Man, am I going to love this. Can't wait for some of the cello solos.
If anybody from the website is reading this, I have a tiny criticism: clicking anywhere on the page while the video is running closes the video. I don't know if I'm representative, but I often click in empty space to make sure my keyboard focus isn't in the video. I was disappointed when the organist was so abruptly cut off!
Might keep you going for a bit. Colin Carr playing four of the six suites. CC licenced, lowish bit-rate mp3s
I can't play the All of Bach at all, suspect flash related (gnash/iceweasel on Debian Sid)
EDIT: yup, flashplayer-nonfree works. This being HN, do we think a flashplayer based solution is sensible for a long term project such as this? Is mass transcoding at some point in the future likely to be a trivial task?
Poking around it looks like they are hosted on Vimeo and that the default is HTML5/H.264 with fallback to flash. Assuming that iceweasel has H.264 support (IIRC there is a way to get it through ffmpeg) you can probably it could just be that they are doing UA sniffing and don't recognize your browser.
I had forgotten about Magnatune!
I used to buy all sorts of stuff from them. I always loved their approach, and its great to see that they still exist.
It also annoys me when what appears to be the background of a webpage is actually a link to somewhere, as I inevitably end up clicking it when trying reset the focus.
I just checked the preview you mentioned on Youtube and it's absolutely incredible. I'm definitely adding that album to my collection, but I wonder if I could ask for some more help?
I don't have much experience with Bach, or even classical music outside of the really famous pieces. It's a genre that, though I've always been interested in, I've never invested the time to gain a real understanding. Recently, I got into Bach through this album:
That link you posted reminds me there is so much that I've never even heard of. Do you have any other recommendations? So far, you're batting 1.000...:)
I find that going out to concerts is important to my understanding of this tradition. Seeing and hearing actual instruments helps to tease out the various lines of the music and make sense of it all. There isn't any recording system that can capture a performance of a Mahler symphony (or the Schoenberg Gurrelieder). And a small intimate chamber concert is a lot of fun too, a shared experience with strangers. Concerts are programmed with an eye for contrast and coherence, and you can discover interesting pieces through unusual pairings.
Suggestion: as a contrast to the Goldberg and Bach's world generally, try Schubert. A particular favourite of mine is the String Quintet (doubled cello) D. 956. The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum provides a live concert recording[2].
Plea: To keep this music alive, can people please buy recordings by living artists now and again? Many here are mentioning Glen Gould's Goldberg. Try Simone Dinnerstein's recording (Telarc CD in Europe). Listen to Jeremy Denk's realisation in a small concert setting (Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum)[1] for nowt. All classical musicians working now are competing against 100 years of recordings!
Glenn Gould is absolutely the definitive source in regards to Bach piano music. For me the beauty in Bach's music is the extreme technical expertise, which, like an extraordinary piece of architecture, unveils a perfect geometry and universal perfection that makes our hearts and minds meet in the same exquisite place. But you need an exacting performance to be able to appreciate it.
You just have to listen to a few of the best and listen and listen, and if possible go see some play live, and you'll start to know what you love and what you are looking for. I am a fan of period instruments and technical performances, rather than the more mainstream recordings by someone like Yo Yo Ma.
So some great performances that I personally love:
> Glenn Gould is absolutely the definitive source in regards to Bach's piano music.
I love Gould's performances, but it's worth saying that plenty of good musicians don't, so "definitive" is probably not the best word. So, anyone reading this: If you listen to Gould playing (say) the Well-Tempered Clavier or the Goldberg Variations and find it too mannered or mechanical or can't get past his humming, try Schiff or Richter or Perahia or someone more "mainstream". (And try Gould again later when you're more familiar with the music, just in case your tastes change; what he does, he does very well indeed.)
