
What Did Bach Sound Like to Bach? - tintinnabula
https://www.neh.gov/article/what-did-bach-sound-bach
======
stereo
If you've never heard Bach performed on period instruments, you're in for a
treat. Here's a performance of the third Brandenburg concerto by the Akademie
für alte Musik Berlin.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSHLlidrZh8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSHLlidrZh8)

Compared to "normal" instruments, you'll hear something that's a lot lighter,
less monumental, more fun, a bit faster especially in the third movement. I
was lucky enough to see them live a few times, and it's really great to hear
how much they listen to each other, how much work has gone into their
performance, and how much fun they're having, with big smiles and happy looks.

~~~
dvcrn
I read this as “I was lucky enough to see HIM live a few times” and this had
me legit thinking how that could be possible

~~~
pipingdog
Perhaps parent commenter was in the oil and gas industry.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozart_in_Mirrorshades](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozart_in_Mirrorshades)

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rectang
Listening on period instuments can be revelatory. The first movement of
Beethoven's Waldstein sonata, which is murky on a modern piano, is
comparatively clearer on the fortepiano. The fortepiano has much faster and
more pronounced decay (in the Attack-Decay-Sustain-Release ADSR formulation)
and weaker bass, but that punchiness works well for the Waldstein as it makes
it easier to hear the rhythm.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fhmm_hfZAo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fhmm_hfZAo)

As a complement to period instruments, I found that Switched-On Bach by Wendy
Carlos also made me listen to Bach in a new light. Physical low-register
instruments do not speak all that clearly — not even today, and not in Bach's
time either. Compare a string bass with an electric bass — or even more
starkly, a synthesizer bass!

The bass register in Switched-On Bach has much cleaner, more identifiable
pitch than Bach would have heard from a period ensemble playing one of the
Brandenburg Concerti. But is one actually more "true" to Bach than the other?

My feeling is that what Bach heard in his head were closer to a synthesizer
version than a baroque chamber ensemble version. Because even though a good
composer strives to write for a medium and compensate for the strengths and
weaknesses of actual instruments, the essence of Bach is counterpoint and
harmony, not orchestration.

~~~
Freak_NL
Wendy Carlos is a well-known name (mostly for the Clockwork Orange soundtrack
I think), but her recordings are not as accessible as they ought to be. That
is, there are no (legal) digital downloads or streaming options for her
oeuvre, and the CD's and records have been out of print for years.

I only recently discovered Switched-On Bach (and the other three albums that
followed: Switched-On Bach II, The Well-Tempered Synthesizer, and Switched-On
Brandenburgs), and you are right; these are really interesting performances of
such well-known classical works. Worth exploring!

And for a light classical snack: she created a 'sequel' to Prokofiev's Peter
and the Wolf and Saint-Saëns' Carnival of the Animals with 'Weird Al' Yankovic
in 1989!

~~~
gregsadetsky
Side 1 of Switched on Bach on IA:
[https://archive.org/details/SwitchedOnBach2](https://archive.org/details/SwitchedOnBach2)

Side 2:
[https://archive.org/details/SwitchedOnBach1](https://archive.org/details/SwitchedOnBach1)

I also (weirdly?) found them hosted on the site of the Computer History
Museum:

Side 1
[https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/sound-r...](https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/sound-
recording/2016/05/102695358-04-01-acc.mp3)

Side 2
[https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/sound-r...](https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/sound-
recording/2016/05/102695358-04-02-acc.mp3)

An incredible masterpiece.

~~~
isoprophlex
>
> [https://archive.org/details/SwitchedOnBach2](https://archive.org/details/SwitchedOnBach2)

Holy shit this sounds so much ... fun! It sounds so incredibly joyful on those
synths! Thanks for posting, marvelous

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idoubtit
> As interest in the early music movement has grown, performers and
> musicologists have increasingly turned to period instruments, smaller
> ensembles, and faster tempos to try to more faithfully recreate the music of
> the past.

This is misleading. The interest in baroque music grew strongly in the 50s.
The turn toward period instruments, smaller ensembles, and faster tempos
appeared at the end of the 60s, and was steadily established in the 70s with
great leaders like Gustav Leonhardt and Nikolaus Harnoncourt. There have been
little changes over the past 30 years.

This looks like a fun but futile project. Though I strongly relate to the
desire to know more about Bach's music. As Émile Cioran wrote, "Bach's music
is the only argument proving that the creation of the Universe cannot be
regarded as a complete failure".

~~~
tom_mellior
> The turn toward period instruments, smaller ensembles, and faster tempos
> appeared at the end of the 60s, and was steadily established in the 70s with
> great leaders like Gustav Leonhardt and Nikolaus Harnoncourt.

Is Harnoncourt generally associated with fast tempos? I thought the opposite.
His recording of Händel's Messiah runs to 141 minutes (according to Amazon, I
don't have my copy here). Almost all other performances I've come across try
to squeeze it into two hours. I much prefer Harnoncourt's slower tempo. Though
he might have treated other pieces differently.

~~~
Bud
It's very very difficult to do a full Messiah in under two hours; what you
probably heard was a version with cuts. That being said, 141 minutes is not
extraordinarily fast overall. Hogwood's recording is 136 minutes; you can find
others that are a bit faster yet.

