Listen (2:22)
March 31, 2025
Today, 340 years ago, in Eisenach, the capital of the duchy of Saxe-Eisenach, in present-day Germany (21 March 1685 O.S.) Johann Sebastian Bach was born. I will celebrate by playing the Prelude, Fugue, and Allegro BWV 998, a piece originally written for the lautenwerk, sometimes called the lute-clavier or lute-harpsichord, one of several composed for that instrument. Although the piece was adequately memorized many years ago, I will be reading it today from my own 1998 transcription in D major (played with a capo at the first fret to sound in the original key of E-flat). I will not perform it as brilliantly as the inimitable Ana Vidovic.
Although I still listen to, play, and teach Bach throughout the year, March 31st is a day to zoom out and reflect on the big picture—to consider the broader scope of how and why music composed three centuries ago continues to make an impact. Bach’s music still sounds modern, fresh, and vibrant. It remains relevant and incredibly difficult to perform well, being as relentless as it is achingly beautiful. How does an artist working in any medium truly stand out and authentically create something that becomes timeless due to a conscious effort to innovate? The answer I have come away with is a time-honored one—by breaking the rules.
Bach excelled at imitative counterpoint, especially in his fugues. He utilized techniques like inversion (flipping melodies), augmentation (stretching rhythms), and displacement (pitch and rhythm) to foster dynamic interactions between voices. These methods imparted a sense of movement and transformation to his music, which was less prevalent among his peers. Counterpoint had numerous rules that constrained many of his contemporaries, who were content with formal precision and highly structured forms. Bach was willing to break specific rules (the entire concept of the harmonic minor scale is significant), but more often than not, he consistently found loopholes.
The structural complexity of Bach’s compositions demanded masterful contrapuntal fluency; he needed to sustain musical ideas for longer. He pushed boundaries with dissonance to maintain interest, which helped engage the listener more deeply. His consonances and dissonances were sometimes deliberately imperfect, as was his consistent use of unexpected intervals. This approach imparted movement, emotion, balance, and expression to his music. Even as the Baroque gave way to the Classical era’s more simplistic approach in the last thirty years of his life, and with the publication of Fux's Gradus ad Parnassum, which saw the era’s dutifully faithful with their formal noses to the grindstone, Bach’s final pieces were the era's circle head enclosed.
To the birthday boy—Prost!