The Art of Fugue

Bach does not give indications regarding instrumentation; anything goes as long as the result is artistic

Anything goes.. within the limits of decency and aesthetics

yes. How can one not agree?

But the "problem" is that everyone has their own limits

And who says no

LucaCavaliere wrote:

   to the face of many of his "Enlightenment" contemporaries 

Dear Luca, I have the impression that the lawyer Gabriele Cirello - defender in the Mose case for Altero Matteoli - has it a bit too much with the "Enlightenment thinkers" and thus with the Enlightenment itself, and in this, he reminds me of Buscaroli.

Reducing the Bach/Enlightenment issue is absolutely reductive, not to say misleading.

hi Daniele

as for me, from what I have heard (only that video I pointed out), it doesn't really seem like he has a grudge against the Enlightenment thinkers. In his words, there are neither insults nor judgments of devaluation/discredit from a historical-aesthetic-musical point of view... Beyond whether or not one agrees with him, criticisms and judgments, in civil terms, could also have been expressed. And yet they are not there.

And therefore it seems to me that the 'Buscaroli style' does not belong to this gentleman at all.

Regarding the issue of why Bach appeared abstruse to many of his contemporaries, it is quite possible that he approaches the matter in a reductive way. Of course! Broader explanations are always possible, and even welcome. But why also 'misleading'?

A reductive statement is true even if it is short-sighted or narrow.

A misleading statement, on the other hand, asserts a falsehood.

But do you think he says misleading things?

Not exactly like Buscaroli but, you must admit that he repeats the word "Enlightenment thinkers" several times as if wanting to emphasize that the misunderstanding of Bach's music was due to that movement of ideas which, coincidentally, is quite unpalatable both to those with too much right-wing or too much left-wing ideas. A demonstration that very often extremes touch each other.

Why do I say that the thesis he maintains is misleading?

Now, I will write things that I have already written many times and therefore I apologize for my repetitiveness, but I am very convinced of what I will try to summarize quickly.

Only from the time of Beethoven did a tradition of listening to the music of composers who had already passed away begin to consolidate. Until that moment, listening was only linked to living composers and it goes without saying that all past composers were therefore forgotten.

Bach was forgotten just as Vivaldi had been and as all those before him had been. The Bach case is however anomalous and causes such an uproar for two fundamental reasons: Bach is a supreme genius of music and, unlike his contemporaries, already in the last 11 years of his life, precisely because of his decision to compose "out of fashion" music, he had been set aside by most.

Bach is however—coincidentally—the first composer from the past to be mainstreamed. Vivaldi had to wait for the twentieth century, and so it was for all early music which even today struggles to take off and find its proper audience.

And this is one point.

The other point—and this more directly addresses the issue of Bach and his time—is linked to the birth of what we today define as "Baroque period music," which is music based on the birth of melodrama on one hand and the use of basso continuo on the other.

Melodrama begins at the end of the 1500s and beginning of the 1600s and, even if he was not the first composer, Monteverdi, due to his greatness, is considered its father. And it was he who coined the famous terms of "first practice music" and "second practice music" and, with all this and in all this, the Enlightenment and the Enlightenment thinkers have nothing to do with it because, obviously, they were far from existing yet.

It is precisely from this, however, that the process of return to monody—or homophony—begins, which will lead in the 1700s to the galant style and thus to one of the lowest moments in music history, from my point of view, naturally. And it was the dominant galant style in Bach's time that rendered the music of the greatest genius out of fashion, not the Enlightenment.

The Enlightenment, in reality, begins to take root just after Bach's death and thus in the second half of the 1700s; and if we want to relate it to music, it is Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven that we must speak of, not Bach.

So, if I analyze the three greats of Classicism, what do I notice? I notice the initial affirmation of sonata form and a gradual rapprochement to counterpoint which, with Beethoven, will arrive at being completely revolutionized, marrying sonata form and variations.

Ergo: the Enlightenment is not the gateway to simplification for the masses but is the triumph of reason and of "the use one makes of it as a scholar before the entire audience of readers," as Rousseau said, and in the case of music, of listeners.

thanks for the explanation

effectively yes: the Enlightenment took shape after Bach's death, so with the fact that Bach was neglected because he was "unnatural" there is no direct relationship. But there could be an indirect relationship. I mean that, hearing the words with which he says what 'good', 'right' music is according to the ideas of the Enlightenment thinkers... Well... Even if it is never named, it seems like the perfect description of the galant style.

