Notes on Bach 2

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.