Surprise! It’s Bach!
Some musical escape.
The whole video is interesting, but I find this part especially so:
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Some musical escape.
The whole video is interesting, but I find this part especially so:
Per a great courses course by Robert Greenberg, part of Bach’s employment was as an occasion composer. That is, he had to compose music for weddings, funerals associated with the city or the bishop for whom he was employed. To come up with something which just wasn’t like last week’s event music must have required some lifting from others or revamping of his own works.
Nice. I love that old pop/rock song Whiter Shade of Pale. It is nifty that what Bach wrote as a little blip of a grace note in the third measure of the tune got changed to two 16th notes in the Procol Harum song. (ProCole Haarum says our youtube host.)
I also like the works of his son, PDQ!
Damn right! PDQ FTW! I’m off to compose my breakout Partitas for Garden Hose. Variations on Mariachi theme(s) would be too much like Cultural Appropriation? Asking for a Friend.
The Cambridge Buskers had an even better thing going with their Readers’ Digest approach to the Classical Canon.
I don’t recognize Bach in McCartney’s “Blackbird.” I did wonder how Macca came up with such a special melody.
When I was a teen and the boys in the neighborhood were learning guitar to impress the girls, “Blackbird” was a favorite. (“Little Black Egg” was the other, but that was the one-hit wonder from a local band.)
As Frank was quoted in the current first comment on the YouTube:
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All the good music has already been written by people with wigs and stuff.
–Frank Zappa
Eddie Van Halen’s transcendent “Eruption” jam was based in part on Bach’s “Toccata and Fugue in D Minor”:
–Eddie Van Halen, “Eruption” (Bach excerpt)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ihlygHEcKw
EVH started as a kid playing classical piano.
–“Eddie Van Halen on How He Switched From Kid Classical Pianist to Shredding Axeman”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXM62CQmwDY
My dear mother graduated from college when she was 19 as a music major and pianist and was teaching high school music the month she turned 20, that was in the mid 1920’s and she taught music, played the church organ, judged music contests and continued to take organ lessons up to the year she passed away at 79. She insisted the man who taught her organ lessons be contacted the as soon as possible when she passed away because he was the only person she knew who could play Bach the way she wanted for her funeral which was all Back music. As per her instructions I put a rolled up sheet of Bach music in her hand before her funeral. That lovely woman loved Bach.
Its the electronic Night of the Long Knives on Social Media!!!!!! Walk Away page gone on FB! Parler being deplatformed!
part of Bach’s employment was as an occasion composer. That is, he had to compose music for weddings, funerals associated with the city or the bishop for whom he was employed.
As my Music teacher in an AP Humanities class put it, Bach “wrote a truckload of music.” My Music teacher was both a fine teacher and a fine musician. In his younger days, he played in the big bands, and after teaching high school and college, returned to performing. Not many high school music teachers end up in Leonard Feather’s Encyclopedia of Jazz Musicians, but he did.
Another pop song based on Bach was A Lovers Concerto – The Toys . From the Minuet in G major.
Coincidentally, I saw the “Songs Inspired by Bach” video about a month ago.
Bach is my very favorite. I refer to his Brandenburg Concerto #3 as my “desert island music”. What would you choose if you could only listen to one piece of music?
Gringo,
I am a fan of Leonard’s daughter, Lorraine Feather. Talented and clever.
There are only 12 notes in western music. It’s incredible how composers and musicians have put them to use.
Gringo:
Coincidentally, I’ve been practicing the “Minuet in G Major” the past couple days. I had let my practice go to seed, but part of my response to loss is to return to creative activities.
I’m pleased I remember the first half as well as I do. (Make no mistake, though, I’m quite terrible on the piano.)
Wiki tells me that the Minuet is actually written by Charles Petzold, though it was included in Bach’s famous “Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach.” Anna was his second wife.
That’s some comfort. All this time I thought Anna was Bach’s 8 year-old daughter and I was a dunderhead to have so much trouble playing the Minuet.
That’s easy: Wanda Landowska Goldberg Variations (1945 recording).
Rossalyn Tureck also good. Damn, going to have to hand in my jackboots and ceremonial dagger if I keep on like this.
Quite like the 80s Glen Gould when he slowed down a bit.
Goedel Escher Bach fans will appreciate the Crab Canon on a Moebius Strip:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUHQ2ybTejU
Hey. How about that Little Fugue in g minor — orchestral, organ, piano versions, one after the other, and then in a new round?…. I don’t think I found a harpsichord version up online. (Or else I did not search hard enough.)
@Huxley:
Christian Petzold composed it.
Charles Petzold… You’ve just outed yourself as having taken an unhealthy interest in the Windows API back in the day. Shame!
Saw that name and had all sorts of flashbacks. I’ve still got his Very Heavy Book somewhere.
Zaphod: You got me!
But I didn’t have any choice, when I switched from Mac to Windows programming.
The Windows API was so horrible and hard to figure out. I had several such books. Rector & Newcomer’s “Win32 Programming” was the best.
I got rid of them all in my last move. One of the more technical books recommended listening to Philip Glass’s “Solo Piano” album for intense debugging sessions. I still do that.
I just listened to a comparison of a contemporary Christian “Gloria” with the theme from “My Little Pony.” Same tune! Give me Bach any day.
“Baroque Before Bach: The Lives of 12 Great Italian Composers” – it’s not in the mail because I’m writing it. (A Lockdown inspired book project since there’s nothing of general interest like it in English!)
Jethro Tull Bourree: https://youtu.be/N2RNe2jwHE0
Rufus – that’s one of the nice things about Byzantine chant: it’s microtonal. I get the full spectrum to play with. 🙂
Sharon W – I feel as if I’d pick either one of the Cherubic Hymn versions or a string quartet.
Should I tell the story about how I almost stepped on J. S. Bach’s grave by mistake?