted with permission from
The Grove Concise Dictionary of Music
edited by Stanley Sadie
© Macmillan Press Ltd., London.

[umberto]

i play bass guitar and just bought a book JSBach For Bass. Very nice pieces. They are also a very good exercise, though at first they tire your hand out, but when you master them, they are very nice and fun to play.

[Neverwinter]

Researchers find Bach’s oldest manuscripts
Handwritten copies of works by other composers date back to 1700

Updated: 11:53 a.m. ET Aug 31, 2006

reat article at: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/14602322/?GT1=8506