I will especially vouch for Andras Schiff's recent recording of the Well-Tempered Clavier as an alternative choice. http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008NR8YXC/
I love everything that you said and have no quarrel with any of it. I just thought it worth pointing out that when you say
"if possible go see some play live"
after extolling Glenn Gould, that he would probably advise not going to live performances. Gould thought that live performances were distracting rituals and that music could be much more easily focused on and appreciated through recordings. Personally, although I understand his point, I think the occasional live concert is worthwhile.
I love Gould because of the way he brings out Bach's counterpoint so clearly, especially the inner lines - his playing is a good argument for using the piano to perform Bach's keyboard works rather than something more authentic to the period. As a fan of period instruments, what do you think about that?
I am not a musician the calibre, or even near it, to Gould but I completely, utterly disagree about live music. Maybe he preferred the recording studio, but why would you want to take away live music from the tradition! It's like watching a chef make food on TV instead of being where you should be when it comes to food: in the kitchen and dining room, smelling all the smells.
Edit for those not agreeing: try sitting under or near a grand piano with your eyes closed. Your body experience is completely, utterly different than listening to the same music over even a very good stereo sound system. Being in the same room as an orchestra or even small chamber ensemble gives you a fully physical experience. It's not just your ears being involved, when listening to music.
As far as "classical" music goes, I can definitely live without the synchronized audience coughing between movements. Or the fact that you can only applaud at the end of the piece, no matter that a prior movement might have ended on an energetic forte and the last movement on an introspective pianissimo. Or the upraised eyebrows you inevitably draw if you're under 70.
I have to disagree. When listening to a recording, you hear all the music. A more fitting analogy would be tasting and eating the food without seeing the chef prepare it.
Forgive me for the late reply, but thank you so much for taking the time to answer my questions and make such great recommendations! It's much appreciated.
Since you discovered Gould and the Goldbergs, I have two comments.
First, I personally find the original 1955 version almost unbearable. I love his playing, but the mono sound is exhausting. Then I discovered the Zenph Re-Performance recording. In one word: stunning. Especially with the binaural tracks, it sounds like Gould is playing right there in your living room. Give it a listen. http://www.amazon.com/Bach-Goldberg-Variations-Performance-R... — Neat technology behind this, too.
Second, try Murray Perahia's version. Gould and Perahia are my favorites for piano Bach.
Glenn Gould's (multiple) performances of Bach are considered some of the best interpretations of Bach among the academic classical community. Listening the Gould's different interpretations of these gives us a windows into the real talent of performers. You might be interested in checking out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Two_Short_Films_About_Gl...
I know it's heretical but I just can't get past his audible humming/moaning. I tried...I wish I could. I love it when Keith Jarrett does it, but for some reason Gould's voice just pollutes the music for me.
Fun fact: Paul Simon lifted the basic harmony and melody for his song "American Tune" from that piece, which itself lifted them from an earlier piece. Remixing is not a new phenomenon!
Until the age of recorded commercial music it was considered completely normal to lift tunes, harmonies, anything recognisable, from other composers. In classical music it's generally considered a complement, more rarely a parody. Copyright has been around for much longer with printed music: as early as the 1500's we see Henry 8th issuing protections. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_music_publishing#Cop...
And composers recycled their own work. Bach had to knock out three hours of music each Sunday for four years or so when he was Kapellmeister. You'd reuse!
To illustrate that: here's a video from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation that looks at musical quotation, using the Star Trek:TOS theme. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTaSjS1pwhQ
Its 199 Euros which is really not a lot if you consider its 172 CDs. And its not just a cheaply thrown together compilation but it was curated (and in large parts conducted) by Helmuth Rilling who is one of the premier Bach experts of our day. The quality of performance and recording is very good throughout. You certainly find superior recordings for some of Bachs works but I have yet to find a real disappointment in the set (I'm only about half way through).
There is the http://www.naxosmusiclibrary.com, which is a streaming service with tons of classical. Currently 96,609 albums with 1,403,008 tracks, the vast majority of which is classical. They have 3620 albums of J.S. Bach music (and quite a few more of the rest of the Bach family). It is a little pricey, but I've always been tempted to subscribe.
