[Pyro7480]

One of the greatest music composers in the history of Western civilization...

[SoFloFreeper]

Ahhh, Bach!

[pissant]

Great composer & great man.

[Lady Eileen]

Bach is my favorite.

[Pyro7480]

Ping on the 320th birthday of J.S. Bach...

[MinstrelBoy]

That's why you don't hit a famous composer. He might hit you Bach.

[SmithL]

...and he doesn't look a day over 179.
; )

[Charles Henrickson]

As a Lutheran pastor, I am very proud that the greatest musician in the history of Western Civilization was a Lutheran church organist.

Tony, this should be a Lutheran ping.

[RayChuang88]

Interestingly, during his lifetime Johann Sebestian Bach was actually disliked by his patrons in what is now eastern Germany despite all the great music J.S. Bach wrote. It wasn't until when composer Felix Mendelssohn performed St. Matthew's Passion in 1829 that people started to recognize Bach's genius.

In those days, composers like Joseph Haydn were far better-known, mostly because his music reached a wide audience.

[dfwgator]

One of the greatest music composers in the history of Western civilization...

Skid Row sucked, no wait, wrong Bach.

[Charles Henrickson]

Here at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, we have an ongoing Bach at the Sem series, with five or six sacred concerts--free, yet of the highest professional quality--every year. The next one will be on Sunday, April 24, at 3:00, when the instrumentalists and singers of the American Kantorei will do the Credo from the Mass in B Minor and the Cantata for Ascension Day.

[Duke Nukum]

Happy Birthday Johann!

I have enjoyed many hours of listening to your compositions and hope to enjoy many more!

[Prophet in the wilderness]

My favorites are : Concerto for 2 violins in D Minor, Allegro.

[PoorMuttly]

Uh-oh. Me thought it was his 319th.

Need another candle for the cake!


I think it may be Brandenburg #4 that has an amazing "blue note" in it, which I find virtually astounding.

I wish you all a happy remembrance of JSB's life, and his glowing human example. How fortunate we are that so much of his work survives for us.

[sassbox]

We had several Bach pieces played at our wedding - he's my husband's favorite composer. DH was raised Lutheran, and grew up hearing lots of Bach played on his church's magnificent old organ. Unfortunately, this church has lately become enamored with "contemporary praise" music and now has a drum set in the sanctuary! Every week, Bach competes for attention with electric guitars. It is very sad :(

[Mr. Jeeves]

What is so profoundly wonderful about Bach's music? For one thing, it is of the people, maybe for its thorough grounding in humanity.

Why do they always let the Marxists write these tributes? What is so profoundly wonderful about Bach's music is melody, something he was just plain better at inventing than any other composer before or since.

[msdrby]

ping

[redgolum]

My bride (a cradle Catholic) is getting quite the musical education at my (LCMS-Lutheran) church when she goes with me. Bach booming from the organ, so powerful you can feel it in your heart. I love his Passion and just wish I could get a good CD of it.

[Billthedrill]

Well, happy B-day! He spent 65 years composing and the next 255 decomposing. (Old joke alert.)

I used to think of them as the rocks stars of their day, but reading the lives of some of these people I'm reminded how very few were actually appreciated in their lifetimes. The Brandenburg Concertos, for example, were a job application that was turned down. An entire movie was made over the fact that Salieri was better-known in his day than Mozart. Brahms, perhaps the best-known brothel piano player in history, was an exception but the lion of his day was somebody named Wagner for reasons that honestly escape me unless they were other than musical, which they probably were.

I suppose it's the price of immortality. It may be that familiarity, or perhaps proximity, breeds contempt. 320 years from now people may be wondering how we could fail to appreciate the genius of Axl Rose.

Or not.

[RightWhale]

I heard that Bach was more of a performer than a writer, that others wote down his compositions as he performed them. He was a genius at improv.

[Diva]

Bach's da man!