You really can never have too much Bach and Mozart in your music collection, can you?
22 responses to “”
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You’ll have to try some other approach if you want to pick a quarrel with me, at least!
But what prompted this posting? Just played a new Bach recording made under Herreweghe’s baton perhaps? -
Listening to Mozart on the way home from work yesterday and on the way to work today. Piano concertos, I’m not even sure which ones because it’s one disk of the complete set and they aren’t in order.
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And as for Bach…?
I’ve been listening to his cantatas mostly for the past few months, rather than the better-known things such as the Brandenburg Concertos, B Minor Mass, St. Matthew Passion, Goldberg Variations, etc. The music of the cantatas is more intimate, for me. One thing that assists that quality is the occasional appearance of tunes (e.g. “Now Thank We All Our God”)that I recognize from church! We use the Evangelical Lutheran Hymnary, published by the small Evangelical Lutheran Synod (not to be confused with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America). It is very traditional, very Lutheran (although we not rarely sing “Just As I Am” as a Communion hymn). -
I haven’t been listening to Bach lately–I included him in that comment because he’s even more essential for me. I don’t suppose I’ve heard more than a couple of dozen of the cantatas over the years–just the ones that contain big hits like Wachet Auf. 🙂 I admit to being a touch impatient with them–they seem to include a certain amount of filler.
I went on a Goldberg Variations kick some months ago, and it hasn’t really gone away, just subsided. -
In short: no.
Particularly Bach. I am attempting to learn a third grade piano piece of Bach’s. -
This is another one I have tried to learn. It is the basis of an Ave Maria which Gounod set to this piece. Gorgeous.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEL2IIkOudg -
And I adore this one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gP7fpdQZ9ZI&feature=related
My 13yo can almost play this now. I’m quite jealous. You would think that since I have nagged her to practice all these years I should be able to play it myself as a result. Life’s not fair. pout -
Found it! This is the one I’m trying to learn:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OmyD-h11G4
Lord, I love Bach. Hope he made it into Protestant Heaven! (a la The Simpsons) -
No, not really!
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Mac, you said that the Bach cantatas seem to have a “certain amount of filler.”
I’m guessing you’re thinking of the recitations. For me, those, these contribute to that approachable or intimate quality that I mentioned, because they speak for how the cantatas were intended for Sunday church services. Some of those services were for high points of the Church Year, some for “ordinary” Sundays; but a service of Word and Sacrament was the context. Obviously few churches would have the choirs and musicians capable of tackling these cantatas, and I suppose Bach wrote them with one specific large church in mind — even with specific singers and instrumentalists in mind.
Still, the cantatas were meant as part of a Lutheran church service. And, as I said, Bach sometimes draws on hymn tunes by earlier composers, tunes that we are still using in our church services today. Just last night, I was listening to the cantata “Erschallet, ihr Lieder” (BWV 172). The music for the chorale is based on a very familiar tune by P. Nicolai. The Church Year focus is familiar, too. There’s thus an appealing combination of greatness and familiarity when I listen to them. -
I’ll have to wait till a little later to watch these videos.
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I’m sure you’re right about the cantatas, Dale. Yes, it’s partly the recitation sections, but as I recall some of the choral sections tend toward the ordinary, too. All perfectly fine for the purpose intended, as you say, but with limited listening time I tend to go for something else.
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I don’t know much about music, but I know enough early modern history to know that Bach was working for two big Lutheran churches in Leipzig, one of which was also used for Catholic services on a time-share basis, and for a Catholic court chapel in Dresden (the Elector of Saxony having converted to Catholicism). Some parts of Post-Westphalian Germany were surprisingly ecumenical.
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I actually sorta like that ukulele one, except that it seems a little out of tune in the higher part. Sounds like a mandolin. Vivaldi has a couple of concertos for mandolin that I really like. They’re sometimes played on guitar and they lose something.
That 5-year-old…amazing but bordering on weird. How did they teach her to do that?!
Congrats, Louise, to you & your children learning any of these. That first prelude is a great example of the fact that music doesn’t have to terribly difficult to be good. -
For me the principal obstacle to really enjoying the cantatas is the German language. I don’t know a word of German — well, except Gusundheit and Blitzkrieg — so I haven’t the foggiest idea what they’re singing about, and lately I haven’t time to sit down with the texts and translations while I’m listening. So I tend not to listen to the cantatas very much.
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His Magnificat is magnificent, and “Meine Seel erhebt den Herren” is basically the Magnificat in German. I can’t help thinking it’s nice that the best music written to venerate Our Lady was written by a Lutheran.
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I usually don’t understand more than half of sung words anyway, even in English, so that doesn’t bother me. Though I do have a smattering of German, that helps more with getting a feel for the connection between sound and meaning as I read the text than with comprehending it without a text.
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Paul, thank you for mentioning the Bach cantata BWV 10. It happens that it is included in what I think is the very latest release in John Eliot Gardiner’s ongoing series from Soli Deo Gloria, reviewed here:
http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2010/May10/Bach_Cantatas_SDG165.htm -
Just now, checking the Soli Deo Gloria site, I see that their next Bach Cantata release includes BWV 180, with Bach’s use of the hymn “Soul, Adorn Thyself with Gladness,” something very familiar to me as a hymn for the Sacrament of the Altar. This release is certainly something to look forward to.
Light On Dark Water 
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