10. 5 - Bach's Posthumous Reputation

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Introdução à Música Clássica

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Yale University

Introdução à Música Clássica

1442 classificações

Using a simple and enjoyable teaching style, this course introduces the novice listener to the wonders of classical music, from Bach fugues to Mozart symphonies to Puccini operas.

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The Baroque Era

Novelists, poets, painters, mathematicians, and even geologists talk about "fugue-like" structure in their media and disciplines. But what is a fugue and how did we get it? To find out, we enter the world of Baroque music and famed master of the fugue, Johann Sebastian Bach. First, we'll get a chance to "live" during the Baroque period by taking a detailed look inside the life, career, and even home of Bach-- explore where and how Bach and his family lived, discuss Bach’s music, and talk about the techniques of Baroque music as a whole. Next, Bach’s music will then be compared and contrasted with that of his exact contemporary and fellow German, George Frideric Handel. One might say that Bach was an idealist and Handel was a realist when it came to music, so we’ll look at how these personality traits informed each composer’s musical style. Finally, we'll wrap up the module with an introduction to music of the Classical Period, and who better to lead the way than the inimitable Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart?

10.1 - Bach the Young Man and Organist6:58

10.2 - Cothen: Prelude and Fugue25:03

10.3 - Cothen: Brandenberg Concertos13:00

10.4 - Leipzig: The Church Cantata21:50

10. 5 - Bach's Posthumous Reputation6:19

Conheça os instrutores

Craig Wright
Henry L & Lucy G Moses Professor of Music
Department of Music

[MUSIC]

When Bach first came to Leipzig in 1723 he was in middle-age, ambitious and

active and he worked hard.

Writing a new cantata about 30 minutes of music every work that's a lot of work and

Bach got tired of it.

Hence, toward the end of his life he went into, in effect, phased retirement.

[LAUGH] Working on only a few esoteric contrapuntal projects.

But would producing a new cantata every week really have worn out Bach?

What was the most onerous, most difficult, most demanding aspect of

producing 30 minutes of music, 30 new minutes of music every week?

Composing the music copying the music, or rehearsing the music?

What do you think?

In terms of time, copying, writing music down and

copying all the parts that was probably the most time consuming part.

Here for example is the autograph of a full score.

Of the opening page of an early cantata by Bach, by my count there are 20 instruments

and voices performing here, 20 lines and each measure goes by in about two seconds.

So you might have a thousand, easily a thousand measures of music in a cantata.

So you have to create this page, the master score and then you'll have to

then have all the individual parts copied, parts for the strings,

parts for the woodwinds, parts for the voices and so on that's a lot of work.

Where was all this done?

Well, in the church choir school, where Bach lived and Bach worked.

And this is how it worked in 1723,

Bach worked here as he saw, I just think I can show you the cursor.

On the south end of the choir school.

And I want you to count the number of stories in this building before we

reach the roof line.

One, two, three okay, three story.

Now, this is how that building looked, that same building, looked from 1735 on.

There we have it count the number of stories now.

One, two, three, four, five.

In 1735, they lifted up the roof and added two stories to this building.

They did so

to create, in large measure, more space for Bach because they needed it.

Inside the school where Bach's very numerous children, in totally he had 20.

Various relatives and a couple of boarding students, fee-paying boarding students.

This was, this building was the corporate headquarters of Bach Ink.

But most important, working in this building was Bach's wife, Anna Magdalena.

So here, we see a slide it may or may not, be an Anna Magdalena.

Bach, we can't be sure, but she was a musician,

a talented singer, but she couldn't sing, in Bach's time, in Leipzig.

No woman sang in church,

in these Lutheran churches in this period in Bach's religious Leipzig.

But, she was Bach's principal handmaiden as a copiest.

Now here, you're about to see a famous manuscript that she

copied Anna Bach's unaccompanied cello suites.

On the left you see, [INAUDIBLE] We're just going to listen to this music and

I'm going to talk about this music for a little.

So here's Anna Magdalena's.

[MUSIC]

Hand over here and here's her husband's hand over here and

they're virtually identical.

She taught him much about music.

And, undoubtedly, her style,

her style of calligraphy was influenced by him to the point that they're virtually.

Indistinguishable and sometimes scholars had difficulty telling the two apart.

[MUSIC]

Well, when old Bach died in 1750 he was buried in a local parish church

no one paid much attention to him or his music, then something strange happened.

Around 1830, Bach's unappreciated music was rediscovered in part by

Felix Mendelsohn, and it rightly became usually popular.

The good citizens of Leipzig,

had begun to realize that they'd had in their midst a genius.

So what did they do?

They dug him up to measure his skull.

What? [LAUGH] Measure his skull?

Well, measure his skull, yes because at the end of the 19th century,

some scientists, one might say mad scientists, had a theory that having

a diminished size skull, being microcephalic, was a mark of genius.

So they dug him up, measured his skull, and found it to be completely normal.

Now what to do?

Well, capitalize on the event.

So, instead of putting Bach back in an outlying parish church.

Why not give him a place of prominence that he deserves?

Bury him at the high altar as you see here and

that's what the plaque is here, the high altar of the St. Thomas Church.

Today the most important church in the Leipzig.

And while we're at it here at the end of the 19th century why not

make a real shrine to Bach?

Let's put in a huge stained glass window a Bach, with references to his music so

that tourists, musical tourists like you and

like me will visit Leipzig, inveterate the late, great Bach, the church becoming

something akin to a musical hall of fame, and that's exactly what happened.

So, if you ever have the chance, go there, it's actually worth the trip,

and you'll hear and enjoy a lot of great music by Bach.

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