I sometimes get the feeling with Bach that it's "complete" music. It's "all there." I'm not sure exactly what I mean by that, maybe in part there there is not one note that is uncertain, maybe that it is music that cannot possibly be surpassed, but it's definitely something I get with a lot of his music, and only his music. It is astonishing to me that this music was created before the Classical and Romantic periods, as it seems to have reached a pinnacle of tonality, at least.
IMHO, it's like the sense of satisfaction you get when you see a complex clockwork mechanism in operation, like Babbage's Difference Engine. This mechanistic quality isn't dry, though. If anything, IMHO, there's a sense of reassurance in it; I like your comment about tonality in Bach, you're feel that you're on steady ground with him as a listener, you can "trust" him; his satisfying moments come from rewarding the listener's expectations far more often than from subverting them. One of his biographers (Forkel, IIRC) mentioned that one of Bach's sons remembered that Bach would enjoy playing a sort of listening game whereby upon hearing the exposition of a fugal piece, he would try to predict how the composer would use the material, and would nudge his son when he'd guessed correctly.
EDIT: Here's the quote from Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach, written in a letter to Forkel:
"When he listened to a rich and many-voiced fugue, he could soon say, after the first entries of the subjects, what contrapuntal devices it would be possible to apply, and which of them the composer by rights ought to apply, and on such occasions, when I was standing next to him, and he had voiced his surmises to me, he would joyfully nudge me when his expectations were fulfilled."
Tfw when you will never be joyfully judged by a titanic musical genius
Yes
I might be biased, been listening to him and Beethoven since I was in utero (it was the 70's 🤷🏻‍♂️)
And fwiw, Beethoven became an absolute ✨fan boy✨ when he found Bach's works in a patron's library. Thought he was the greatest composer ever.
Bach’s music is meticulously crafted from beginning to end. Seems like he didn’t half ass anything.
He sure did sometimes, his craft was just good enough that’s his half-assed music was still good. Unlike Beethoven…
Are you knocking Beethoven's cantatas?
Yes, unlike Beethoven, whose “half-assed music” ended up beloved masterpieces… 🤣🤣🤣🧨🦉
I don’t believe that much in style or era.
I do believe in the harmonic series.
The peak of musical awareness of the harmonic series was Bach around 1720-1740-something.
Everything before and since is a footnote to him.
Can you expand on why it’s 1720-1740?
The best music ever written was by Bach during that time. Sacred cantatas in 1720s in particular, but he didn’t “lose it” until he died, and was writing expert “abstract or scientific” music when he croaked.
and how is that peak awareness of the harmonic series?
Yes, I do.
But why is it astonishing to me that this music was created before the Classical and Romantic periods?
I see mandalas when I listen deeply to Bach. It started when I was a child. I am nonmusical and have no idea what he is doing musically, but I can see it when I shut my eyes. I love the Brandenburg Concertos, especially Voices of Music's interpretation. It is like entering a magical forest to lie back and listen.
Totally! Everything is there. Beethoven is close but it lacks something. I don’t know… Schuberts Impromtus comes close as well… Some of Rameau as well but nothing is as complete as Bach… at least in my experience
I often listen to BWV 232 all in one sitting... almost without moving, from beginning to end... hyperaware of each note and turn of phrase and modulation (because I know it so well, I follow it wherever it takes me: it is a different world than this physical world). Yet my micro reactions to it are somehow always different. And except for Bach, I really don't like choral music! There is something to Bach's music that touches my soul and fires my neurons like nothing I've ever experienced before in my 68 years. I would not think a God might exist if I'd never heard Bach's music. It is almost like the answers to the most unanswerable questions. I think the answers are coded in music, not in words, and that Bach's music is the voice of an all-knowing Being. There were times in my life when the music of Bach was the only reason to keep on living.
All that said, is it necessary to admit that I'm a Bach freak? If you're ever in AZ, look for a raspberry colored Jeep Rubicon with license plate "B A C H". Don't honk tho... just crank up the Bach you're listening to. I'll get it.
When I listen to Bach there is never a time that I feel unsatisfied. I always feel fulfilled from start to finish of every piece, in major or minor key wheras other types of music tend to get boring quickly.