Many quotes, newspaper articles and projects by record companies and or on the internet create a sense that the world of classical music revolves around Johann Sebastian Bach. The Baroque composer is anything from the “godfather of music” (Garrett 2012) to God himself (Berlioz).


The majority of these instances suggest that Bach does not need any links to the rest of the classical music world: he is the quintessential musical genius, out of his time, inspired by something at least close to the divine – “For Bach, you see, was music’s great non-conformist, and one of the supreme examples of that independence of artistic conscience that stands outside the collective historical process” (Gould cited in Springer 2012). This idealisation echoes the “virulent attack of Bach fever” from which a “large part of the musical world [was] suffering” in the late nineteenth century and which has been criticised now as then (‘Bach Worshippers’ 1879). In the 1950s, the most prominent of critics was Theodor W. Adorno who felt the need to “defend” Bach against his “devotees” and place him back into context (1995).


Part of what Adorno describes in his essay clearly relates to one of two trends that can be identified in the (technological) mediation of Bach and classical music more in general: democratisation, the idea of wide-spread availability and a breaking down of barriers between audience and music. (The second can be referred to as specialisation, a focus on and highlighting of Bach and his music.) Adorno’s focus in particular is on the universal availability which, according to him, deprives Bach of meaning: “his influence […] no longer results from the musical substance of his music but rather from its style and play, from formula and symmetry, from the mere gesture of recognition” (p.136, emphasis added) – an aspect that had already been pointed out seventy years earlier when it appeared that Bach’s works “are reverenced because they are known” (‘Bach Worshippers 1789, p.84). In sad consequence, Adorno feels that Bach has become “a neutralized cultural monument.” Similarly, Susan McClary has written in 1989 that much contemporary musical practice and understanding of Bach have “flattened him out into pure order,” “stifling” the music (p.56f); her focus strongly lies on the call for contextualising Bach and his music to counteract the romantic notion of the “music itself” that exists independently of the composer’s circumstances.


Both Adorno and McClary call for contextualisation of Bach, only then can he and his opus be imbued with meaning again. Some texture needs to be returned to the flat and neutral image that much of the musical genius-discourse in musicology but also different performance practices have created. It might be some consolation to them that several of the – especially more recent – Bach projects, both of the record industry and on the internet, have increasingly included contextualising materials that accompany the records or the internet presentation of Bach and his music – both in print and as videos. Nonetheless, it should not be forgotten that the two technologies do still have the power to co-construct, mediate and enforce the image of Bach the musical genius.

 

References

 

  • Adorno, Th. W. (1995). ‘Bach Defended Against His Devotees.’ In Prisms (translated by S. Weber & S. Weber) (pp.135-146). Massachusetts: The MIT Press.

  • ‘Bach Worshippers’ (n.d., October 1879). The Orchestra 6(63), 83-84.

  • Garrett, D. (2012). Bach – Double Harpsichord Concerto in C Major. CD Sleeve to Music. Decca Records.

  • McClary, S. (1989). ‘The Blasphemy of Talking Politics During Bach Year.’ In R. Leppert & S. McClary (eds.). Music and Society: The Politics of Composition, Performance and Reception (pp.13-62). Cambridge [etc.]: Cambridge University Press.

Criticising "Bach the Genius"