A careful analysis of Beethoven's later works shows him to be a worthy contender.
In particular, the Große Fugue [0] and the Op. 106 Hammerklavier sonata [1] (ironically so nicknamed, because at Op. 101, Beethoven directed that all sonatas from that time on be named Große Sonate für das Hammerklavier, and the nickname only stuck to this) show a profoundly advanced sense of counterpoint and structure. In addition to applying all of the classical transformations to motifs (including augmentation, diminution, cancrizans, canons and sequences), he even performs note for note reversals in time. (A temporal cancrizan, if you will.) [Edit: it would be a crime to fail to mention the late string quartets, which show prescience of modernism and are considered to be the pinnacle of chamber music. Many of you will at least be familiar with the Op. 131 c# minor quartet, which Wagner called the "saddest music ever penned" and whose 6th movement was used in the Band of Brothers episode "Why We Fight".]
Similarly, Brahms' masterful applications of form and counterpoint put most other composers to shame. Rather than be as enormously prolific as Bach, the quality of his output is more consistently excellent. (No doubt partially due to his penchant for burning the manuscripts which he felt were subpar.)
I think it's a little unfair to put Bach on this pedestal. There's plenty of music by any composer mentioned to relax to or feel stimulated by. Additionally, Bach's musical temperaments are somewhat limited by his media and styles. He is the master of his craft, but his craft has limited scope.
Yes, Bach has his own, unique, immovable place. But Beethoven, Brahms, and many other composers have immutable, unchallenged championships in their own arenas.
[P.S. Please mark this with a [2014] tag to denote when it was published.]
Agree on Hammerklavier. I have a pet theory that Große Fugue is an elaborate troll on Beethoven's part. I kind of think that it was constructed in such a way to be as analytically rich as possible while being horrible to listen to. I have to wonder if it wasn't deliberately constructed by Beethoven to con future generations into listening to awful music.
Where Brahms is concerned, very few composers matched his mastery of the craft. That being said, Bach is one of them.
I think Bach is so consistently regarded as the GOAT because (AFAIK) no one has matched his output while maintaining the high level of quality he did.
Also, he wrote St. Matthew's Passion which is arguably the greatest piece of music in the entire western canon. I can think of very few other reasonable contenders for that spot.
As far as composers being greater than Bach in any particular area, I 100% agree. Brahms was probably the best chamber composer, Chopin wrote the best music for piano etc...
Brahms and Bach were both in an unusual position: their profound mastery of compositional craft was partly made possible by their position at, even past, the end of the tradition of music they represent. By the time Bach was writing his intricate contrapuntal masterworks, the world had moved on to homophony, and while Brahms was crafting balanced, classically-proportioned works, Wagner and his followers had been boiling Romanticism into Expressionism.
(I have to take issue with your characterization of the late Beethoven quartets as "the pinnacle of chamber music". I prefer the term "dissolution". (And I always enjoy your comments on musical topics.))
I think Bach's scope is much, much larger than most listeners are aware. For instance, most are completely unaware of the Bach cantata repertoire, the guitar/lute repertoire, etc. I don't mean you personally, because I of course do not know what you're familiar with.
(personal bias: I sing professionally, and a fairly large part of what I sing is Bach.)
The lute suites are crazy. He didn't play the lute, modern guitars didn't exist when he wrote them, the pieces aren't playable on a guitar without some changes, they sound amazing, and they are brutal to even approximate. He wrote many-voiced ("polyphonic") music for an instrument played by beating two hands on six strings. Not content with that, he wrote fugues for the same instrument, which are polyphonic music that obeys a lot of rules.
Take the time to learn the rules of fugues, then try to understand one of Bach's.
Incidentally one of his lute suites is the same as the c minor cello suite. Except I think on lute it's in either a or e minor, I forget now. I don't know whether the cello suite came first or the lute suite though.
But as a violist I found this interesting. I like to play his violin sonatas and partitas but on viola but people have discouraged me from this because it means changing the key and everyone insists that Bach is very deliberate in his choice of key and it's almost blasphemy to think about playing his music in a different key. But the lute/cello suite is a direct contradiction to this.
The people telling you that Bach is specific about his key are talking about his work on temperament...none of which applies to the cello suites or sonatas and partitas for solo violin. The violin family isn't tempered, and wasn't played tempered unless it was playing with a keyboard.
On the violin family his choice of keys was driven by the technical requirements of the instrument, what open strings were available, what chords were natural.
Transpose them a fifth down and play them with no worries. I certainly transpose the cello suites up an octave and a fifth and play them on violin with no qualms.
>everyone insists that Bach is very deliberate in his choice of key
They’re being precious. He was a consummate pro who frequentlyrecycled his own themes and those of others, and his pieces often changed keys a dizzying number of times within just a few measures. Besides, that shit sounds beyond awesome on viola.
> Besides, that shit sounds beyond awesome on viola.
I agree. There's a fantastic recording of one of my favorite violists today, Antoine Tamestit, playing Bach's second partita. It's his appropriately named album "Chaconne", and it also includes the Ligeti viola sonata, which is probably one of the hardest things I've seen written for viola. Ugh, it's one piece that I just don't even know how to begin practicing. :)
G minor, I believe. I personally think it works better on the guitar, and can't imagine trying to do justice to polyphonic music on an instrument where it seems hard to play more than one string at a time. Sort of like the Paganini caprices -- I first heard them played by Eliot Fisk on the guitar, and even if he is sloppy sometimes, it sounds better than any violin recording I've heard.
The best guitar recordings of Bach are by Paul Galbraith. He really took it to the next level with a custom built 8string guitar and astonishing technique.
It's not uncommon to retune a guitar for some pieces, often making the lowest string D instead of E. I don't think that was true for this piece, but I don't have the sheet music, and it has been awhile. It's worth remembering that the guitar is a relatively young instrument.
I have studied quite a range of Bach, and have performed several cantatas (as a tenor), but as a pianist, I do tend to prefer the keyboard music.
The cello and violin suites are fantastic. In particular, it's worth commenting that when Bach writes for instruments which can only play one or two notes at a time, he still produces counterpoint by suggestion by switching between the lines.
I've seen some excellent guitar performances, but I'll need to listen to some of his lute repertoire.
By a wide margin the most interesting thing to me about what you just said is that in this world it is still possible to make a living singing Bach. Good on you!
I agree. I hate to be brief, but the key question with Beethoven is what did he want to do? Beethoven was as much a master of the craft as Bach -- he just lived in transitional times (which he helped bring on.) That makes comparisons a bit superfluous.
