Lassannn
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11
"Sanctus" from the "Mass in b minor."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wNTNEZYoHg
He had the biggest organ in town.
When he broke in a new organ he would play it with all the stops pulled out for maximum loudness. He called this "testing its lungs." This is where the phrase "pull out all the stops" comes from.
Here is a hand stretching an 11th. Bach and Franz Liszt could stretch a 12th if they wanted, but neither ever wrote music requiring it, since the average man's hand can just manage a 10th. Rachmaninoff could stretch a 13th.
Andre the Giant could have stretched a 16th, but his fingers were so wide he would not have been able to play just one key at a time.
There is, however, no great advantage in being able to stretch a 12th. Beethoven was only 5'3.5" and could just barely manage a 9th. But he played the piano better than anyone else in the world from the time of Mozart's death until Beethoven went deaf. Beethoven never lost a piano duel.
The following fugue was improvised entirely on the spot, and then Bach wrote it down from memory afterward.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUcMX0Pqx04
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsh88GrsY34
If you would like to hear the entire Musical Offering, it lasts about 71 minutes and can be found below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4lwV3IMHMQ
This is essentially a musical palindrome, played here while visualized on a mobius strip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUHQ2ybTejU
The Art of the Fugue was his "exploration in depth of the contrapuntal possibilities inherent in a single musical subject."
He wanted his final work to be sacred, so he composed a chorale prelude:
"Before your throne I now appear, O God, and bid you humbly, turn not your gracious face from me, a poor sinner. Confer on me a blessed end. On the last day awaken me, Lord, that I may see you eternally: amen, amen, hear me."
The final page of "The Art of the Fugue." The music is in Bach's handwriting. Then he went blind.
The inscription was written by Bach's son, Carl Phillip Emanuel: "At the point where the composer introduces the name BACH [for which the English notation would be B♭–A–C–B♮] in the countersubject to this fugue, the composer died."
Those pieces are:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TlWfPS4XI0https
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TlWfPS4XI0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkNzx7hXu_U
Hotsauceman
I read some of these to my wife. She is a musician. She knew most of them which is funny to me.
ukalliq
Six Sonatas and Partitas is considered the BIBLE of violin And the cello suites for the cello. Always something new to learn from them.
Porfirij
to me, bach is undeniably the goat. without any hesitation, and despite the wealth of amazing geniuses that classical music has produced. beethoven and mozart complete the podium. hardly a spicy take, ofc, but considering their body of work, their influence, their innovations, i fully agree with the mainstream take on this. debussy, mahler, stravinsky, wagner, brahms, chopin, tchaikovsky... and so many more are all great shouts, but bach is untouchable imo.
nurmich
roninjedi87
Thank you for this, I died.
HelgavonLichtenstein
Bach wasn't even Leipzig's top pick for organist. They wanted George Phillip Telemann, then Christoph Graupner. https://www.bach-cantatas.com/Topics/Leipzig-Competition.htm
zeacorzeppelin10
His organ works as well as the "the well tempered Clavier" are the best works for keyboards. The well tempered Clavier covers all of the keys in two books equalling 4 hours of music.
dwideschrewd
Growing up I had a teacher who is a very talented musician but organ is his favorite instrument. He made the whole school celebrate Bach’s birthday every year
Zalm
Toccata and Fugue in D minor is still to this day my absolute favorite classical piece. Utter perfects, start to finish.
pdp1
Minuet in G was officially credited as a Bach piece all the way until 1990. In 1979 it was discovered that Bach heard the song, originally by a composer and his friend, Petzold, and jotted it down in his notebook as a gift for his wife and as a music lesson to teach his kids. While the evidence was discovered in 1979, it wasn’t officially recognized as Petzold’s piece, not Bach’s, until 1990. Here’s a link to the song, I’d wager you’d have heard it before https://youtu.be/icZob9-1MDw
UnrealEstates
Ahh, the music from Electric Dreams. :)
schoolfreak32
I also remember it from "Electric Dreams" (1984).
3Davideo
And ever since he's been decomposing
Sechran
#5 - Bach be like
LuminoZero
Knew a priest who LOVED music. I head him say once: "Beethoven gave us God's fire. Mozart gave us God's laughter. Bach gave us the ability to pray without words."
phalanxausage
My grandparents' priest had that on a sign in his office. I love that quote.
BeaverOnFire
He is actually my great great (many greats) grandfather. 🤔
unremarkableasterisk
Be sure sure to like, comment, share, and check bach for more fun music facts!
JustAName00
#4 I've walked that many miles in less than a day just for a paycheck.
IronMagnus
In the "Omnes generationes" movement from his Magnificat BWV 243, the text "Omnes, omnes generationes" (which is the only text in the movement and means "all the generations" ) is intentionally repeated 41 times across the 5 voice parts, and then again one last time homophonically for the entire chorus, for a total of 42 which symbolizes the number of generations from Abraham to Jesus.
Baskaa
Well, I've just added a new station in Pandora.
J3lek
Johann Sebastian Bach is the new Chuck Norris meme?
HandoB4Javert
JimmyWalkerTexasRanger
I'm good with that. https://media1.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPWE1NzM3M2U1bDV3Y2g0cHdkbmxmYjF6YTRhODMyZWtheWxjM3F2dWQwdzZlYmxxaiZlcD12MV9naWZzX3NlYXJjaCZjdD1n/ChmEWOL7Vaz5u/200w.webp
Haemaelaeinen
I would much rather Bach to that fucking turd of a man.
stupidfstick
Came here to say that!