At most, one could argue that the Enlightenment, having chosen the galant style as its "adoptive" music of choice, goes somewhat without saying that this takes credit away from all those musics that dare something more

LucaCavaliere wrote:

At most, one could argue that the Enlightenment, having chosen the galant style as its preferred "adoptive" music, goes somewhat without saying that this takes credit away from all those musics that dare something more

My dear Luca, in reality, things are much more complex than one might think. The Enlightenment can actually contain within itself the entire culture of the 18th century and thus also music in its various facets and contradictions.

I suggest watching and listening to this broadcast of "Il tempo e la storia" titled "Illuminismo e musica" (Enlightenment and Music) which contradicts some things I have written but, at the same time, demonstrates how even Bach's work fits into Enlightenment culture and is not in opposition to it, as lawyer Cirello claims.

One could even say that the least common denominator of the Enlightenment is mathematics and science, and how these are directly related to music..

Then if you want, we can talk about it again!

ps: it is always moving for me to see and listen to Severino Gazelloni again.

I've seen it all, Daniele. Thank you.

My God, it's not that the video is very enlightening ( ) in itself on the issue of "natural music."

I don't mean the 'issue' as Civello presents it, extrapolating it from some phrases by certain Enlightenment thinkers.

That issue for me - but also for you, if I understood everything you wrote in that other discussion about Mozart's "naturalness" - simply does not exist: what is natural are the sounds of nature.

The only question explicitly asked towards the end of the broadcast is whether, for the Enlightenment thinkers, music was more a matter of feeling or if the scientific aspect should prevail. A slightly different question from whether "good" music should be only that which is easy or also that which is complex.

That being said, in any case, from this episode of Rai Storia I seem to understand one thing: that the Enlightenment was a phenomenon so vast and wide as to contain within itself voices in favor of one opinion or the other, and in all cases with arguments supporting the opinion held. (which is always a very beautiful thing)

And so in the end I agree with you on the fact that saying: enlightenment=galant style is very misleading.

Bach represents, essentially, the end of an era, that of the Baroque. In him converge the best traditions of that century and a half that began with Monteverdi, made up of concertante and vocal music, of sonatas, toccatas, and cantatas based essentially on Italian and French music. The great paradox of all this, however, lies in the fact that the era of basso continuo—that is, of homophony, which finds its theoretical quintessence in the Traité de l'harmonie réduite à ses principes naturels—concludes with a grand return to the polyphonic style.

Bach was perfectly aware of his awkward and, in some ways, inopportune historical position, which proved to be untimely and anachronistic. But Bach's anachronism was not only musical in character relative to his time, but also substantially political-religious in nature.

And it is on this aspect that one can grasp the divergence between Bach and the Enlightenment. A divergence that does not concern the use of polyphony rather than homophony, but the vision of religion that a man like Bach held and the religious vision that the Enlightenment held in opposition.

The Enlightenment arose essentially in response to the repulsion and disgust toward two centuries of religious war—from the birth of the Reformation and the subsequent Counter-Reformation—in Europe.

Consequently, Bach's religious, personal, and musical world gives way to a concept of Reason that will allow for the redemption, not only of music but of all the arts; and this, whatever the current broadcast may say, occurs primarily after 1750, that is, after Bach's death. Therefore, I reiterate, it is Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven who must be spoken of above all if one wishes to address the theme of "Enlightenment and music," not Bach.

Certainly, in his last twenty years of life, Bach deeply intuited that his music would end with him. He sensed that the era in which Sacred Music reigned supreme was over. He sensed it directly within his family when his sons Carl Philipp Emanuel and Johann Christian entered that world defined as the galant style, which in a certain sense foreshadowed the pre-Romantic sentimentalism of Sturm und Drang.

On second thought, however, even the galant style is not so foreign to the Enlightenment, but probably represents its most hedonistic part. And in the face of all this, what did our immense Bach do? He consecrated his last 20 years to an effort of artistic and scientific abstraction, demonstrating the law of the tempered system on one hand, and on the other, ensuring that the universe of the fugue unfolded in a formidable and gigantic hall of mirrors; and through the Baroque principle of basso continuo, which placed homophony at the foundation of harmony, he created the greatest polyphonic structures in the history of music, restating, exactly, the medieval thesis of the quadrivium, which held music alongside mathematics, geometry, and astronomy.