Pleasant Stuff, for a Change: It's about the "GOAT"!
Yay! Finally!
He’s only been my fav classical music composer ever since that double violin concerto on a German record (borrowed from the local Goethe House) first thrilled my teenage ears, heart and mind. Here’s a genteel rendition of that composition’s First Movement:
(HERE is my previous post waxing poetic about this work.)
He was a real “genius” in ways that many of us still cannot comprehend.
He also apparently said that playing any musical instrument is easy:
"It's easy to play any musical instrument: all you have to do is touch the right key at the right time and the instrument will play itself."
Haha, yeah, right, Mr Bach! As a pathetically untalented and undisciplined yet ambitious piano player myself, I keep wishing that Bach were really right about this — but the reality is just too sad to contemplate!
Also, most admirers never even acknowledge that Bach wrote not for himself (unlike our famous pop and rock stars) — but did so for the glory of God (he was a Lutheran). He signed his pieces, 'Soli Deo Gloria' (To the Glory of God Alone). Little wonder his music has had universal appeal over the many centuries past through today, and will continue to attract people of generations yet to be born.
(Note that musicians in those days were treated little more than kitchen servants, their employ at risk of termination at the whim of their benefactors. No less than Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart experienced such humiliations at, for instance, the hands (or ‘foot’?) of his patron, the Salzburg Archbishop, Count Colloredo.
Back to the main point, then:
Here’s a neat and quick summing-up on how Bach’s music has influenced so many famous pop and rock musicians in our day.