Johann Sebastian Bach was one of the greatest geniuses ever alive. The true extent of his creativity, however, can only be grasped when going beyond the sublime tragedy of his passions and the deep faith of his cantatas, to discover the playful joy of his dances and orchestra suites as well. In the famous Goldberg Variations, every third piece is a canon. If the follower plays the melody backwards, doubles or halves the notes of the leader, while the latter undauntedly strides ahead, various canons can be heard simultaneous
The only authentic portrait of the great composer adorns the walls of the Old Townhall in the trade fair city of Leipzig – kitty-corner from St. Thomas Church where Bach served as director of church music for 27 years – and shows him holding a musical manuscript of his mysterious canon for six voices. Bach himself is believed to have been the model for the oil painting, which in turn served as a model for the monument in front of the church.
The text and the poems in this post are excerpts from the book “Art Château, Vol. 2 – Vernissage with Ice Wine“.
Musical Witnesses of Tremendous Creative Power
In the Protestant environment of his home, his initial interest centered around the organ. His masterful heritage, however, stands out mainly due to his Brandenburg Concertos, the Well-Tempered Clavier, the Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue, the French and English Suites, the Italian Concerto, and The Art of the Fugue. Without conforming to conventional tastes, Bach’s brilliant improvisations clearly put him ahead of his time, laying the groundwork for modern instrumental music. His sonatas for violin and cello demand a lot from listeners, as they lack the distractions usually offered by other instruments or melodies. In their purity of sound, they evoke associations of exotic birdsong.
No other composer, not even Mozart wrote as much timeless music in such a short time as Bach during his first years in Leipzig. Even the dogmatic ties of Christianity were easy for him to cast off, as he was not afraid to turn cantatas into festive pieces. He was an exceptional inventor of melodies. The “Jauch-zet, Frohlo-cket!” (“Christians be joyful!”) of his Christmas Oratorio rings in the Holiday season with cheers and joy. When for Christmas and New Year’s 1723, Bach presented a series of cantatas and other festive music, it must have seemed to the congregation like the music was descending straight from the Heavens. This was also the occasion at which his magnificent Sanctus in D-major premiered, which was performed again for Easter 1724. After Bach had used his reservoir of cantatas to create festive masterpieces like St. Matthew’s and St. John’s Passion, the New Year’s Cantata and the Christmas Oratorio, he stopped composing cantatas in 1729, save for a few later exceptions including the Coffee Cantata and a few birthday cantatas, and became head of the Collegium Musicum at Leipzig University now known to be the predecessor of the world-famous Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra.
The abstract works Bach composed in his later days have baffled musicians and researchers alike, but nevertheless fascinated them with their unusual canonic and contrapuntal inventions, as well as the expert polyphony of their fugues. Although Bach wrote a lot of church music and possessed extensive knowledge of the Bible, in a religious sense, he is thought to have been more of an opportunist than a fanatic. He seems to have preferred his job as a town musician to that of director of church music at St. Thomas. To him, it was all about the quality of a composition meant to reflect creation. In this way, he inspired Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations and motivated artists like Braque, Kandinsky, Kokoschka, Adalbert Stifter, Johannes Itten, and Paul Klee to create visual artworks infused with the magic of music.
Sources: Please see the authors, poet and bibliography in the above link to the online book (imprint at the end of the book)!