Bach is Better than Brahms
May 18, 2007
by Michael
I would have defended this statement with incommensurate vigor in any case, but now I have real authority. This article was by turns very interesting and very depressing, but I won't dwell on the depressing elements at the moment. One of the more interesting bits was the following quote from Brahms himself, speaking of Bach's astounding Chaconne, from the second Partita for solo violin:
On one stave, for a small instrument, the man writes a whole world of the deepest thoughts and most powerful feelings. If I imagined that I could have created, even conceived the piece, I am quite certain that the excess of excitement and earth-shattering experience would have driven me out of my mind.
There you go: Brahms recognizes himself incapable of even comprehending what it must be like to create something as good as Bach's greatest pieces. The Chaconne, of course, is only one of many, many incomparable masterpieces by the magnificent Bach, who, far from driven insane by his creativity, was really a very workmanlike genius, sane enough to produce hundreds of hours of excellent music in addition to the dozens of hours of some of the greatest music ever composed, as well as twenty children, and keep up his virtuosic skill in several instruments, without ever throwing himself over a cliff or drinking himself to death or cutting off an ear or anything tortured Romantic genuises are supposed to do.
My first musical love was Mozart. Then, as a teenager, I was much enamored of Romantic music (and poetry)--especially the great Requiem Masses and violin concertos of the nineteenth century. I didn't begin listening to a lot of Baroque music until college, when I really discovered Bach. Now it's almost difficult to listen to anything later.
Comments
On May 18 at 2'43 PM
, Martin Marks wrote:
If you’re expecting a big argument on this point, I can’t imagine who you’d get one from.
On May 18 at 2'52 PM
, patrick findler wrote:
I had a strange experience last month, after listening to very little music besides various throat-singing styles, coming back to an album (mostly acoustic guitar and two voices, poppy songs) I had liked very much last time I heard it, I found it almost unlistenable at first. How can they stand to hear themselves, I thought, why won’t they pay more attention to their harmonics?! It seemed so sloppy, so juvenile of them not to take care of their overtones. I was annoyed, and almost physically pained, not to mention ashamed for them. Thankfully, I am now readjusted.
On May 18 at 2'55 PM
, patrick findler wrote:
Oh, and I do know someone who prefers Brahms to Bach, but I think in part because she prefers music she can think is silly to music with less, ah, personality. (In the negative sense of the word.)
On May 18 at 3'59 PM
, Erika wrote:
I was taken with Brahms at Tanglewood last year, but didn’t get around to listening to much afterwards. Bach on the other hand is a staple.
Still, I get the feeling sometimes when people talk about Bach that there’s something I’m not quite getting. He’s my favorite composer, but I don’t see the universe in him the way Brahms describes it. I think while I enjoy classical music, and spent years learning to play the cello, I still lack certain elements of the language, it doesn’t speak to me as deeply as it speaks to some. Sometimes (like with some Beethoven) it doesn’t speak to me at all. Which is slightly disappointing. Ah well.
On May 19 at 1'42 PM
, Michael Sullivan wrote:
Mr Marks,
It’s not that I expected a big argument necessarily, although I too have had arguments with a not-to-be-named party on this point. On the other hand, he may have simply been trying to get my goat (he succeeded).
But while stirring up controversy can be fun, there’s another pleasure in giving a polemical declamation which commands universal agreement.
Maybe I’ll do a series of posts in the style __ is better than __ , and see which ones cause fights and which don’t. Could be fun.