Understood. I just bought a Chopin collection that was only available on CD.. not remotely as large as a complete Bach collection obviously, but a few CDs anyway. It's been sitting around for a couple weeks because about the only thing I can do with it is go to my desktop PC and rip it, and getting around to that takes awhile. I've been looking forward to listening to it, but.. fragile plastic discs, man, what's up with those?
There are CD ripping services around. In the UK they charge around ~60p/CD (gets cheaper at ~500 CDs). Some will rip lossless, which is what I was after for the 800 or so CDs I stupidly ripped at 192Kbps over the years.
I've found myself in a similar position. I even ripped some CDs at 128kbps, back in the day when my computer had a 4GB HDD. I really need to go back and redo them all, but the amount of effort required is really demotivating. How do such services work? You take all your CDs to them? I imagine postage costs would be astronomical otherwise!
Most will collect. Some will let you drop your collection off. Some[1] will ask you to load your CDs into their spindles. I think all of them want your CDs out of their jewel cases. Note that I've only looked at services in or around London.
I wouldn't feel any moral qualms about downloading the torrent (still huge) if I had the box of discs on my desk. The swapping of discs isn't as bad as the tagging. Is the set tagged on Musicbrainz?
Another remarkable projet regarding Bach is the Open Goldberg Variation ( http://www.opengoldbergvariations.org/ ), a project that freely offer a high-quality version (they hired a world-class musician, rent a world-class piano and studio) of the Goldberg Variations. (I have no stakes in that project; I do enjoy listening to the album as work music though)
And to think, his music was almost forgotten. It wasn't until Mendelssohn almost single handedly revived his music nearly a hundred years after Bach's death. A surprising number of great composers that came after didn't even know of him, yet when they were exposed to his music suddenly started picking up select elements of his style.
He was one of the few composers Mozart admired. A stunning triumphant genius who's music has remained relevant and flexible from ancient instruments and playstyles through the digital age and all of this was nearly lost to the tides of fashion. Whenever you hear a Bach piece thank Felix.
Bach's friend Telemann is also relatively unknown today. He was extremely productive and there are lots of great pieces, I especially love some of his trumpet works. They are played on the radio occasionally.
Thanks for bringing up Telemann. I wouldn't say he's unknown today, but definitely not in the "pop" composer category the way Bach is. His music is definitely in the repertoire of most serious violinists while studying late Baroque.
Here's one I studied for a while when I was studying the instrument many years ago.
I was always torn between playing Baroque music in the modern style or in the contemporary style. I find incredible enjoyment in hearing the music on period instruments played in the style. The music's texture changes so much.
That's also true about other composers. Some composers we consider cornerstones of classical music today were, for a long time, completely neglected. Hardly anyone today probably realizes that before the 1930s, Antonio Vivaldi was not a household name at all; he was pretty much completely unknown outside the field of musicology.
Vivaldi had been popular in his day as a virtuoso violinist and a composer of operas, until his musical style became too unfashionable for Venice, and he faded into obscurity, and was buried in a pauper's grave. Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians of 1910 devotes a scant page to Vivaldi, and while it praises him as a technical innovator, also criticizes him as a style-over-substance showman ("Vivaldi in fact mistook the facility of an expert performer ... for the creative faculty, which he possessed but in a limited degree") and spends much of the article talking about how much better Bach was.
What's also interesting is that, aside from changing tastes, part of the reason was that a large portion of his works were simply considered lost. In 1926, a trove of manuscripts was discovered in an Italian monastery, and this coincided with a concerted effort of evangelism by a group of musicologists, composers and poets (including, interestingly, Ezra Pound, who coincidentally seems to have adopted Vivaldi and Italian fascism with equal passion) who reintroduced Vivaldi into the public and rehabilitated his reputation.