The problem with comparing great composers is that if they were truly great, they were also iconoclastic, so it's always apples and oranges. The only way I can around that, and it is tremendously imperfect, is to look at how great composers move across genres.
I don't mean this to be diminutive of Bach, but Bach was a technician, a craftsman. He mastered the art form of his time and was amazing at it. Beethoven was an _artist_ in much more the modern sense, with all that entails. Bach was the guy in the cathedral who just wrote his twentieth amazing piece. Beethoven was the unwashed guy in his apartment with a spittoon by his side tweaking away on the piano. They just don't compare.
But if I had to choose, it'd be Beethoven. His early symphony works illustrated that he certainly knew the current form. He just didn't like it much. And his later string works are some of the best written music ever (from what the pros tell me.)
I sure would have loved to have been a fly on the wall when young Beethoven was being taught by "Papa" Haydn. What a pair that must have been.
The Beethoven late string quartets are a world of their own. 50 years from now I expect I will still be listening to them with the same awe that I did the first times, rediscovering, revealing new things still.
In case anyone is interested, Kissin is doing Hammerklavier and the CSO will follow up with Rachminov May 13th - and it looks to be selling out. I grabbed my tickets already.
Beethoven is not at the level of Mozart in terms of the amount of lyricism and pathos infused into each work. Many of this piano sonatas are pretty plain and boring.
Douglas Adams once said "Beethoven tells you what it's like to be Beethoven and Mozart tells you what it's like to be human. Bach tells you what it's like to be the universe."
As a musician, I understand this. It's our goal as musicians to channel and convey emotion. Bach channels something much greater than himself or myself or ourselves. It's really incredible. His music sounds vast.
Adams also wrote: "The familiarity of the Brandenburgs should not blind us to their magnitude. I’m convinced that Bach is the greater genius who ever walked among us, and the Brandenburgs are what he wrote when he was happy."
The article describes an agnostic man being drawn to faith by Bach's music. I am no Christian, but this is my own experience as well. Douglas Adams is correct.
I'm a Mozart (and Haydn) fan and this quote is still correct. I prefer the humanist approach to music of the late 1700s over Bach's. They're all great though :-)
I can feel extreme sublime elevation from form few pieces of music I'm completely familiar with. One is Bach's Goldberg Variations (Glenn Could's first faster recording is my favorite) and another is "He Loved Him Madly" from Miles Davis (there are few others). In all cases it fist happens after I listen nothing but the same piece over and over again maybe 10-15 times in a period of week.
It's amazing feeling. Something just clicks.
But the experience is different from different pieces of music.
Miles Davis is expressing something based on humanity.
Bach is, like you said, something else that transcends everything.
Since we're on this topic: Is Western classical music (typified by Bach) really the zenith in our human understanding of the 'universal' language of music?
Certainly, the complex and subtle tunes and harmonies of classical, in particular, give us goosebumps, provoke intense emotional responses. Do the same phenomena occur in other musical cultures? Traditional Japanese, Chinese, Javanese, Indian - their musical expression is markedly different. Try out some ancient Greek scales, from the dawn of our Western civilization: unfamiliar, yet still 'tingly'.
So are there equivalents to Bach that we're just not 'in tune' with? Alternative musical structures that are just as valid, yet wildly unfamiliar?
Indian Classical Music is perhaps the most versatile of all kinds of music I have come across. A traditional western scale has 12 notes, in the Indian system (carnatic) there are four further divisions, making it a 48 note octave. Instead of scales, there are raags and they signify different moods.
That's somewhat of an exaggeration. There are embellishments of notes that border half and quarter-notes, but they are usually centered around a point on the 12 note octave.
Also, there is a price to be paid for the melodic complexity: there is essentially no place for harmony in the Indian tradition. On the other hand, there is a lot more room for improvisation, making it more akin to Jazz than to any Western classical form.
Indian classical is for sure cool and does a lot of interesting stuff rhythmically speaking. Also lots of interesting instruments and corresponding techniques for playing them. But I don't think it's necessarily any more versatile than other musical traditions. If Western classical is less interesting rhythmically, it's more interesting harmonically. It also developed an incredible system of notation. Every kind of music has its thing that makes it stand out I guess.
> Alternative musical structures that are just as valid, yet wildly unfamiliar?
Some music taste is very culture influenced, not questioning that. But I think present some classic music tracks (and I mean not only pieces from Bach & co) to any human kind with any cultural background and it will somehow touch that person.
I don't think so. Douglas Hofstadter in GEB, also makes a similar claim. I tried listening to Bach many times and found it laborious. Same would be true for a western listener to suddenly tune to MS Subbulakshmi singing 'Nagumomomu' or Kunnakudi teeing off 'Pranamamyaham' with Valayapatti.
I may have started with the wrong tracks or may be not, but the bottom line is that I didn't find much common to relate to. At the very minimum, the tracks sounded structured and mathematical which is why I was surprised by the description of them being emotional. Until now I was under the impression that at least emotional appeal crosses cultural barriers.
Appreciating pinnacles of music in any tradition requires cultural attunement, exposure to prior works of art, familiarity with the idioms of expression etc., OTOH music that have pan-cultural appeal are often primal and simplistic. I am not entirely sure whether one is better than the other.
I agree but I also would remind you that the player plays a large role in keyed music. For example, constant velocity MIDI makes a dissonant slaughter of any harmonic music, and totally destroys the swing of rythymic music. A player with the wrong motivation or lacking passion, pretty much reduces to a souped up MIDI. Organs are especially expressive, even more so than pianos.
Try listening to the "Frankenstein music" from Bach, it is pretty easy to relate to and Hans-Andre Stamm plays it on an appropriately large church organ with the necessary emotion and "godhead" existential feeling/motivation behind it.
I first should admit that I'm a 100% self taught appreciator of classical music. I don't have any formal musical education. Nor any formal history of music education. I'm the only person of my family and friends that seeks out and listens to classical music. So, my knowledge is very uneven and I'm a total pedestrian in this realm. Over the years, I've found music by references from fiction, films and criticism. I've run down many a list of "great composers". Usually, some little reference throws me down a rabbit hole of all kind of new compositions I like but every time I get to Bach, I stop short. I just can't stand the music. I've spent hours picking different recordings of the Brandenburg's, the Toccatas and Fantasias to no avail. I understand the music is important historically and that it has a technical beauty but it just doesn't move me in any way. Maybe some day it will click but until then I'm just going to have to take the critic's word for it.
