How can I move on from Bach?

Um... How about all these other people who wrote fugues before Bach? Say, Pachelbel and Buxtehude being good examples, with tons of others if I bothered to look. Froberger comes to mind.

But anyways, the attempt to combine Bach's style with what was trendy (Galant style) came from CPE Bach, but he didn't get a lot of attention sadly. By the time CPE Bach came around, the Vienna Classic stuff was in full swing so that may have eclipsed it him.

Almost all Pachelbel's fugues are in style antico - essentially a vocal style of part writing, though his later fugues do contain a number of rather more adventurous subjects. A handful of the Magnificat fugues use faster, scalic passages, but none uses the same sort of flourishing, French keyboard style as one sees, for example, in the D major fugue from Book 1 of DWTK. Buxtehude is closer, but Froberger I know little about. Certainly, Bach's combination of modern style with ancient form appears unprecedented in so strict a process as fugue. It is however in truth his near-total mastery of counterpoint that renders his work fundamentally different from that of his predecessors and contemporary.

CPE Bach's definitely trendier, but JS consciously tried to use foreign styles. His works are littered with his own, personal scribblings about sections being 'in French style' and so on, amidst all the funny drawings of flowers and landscapes with which he embellished blank spaces.

Oh, and malestromtempest - how about the Matthew Passion? That has:

Two Choirs

Two Orchestras

Two Organs

What more could somebody of the early 18th-century possibly have added? This work, along with the St John Passion, also demonstrates the (rather well-established) notion that different instruments can convey different atmospheres and moods. Flurrying basses and cellos are used to convey an earthquake in one of the recitatives, whils a Viola da Gamba, an instrument traditionally assosciated with death (for some reason or another) is reserved for a single aria. Also bear in mind that despite the gargantuan forces, the instruments all carry distinct lines, rather than simply filling in the harmonies.

The thing is though, even all these instruments don't make Bach sound anything like Beethoven. If they did, I probably wouldn't like him as much. It's likely that the emptiness you perceive in Bach's instrumentation is precisely what I appreciate, and the oversaturation I hear in thick orchestration is precisely what makes you adore Beethoven. It's just about taste.

I'd say Buxtehude uses some subjects which are almost entire chromatic (with jumps, dance rhythms, etc) VERY often, and instrumental music was already pretty standard pre-Bach. Bach really didn't invent anything or made anything fantastic, he just grabbed things from other composers of his time and did his own thing which can easily be traceable to the composers that influenced him. Froberger and Buxtehude were both HUGE influences, Vivaldi and Pachelbel too.

What's more, "mastery of counterpoint" doesn't mean much, there wasn't anything ELSE at the time, and I would hardly call Pachelbel or Vivaldi anything but masters of what they did.

Too much worshiping Bach makes Bach look like some sort of monolith he never was, and it also makes him look inhumane, as if he never learned anything. Looking at his early Fugues for organ, they sound like down-right imitations of Buxtehude's style (Bach was a fan of Buxehude, this isn't surprising.) He transcribed works from Vivaldi for organ solo, and all of this had a great influence in what he wrote later.

Also: While Bach did attempt to add a certain flavor to his works, such as the french suites, italian concerto, etc etc, they are strictly in German tradition still. Nevermind that he was not the first to do this type of thing.

PS: Fugue-writing is essentially one of the least strict forms of the time, there's absolutely no pattern, and a lot of composers wrote fugues in entirely different way save for a couple of characteristics which identify it as something different than just an imitation at the 5th. Fugue is not a song structure, Bach himself used a lot of different structures along with his fugues, sometimes A-B-A, sometimes not. There's no "rule" that he establishes that he also doesn't break.

Bach > everyone.

Bach was the one who taught God how to play the organ. True Fact.

PS: Fugue-writing is essentially one of the least strict forms of the time, there's absolutely no pattern, and a lot of composers wrote fugues in entirely different way save for a couple of characteristics which identify it as something different than just an imitation at the 5th. Fugue is not a song structure, Bach himself used a lot of different structures along with his fugues, sometimes A-B-A, sometimes not. There's no "rule" that he establishes that he also doesn't break.

This is true, but what about the canons?

Bach > everyone.

Bach was the one who taught God how to play the guitar. True Fact.

