A strange line in a piece on sacred music.
Where Beethoven composed for eternity, Bach was a hired gun, concerned day-to-day with writing a banger for church on Sunday and providing for his huge family – 20 children from two marriages (his first wife died in 1720). We can guess, because Bach was hopeless at preserving the music of predecessors at his many postings, that he probably did not expect anyone to keep a record of his.
Bach wrote music of eternal beauty for all of that -- as well as some 'bangers,' as they say.
I have mixed feelings about the article. Criticism of public figures, especially those long dead is fair game, certainly, and I don't want to venture into territory that sounds like I am saying "How dare you criticise someone as great as Bach, you fool!" But I can't shake the feeling that he is complaining that JSB did not organise his life in a way that Hebblethwaite thinks he should have, without much evidence that it was actually an inferior way to go. Life presents us with choices and we make them. But exactly what choices are on the table is not always easily visible to those outside our skin.
ReplyDeleteSounds like an interesting article, but I'm not subscribing.
ReplyDeleteAVI has a point: Hebbelthwaite's sneering at Bach's 20-child family is disgusting, but expected from certain quarters.
ReplyDeleteHowever, H does have a half-point. JSB's organ and clavier output is not particularly inspiring when compared with his output for voices. It seems that JSB was very good when text was in the mix, and not so much when there was no text. That should not come as a surprise, by the way.
I've always considered Bach as more of a vocal composer than clavier, although I love his organ compositions. Some are better than others, granted, but the way he uses weaves the parts into a whole fascinates me. [Full disclosure: I'm an organist as well as vocalist. YMMV] There are contemporaries of his who did better, but his organ works hold a special place in the repertoire.
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