J. S.
Bach is the Greatest Composer of All Time, a maker of timeless music,
we say, even though he died only a small handful of healthy lifetimes
ago and even though he wasn't rediscovered until the 1800s -- and, some
argue, not authentically rediscovered until the 1900s. What utility does
the Greatest [x] of All Time designation have? And if the comment about
rediscovery confuses: how embedded is the idea of posthumous
appreciation in our modern conception of
genius/greatness? We like the archaeology of Bach's music not just
because it is interesting (it is interesting) but also because it
romances a greatness that takes decades, centuries to be "properly
appreciated."
Bestowing
the designation of ultimate greatness upon any composer carries
with it the thought that So-and-so (if I
may use boring metaphor) swam the depths and hiked the heights of
emotional-imaginative invocation and performative possibilities so
thoroughly that all or most efforts since have fallen short. Regardless
of the level of his craftwork, Bach lived in his time and was variously
affected by the limits of that time. It is a mistake to say that because
Bach so thoroughly explored the architecture of his musical language
that he somehow charted the entire affective potential of music. Bach's
music cannot specifically express whatever it is that Debussy's,
Reich's, Metheny's, Coltrane's music so specifically express: it is
bound to its own language and rhetoric, and the social and personal
attachments which that language and rhetoric brings to each of our
dispositions. To say that Bach takes us to the "pinnacle of joy" is a misdirected claim because it assumes that "joy" can be brought under a
singular house. Yet there are species of joy, just as there are species
of every other emotion.
If Bach is the greatest composer to have ever lived, what does that
mean when it comes to the question of what (kind of) music could surpass
or equal it? Would one need to continue Bach's compositional means and
somehow improve upon them; and, if so, would one be able to escape
accusations of anachronism, of all-pervading indebtedness, of
non-genuine effort? Bach's musical language was particular, and it is
important to remember that historians have marked the death of Bach as
the end of the so-called baroque era and the start of the so-called
classical era. This boundary-making does more than create categorical
ease: it effectively shuts us off from Bach, makes him even more
untouchable. The Master Passed Away, and with his death a spirited
Greatness was relinquished unto the universe, its empty host committed
to the Earth -- and thus was the temple built and its doors closed and
its perimeters surrounded by the bowed heads of adulators. Of course,
these constructs were posthumous, for Bach was unfashionable by the time
of his death, and still only mostly known for his improvisational
abilities.