I think the best way to appreciate Bach is from a few ideas:
First, the article makes a few spurious claims. Saying he was only recently enjoyed is just wrong. And claiming he only played holy music is also wrong.
Bach did not see his music as music that was to be played straight. He saw his sheet music as a suggestion, and he refused to take on any student who didn't show improvisation ability.
If you take his music as a framework to be built upon, you can see the beauty of his motifs and runs, but most of all, you can hear how later musicians from day 1 to today has taken and remixed many of his ideas and music.
In an odd way, I see his music as a collection of etudes, though that's a bit of a disservice to him.
I also think it's helps to actually play his music. Buried in the relative simplicity (of some of his music) is complexity that's hard to really describe unless you've sat down and really hammered away at the music.
Being a guitarist, I'm particularly fond of his lute suites, but nothing supercedes his organ music. The organ music doesn't sound out of place among classic rock albums.
> Being a guitarist, I'm particularly fond of his lute suites, but nothing supercedes his organ music.
As an ex-guitarist, I wholly agree. The lute suites are amazing, but the organ is the best instrument for a single person to play polyphonic music. Still, Bach survives transcription better than any other composer (see the Swingle Singers and Switched on Bach).
Those pieces you mention aren't exactly the things I would categorize as "moving", though.
What about the pieces for solo cello (BWV 1007-1008)? The Goldberg Variations? The solo violin sonatas (BWV 1001-1006)? His motets (e.g. BWV 227) and cantatas (too many to mention)? Or the Matthäus Passion (BWV 244)? Most people would also mention the Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D major (BWV 1068, more famously known as "Air on the G string"). Then, for sheer awesomeness, his Mass in B Minor (BWV 232) is hard to beat.
That said, aside from some of the above pieces, Bach is often too dense, complex and (heh) baroque to be truly moving. The beauty of many of his pieces are in their construction, not in their ability to give you goosebumps.
I still remember where I was when I first time I saw the piano partitas (BWV 825-830) performed. Gould playing the one in C minor moves me about as much as any music, along with some of the others you mentioned.
Bach's compositions are unquestionably beautiful and technically brilliant, but not all of his music was written to stir an audience. He composed in a different time and for different reasons than the classical composers that came after him.
“The purpose of art is not the release of a momentary ejection of adrenaline but rather the gradual, lifelong construction of a state of wonder and serenity.”
The Goldberg Variations is a good starting point because it evolves gradually to builds in complexity. And it was designed to relax, so it's a perfect companion for a long session of coding.
I think you're probably listening to the wrong Bach. I don't think that newbies should generally approach Bach's keyboard repertoire first. I'd recommend starting with the cantatas and maybe parts of St Matthew's Passion. Also, even amongst people who make classical music a living, Bach can be an acquired taste, so I wouldn't feel bad if it doesn't click. I studied piano performance in school many moons ago and only recently have come to appreciate Bach's keyboard literature, and even then only in part (I quite enjoy the Goldbergs, keyboard concerti, and dance suites. I'm not sure I could be paid to listen to WTC in its entirety--though I obviously heard and played quite a bit of it on account of studying piano performance.)
You're not the only one who feels like that and you can safely ignore the critics. There's no doubt Bach was a great composer but even asking the question whether there's a "greatest" is pretty dumb. I happen to love some of Bach's works but know many people who find his works too mathematical or cold.
I would wager they haven't listened to good performances or haven't spent enough time with Bach's music. There's nothing cold about BWV199. Find Gardiner's rendition featuring Magdalena Kozena, it'll knock your socks off.
Sure this music is "nice", and I can appreciate it, but personally I find it boring. I use Bach as background music for when I want to go to sleep. If I want to actually enjoy and be stimulated by music, I listen to something like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Kwajecmh2c
The ultimate problem with Bach is 1000+ compositions but only a few usually get mentioned as "the hits".
Looking back I think I just thought of Bach as only sounding like fugues because fugues are his most popular works and what gets played on classical music radio here.
Hi, DubiousPusher. If you could tell me some other classical music that you really like, I could probably better suggest particular Bach recordings you might like. I suggest the vocal music, though, for starters.
I'm not the same person, but I feel similarly -- though I come from a classical family.
My preferences run to Mahler, Tchaikovsky, Dvorak, Brahms, and Wagner. Classical music generally got better as time went on. I mentally group Bach with other 'early music', and as with any art form, I recognize that the early steps were historically significant, but that's about it. I can appreciate the importance of the silent film era, too, even though I'll probably never sit down and watch one for fun.
With Bach in particular, how to put it... When making sound into music, there's all these possible axes upon which to add entropy to make it enjoyable: pitch, rhythm, tempo, dynamics, instrumentation, lyrics, and so on. Most of the Bach that I've heard or played is essentially a study in what happens if you fix the value of every axis except "pitch".
I assume that different people hear music differently, and for me, I find pitch to be one of the least interesting ways to make a piece of music. (Full disclosure: I play in an all-percussion ensemble, and I probably own more than a couple all-percussion albums.) The prelude to Bach's first cello suite is a neat study in what you can do with a single voice playing 16th notes for 2 minutes -- perhaps even the most interesting possible such line -- but it's still 2 minutes of 16th notes. Time (rhythm/tempo) and space (instrument/position) just feel so much more substantial to me than pitch.
I’ve got act 2 of "Die Walküre" playing right now. Which Bach piece is closest to that? :-) I went to a performance of the St Matthew Passion (mentioned elsewhere in this thread) back in college, and my recollection is that the performers did a good job but the piece was nothing special.
That's why, when I perform Bach's cello suite, I change the rhythms, sometimes quite a bit. I see it as a great sketch in melody and harmony, a springboard to experiment with some more rhythmically sophisticated ideas.
It's so fascinating to me that we've fallen under the very real illusion in these modern times that "classical" music has virtually no concept of improvisation, that most of the primary elements of music are completely fixed, static, dead. That's definitely not how it used to be.
It's true that in my years taking cello lessons, improvisation never came up. That might help, but I'm not convinced that it's a complete explanation for the disconnect between me and Johann.
I confess I don't know the rules of baroque improvisation, but the links posted in other comments here seem to be faithful to the score (at least, for the ones I'm familiar with), yet the commenters seem skeptical anyone could dislike these recordings.
My background: At about 14, one night with the radio on, on the way to sleep, I heard some music and thought "WOW!". It was Beethoven's 7th Symphony. It can be a lot of fun -- at least one part is great dance music.