Of course, to the public — ie., people who are not hard-core music buffs — there are still a large number of composers who are completely unknown. For those who enjoy baroque music, I particularly recommend:
- Van Wassenaer: The six Concerti Armonici. A Dutch diplomat who dabbled in music on the side, but published his works pseudonymously; after his death his works were for a long time assumed to be by Pergolesi. The concerti are beautiful. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8lzbFkrlUs
- Biber: The Mystery Sonatas, aka the Rosary Sonatas. For someone used to the jollier, frothier side of baroque music, these will seem fantastically bare and stark. One of the monumental masterpieces of the baroque era. I specifically recommend the performance by John Holloway et al: http://open.spotify.com/album/0BJib6o3KcAxlPqwoydZNO. YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FU4Xa_sFXak
Have you by any chance read both Douglas Adams' "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency"[1] and Douglas Hofstadter's "Gödel Escher Bach"[2]? If not, meet some kindred spirits!
I love the fact that so much of Bach's music explores numerical relations and patterns. And I've still not heard of anyone creating a piece as complex as his Musical Offering[3] that sounds at all listenable, let alone sublime. Any person who can compose a 6 part fugue is superhuman IMO.
I recently found myself wishing there was a website with curated, high-quality performances of Bach, after realizing how big the difference in quality can be.
I ended up working on a Spotify playlist for myself, which I've been editing on and off for months, just trying all the recordings of each particular piece until I found a good one. (The only thing making it possible, with Spotify's terrible organization of classical music, is being able to search for literally "BWV 140" or whatever.) So I'll definitely be visiting this site.
I do shuffle around pieces because I'm trying to pick the version I like the best. I don't think I'm removing that much overall, but this is a work in progress.
I also decided to fact-check myself after posting the links, so I deleted some things that multiple sources say are spurious (not by J. S. Bach at all). If all of those happened to be your favorites, it might be that there's another Baroque composer you like better than Bach that you should look for!
I can't seem to find an RSS feed for these... that would be really helpful.
This seems like a great way to consume large volumes of things that one might not otherwise ever get to... 10 minutes a week for 20 years seems a lot more doable than committing several months to consuming all 1080 works. Now I'm thinking about how I can apply this to other large-volume things that I've wanted to consume, like reading the entirety of Tolstoy's War and Peace.
The performance in video of Toccata and Fugue is just wow! Incredible, to say the least. It's a total must. I've always loved it because it reminds the old gamer in me of Sabrewulf's theme in Killer Instinct for arcades in the 90's. Also, I can't wait for The Well-Tempered Clavier's Prelude I (C Major). It's almost corny these days but it's still such a marvellous piece, it instantly talks to your body and you know that's beauty being played back to you.
I really can't decide if the music, the organ or the performance was more impressive! As the final notes faded away, I realised I had been crying for most of the piece. It was truly beautiful in every aspect.
This is probably like the experience of the people who attended the Thomaskirche and heard a new work by Bach every week. I could take 21 years of this!
I like to think about those people. I'm imagining a bored little boy kicking the pew in front of him, not realizing he's hearing some of the greatest music that will ever be written.
The duration of the project implies that not all those that are recording today will be alive when the project is completed. Incredible how productive Bach was.
I'm using Safari on an iPad, and for a moment I can see the page, but then it quickly disappears behind an impenetrable solid-black screen with nothing on it but the prompt:
"Tilt your screen."
It's a shame, and it doesn't befit the wondrousness of the content. Whoever came up with this brilliant UI idea should seriously re-evaluate what usability means to them.
Even looking at the graphic, I didn't understand --- I thought they wanted me to tilt my iPad along the horizontal axis (pitch). When that didn't work I tried tilting on vertical (roll). It wasn't until the tablet slipped in my hands enough to rotate sideways that I got a clue.
For me latest Chrome is having repositioning issues on the top background image when scrolling up and down, causing it to look jittery until I stop scrolling. Navigation is working fine.
