14 Feb
2013
14 Feb
'13
4:32 p.m.
On 14/02/13 13:50, Paul Davis wrote:
On Thu, Feb 14, 2013 at 7:39 AM, Rustom Mody <rustompmody(a)gmail.com
<mailto:rustompmody@gmail.com>> wrote:
Personally, Ive for years belonged to the class of people who
consider that music starts with Bach and ends with Beethoven. Bach
because he is God and Beethoven because He is a man.
as much of a lover of Bach's non-vocal works as I am, I'd like to
point out that most definitions of music involve at least 3 components:
rhythm
melody
harmony
one might also timbre if you were in the right mood. Bach, like more
or less everyone who is a part of the "western tradition", did some
incredible things with harmony,
such as settling it to what virtually *everyone* writing tonal music
after him would have done up to current mainstream pop/rock/____ :) [1]
and had some modest accomplishments in the melodic
area (*), but did
essentially nothing with rhythm.
I think it depends on what you mean by 'doing something': personally I
have always been fascinated by the 'beat' in Bach's music. If for
example one looks at the opening of the Magnificat in D major (BWV 243)
[2], although the rhythm may not be as complex and intertwined as
certain polyrhythms in 'non-western' music, it's hard to see it as
'doing essentially nothing' (demonstrated by the fact that most
performances you can search for on the web are lacking in some aspect of
the rhythmic interpretation, at least in my humble opinion).
It is entirely possible to fully respect the incredible work of
western composers while also acknowledging that "music" begins and
ends in places far outside anywhere that they (or any other single
musical culture) have ever explored.
I fully agree.
And I also think that those "other places" are not necessarily physical
places: it is probably time to think of 'music' in a broader, more open
manner (I am open to changing terminology if 'music' has a too strong
historical valence).
Lorenzo.
(*) contrast western notions of melody with that found in carnatic
music, for example. one could argue that this is a matter of listener
interpretation rather than compositional form, but since in practice
these two are tightly bound together, it doesn't make a lot of
difference when it comes to actual music.
[1] I say 'settle', because certain prominent harmonic traits in western
tonal music we still use today, date much earler than Bach. Nonetheless
it was him who perfected and unified lots of them.
[2] See e.g.
http://petrucci.mus.auth.gr/imglnks/usimg/2/2e/IMSLP102028-PMLP06399-Bach_-…