Then I kept listening, buying records, seeing what I liked and didn't. I found a lot to like.
As a math grad student at Indiana University, my dorm was next to the excellent music school they had (have?) there with a lot of orchestra and soloist quality music students. One, a Stern protege, put his old Italian violin under my left chin and gave me a first lesson. Soon I took a "course" in violin, got a loan of a not very valuable violin from the school, started at the beginning tuning the violin. The teaching was a good start; my teacher was terrific, played the Brahms concerto in Toronto!! I continued and eventually made it through parts of my favorite music. I wasn't any good, but as far as I got was fun beyond belief -- could scream out to the heavens with the full passion of the human spirit!! The violin gave me a much better voice for such screaming out!
So, for Bach, right, for the
prelude to the third partita for
solo violin, e.g.,
So, it's super famous and a favorite of violinists. It starts with a haralding call, rushes through lots of running around gymnastics, and ends with a nice calm resolution.
I did well enough on the first two pages and the fourth one -- still need work on the third page! And I got through about half of the Chaconne.
So, let's start with a standard favorite, easy enough to like that it is close "pop" music:
So, right, this is the prelude to one of the Bach pieces for solo cello. There's an obvious way to play it on violin, and I got through that.
So, what is going on here? Well, opinions will vary, but here's my view: The piece is about some guy thinking about something. He cares; he's passionate. Maybe he is thinking about some problem in his relationship with his girlfriend. He starts out confused. He things of X, interrupts thinking of Y, keeps charging on considering this and that, with some thoughts interrupting others, some thoughts with some momentum of their own. Finally he begins to understand and get to a solution. Then he gets really happy! He rises with victory, joy! It's like he just won the 100 meters at the Olympics, takes a victory lap with his arms above his head, and sees his girl in the stands really happy with him and cheering!!!
Or, the piece is a short drama as in formula fiction: He's a nice guy, the protagonist, has a problem he keeps struggling with, and finally gets a great solution and wins the girl.
Imagine that the guy is explaining all this to you, from the problem though his struggles, to his solution and victory. He's passionate, really wants a solution. BUT!!!!! He is explaining this to you in a language you don't know even one word of! So, you can't understand his words, but you can hear his passion. To me, that is what Bach is doing in that music.
And to me that is mostly what Bach does: So, there is some speech in a natural language, maybe English, French, Russian, whatever, fervent, emotional, maybe passionate, speech, and, since we don't understand the language or the words, all we get is just the emotion.
The speech can be, as from that cello piece, by just one person. Or the speech can be several people, an orchestra or choir, all saying much the same thing. Or the speech can be a dialog between two persons or groups of persons.
Sure, my favorite piece of music is the Bach Chaconne. So, it's the last part, sort of tacked on, to one of his six solo pieces for violin. It's written in the keys of D minor and D major.
Keys? Okay, take a sound wave that repeats, say, 440 times a second. It will have a pitch like the A above middle C on a piano. You can buy a tuning fork for 440 Hz A -- it's a standard. Well, 880 Hz is also an A but an octave higher. Okay, 880 / 440 = 2, so in going up an octave we have gone up a factor of 2 in frequency. Well, we can consider 2^(1/12), that is, the 12th root of 2. So, multiply that by itself 12 times and will get 2. So, take A at 440 and multiply the frequency by this 2^(1/12) thingy, and will get, A#, that is, one half step or one semi-tone up from A. Multiply again and get two half steps up or a full step or B. Or B is two half steps above A, two half tones, two semi-tones, one whole tone. So to go up a semi-tone, multiply the frequency by 2^(1/12). To go up a whole tone, multiply that by 2^(1/12) twice.
So, start on A at 440 Hz and go up tone, tone, semi-tone, tone, tone, tone, semi-tone, will have gone up 12 semi-tones, and will be at A at 880 Hz. You now have the notes of the A major scale, the notes of the key of A major! The notes are A, B, C#, D, E, F#, G#, A. Can do these steps starting with any note on the piano, say, C, and get the C major scale, the notes of the key of C major, and get the notes C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C, which are all the white keys on a piano.
Or, for D major, get D, E, F#, G, A, B, C#, D.
An interval of a fifth is seven semi-tones. So, if start with C and go up a fifth, get G. So the notes of G major are G, A, B, C, D, E, F#, G. So, we have one sharp! If we go up a fifth from G we get D, and as we have seen the notes of D major are D, E, F#, G, A, B, C#, D. So, we have two sharps, the one we had from G major plus one more. If we go up from D a fifth we get to A with notes, as we saw, A, B, C#, D, E, F#, G#, A, or three sharps, the two we had with D major plus one more, G#. We can continue this and get the "circle of fifth". Cute.
But if we start on D and go up tone, semi-tone, tone, tone, tone, tone, semi-tone, then again we have gone up 12 semi-tones and get notes D, E, F, G, A, B, C#, D, the D minor scale.
This use of 2^(1/12) to define the notes of, say, a piano keyboard is good, called tempered tuning, but not the only way. Here's the core of the main other way called perfect tuning: We can observe that
2^(7/12) = 1.49830707688... ~ 1.5 = 3/2
So, going up 7 semi-tones, a fifth, multiplies frequency by right at 1.5 = 3/2. Well, a violin has four strings. The one on the far left for the violinist (as the instrument is held) is the first G below middle C. The next string to the right is D, then A and E. So, each adjacent pair of strings is separated by a fifth and will have a frequency ratio right at 3/2. But with 3/2, three times the frequency of the string with the lower frequency has the same frequency as two times the frequency of the higher string. So, the second overtone (think Fourier series for periodic waves) of the lower string will have the same frequency as the first overtone of the higher frequency. Well, if bow the two strings at the same time, then can hear this common frequency or, if the two frequencies are not quite equal, the beats in the two frequencies. So a violinist tunes his instrument by adjusting to make the beats go away. He starts with the A string at 440 Hz then plays the A and E strings and adjusts the frequency of the E string. Then the same for the A and D and then for the D and G.
So, we now have four notes -- G, D, A, E -- tuned to have ratios of 3/2. So, we have a ratio of small whole numbers. Continuing in this way, we can work to get nearly all the notes on a violin by working with ratios of small whole numbers. Those ratios of small whole numbers are close to whole number powers of our 2^(1/12).
