J.S. Bach stands out from other composers of his era because, in my humble opinion, there is no other way that any of his music could have been written. Handel, Vivaldi, Corelli...somebody else with a good understanding of music theory could have composed equally satisfying variations on their work. But not Bach's. He thought of everything.
Bach wrote The Musical Offering in response to a challenge from King Frederick II to improvise a six-voice fugue on a complex musical theme, a challenge perhaps intended to humiliate the composer. Two ricercars, ten canons, and one four-movement trio sonata later, Bach published his work on "the theme of the king." With riddle canons inscribed in Latin above variations on the theme, Bach comments that "as the modulation rises, so may the king's glory," or "may the fortunes of the king increase like the length of the notes." Cheeky.
It never fails to amaze how Bach so puposefully works the theme into every possible nook and cranny of the Musical Offering triosonata. The few bars in the second movement where I the violinist state the theme openly and pragmatically above everyone else is one of my favourite moments in classical music. The theme has been twisted and turned and hidden and hinted at for page after page up until this moment, then everything else quiets down so I can say "look guys, here's what we're talking about." And then the flute takes it and then the bass and then we're back into an intricate game of hide-and-go-seek until the end. Every time we get to that bit, I ask if we can go back and play it again.
The other moment in which Bach brings his audience to their knees is the Chaconne of Partita No. 2 for solo violin. The 56th bar of the movement reaches the highest note of the piece--indeed, of all four preceding movements--and flirts with a key change to reach the high note, then drops back into the tonic and takes off on a trajectory of modulations and new ideas which are explored to the furthest limit and touch every possible human emotion. Relaxing to a pastoral calm at bar 113 with a transition to the relative major, a new range of sensations are played out and the listener/player is yet again held in awe until the music yields to the original d minor at 209 and begins to summarise and recapitulate and tie everything together until the end.
I'm not the only one who holds this piece in such high esteem, as Johannes Brahms wrote of the Chaconne to his sweetie Clara Schumann:
"On one stave, for a small instrument, the man writes a whole world of the deepest thoughts and most powerful feelings. If I imagined that I could have created, even conceived the piece, I am quite certain that the excess of excitement and earth-shattering experience would have driven me out of my mind."
Anybody can study music theory and compose decent music, but how does somebody put ideas down on paper that are so timeless? Art often seems to have a fuzzy boundary with religion, and the subject of many paintings has been to capture a divine moment or god-inspired idea. Perhaps Bach's inspiration was no different.
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