I'm not into classical music, except from the very famous composers and everything Tchaikovsky has ever written (my sister took ballet classes since I can remember myself).
That said, what's exactly the reason Bach's work made everyone here so excited? Can't we find these compositions on YouTube?
ps. I'm listening as I write. Bach sounds really cheerful :-) Awesome music.
I'm biased (I was raised on Bach) but I've always thought that most of modern western music owes an enormous debt to J.S. Bach. He pushed even temperament, was ridiculously prolific, represented music across Europe to the point where he was known as "Grandfather Bach" in some royal courts, and his music was often inspired by patterns, numbers and complex riddles.
There are a huge number of famous musical passages, hooks, licks, etc. attributed to artists from Mendelsohn to the modern day that can be found in just the Well Tempered Clavier. Listen to the second half of BWV857(http://allofbach.com/en/bwv/bwv-857/) which is fugue number 12 from the Well Tempered Clavier vol 1. Tell me if you don't hear something familiar there :-)
Paul Graham's essays discuss how the most exciting work in many media was done by the generation that invented them. For example, the most interesting paintings were done centuries ago, when oil paint was new. Bach is like that. When he was writing, the piano was a new invention, and a system of musical scales had been found that allowed you to change key mid piece, without retuning your instrument. Those things are old now, but Bach lets you feel the thrill they gave when they were new.
von Bulow said something along the lines of Bach being the old testament of piano music and Beethoven being the new testament. Bach for the first stage of development and Beethoven for the end of the development stage.
Maybe an answer to OP could be Beethoven is a reaction to, or maybe, completion of, Bach's work. Or Beethoven is a bit more playful and experimental than Bach in general?
Or TLDR is physical development of the instrument didn't end with Bach it ended with Beethoven. So its kinda hard to talk about one without talking about the other.
I think it's his use of coutnerpoint and its ability to pleasantly overload the brain. Case in point, Toccatta and Fugue in D Minor. Close your eyes and try to play air organ to this: http://allofbach.com/en/bwv/bwv-565/detail/
This is very cool. A similar project, called J. S. Bach-Stiftung, has been recording all of Bach's choral works. Check them out on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/Bachstiftung
I'd love to watch this on my large living room television via Roku+Vimeo, but apparently the AofB people have decided to make their Vimeo-hosted videos private and only viewable via their own site. Pity.
If anyone is looking for a way to understand music "from the beginning" so to speak, I can't recommend "How to Listen to and Understand Great Music"[1] enough. It's around 35 hours worth of lectures, I'm only half way through but it's fantastic so far. It's also available on Audible.
If you happen to see this reply a week later: thanks for that recommendation. Found the audio version on sale on the Great Courses site and bought it. Looking forward to listening.
This is cool. The title reminds me of some crazy art project I attended when I was in France (in a nifty very steampunk club) called "Mozart in 30 minutes" where they used some wicked math to overlay all of his tracks into one huge 30 minute one. Sounded mostly like an aircraft turbine to my unenlightened ear but it was a fun idea.
Can't find it via Google or the likes, I have searched for it a year back and came up empty then as well.
As a family we've been taking a week and learning a little bit about composers. This week was Bach, so the timing on this post was perfect. I've watched two videos so far and was completely blown away! Beautiful music, fantastic camera work and stunning performances by the musicians. This site is going to occupy a Chrome tab for a very long time.
I recently subscribed to http://CalmRadio.com for their uninterrupted 24/7 streaming of different composers and classical music in general.
Actually, I signed up to listen to Bach (I wanted to become familiar with his music), but I discovered Felix Mendelssohn and I like his works even better.
Wow, thanks for posting. Bringing the topic back to startups/tech, I'd love to integrate these performances with my interactive sheet music player, Soundslice (http://www.soundslice.com/). It would be amazing.
-1, not viewable on an iPad in portrait orientation. There's a giant popup that covers the entire screen displaying "tilt your tablet" when in portrait mode. Who designs this stuff?