In the history of music, violins, flutes, trumpets were tuned with ratios of small whole numbers. But, if want to build a piano or organ that can play the major and minor scales with any key, then get a big mess -- need too many close but significantly different frequencies. So, if just use 2^(1/12) or approximately that, then can get "tempered" tuning as on current pianos, and each octave needs only 12 frequencies. Bach helped make tempered tuning accepted.
Simple recipe for music: Pick a note, say, D, and pick either D major or D minor. Play D. Then play all the other notes in that scale except D. Then return to D. As long as you don't return to D, the music will seem to have no end. As soon as you do return to D, the music will seem ended. First cut, the D major version will sound glad, and the D minor version, sad. Same for all the other major and minor keys. In the key of D, the note D is called the tonic and is roughly the beginning and end of a piece in D.
Okay, the Bach Chaconne starts in D minor, has a center section in D major, and continues in D minor to the end. Yes, it starts and ends on D.
My favorite part of it is at the end of the center D major section. Here are a few seconds starting at the end of that section and continuing in last D minor section:
After the climax part, the music gets confused: An artistic interpretation is that the confusion is release or catharsis from the climax. Not all violinists try for such!
So, what is an interpretation? Well, that is made a little easier by the fact that a chaconne is dance rhythm. So, the piece keeps repeating this rhythm or close to it for the full 13 minutes or so. So an effect is that the music is insistent. Then, in the sense of speech, the music is like someone saying much the same thing over and over but in somewhat different ways, with different emotions, over and over. So, the guy is thinking about heavy, passionate stuff, and trying and trying to get to some resolution.
The whole first D minor section does this, over and over, versions of being insistent, using the chaconne dance rhythm.
Then at the start of the center D major section, at about 6:35 in the link above, the music becomes calm, "glad", happier, like the guy is finally getting some happy memories (no doubt about his girl!). But the calm feelings don't last and, instead, build and build, with some very insistent notes played three times. After these triplets, the music returns to some of the beginning and builds, with astounding use of just the four strings on a violin to the climax, at about 9:20, to the end of the D major section at about 9:45, the catharsis, if believe that, and the final D minor section.
There are also good versions for piano, one by Brahms for left hand alone, full orchestra, etc.
> it has a technical beauty but it just doesn't move me in any way.
If you can listen to the last fugue in the first volume of the WTC and not be moved by how it combines math and beauty, you probably just won't like Bach. That's fine, but a lot of people disagree.
> It’s inconceivable that another composer could take Bach’s place in that slot. Even Mozart or Beethoven wouldn’t cut it.
I'd pick Mozart.
When listeners hear Bach enumerate what seems like every significant variation technique for a given theme, they can quickly attribute mastery upon hearing that one piece.
But someone with Bach's abilities could just as easily have only imagined all those variations as potential music, then chosen only a few excerpts for a lighter, shorter setting.
Now, imagine this alternative-timeline Bach wrote in a late 18th century operatic form. For each aria he a) picks a fitting style (or mashes up fitting/effective styles), b) imagines the set of possible music based on the character of the text, and c) chooses what he thinks is the most fitting from all those possibilities. (Also, throw in a bunch of hidden musical jokes along the way.)
That alternative-timeline Bach would be superior to the real Bach. Because he came after the real Bach his output includes real Bach's mastery of counterpoint (Jupiter Symphony, Intro to Requiem). Also alternative-timeline Bach can imitate real Bach's style at will (two-part invention at the end of Rondo in A minor).
The only difficulty is that the listener has to listen to a lot of alternative-timeline Bach before they start to get a sense of the scope of his mastery.
Well, good thing the slot we're trying to fill gives an audience plenty of time to hear a variety of music from this composer's output.
There's definitely a lot of innovation with them, and not just in songwriting. For example, I can't figure why Helter Skelter has somehow managed to sound like it was recorded yesterday for five decades now. How many other recordings from 1968 sound like that?
But I can imagine a world where an alternate Lennon-McCartney arranged all their own string parts, dominated the symphonic world, wrote wildly popular church service music, performed guitar showcase music with prominent (probably improvised) cadenzas, and had multiple hits running on Broadway.
I think you could pick any single genre, burn everything else Mozart wrote, and he'd still be regarded as one of the greatest composers of his time. (That doesn't work for Beethoven because of the opera genre.)
Rich people at parties are still playing the throw-away background music he probably wrote for a rich person's party. (Btw-- if you listen to the rest of his background music you won't be disappointed.)
I'm only being partially facetious to say that the greatest themes in music are Beethoven's Ode to Joy, the theme from Bach's chaconne for solo violin, and the piccolo trumpet part from Penny Lane. (which was itself inspired by Bach's Brandenburg concerto #2)
If you can name a short (<5 mins) piece of music more beautiful, moving but also all-encompassing than Bach's "Air on a G-String" please do so; I can't. Listen to this interpretation before deciding: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cVSgEdT4KI . Love, loss, despair, grievance, new hope, closure - it's all in there in this single, short, compassionate-but-not-sentimental, solemn-but-not-sad, perfectly balanced, ethereal piece.
Seriously! This is making my Saturday even better than I hoped it would be.
I often forget properly listening, and instead end up having the same bunch of Spotify songs on repeat throughout the week. For all the suggestions in this thread I even dusted off my 'really good but uncomfortable' headphones :).
a quite beautiful polyphonic piece: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSPaJLXfd-w. but agreed that some of the most beautiful musical pieces mankind has ever created can be found in the Western classical music tradition. i don't care very much for comparing who is better than whom.
Early in Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon, a math teacher and organist explains to Lawrence Waterhouse how organs worked.
"When Lawrence understood, it was as if the math teacher had suddenly played the good part of Bach's Fantasia and Fugue in G Minor [BWV 542] on a pipe organ the size of the Spiral Nebula in Andromeda—the part where Uncle Johann dissects the architecture of the Universe in one merciless escending ever-mutating chord, as if his foot is thrusting through skidding layers of garbage until it finally strikes bedrock. In particular, the final steps of the organist's explanation were like a falcon's dive through layer after layer of pretense and illusion, thrilling or sickening or confusing depending on what you were. The heavens were riven open. Lawrence glimpsed choirs of angels ranking off into geometrical infinity."
Ironically enough, I think the author did a fantastic job of demonstrating why "writing about music" is a fool's game. I love Bach as well, but what makes him the "ultimate", beyond reach of others like Mozart? The article paints numerous glowing tributes by Bach's fans, presents the inspiration of his life, but fails utterly in answering the ultimate question.
