I don’t care for later composers; I love the elegant-yet-complex structure of early/ier music and I have yet to find anyone who can explain to me precisely what I mean by that.
I have a huge mental blind spot when it comes to music theory; I don’t understand a damn thing about it and likely never will, so I can’t put this in actual smart-people words.
But Bach (along with a number of earlier composers) sounds immensely fucking clever, like he’s carrying on a conversation on three different levels at once, and somehow doing counterpoint down the timeline instead of across it, even with an unaccompanied cello.
Whereas your beethovens and mozarts of the world seem to use ten times as much sound and fury, or ten times as many twiddly bits… to say very little at all. If you boiled out all the redundancy, all the structures would collapse and you’d have nothing left over.
If anyone knows what the fuck I’m talking about and is able to translate, I’ll be eternally grateful.
Bach was a baroque composer, you are hearing the difference between baroque and classical music. You are getting at counterpoint used in baroque and homophony used in classical composition. Counterpoint has multiple independent but interrelated voices or musical lines going at once and homophony is basically the opposite where all voices or musical lines move together in a harmonic progression.
I’m super impressed with what you recognize I’ve had to do some digging and reading to even start to hear what you picked up on naturally.
I get what you’re saying! Never was great at music theory either, but Bach indeed uses a lot of techniques in his composing to create the layers you’re referring to, where there is clarity but complexity. Sometimes it’s a melody mirrored or reversed, sometimes it’s the way themes repeat across and within parts, sometimes it’s a well timed key change, but there’s an often mathematical approach to the composition that you don’t find in other composers (or at least, done as well). I find Bach to be a bit boring to play, but it’s like violin comfort food lol.
Bach, definitely.
I don’t care for later composers; I love the elegant-yet-complex structure of early/ier music and I have yet to find anyone who can explain to me precisely what I mean by that.
I have a huge mental blind spot when it comes to music theory; I don’t understand a damn thing about it and likely never will, so I can’t put this in actual smart-people words.
But Bach (along with a number of earlier composers) sounds immensely fucking clever, like he’s carrying on a conversation on three different levels at once, and somehow doing counterpoint down the timeline instead of across it, even with an unaccompanied cello.
Whereas your beethovens and mozarts of the world seem to use ten times as much sound and fury, or ten times as many twiddly bits… to say very little at all. If you boiled out all the redundancy, all the structures would collapse and you’d have nothing left over.
If anyone knows what the fuck I’m talking about and is able to translate, I’ll be eternally grateful.
Bach was a baroque composer, you are hearing the difference between baroque and classical music. You are getting at counterpoint used in baroque and homophony used in classical composition. Counterpoint has multiple independent but interrelated voices or musical lines going at once and homophony is basically the opposite where all voices or musical lines move together in a harmonic progression.
I’m super impressed with what you recognize I’ve had to do some digging and reading to even start to hear what you picked up on naturally.
There’s a reason Bach is on Voyager’s golden record 3 times.
I get what you’re saying! Never was great at music theory either, but Bach indeed uses a lot of techniques in his composing to create the layers you’re referring to, where there is clarity but complexity. Sometimes it’s a melody mirrored or reversed, sometimes it’s the way themes repeat across and within parts, sometimes it’s a well timed key change, but there’s an often mathematical approach to the composition that you don’t find in other composers (or at least, done as well). I find Bach to be a bit boring to play, but it’s like violin comfort food lol.