Fixed it for you.

The thing is though, even all these instruments don't make Bach sound anything like Beethoven. If they did, I probably wouldn't like him as much. It's likely that the emptiness you perceive in Bach's instrumentation is precisely what I appreciate, and the oversaturation I hear in thick orchestration is precisely what makes you adore Beethoven. It's just about taste.

Thank god you finally understand :D.

"arguing on the internet forum is like competing in the special olympics. even if you win, you're still retarded."

sorry couldn't help it. :)

I would advise you not to force yourself in any direction. Let your heart decide what to love.

Sometimes your heart can be stupid...

Use your brain, think about what you like and try and find things similar to the style of music that you enjoy. If you don't like it on first listen, usually you won't THAT interested in it.

lol :P

and thirdly that the sole purpose of good art is to reveal emotion.

Who are you to a) distinguish between "good" and "bad" art, and then say with great confidence that the sole purpose of art is to reveal emotion? How do paintings during the industrial age reveal emotion? How does a work by Feldman, a work by Cage, a work by Stockhausen reveal emotion? Even so, if I told maelstrom that some pieces by Schoenberg and Webern are highly emotional, he wouldn't like them. Even if I told him they are more emotional than a Bach piece or a Beethoven piece.

And you can't really call Feldman, Cage, Stockhausen, Schoenberg or Webern "non artists".

emotion is easier to contrive with more instruments and more chords

Again, says who? Do you think a symphony by Haydn has more to offer than an improvisation by Keith Jarrett? Why should it? Just because it's pre-thought, with 50 times the instruments than the Keith Jarret improvisation? I think "emotion" (in music in which emotion exists anyway - I don't think Bach wrote with "emotion" in mind either) is unrelated to the amount of chords (what about music that is not about chords? what about music that is not about notes/pitches, even? Can't music like that be "emotional" or even "artistic"?) and the amount of instruments used. In contrary, I could argue largely that it is, in fact, easier to convey emotion with as less instruments as possible, since you don't have to overburden yourself and your mind with sooo many writing details for all the instruments, so you can concentrate on the "emotion" itself.

"arguing on the internet forum is like competing in the special olympics. even if you win, you're still retarded."

sorry couldn't help it. :)

It's 1995, my name is Al Gore, and welcome to the internet.

Perhaps you would like to make a Spice Girls reference next?

lol :P Who are you to a) distinguish between "good" and "bad" art, and then say with great confidence that the sole purpose of art is to reveal emotion?

I assume you were referring to what I posted. You may have read it rather speedily and become inflamed without considering the (admittedly slightly confusing) syntax:

"The three statements that confuse me are firstly that Bach's music was mainly focussed on rhythm ... and thirdly that the sole purpose of good art is to reveal emotion."

I then shortly after wrote that:

"What does confuse me however is the idea that emotion is the sole virtue of music. Is there not more to it than that?"

I think we're probably in agreement.

In contrary, I could argue largely that it is, in fact, easier to convey emotion with as less instruments as possible.

Again. I never claimed anything to the contrary. I said that I thought it was probably easier to contrive emotion with more instruments. When it comes to generating emotion that's plausible, it's probably equally difficult with any sized ensemble. Also, the fact you'd want to contradict me just for the sake of it seems rather counterproductive. I'm more interested in arriving at what I find most believable. You win the argument.

Who are you to a) distinguish between "good" and "bad" art, and then say with great confidence that the sole purpose of art is to reveal emotion? How do paintings during the industrial age reveal emotion? How does a work by Feldman, a work by Cage, a work by Stockhausen reveal emotion?

I think this was also a product of speed-reading. I later retracted that statement:

And the part about emotion being solely what composers write for... again, I was slightly wrong in saying that. There usually is a meaning and purpose behind the music and that's what I meant.

All that you people are doing really is taking bits and pieces of what I said out of context and blowing them out of proportion. But what should I expect from you people :glare:

And who are you to say that the sole purpose of good art is not to convey emotion? When you look at it, "good art" is a matter of opinion and nothing else. Now, you'll probably parse this to mean something else... but what can I do. All I can ask of you is to read this carefully. Now as I was saying, you have as much right to call my opinion wrong as I have to call your opinion wrong too. If my opinion was to say that sitting on a toilet is artistic and you do not believe so, that is fine and you can call it wrong. The same goes if your opinion is that Schoenberg and Webern infuse meaning into their works; I can call that wrong too. In the end, who is right? Neither of us; in this scenario, there is no such thing as right or wrong. It is opinion.