ElusiveThing
#6 With the middle finger presumably aimed at his critics.
LexiconDul
J.S., Brahms, Rachmaninoff, Haydn, and Beethoven are tied for my 5 favorite classical composers. Chopin runner up.
Sloloem
One of my favorite things about Bach is that we don't know how all his music should actually sound. Modern keyboards are tuned to equal temperament which makes all keys sound alike but didn't become mainstream until after Bach. Bach grew up on meantone temperaments which improved on earlier tunings by making all but 2-3 keys usable, but every key sounded different depending on which of several methods of well-tempering was used. Bach never wrote down how he tuned.
ActionJohnnie
Baby got Bach
rmx256
Leipzig face with a Baden booty
HillOfBeans
I started my day with a cup of coffee and this post. May I just say a hearty fuck yeah, Lassannn. Listening to some of the links really made me smile.
tinyfootprints
With that many kids, clearly he had mastered his organ.
newphonewhoodis
#9 sorry if this is a stupid question, but couldn’t you just make the keys a bit smaller to stretch a 12th easier?
Were key sizes standardized at that time?
RyvaTheRenamon
Each key lines up with a hammer that strikes the chords of a piano, inside of it. There's only so much space inside, so each key is generally rather similar in size to another piano. Size equals the sound for most stringed instruments, as well as percussion ones, so the sizes are generally always the same, though there are smaller pianos than a say, "Grand" piano. But they wouldn't sound the samee.
phalanxausage
I can think of no instances where a pianist is required to stretch a 12th, so that would be solving a problem that doesn't exist. I'm a former cello player, not a pianist, so I don't know the literature well enough to make an absolute statement. As with anything involving muscle memory, consistent spacing is very important.
Whoisthisdoctorwho2000
20 children.... yes he was a master of more than 1 organ
Meltemi
AyatollahBahloni
SnarfyMcSnarferson
No Einaudi, sad
NuclearGradeIrony
But with a significant downgrade on Mozart.
AyatollahBahloni
It appears that redditor r/NeokratosRed is the creator, whoever posted the trimmed version tried to "upgrade" Mozart according to their own impressions.
Hotsauceman
#20 my wife and I didn’t know that. I want to buy the record
AyrA
If you don't mind a used copy, ozma records made a full set a few years ago that sold out, but maybe you can find a used copy of it for sale somewhere
Lassannn
Let me go get it. brb
alcamar
I don't think they'll be delivering in the neighborhood anytime soon 😂
Hotsauceman
SOLD OUT??!!
Septcanmat
Even if you could find a copy the price would be astronomical, but the record is truly out of this world.
HillOfBeans
VinchVolt
jokes aside, the audio content has been the subject of multiple commercial releases over the years, since the nature of record production means they had to have a tape on hand to cut the disc. https://www.discogs.com/master/894931-Various-The-Sounds-Of-Earth (do note that the first entry on this page's list is the copy that was shot out into space; the rest are the commercial editions)
DukeDarkwood
Apparently, twelve copies of the Golden Record were made, two of which are on the Voyager probes. Eight are in museums or space institutions, and the last two are missing.
As they are made of gold-plated copper, I really doubt the lost two are intact; both metals are well-known for their intrinsic value and use in electronics. And that's assuming they didn't get damaged through some other means, whether mishandling, exposure, or wherever they were hidden falling in on them... who knows!?
Yakeshinu
Ok, +1 for the information, but I'd argue that the significance of the objects themselves would far exceed the few hundred (maybe) $$ of the raw materials.
But yeah, gold and copper are quite malleable & have relatively low melting points, so physical damage wouldn't take much. Gold is nearly impervious to chemical damage (aqua regia and elemental Hg come to mind as exceptions), but other than a chem lab I doubt exposure would be a problem. :)
cosonfused
#13 the link has comments from imgur from 11 years ago.
HillOfBeans
I only get the image.
rolliefingers
#1 How do we know how much of his music survived?
somnif
There were lists of his works published when he was alive, and shortly after. And we know what we still have around.
ukalliq
He spent much of his career writing weekly church music. So if a church recorded that he wrote cantata X on bible passage Y, yet that piece is not extant in the literature, we know it is missing.
rolliefingers
Thanks for this clear and informative reply.
Lassannn
Rough estimate based on letters describing works that have not survived for posterity. Every now and then a heet of music is discovered in some European library and turns out to be music he wrote tha no one knew about. His wife sold a lot of it to pay the bills after his death. Many sheets of paper went to butchers who wrapped meat with it.
rolliefingers
Fuck!
Lassannn
Yeah that last part is like the one historical fact that pisses me off the absolute most.
mremaknu
knowing how many random doodles I've thrown away over the course of my life, I shudder to think about the ones thrown away by artists a billion times more incredible than I have ever been or will ever be.
RyvaTheRenamon
It's unfortunately an extremely common thing in history. People often genuinely do not understand the significance of their own work, and many important things are lost to time, stuffed away in a drawer or burned for warmth, or in this case, wrapped around a pork loin.
RyvaTheRenamon
Also of course, fuck you Lassannn