The legacy of J S Bach

“That’s my tribute to Johann Sebastian Bach”, said my friend Steven, and it was soon quite clear what he meant. This was a school friend of mine who had a passion for jazz and was also very good with the paintbrush and easel.

The painting he was showing me was an abstract piece, a mass of whirls of colour, but each whirl was painted in a framework bounded by straight lines. Movement and vivacity were strictly controlled and related to each other, just as in a piece of music by Bach, where the time structures and rhythms control the beast that is trying to escape. I mentioned above that Steven was a jazz enthusiast, and is noticeable how Bach’s legacy has affected the world of jazz every bit much as it has influenced what we laughingly refer to as “serious” music.

Counterpoint

Bach was the ultimate master of harmony and counterpoint, especially the latter. Counterpoint is about how two or more themes, or melodies, can have a separate existence but sound even better when played at the same time.  That is what the best jazz musicians do brilliantly; one player starts off a tune and another improvises a countering tune that sometimes runs with the first one, sometimes against it, but always achieving a balance that enhances the whole performance.  It’s a good metaphor for life; do your own thing, but listen to what the other guy is up to. Together you will produce something that is far better than either of you could manage alone.

Fugue

Bach’s particular genius was a form of counterpoint called Fugue, which is at heart a very old musical form in which the same theme is repeated by different musicians, or singers, but at different times.  A “round” is a sort of fugue, whereby a simple four-line song, such as “London Bridge is Falling Down” is started by one group and a second group starts just as the first group is starting the second line, then a third group joins in, and so on.

Fugue reached its apotheosis with Bach, which is not surprising given that Bach was a genius at the organ, which, with its multiple keyboard manuals, plus foot pedals, is the ideal instrument for fugue, especially as each manual can be given its own characteristics through combinations of stops that affect the tone. 

Indeed, one of Bach’s greatest works, although little heard in its entirety, unfinished though it was, is “The Art of Fugue”, in which a single tune is taken and re-presented in hundreds of different ways. Again, the legacy of this is found in jazz, and also in the “theme and variations” style of musical work that many later composers have taken forward; Elgar’s “Enigma Variations” owes a lot to Bach.

One interesting aspect of the final part of The Art of Fugue is a four-note motif that spelled the letters of his own name, because in German musical notation B is B flat and H is B natural. Many later works by other composers have used the same theme as a tribute to him.

Probably Bach’s best known fugue is the second part of the Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, written for organ, which has been heard at countless weddings and has also found its way into film and rock music, video games and ring tones.

However, in one sense it could be said that Bach’s perfection at fugue marked an end rather than a beginning.  Bach’s was the last word on fugue, as nobody could do it better. Sonata form now took over, as Baroque became Classical and the Romantics followed on.

His greatest works?

Summarising Bach’s legacy in a short article is an impossibility, as there was a lot more to him than just fugue. He was a profoundly religious man, and some of the greatest sacred works of all time came from his pen. Apart from writing a cantata (short oratorio) for virtually every day of the year, and huge amounts of organ music, he also produced such stupendous choral works as the St Matthew Passion, the St John Passion and the Mass in B Minor, the latter despite his staunch Protestantism.

And let’s not forget the Brandenberg Concertos, the Goldberg Variations, the Musical Offering, the Air on the G String, the Well-Tempered Clavier, the cello suites, and much, much more.

Other legacies

One fascinating aspect of Bach is his influence on styles of music which only emerged centuries later. A noted example would be the a cappella group The Swingle Singers who produced albums entitled “Jazz Sebastian Bach” and “Back to Bach”.

The Moog synthesizer was used to great effect by Wendy Carlos on her (it was “his” at the time) 1968 album “Switched-On Bach”, which was the first of several albums with similar names.

Bach themes have appeared in a number of songs by pop and rock bands, most notably Procul Harem’s 1967 “A Whiter Shade of Pale” (although this is a case of inspiration rather than direct copying).

Another sort of legacy left by Bach was produced jointly with his two wives (not married at the same time!), namely a crop of sons who each made their own mark on European music, although none could hope to rise to their father’s achievements. The Bach dynasty included Johann Christian (the “English Bach”) and Carl Philip Emmanuel, both of whose works are still heard today.

In compiling a list of the ten greatest composers of all time, problems arise as to who to include and who to leave out. It would be hard to imagine a list that did not include J. S. Bach.

© John Welford

The death of Mozart, 1791

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart died on 5^th December 1791, two months short of his 35^th birthday. The output of brilliant music throughout his life had been phenomenal, and he died with one of his greatest works, his “Requiem”, still unfinished. The work we have today was completed, based on Mozart’s notes, by one of his pupils, Franz Süssmayr.

