Bach, the Master Recycler | Hacker News Reader

Bach, the Master Recycler

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95 pointshoffmannesque15 comments

The concept that artist should come up with new ideas and create something new is narrow. Seeking perfection in somee restricted style and going deeper instead of different is also creativity.

The way I see Bach is that he mastered, refined and perfected the style. People who came afterwards had no choice but do something different. Others are climbing different peaks because Bach stands at the top of Mt. Baroque.

Mozart and Beethoven are geniuses. They started something that has been never perfected. Bach's music does not feel like a work of genius, it feels goodlike and nonhuman.

> The concept that artist should come up with new ideas and create something new is narrow. Seeking perfection in somee restricted style and going deeper instead of different is also creativity.

Very true. Indeed, all of these most creative, "genius" composers were very much standing on the shoulders of giants: Bach draws plenty from e.g. Corelli, A.Scarlatti and Vivaldi, while Mozart, Haydn (why forget him?) and Beethoven were in turn perfecting the "modern" style that much music of the 18th century had been written in throughout Europe.

"Now there is music from which a man can learn something."

- W. A. Mozart (on hearing Bach motets in Leipzig)

> The concept that artist should come up with new ideas and create something new is narrow.

I think it can even be stifling.

> The ceaseless, senseless demand for original scholarship in a number of fields, where only erudition is now possible, has led either to sheer irrelevancy, the famous knowing of more and more about less and less, or to the development of a pseudo-scholarship which actually destroys its object.

-- Hannah Arendt

I guess it's different for different people, but I find myself agreeing with these two things I came across recently:

Stephen King: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8TkQvdJVbc&t=7m05s

Chad VanGaalen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4z2wSMp81Y&t=9m40s

Like, just do it... pursue what you find interesting, follow your inner voice. If you want to do something that's been done, but you haven't done it, do it! Maybe it will lead you to something original even, and if not, so what.

That's not advice, but it does work for me, so if anyone feels like it works for them, I would "advise" them to not be put off by people telling them they're wrong with some kind of formula.

> Bach's music does not feel like a work of genius

Speak for yourself.

> Mozart and Beethoven

Both geniuses, for sure. But they didn't create the styles they composed in any more than Bach did.

There was _classical_ music (in the sense in which Mozart is "classical" and Bach and Brahms aren't) before Mozart. Some of it was written by Bach's sons, in fact.

There was quite Beethoven-like music written before Beethoven -- most notably by Haydn, who to my ears is much more Beethoven-like than Mozart is.

None of that detracts from the greatness of Mozart and Beethoven -- or of Bach. Artists don't exist in isolation, even if they're geniuses.

The size of Beethoven’s concertos and symphonies are so much bigger than any that Haydn wrote that I find it difficult to have Haydn sound anything like Beethoven .

I think when the parent said 'does not feel like a work of a genius', he was saying that it's 'non-human, god-like (typo?)'. The parent likely meant it's above genius which can only be human.

It is documented that Bach was a great improviser, much like his contemporary Handel, and others who came after him (Mozart, Beethoven, and Schumann). Improvisation has since been lost in the Classical World but is alive and well in the Jazz world. In Jazz, the term 'vocabulary' is often used to describe styles or influences within the genre. With Bach, he literally built and refined the language from which all other vocabularies stemmed from.

Bach was a church organist, and improvisation absolutely hasn’t been lost in the church organ world. Basic improvisation is a skill expected of every organist: this morning I needed to “cover the action” when the offertory hymn didn’t last as long as the offertory itself. But in the hands of a master - an English cathedral organist, or a French titulaire, particularly Saint-Sulpice or Notre Dame - it’s high art in its own right.

The improvisation concerts at American Guild of Organists conventions are mind-blowing. Performers are given a tune and improvise a work (toccata, theme and variations, etc.) on the spot. Even knowing the tricks they're using—such as having a general outline mapped out ahead of time that can be used with any tune—I'm still in awe.

I got pretty good at improvising (and sightreading) when I was the primary organist at my church. Not having much time to practice (young kids, a different full time job), I did what I had to to get by.

Yeaa improvising can really produce good stuff.

See: https://youtu.be/lHXkQDanKow

Neither improvising is lost in East.

This makes sense to me as a musician, and also as an artist or craftsperson. I feel like I’ve done so many prior works, they deserve to be revisited and reworked and at some point, you might as well. I may feel like there’s certain elements of past work that could benefit from attention with my current, improved skill set, or that something that felt finished previously seems incomplete now. Another motivator could be that an older work feels underexposed. At other times I might pull out an old work because it contains elements of a current trend, or I think the style is ripe to come back into fashion. You see this with modern musicians, too - artists often remake songs from their early demos or first albums later on with better production, a different style or a new perspective.

I would imagine that many people reading about Bach’s way of reusing rhythms and notes would think of coding. Parody as described in the article sounds like he was using his old rhythms like a template, or macro. This metaphor works great since it’s hardly even a metaphor. Musical notation, with its rigid and limited format, resembles a programming language much more closely than conversational language.

Yes Bach reused themes. He still composed a tremendous quantity and his arrangements, counterpoint and sequences remain unmatched IMO

He re-used more than themes; often entire movements of large-scale works were re-worked, including for the Christmas Oratorio, as discussed in this article. (I sing baroque music professionally and just sang the Christmas Oratorio a couple weeks back; it's a personal favorite.)

The walrus was paul: everyone recycles.

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