And Zetetic, I think we are ALL in agreement. Its just that some people like to quote fragments of original posts and then make a huge ruckus: "oh emotion emotion emotion emotion". If you were to read my later posts, you would see that I actually was referring to a certain level of meaning.

Zetetic: sorry, yeah, I misread your post.. :) We do agree on that.

Ignoring pretty much everything that's been written in this thread (except the "special olympics" comment.. THAT got a guffaw from me), I'd suggest the following:

Define what it is you LIKE about Bach.

Is it the fugues?

If so, look for other composers who have composed fugues and listen to those. There are MANY post-bachian composers who wrote fugues, and some of them true masterpieces, right up into the 20th century, and beyond.

Is it the instrumentations?

If so, then try to find music that is for similar ensembles. If you really like Bach's vocal music, then find other vocal music to listen to. His Cantatas? Look for other pieces in similar form. His orchestral music? then look for music that is written for a smaller orchestral ensemble.

The only other thing I can suggest is to simply LISTEN to music! Go and listen to pieces suggested by other people.

Hell, you could even, I dunno, NOT listen to classical music exclusively

Elton John is quite good ya know

HAHAHAHAHA. Elton John.

Yea, no he is good lol, i just laughed because you said him.

You've got me feeling emulsions .... er .... emotions ...... :ninja:

HAHAHAHAHA. Elton John.

Yea, no he is good lol, i just laughed because you said him.

Your avatar makes me want to kill every scene kid I see walking from class to class

Your avatar makes me want to kill every scene kid I see walking from class to class

HAHAHAHAHA.

For your convenience, I will change it. When i can be stuffed.

and for the record...im not emo...or scene.

I was in a huge Bach phase about a year or so ago... and immediately after jumped into late romantics... but that's really just me.

As a composer, Bach is a genuine goldmine for inspirations, so I would personally continue listening to Bach, but still listen to others from different eras (that's what I'm doing, anyway). I would personally recommend Brahms and Rachmaninoff; they both, especially the former, use quite advanced contrapuntal technique and still introduce amazing Romantic stylistic depth.

A couple years ago (when I was 13-ish), I listened pretty much exclusively to John Williams and a couple other film composers. I found most classical/romantic/baroque/modern music boring. What really broke me out of this was joining an orchestra and playing other types of music. I also think that you learn to enjoy what you listen to. I used to dislike Copland, but someone gave me a CD of his music and I began listening to it. Now I really enjoy his music. So, my advice is: Listen to other music and you will probably start enjoying it. I don't think there's any need to "ban yourself" from listening to Bach (I still listen to John Williams quite a bit), but don't listen exclusively to Bach and you will grow to like other music. I think. Maybe. ;)

If I could hesitate to recommend a few composers, I would recommend this...

Listen to the guys that Bach revered as the "greats," both contemporary and earlier composers; learn where he found his inspiration, learn what he considered good. It's relatively common knowledge that he considered Handel to be the greatest musician alive (if he didn't consider himself the greatest), and Vivaldi the individual who "taught" him music. As for counterpoint, although both of them were much more homophonically-driven, they can be contrapuntalists in the serious, strict sense- take a look at their fugues, I find them much more liberating than Bach's, and no less brilliant or inspired.

If "strict" counterpoint is what you must have to satisfy yourself, take a look at the masters who developed "true" counterpoint, where the notes aren't necessarily written to create harmonies; Machaut's Missa de Notre Dame, Leonin and Perotin all wrote melodies without paying as much attention to where the harmonic progressions would lead.

Finally, if you want to "free-" and I use the word free very liberally, I consider counterpoint to be a necessity in most music, at least a bass melody and soprano melody- yourself from strict counterpoint, try the Bach sons and Quantz, or rather, look at Bach's gallant pieces (flute sonatas, musical offering's trio sonata, etc)... he wrote pieces without counterpoint, and they sound just as brilliant as those with it.

I'd say more, but I'm late for something.