You all knew it would happen eventually: the most superfluous thread ever made for this board. The greatest contrapuntal genius of all time. I've heard it said that, while among the public there are Mahler cults, Sibelius cults, and Brahms cults, there is among the composers a Bach cult. Not to say there isn't a Bach cult among the public, it's just that the great composers all worshiped the guy. It is genuinely worthless to try singling out some of his greatest pieces; if you pick out about any five of the more than one thousand published works, I will guarantee that at least three, if not all, will be masterpieces.

Although *cough, cough* the B minor Mass is considered to be the greatest and most perfect composition ever written in history, not to mention the Art of Fugue, Goldberg Variations, several hundred choral works, preludes, solo violin sonatas, solo cello suites, violin concerti, transcriptions of other peoples' work, harpsichord concerti, Well-Tempered Clavier....

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"Aufersteh'n, ja aufersteh'n
wirst du, mein Herz, in einem Nu!
Was du geschlagen
zu Gott wird es dich tragen!"
-Gustav Mahler

Johann who?

Before idolizing the Great Man, one should read Theodor W. Adorno's equally famous essay, "Bach Defended Against His Devotees."

Sebastian Bach, either the font on your computer is broken or you just can't read.

You either need the text to be supplemented with emoticons, pictures, etc. to put something in context, or you just don't have a sense of humour!

And in case you didn't get that: I'm angry.

Now,now Girls don't get bitchy, the big guy may be watching you

Soooo... ignoring the catfight...

Bach's music has a power that stretches beyond his time. The Baroque is my least favorite era, but I will always listen to Bach's wonderful keyboard, orchestral, choral, etc. works above those of many Romantic and modern composers.

Incidentally, one of my favorite books is Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstader. It's a nonfiction work which draws connections between philosophic logic, phenomenology, and the ethics of artificial intelligence within a musical-visual artistic-mathematical context. A truly fantastic work, which, for classical music lovers, offers some great new insights into Bach's fugues. BTW, the other two title figures are the mathematician Kurt Gödel (of Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem) and the great surreal artist M.C. Escher (known for his optical illusions).

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Take a look at the Bandit's blog, The Classical Corner.

LOL, opus67 ...

He read it ... 99% of the musical world, and especially Opus67, knows exactly who and what JS Bach is ... I took the comment to be quite humorous, and so did most everyone else ... ... JS Bach enjoyed a good laugh, too.

Which 'big guy'? Johann?

Sorry, that was supposed to be funny? sorry, i didn't know, it just didn't seem like a joke....

that's creepy, is he one of those people who frequently appears on "To Catch a Predator"? and you know him, creepy.

If you'll forgive the digression, this reminds me of an anecdote concerning Toscanini and Lauritz Melchior. It was written that Melchior was one of those rare people who had a chance of stilling a "Toscanini tantrum." At Bayreuth, Toscanini was "on the boil" and Melchior looked at him, held his forefinger to his lips, and pointed his other forefinger skyward. The implication was not only "God is watching," but (because it was Richard's house) "Wagner is watching"... and die alte sturm subsided.

O.K.: back to Bach- popularizer commentator Phil Goulding placed Bach at the very top of his list, with a comment something like (I'm working from memory here): 'regardless of the composition, he was constitutionally incapable of indifferent workmanship.' That's a singular achievement, if you think about it. Beethoven had his "Battle Symphony." My beloved Wagner had his "Centennial March." In the last century, a symphonic titan like Shostakovich had... well... he had a lot of stuff that did his reputation no favors. For high art in all of the forms which he essayed, one could say that Bach stands alone.

Where's Azathoth when you need her?

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The hardest knife ill us'd doth lose his edge. Shakespeare- Sonnet 95

Not to mention moving us towards equal-temprament tuning so that Wagner and the other late romantics and 20th century composers could modulate early and often. Or stop modulating because there isn't a tonal center. Whichever.

Totally agreed. Bach is god.

My favorite thing about Bach is almost no one cared for him when he was around. Aside from the Brandenburg Concertos (or "Concerti") almost all of this other work was for his church position or for personal enjoyment. The man was one of the finest architects of music that has ever existed and his importance can never be understated.

I think it's rather odd that of the 14 posts on this thread, about half or more were about a "catfight" or utterly sarcastic remarks... oh well.

I still like his Chaconne above many other pieces, although his fugues are beyond genius.