Cause of death

Mozart had started feeling ill earlier in the year and had gone through phases of illness followed by partial recovery. He suspected that he would not survive and made remarks to the effect that the Requiem was being written as much for himself as for his anonymous commissioner.

He also hinted that he might have been poisoned, and the finger of suspicion was pointed at a fellow composer, Antonio Salieri, with whom Mozart had not always been on the best terms. However, there is absolutely no evidence to support this claim and it seems highly unlikely as a cause of death.

If Mozart had been poisoned it could have been at his own hand, through self-medication using over-strong preparations that included antimony.

However, there have been many speculations as to the cause of Mozart’s death, one of the stronger possibilities, due to consistencies with the symptoms, being that he was suffering from a subdural haematoma, or a bleed on the brain. The practice of bloodletting, which was a common treatment at the time for many illnesses, may also have been a contributory factor.

A “pauper’s grave”

Another myth surrounding Mozart’s death was that he was buried in a common pauper’s grave and thus not given the recognition that was his due. This claim needs to be put into its proper context.

There were two methods of burial available in Vienna at the time, the “common” method being that which applied to everyone who was not an aristocrat. It did not involve the body being tipped into a mass grave, as might be assumed, but it did mean that a body could be removed from a grave after ten years to make room for a new one. As it happened, Mozart’s skull was exhumed in 1801, ten years after its burial, and there have been conflicting claims over whether it still exists.

Whatever the cause of Mozart’s death, it clearly happened at far too young an age. The world was almost certainly denied a wealth of great music that one of its greatest ever composers never got to write.

© John Welford

Frederic Chopin, Poland's best-known composer

1^st March 1810 was the day on which Fryderyk Franciszek Szopen was born in the village of Zelezowa Wola, which is about 30 miles from Warsaw, Poland. He was to have a glittering, albeit short, career as a virtuoso pianist and composer, but the world knows him by the French version of his name, which is Frédéric Chopin.

There was French blood in him anyway, because his father was an émigré from France who made sure that Frédéric was given as French an education as possible at the local lycée.

Frédéric showed early promise as a pianist, being brought to the attention of Prince Radziwill when only eight years old. It was Prince Radziwill who introduced Chopin to Paris society when the latter was 20, and that was the last he saw of Poland. He had, however, already made his mark as a composer of works for the piano before his move to France.

Chopin became part of the artistic life of Paris, being feted wherever he went, although the number of concerts he gave was relatively small. He was much admired for his dashing good looks, not least by the baroness and writer Aurore Dudevant, who wrote under the name George Sand. The couple had a passionate relationship that lasted for eleven years.

Chopin’s health was far from robust, and he died from tuberculosis in October 1849 at the age of 39. He left behind a wealth of brilliant compositions that have always been popular. Although he could write for instruments other than the piano, for example in his two highly popular piano concertos, he never wrote anything that was not, wholly or in part, for the piano.

© John Welford

Henri Murger and "La Boheme"

1^st February 1896 saw the first production, in Turin, of Giacomo Puccini’s opera “La Bohème”. The opera was an immediate hit and has continued to be so ever since. The story of poverty-struck artists and writers living on their wits in Paris, and the love affair between one of them and a neighbouring seamstress who is dying of consumption, is a real tear-jerker, helped enormously by some of Puccini’s best-loved music.

Puccini got his plot from a play called “La Vie de Bohème” by Henri Murger, who had based the play on his own set of stories entitled “Scènes de la Vie de Bohème”.

Henri Murger (see photo) was born in 1822 and died in 1861 at the age of only 39. He earned a living of sorts from writing poetry but never made any money by so doing – very few poets ever do! However, he was enthralled by the life of 19^th century Paris and appreciated the freedom it offered to writers, artists and musicians to live in unconstrained and unconventional ways, which is what the word “bohemian” means – it was believed at the time that gypsies came from Bohemia (modern-day Czech Republic) and their independent lifestyle became the inspiration for other like-minded people.

Henri Murger did much better for himself by writing about his fellow bohemians, who rejected bourgeois values and chose artistic freedom even at the price of poverty and poor health. His stories attracted the attention of other writers who were much more talented than he was, hence the later adaptations by Puccini and others, and also brought him fame and fortune towards the end of his short life.

No doubt Henri Murger would have enjoyed seeing “La Bohème” had he lived long enough. The main character Rudolfo, who sings “Your tiny hand is frozen” to Mimi, was based on Murger’s Rudolphe, a poet, who is clearly a self-portrait.

© John Welford