I've always believed that art is qualitatively different from pop entertainment. The latter is purely subjective, and aims to pleasure us. Art, in contrast, is defined by its ability to inspire its audience. Its ability to elevate the way we think, act, and look upon the world.
Which is more tasty, chocolate or oranges? That's an impossible question to answer in any objective manner. But which is more nutritious? Which is better for our health? That is something which can be quantified and discussed much more objectively. I look forward to the day we can have similar discussions about art.
> The latter is purely subjective, and aims to pleasure us.
A lot of composers of the Classical era such as Haydn would gladly say their music is made for the pleasure of all or as many people as possible ("I write my music in order that the weary and worn or the men burdened with affairs might enjoy a few minutes of solace and refreshment."). In fact, I would argue the whole point of the Classical style of the late 1700s was to move away from (in their words) "elitist" and complicated music of Bach and the opera seria, Mozart's operas being much easier to relate to as an average Joe than Monteverdi's. Yet all their works are inspiring and elevating - I think both goals can be achieved.
> I've always believed that art is qualitatively different from pop entertainment. The latter is purely subjective, and aims to pleasure us. Art, in contrast, is defined by its ability to inspire its audience.
So art, unlike pop entertainment, is not purely subjective? And can pop entertainment not "inspire its audience" or "elevate the way we think"?
> Which is more tasty, chocolate or oranges? That's an impossible question to answer in any objective manner. But which is more nutritious? Which is better for our health? That is something which can be quantified and discussed much more objectively.
If your goal was to provide an analogy for art vs. pop entertainment, I don't think it worked.
> I look forward to the day we can have similar discussions about art.
That might happen, but only when art, like nutritional value, can be objectively evaluated and have its "beauty" (or whatever the term is) concretely quantified.
Bach is the 'ultimate composer' in the same sense that Pleistocene Ogg is the ultimate tool-maker, Robert Goddard the ultimate rocket-maker.
Bach did many wondrous things, added a lot to the vocabulary, staked a viable claim on a couple of mother lodes. But this sort of argument (though eternally engaged in) is futile. While classical is a favorite of many (including me), music has moved far, far onward.
Onward, but not forward. Counterpoint is still depressingly underused in modern music (save for the occasional duet), and it can say so much with so little material. (Heck, the majority modern music barely even changes chords, let let alone key or anything beyond.) These tools are not antiquated; they are not buried in the sediment. They are still perfectly useful and there for our taking, if only we would dust them off.
If by counterpoint you mean having melody on a different track (rather than just "beat" or added harmony) I'd say it's used way more than just in duets/canons. Most jazz (or accompaniment in general) would apply for example.
I'd say counterpoint requires the melodies to be on more-or-less equal footing, which doesn't really happen in this clip. (I'm sure it happens way more often in jazz, but I'm not an avid listener.) In any case, you definitely won't be hearing the kinds of crazy thematic transformations that Bach uses in his fugues.
I didn't mean to imply that our music is unequivocally less advanced than Bach's — we've certainly acquired musical tools over the years that Bach would never have dreamed of! — but I also don't believe that his music should be viewed as a mere archeological layer in music history. It's still alive, it still resonates with modern audiences, and it still uses techniques that are rarely seen even today. We can still profit tremendously from it.
I agree that counterpoint is great. However, I also recognize (and listen to) a lot of 'modern music' that doesn't have chords. Given the right sonorities, that doesn't bother me.
Also, there are hundreds of alternatives to the 12-tone scale, many of which are wonderfully un-'chordinated'.
If anyone is interested in Bach's keyboard literature, it's hard to top the interpretations of Glenn Gould, a fascinating musician in his own right. Here, for example, is a seminal performance of the D minor concerto, conducted by Leonard Bernstein: https://youtu.be/9ZX_XCYokQo?t=5m9s
But note that it may not be to your taste if you do try them. I specialized in early music, and I hate Gould's playing. There are places in the two part inventions where it feels to me like he chose his tempo to see how much he could screw up the piece.
I like Gould, but there's something I like more about Simone Dinnerstein's rendition of the Goldberg Variations. It's somehow warmer sounding to me over the precision of Gould.
Bach is one of my favorite composers if not my most favorite. However, as someone with a formal education in Western classical, it's always bothered me how heroic figures are worshipped in the tradition, often while ignoring other great artists. What I find much more interesting about Bach is the story of how he became famous as a composer, which as far as I know had a lot to do with the reputation and advocacy if his sons after his death. During his lifetime, he was known much more as a virtuosic organist.
No one equals Bach, but some come close enough to make the answer unclear. My favorite trivia about Boston's Symphony Hall is that there are dozens of empty plaques along the balconies, where composer's names were going to be engraved when the hall was built. The only name the trustees could agree on was Beethoven. Not Bach, Mozart, Haydn, etc., only Beethoven, and his name is front and center, above the stage. [0]
I care about music a lot, but I don't really listen to classical music. I don't actively dislike it, but there are other music genres I like more.
Even as a total uneducated outsider, I can tell there is something special about Bach. Especially the pieces for a small number of instruments like the harpsichord. It captures something deep about the human spirit.
The music of Bach is pretty unique to listen to while coding. The parallel structure of the music lines goes very well for a developer that must coordinate multiple tasks. I discovered bach by myself, and it was a pretty downing task. For curious minds, I would recommend the Goldberg variation, the cello suite and the violin concerto in E major (BWV 1042) as a starting point. At first most of his work may seem like a wall because so much is happening ... but with time you see the light. I remember at first the well-tempered keyboard was like that, but now it just flows so nicely.
It's also a delight to listen to his music on original instruments such as the harpsichord. The music is so much clearer when played on a harpsichord.
From the same epoch there are so many more to discover, one of my favorite is Domenico Scarlatti and his 555 sonatas to be listened on harpsicord played by Scott Ross!
"Classical music has a lighter, clearer texture than Baroque music and is less complex. It is mainly homophonic — a clear melody above a subordinate chordal accompaniment. Counterpoint was by no means forgotten, especially later in the period."[0]
People, just listen to some music, it doesn't matter, that the music is in decline since the baroque period - the music needs listeners.
