Johann Sebastian Bach

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It seems to be, according to my observation with the music-threads, that I am the only one here with a nearly obsession with the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. This obsession goes that far that I hardy hear for myself any other composer since more than 15 years.

This surprises me a bit: I thought that J. S. Bach with highly complex, but still well ordered music, the tempered, but strong emotions, the regular patterns in most complex permutations, his strong theoretical and mathematical taste should appeal strongly to more Aspies than just me.

You are not alone. I am currently obsessing over Bach and playing Bach on keyboard. Also made Bach loops to play over and over.

I also like to say the word Bach outloud repeatedly and it sometimes sounds like I'm trying to make chicken noises.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipzR9bhei_o

I like Bach --- the regular patterns you mention are very clear in this piece of music ^

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFwZeEF5 ... re=related - beautiful piece.

I like Mozart.

I can't believe someone made this thread! This is so great. I love Bach. Yes, I am obsessed. I started listening to him like 20 years ago. First concerti, etc., then I found his Mass in B Minor and that was it for me.

I got the score and began to learn Latin to sing it. I am totally obsessed. At my most obsessive time I listened to the entire Mass 3 times a day. In car, at home, on runs, etc.

I have it in my car and office and several versions and have a figurine of him on my dashboard.

So, yes I am totally obsessed with Bach! And I am glad to see others!

I'd strongly recommend Peter Hurford's recordings of Bach's Organ Works. And The Art of Fugue performed by Sir Neville Mariner/Academy of St Martin in the Fields.

I also like Bach but I'm more of a visual aspie, besides by now any type of music or noise alters my state of mind. I rarely ever listen to music, I suffer from migraine.
In a perfect world I would listen to music every day

Bach to the fugue topic

I have been obsessed with his music for over thirty years. Organ music is very powerful. The Passacaglia and Fugue is a piece I listen to over and over.

Bach was the most "mathematical" and structured of composers. And yes he he did appeal to
that most famous of Aspies....Glenn Gould. I have both his debut and last recording of the
Goldberg Variations.

Has anyone read Goedel, Escher, Bach?

I have not read it all. It is too complicated for me. But my broher is a math whiz and has tried to explain the very complicated loops Bach uses and Math principles.

Has anyone read it/

And Rich-

I do, too. I love them both- it's almost like he made a full circle.

Right after that last recording, didn't he die? Was not that the last thing he recorded?

You can hear the humming very loudly.

...and if it wasn't for Felix Mendelssohn, almost no one would know of him.

He was also prolific between the sheets; way over a dozen kids, 3 of whom became composers...
(or was it 2?...

Mendelssohn popularized him, but Bach was always known to experts: Haydn and Mozart were aware of Bach's compositions, Bach's motet's are standing performances of Chorus of St. Thomas in Leipzig ever since. Even three years before Bach's dead he visited Fredrick II in Berlin. Bach was regarded at this time as hopeless old fashioned, but also as the great master of fugue.



Four of his childeren:

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (the most famous)
Wilhelm Friedemann Bach
Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach
Johann Christian Bach

Yes, but find this regular pattern with other composers of this period (Telemann, Handel) and prior (Lully) too. Bach is outstanding to stick to such pattern, but also to add the greatest complexity to those. I find the most other composers of his time compared to Bach "boring".

I avoid most, tolerate some, but listen to Bach. It is the best fit to the space in my head.

that's what happens when you go up against the experts... thanks. I learned the Mendelssohn bit in music class many decades ago...

There was the romantic idea of the forgotten and misunderstood genius Bach, sometime even spiced up that Bach died impoverished, recovered only by an other genius Mendelssohn.

This just not true: J. S. Bach wasn't popular, but still known and he died not in wealth, also not "impoverished"; his estate is known and there were plenty of books, instruments and even a very few pieces of silver.

Mendelssohn modelled Bach's works also to the taste of his time: Enormous choruses, whilst Bach just had choruses of three of four singer (there was just no more space in organ lock of St. Thomas in Leipzig), playing Bach on organs, which are not fit for baroque music (the so-called "Bach Organ" has a special temperament - mostly found with organs made by Trost; Bach even rejected Silbermann with his strict ideas regarding temperament). To perform Bach's organ works in Leipzig after the lost of all original Bach organs during the war, they build some years ago a special organ with a Bach-temperament, like the organ in Altenburg.

I have. It was actually what ignited my interest in mathematics. Still, the book was at times silly or completely frustrating, more so than even Nagel's book devoted to the Goedel's theorem would be to a not particularly mathematically inclined reader.

I enjoy Back occasionally. I was reading a few months ago how the basic form of the final fugue in the Art of the Fugue could be reconstructed by assuming the forth theme was the Art of the Fugue theme and then looking at the permutations of the first 3 themes or something and assuming the introduction of the A.o.T.F. theme had to fit with that. Pretty cool stuff.

Bach is occasionally too thick, and I sometimes prefer the elegance of classical, but overall is one of my favorite composers absolutely.