~~~
tom_mellior
For concreteness, the Harnoncourt recording I had in mind is this one:
[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyXewGfDx5l0xsWKwAlHT...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyXewGfDx5l0xsWKwAlHTT9P_elygrNF2).
According to the calculator at [https://ytplaylist-
len.herokuapp.com/](https://ytplaylist-len.herokuapp.com/) this has a total
length of 147 minutes. At 1.25x speed it would be 118 minutes. I only did a
very quick check, but playing it at 1.25x speed does sound comparable to other
recordings I've heard. So I'm sure it's doable and would sound okay-ish. I
know I have at least once heard a full (uncut) version on the radio that fit
exactly into a 2 hour slot. Needless to say, I found it too fast.

But it's true that I can't point you to a specific two-hour recording right
now.

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ocfnash
Not strictly related but I recall once hearing that Bach may have never heard
his Brandenburg concertos performed.

Looking at Wikipedia now I see:

"Because King Frederick William I of Prussia was not a significant patron of
the arts, Christian Ludwig seems to have lacked the musicians in his Berlin
ensemble to perform the concertos. The full score was left unused in the
Margrave's library until his death in 1734 [and] was only rediscovered in the
archives of Brandenburg by Siegfried Wilhelm Dehn in 1849"

I have just switched them on and feel very grateful that I can.

~~~
dddddaviddddd
Nor the Mass in B Minor, again because the resources to perform it were never
available.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_in_B_minor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_in_B_minor)

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rpz
Honestly I was expecting the article to discuss tuning/temperament! Has
anybody listened to Bach or Chopin's preludes played on a well tempered piano?
To me it feels as if those pieces were written to take advantage of the
different purities/impurities of certain intervals in each key.

~~~
3131s
Composers did take advantage of the interesting properties of earlier
temperaments.

With a non-equal temperament each key signature has a characteristic tonality
due to its particular series of intervals, and a key that is 'far away' from
the home key that an instrument is tuned for can have harsher sounding
intervals. Equal temperaments like 12-TET were favored at least in part
because they opened up possibilities for romantic era composers interested in
exploring new ideas in modal harmony and more elaborate song structures.

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rabidonrails
Reminds me of this excellent video with Ben Zander:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2S-OjTb4nU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2S-OjTb4nU)

Especially at this part:
[https://youtu.be/b2S-OjTb4nU?t=233](https://youtu.be/b2S-OjTb4nU?t=233)

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_n_b_
Related, the standard pitch for an orchestra has also changed over time:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concert_pitch#History_of_pitch...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concert_pitch#History_of_pitch_standards_in_Western_music)

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dwheeler
This is very cool. There's similar work that reveals how Byzantine choral work
sounded in the Hagia Sophia, which I find to be beautiful in an unearthly way:

[http://www.openculture.com/2020/03/hear-the-sound-of-the-
hag...](http://www.openculture.com/2020/03/hear-the-sound-of-the-hagia-sophia-
recreated-in-authentic-byzantine-chant.html)

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dwheeler
A follow-up article should be, "What did older Beethoven sound like to the
older Beethoven?" (provides recording of silence)

~~~
tim333
He could probably hear it in his head to an extent.

~~~
rectang
Naturally he could, but the feedback loop was broken, so he wasn't able to
refine his compositions as effectively. A lot of late period Beethoven has
aspects which are "off" somehow. But the fact that Beethoven produced
something which was even coherent under those conditions is just mind
boggling.

~~~
senderista
The arrangement may sound off occasionally (great conductors like Mahler or
Mendelssohn couldn’t always get their orchestration right the first time
either), but the music itself certainly didn’t suffer. Yes, late Beethoven is
often just weird, but not in any amateurish way.

~~~
rectang
I don't hear it so much in arrangement, but in things like harmonic rhythm or
harmonies. So that means we disagree, because harmonic rhythm is an aspect of
the "music" by anybody's definition. I wrote about a couple examples here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22104132](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22104132)

I don't think "amateurish" is a good word. It's more of an extremely
accomplished work but needing an additional round of editing. Stuff which
would have been obvious to Beethoven had he actually been able to hear it, but
since he never got the chance to, it never got corrected.

~~~
senderista
I don't believe that Beethoven couldn't imagine harmonies perfectly in his
head. Perhaps not orchestral texture and balance though, but probably no one
could while completely deaf.

Are you talking about the famous "boogie-woogie" variation in Op. 111? I don't
see what could possibly be "glitchy" about that, rather than utterly
visionary!

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teilo
I visited Thomaskirche a few years ago. Please tell me they are going to
release multi-channel impulse response files which represent the work they
have done on this project! That would allow us to simulate this historic space
at home. Aural archeology!

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edgarvaldes
Why is Bach more prevalent in HN discussions than, say, Mozart or Beethoven?

~~~
asimpletune
Wild guess here, obviously I don’t know what everyone is thinking, but Bach’s
music was very beautiful in an almost mathematical sense. Compositions where
the right and left hand are exactly the same but delayed by a bar or two,
pieces that are the same played forwards and backwards, etc... Bach was a true
genius, as were Mozart and Beethoven, but I think the symmetry of Bach’s music
around the axis of time and harmony could be why he’s more prevalent on HN.

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vagab0nd
No one has mentioned the crab canon.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUHQ2ybTejU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUHQ2ybTejU)

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lordleft
I love listening to Bach on period music. I especially enjoy the sound of the
harpsichord.

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quijoteuniv
Great tittle for an article! :)