[edit]
"Since there was a greater emphasis on a single melodic line, there was greater emphasis on notating that line for dynamics and phrasing. This contrasts with the Baroque era, when melodies were typically written with no dynamics, phrasing marks or ornaments, as it was assumed that the performer would improvise these elements on the spot. In the Classical era, it became more common for composers to indicate where they wanted performers to play ornaments such as trills or turns. The simplification of texture made such instrumental detail more important, and also made the use of characteristic rhythms, such as attention-getting opening fanfares, the funeral march rhythm, or the minuet genre, more important in establishing and unifying the tone of a single movement."[0]
So, hello modern music, hello rap/r&b/soul and the likes. It's not worse, it's incomparable. Most people react on rhythm and catchy sounds, hearing no music at all, really. Comparing music is nuts as many here pointed out, and the question was different - can we have the next Bach? For me, the answer is "yes", for sure! Can we hear him/her? - perhaps no, label's target group is different.
As a pianist from the age of 5 my ranking would be Mozart, Bach, than Beethoven. Mozart was a prodigy on a level unheard of. He wrote in so many different genres and such a short time period. Mostly though, is the pure beauty and lyricism of his music. The consistency of quality. The Requiem and the Magic Flute are required listening.
Bach's works can be strangely hypnotic in a way that's rare from other artists. It's not inherently intense or dramatic, but has a way of triggering intensity and drama through secondary means. I compare it to harmonic induction, like pushing somebody on a swing. Each push is gentle pressure, but the end result is high flying. Other artists require a catapult to take you up there, and it makes a big racket. Bach sneaks you up there without you noticing until a cloud sprays you with moisture.
A key thing to remember about the baroque period: it was almost all improvised - the original jazz, if you will.
Tonal harmony was one of my favourite papers at music school, learning the rules of harmony to compose pieces like this from scratch. I wasn’t great at it, but it’s an amazing skill to observe in those that can do it. I once had a guitar masterclass and the tutor just stood up, jumped on the piano and improvised a fugue. Our minds were blown.
Now there is music from which a man can learn something.
- W. A. Mozart (on hearing Bach motets in Leipzig)
In the multiverse I'm supremely happy that I've ended up in one where Bach both existed and created tremendous amounts of music. You can spend a lifetime exploring his oeuvre and find entire corners of delight.
Despite appearances to the contrary, I find that one of the powerful things about Bach's work is how it is almost a kind of "abstract" auditory form that just happens to be performed on instruments. What I mean is that many of his pieces can be performed equally well on just about any combination of instruments or voice and still be beautiful. It's not always true, but there's a strange density of his music that seems like this.
I think the next composer to have captured my attention has been Steve Reich. And for entirely different reasons. I can take or leave his earliest highly experimental works. But when he came into full form later on he created majesty. Some of this music feel like being inside the engines of creation. You'll find his fingerprints all over modern music.
Today I am quitting reddit completely. With some of the time that I will save every day I will listen to a piece of Bach. I've read Gödel, Escher, Bach but never actually listened to Bach.
usually when this question is asked, its asked in such a way that is kind of tautological. in other words, it presupposes that the great things that bach developed and invented are the most important things, then says, "hey look, heres the guy who did these things the best!"
i say this as someone who grew up worshipping bach. its not that he isnt every bit as good as everyone says he is. its just that he does not have a monopoly on "composition" or "music", and you would be well served to remember that!
> This silly popular image of Einstein as the genius among geniuses is just that: silly and popular.
Uh, Einstein published four papers that revolutionized four areas of physics in one year:
* The photoelectric effect
* Brownian Motion
* Special Relativity
* Mass-Energy Equivalence
Sure, he didn't do it alone. But even publishing one of those papers as part of a group would be an extraordinary feat for a physicist of the time, and he did it again and again.
It should be noted that his explanation for the photoelectric proved that photons we’re discrete objects, paving the way for quantum mechanics, and his explanation for Brownian motion was the first definitive proof that matter was made up of atoms.
I point this out just because someone unfamiliar with these topics might think that those two papers were some esoteric things that physicists appreciate but most people wouldn’t.
Einstein always gets associated with relativity and e=mc^2, but I’d argue those were not his top accomplishments. The Nobel Prize committee seemed to agree. (He won for his work on the photoelectric effect i.e. quantum mechanics.)
The Einstein Nobel situation was very political. More and more physicists each year thought that Einstein should get it for special relativity, and later for that and/or general relativity.
However, there were a few physicists who thought specially relativity was bunk, and that included some who were very influential, such as 1905 Nobel winner Phillip Lenard. Until experimental proof of relativity was found, they had no trouble keeping the prize away from Einstein.
By 1919, when there was sufficient proof of general relativity that the "it's not been proved" excuse no longer worked, Germany had lost World War I, and a lot of people were looking for excuses to explain that loss, and Jews were a good target. Especially pacifist Jewish scientists like Einstein who had refused to turn their science toward the war effort. The prominent nationalist scientists, like Lenard, saw people like Einstein as practically traitors. They labeled relativity "Jewish Physics", as opposed to correct, "German Physics", and ascribed evil intent to those trying to mislead Germany with their fake Jewish physics. (Lenard went on the become "Chief of Aryan Physics" under the Nazis).
In 1921, the Prize committee did not find any of the nominees that year worthy, and considered not awarding the prize that year. This would make the already ridiculous situation with Einstein even worse--it's one thing to not give Einstein the prize because you give it to someone else. That at least makes some sense--at worst you might be seen as misjudging the importance of the winning work. But to say there is nothing worthy out there at all, when Einstein does not have even one of the arguably 3 he deserves? Absurd!
But giving the prize for relativity would piss off a lot of nationalist and/or antisemitic Germans, both among German scientists and German politicians. In the political climate of Germany at the time, this was not a good thing to do. Germany was still one of the most, if not the most important science countries in the world. Scientists do have to live in the real world, so there was reluctance.
Someone suggested that they give it to Einstein, but make it clear that they are not endorsing relativity, so he got the 1921 prize, "for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect" with a note that this was "without taking into account the value that will be accorded your relativity and gravitation theories after these are confirmed in the future".
Given all that, I don't think you can infer that the Nobel committee giving him the prize for the photoelectric effect necessarily means they thought that it was his top accomplishment.
HN types think they're the smartest of the smart, yet judging from these comments and from other music-related posts I've seen here, most of you listen to popular music (including rock and rap) near exclusively. The comments seriously offering up pop stars as equals of Bach are just sad.
Go on a pop diet. Cut back on it the way you might sugar or processed foods. Try to spend a year listening to classical music only. These resources will help you get started:
> The comments seriously offering up pop stars as equals of Bach are just sad.
Why is that sad? People have different musical preferences. You appear to be implying they are all wrong for liking other genres of music. Perhaps it is you who is being close minded in this particular instance?
