(NOTE: The embedded video won’t work, but you can click on the link above or below to hear the music!).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHMJFhJNycM
Few people have had as much impact on Western music as J.S. Bach, and in many ways he is the father of modern orchestral music. Born in Eisanach in 1685, Bach spent most of his life working as an organist and Kapellmeister around Germany. He also composed a bit too… in fact he composed quite a lot. And his influence on modern composition is unparalleled.
To really understand Bach’s influence we have to look back to the origins of Western music. Much of the development of modern music started in the Church, where monks would sing religious verses in small choirs (now known as Gregorian Chant). The music itself was simple and plain and, importantly, it was nearly exclusively monophonic. “Monophonic” means that all the singers sang the same melody at the same time and in the same rhythm. In short – everybody sang in unison. The resulting sound is beautiful but basic and very limited.
Now, imagine a piano. If you play a melody with one finger, you’re achieving something similar to those early chants. But, if you play two notes at the same time, things begin to get more complex. Suddenly you’re taking a melody and adding a harmony to it – which turns monophony into homophony.
Harmony was a major development in modern music and is fundamental to musical composition. It expanded the communicative ability of music hugely, and is one of the bedrocks of modern music theory. But things got even more complex. Imagine yourself back at that piano again; your right hand plays one melody, but this time your left hand is playing another independent melody. Different tones, different rhythms. This turns homophony into polyphony. And this is where we arrive at Bach…
Bach was by no means the first person to understand or use polyphony. But it’s fair to say nobody before Bach really took it to such extremes. Bach was a fantastic organist and keyboard player, and his work in various churches (which was one of the few places to find paid work as a musician and/or composer) gave him access to hundreds of old chants and religious melodies. This gave Bach the chance to study a great amount of composition and, importantly, expand on it.
So Bach started toying around with these melodies. He’d add additional notes, change keys, move melodies about, slow them down, speed them up, turn them upside down and inside out. And he got so good at this he started to do it all… at the same time.
Bach didn’t create the fugue but he probably understood and intellectualised it more than anybody else before him. Without getting too technical, a fugue is when somebody takes a melody (also called a theme) and then adds one or more voices to that melody, playing counter-melodies that run alongside the original theme. But it gets even more complex; these themes and counter-themes can then be slowed down, sped up, turned in all different directions. It’s an incredibly technical exercise and truly amazing invention of Western music – and nobody could write a better fugue than Bach in his day. Not only were his fugues technically brilliant but, most importantly, they were good music too.
When you listen to this fugue you’ll hear the first melody played on its own (as all fugues start). But then listen, that melody starts again, but lower down. And as that melody starts, the original higher voice continues to play new music over the first melody, so that now there are two “voices” singing in harmony. But then a third voice enters, playing the melody further in the bass whilst the upper voices continue with additional material – and on it goes. If you’re into music theory and design then Bach’s fugues are technically brilliant, ornate and mind-blowingly well designed. To be able to keep 3 or 4 individual voices going at once, each singing alone and yet in perfect harmony with those around it, is a feat few can manage. Furthermore, of those that can manage it, few can do it well enough to make the music emotional and interesting at the same time.
And therein lies Bach’s genius. More than any other before (and perhaps since) he was able to expand on and enrich the theory of modern music; quantifying and codifying the musical developments around him and basically coming up with a masterclass of modern harmony and polyphony. But more importantly than his technical brilliance, Bach was a wonderful composer with an ear for melody and a heart that had something to say. He’s the musical equivalent of Albert Einstein or Stephen Hawking, perhaps: a man that was technically brilliant enough to push the boundaries, and yet never lost sight of why he was doing so in the first place.
letsfugue 