I love bach and the music. It takes quite a bit of a clicking effort to get to the actual performances. Then when it plays clicking anywhere closes the performance.
This is marvellous; but I can't find any indication on the site of the terms that they provide the music under. Is it public domain, CC By licenced, what?
took me while to find how to play a performance. Once you get there it's easy to keep playing pieces, and it's really not THAT hard to find. But putting a big play button when you see the big title would be much quicker and intuitive than first clicking a small tab in the bottom of the screen.
Vimeo's HTML5 detect is the inverse of right: they use Flash unless you send an iOS user agent, at which point you get better quality and battery-friendly CPU usage.
It says ``This video can’t be played with your current setup''
I guess must be some super-advanced new audio-codec.
Please, recommend me how to get around this restriction!
Worthless. Useless. A disaster. Flatly, on Windows XP SP3 with one of the latest versions of Firefox and Flash, the site essentially doesn't work. So, I clicked, and clicked, and clicked, and waited, and waited, and waited, and clicked, looked at the system monitor and saw no activity on either network data or CPU, waited, clicked, waited, clicked, had much of the screen content go off the screen, kept lowering the screen magnification, clicked, clicked, clicked, and finally did hear the Toccata but couldn't hear or get any other content, not voice or text, etc.
Worst Web page programming on the planet.
Sorry 'bout that.
For Bach, which I nearly worship, devoted a significant fraction of my life working to play Bach on violin, back to my CD collection, YouTube, etc.
Looks like some really good music totally train wrecked by some absurd Web site programming. I'd have no idea how to make such a mess out of some Web pages -- maybe have to use JavaScript to do that. So, ditch the JavaScript.
Not even Microsoft supports Windows XP[1]... why do you expect this web developer to support an OS that the OS vendor, who repeatedly extended the sunset date, finally stopped supporting? Time for an upgrade, friend. Either that or stop expecting new websites to accommodate your abacus. :)
> Not even Microsoft supports Windows XP[1]... why do you expect this web developer to support an OS that the OS vendor, who repeatedly extended the sunset date, finally stopped supporting?
Nonsense. XP and SP3 have NOTHING to do with it. You can go through the HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and TCP/IP standards and never once find that XP doesn't work or that Windows 7, 8, or 8.1 is needed. The main compatibility issue would be Firefox, not the OS.
The operating systems and Web browsers meet the Web sites over the standards; if the standards are being met, then XP,
Windows 7, Firefox, Chrome, IE, etc. just irrelevant.
I have a copy, new, quantity one, retail, sealed in the package, DVD of Windows 7 Professional on my bookshelf, but installing it would take DAYS and maybe WEEKS of work, considering all the re-installation of other software, when some of that other software ruined my installation and I had to start over, etc.
So far, there is no good reason for me to change operating systems. Besides, there is considerable question if Windows 7 is an UPgrade instead or just the same or even a DOWNgrade. Windows Vista and 8.0 were really DOWNgrades. As far as I am concerned, since I don't want to use a touch screen or the 'Metro' interface, Windows 8.1 is a DOWNgrade into the sewer.
I will change to Windows 7 Professional and later Windows Server but hopefully never anything like Windows 8.x.
For now, for me, XP is fine.
Again, once again, over again, to be more clear, asd should be plenty clear at HN anyway, if recent versions of Firefox and Flash run on my OS, that should be sufficient.
For more, I am a heavy Internet and Web user, and as I stated, that music Web site is the worst I've seen. What I described is just what happened. When the Toccata played, the video was in a tiny window in the UR corner of the screen -- absurd. Worst site I've seen. Sorry 'bout that.
If anybody from the website is reading this, I have a tiny criticism: clicking anywhere on the page while the video is running closes the video. I don't know if I'm representative, but I often click in empty space to make sure my keyboard focus isn't in the video. I was disappointed when the organist was so abruptly cut off!