I wouldn’t put it that way to someone. If you do like rap, though, or more generally pop music you owe it to rap and pop music to listen to their roots - jazz, blues (the old stuff - Howlin Wolf, Elmore James, etc), and R & B. I did this with my absolute favorite band (at that time), Led Zeppelin. I sought after and listened to all the versions of their songs from the songs roots. Many bands’ iconic songs started out in the fields with sharecroppers. All of those songs other “covers” shine a different light on them. I discovered more music that made me feel similarly to how Led Zeppelin did - after exhausting all of LZ’s music.
In terms of classical music, there are pop songs that include or took entire parts of classical songs in a new angle. To listen to classical music is to more fully explore the music you already love.
Further, imagine if you went through life never having watched any movies or plays nor read any books. It’s possible to do so, but you would definitely censor yourself out of a valuable part of the human experience.
Just some other stuff
guitar solos in all songs -> a tiny excerpt of Flamenco guitar.
The sort of song where there’s an introductory period of instrumental music before the vocals -> started with Elmore James’ “The Sky is crying”
The first movement of Beethoven’s 7th is prelude to one of the most beautiful pieces of art, the second movement of Beethoven’s 7th.
A person had a mental breakdown playing Rachmaninov’s second piano concerto. His music can be as intense as a thunderstorm.
Bach. I can often tell I’m listening to Bach because there was Bach and then all the other people to touch an instrument let alone compose. Sometimes I can’t connect to his music, other times I feel as though my brain was rewired to the deep reality of the universe.
Why would anyone read a serious novel, like Crime and Punishment, instead of a comic book? Mozart's Jupiter Symphony will still be performed and appreciated fifty years from now. Can the same be said for your cherished rap/pop songs?
And I say this as someone who has been classically trained and absolutely worships the music of Bach (and Mozart for that matter).
"The Message" by Grandmaster Flash, A lot of The Beastie Boys, Some Kendrick Lamar, and many other hip-hop tracks and artists will definitely still be played and enjoyed 50 years in the future.
There are people who weren't alive at the beginning of hip-hop who are massive fans of the early artists. They'll be as popular as the greats of early rock, the greats of jazz etc.
You have to remember that when Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms etc were composing there was also a lot of absolute dross being composed at the same time. History forgets the garbage and remembers the greats. The same will happen for all genres of music.
> There are people who weren't alive at the beginning of hip-hop who are massive fans of the early artists. They'll be as popular as the greats of early rock, the greats of jazz etc.
How many people still listen to even the greatest of Big Band music? Rock and jazz have been passed down one or two generations but it's too soon to conclude they'll live forever.
If Bach could survive without the benefit of recorded media, then rock, jazz, big band and hiphop will survive easily. Maybe not forever, but definitely for hundreds of years.
Fifty years ago, the number one song was “Hey Jude”. Number four was “Sittin’ on the dock of the bay”—both regularly performed, enjoyed and reinterpreted today.
There are half a dozen others in the top twenty that you could say the same thing about.
Yes. Some of the pop songs today will be around in fifty years. Are they as good as Bach? No. But then again neither is most classical music written today.
> Fifty years ago, the number one song was “Hey Jude”. Number four was “Sittin’ on the dock of the bay”—both regularly performed, enjoyed and reinterpreted today
Largely because the Boomers and Gen-Xers are still alive and kicking, and still refusing to grow up, still hanging onto the music of their adolescence. When the last of them passes away, I predict they'll take rock and roll, including its so-called "classics," along with them.
In 1918 we find Irving Berlin began composing significant parts of what was to become known as The Great American Songbook. The staying power and quality of the GAS shouldn’t need any defense, but if it does, skim through Wikipedia.
Pop music might be compositionally simple, but the exquisite rhythms, melodies, and timbral experimentation will indeed live on for centuries. Beethoven would have killed to write something as catchy as "Yesterday".
Cutting off paths of emotional resonance from your life will only damage you as a music listener and a musician.
I was raised to dislike The Beatles, since they "just wrote stupid love songs". I really changed my opinion at a later age. I think most songwriters and composers would die for having written three Lennon-Mccartney compositions. And Lennon-Mccartney wrote at least two dozens of stunningly great compositions.
I think it is pointless to debate who was the best composer, or whether any composer can equal Bach, since it is largely a matter of taste and unclear what criteria apply (complexity? emotion?). But in terms of impact, music history is partitioned in 'before The Beatles' and 'after The Beatles', just as it is partitioned 'before Bach' and 'after Bach'.
I listen to many things. I would liken popular music to your 30 minute sitcom. Whereas a concerto or a symphony i would liken to the entire Star Wars movie series or similar. It can take a composer 10 minutes to set up a “scene” and pop songs are lucky to be 4 minutes long and sometimes as short as 2.
Yes, most. Most HNers have zero appreciation for serious music. This post announcing the death of David Bowie got 1484 upvotes and 301 comments (and the brave few who criticized it as off-topic got flagged):
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10879262
In particular, the Große Fugue [0] and the Op. 106 Hammerklavier sonata [1] (ironically so nicknamed, because at Op. 101, Beethoven directed that all sonatas from that time on be named Große Sonate für das Hammerklavier, and the nickname only stuck to this) show a profoundly advanced sense of counterpoint and structure. In addition to applying all of the classical transformations to motifs (including augmentation, diminution, cancrizans, canons and sequences), he even performs note for note reversals in time. (A temporal cancrizan, if you will.) [Edit: it would be a crime to fail to mention the late string quartets, which show prescience of modernism and are considered to be the pinnacle of chamber music. Many of you will at least be familiar with the Op. 131 c# minor quartet, which Wagner called the "saddest music ever penned" and whose 6th movement was used in the Band of Brothers episode "Why We Fight".]
Similarly, Brahms' masterful applications of form and counterpoint put most other composers to shame. Rather than be as enormously prolific as Bach, the quality of his output is more consistently excellent. (No doubt partially due to his penchant for burning the manuscripts which he felt were subpar.)
I think it's a little unfair to put Bach on this pedestal. There's plenty of music by any composer mentioned to relax to or feel stimulated by. Additionally, Bach's musical temperaments are somewhat limited by his media and styles. He is the master of his craft, but his craft has limited scope.
Yes, Bach has his own, unique, immovable place. But Beethoven, Brahms, and many other composers have immutable, unchallenged championships in their own arenas.
[P.S. Please mark this with a [2014] tag to denote when it was published.]
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gro%C3%9Fe_Fuge
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano_Sonata_No._29_(Beethoven...