Johann Sebastian Bach

. Johann Sebastian Bach, one of the greatest names in European classical music, was born on March 21, 1685. Unfortunately, this does not mean that J.S. Bach was born 324 "years" ago from today, within 24 hours of the Spring Equinox. (The Spring Equinox was yesterday, March 20th, at around eleven in the morning, and falls on March 20 or 21 in most years.) The reason for this is that at that time (1685), the calendar in use in Lutheran Germany was still an older one --the Julian Calendar-- which, for reasons having to do with the Leap Year adjustment, had rotated to the point where the Spring Equinox fell much earlier than the standard date in March. What is going awry here: is the Equinox being unpredictable, or was the Calendar faulty? As far as the world is concerned, especially physicists and farmers, the Equinox is basically the Clock Of The Earth; everything else has to be adjusted so that the Spring and Fall Equinoxes continue to fall on roughly the same dates every year, so that the seasons remain in their places relative to the Calendar. A more detailed description of the problems are given at the end of this post.

  The Music of J.S. Bach In a sense it is difficult to describe what is wonderful about the music of J.S.Bach, because he embodies all that is best in a certain kind of music written even today: music in the conventional, tonal style with some elements of counterpoint. The great composers who enjoy popularity today by and large descended musically from J.S.Bach (though some of them may have had greater affinity for Bach's great contemporary, G.F.Handel; at least Beethoven is said to have declared so.) Still, there is much that is miraculous in Bach's music. His immense range of emotions, the great joy and exaltation he was able to express, the intellectual satisfaction in listening to the music, and the sheer delight of playing and singing it. Bach's music can speak for itself more eloquently than I can. Here are some clips of some of the most appealing of Bach's compositions, in addition to those I have provided in posts over the last month or so. The Chorale, Jesu bleibet meine Freude, or Jesu, joy of man's desiring. This is one piece of a 13-movement cantata, no. 147. This recording is in a style considered to be more true to the original performance style. Finally, a clip of the chorale performed with just one singer and one instrument per part, by Joshua Rifkin and his team. The famous Air on the G String is a movement from Bach's Orchestral Suite no. 3 in D major. Here is a recording of it in its original setting. Bach was mostly famed for his organ music in his lifetime. Here is the amazing Passacaglia in C minor, BWV. 582. It is usually followed by a most amazing fugue on the same theme, but the two are not available together on YouTube.

[Added later: here is E. Power Biggs playing the Passacaglia, and most of the fugue. The registration Power Biggs uses is always extremely clear, so that you can hear everything.] Quite different from the fugues --which have a certain weight to them-- are the organ trio sonatas. A trio sonata normally means exactly what it says: a sonata for three instruments. But Bach decided that an organ presented the opportunity for a single player to play a trio sonata: two hands and feet. Here is one of my favorites: the Trio Sonata in E flat, BWV 525. This clip is of the first movement of three. Bach wrote great music for instruments. His second orchestral suite in B minor featured the flute, and here is a lovely movement from that, the Rondeau. Here is the lovely slow movement of the double concerto for violin and oboe BWV 1060. (The original violin/oboe concerto score has not survived, but has been reconstructed from a version for two harpsichords.) I could not resist also adding a link to the last movement, played here by Kyun What Chung and Heinz Holliger. Here is Kennedy and oboist Aisling Casey playing Movement 1 of this concerto much, much faster. (There are links to the subsequent movements at the site.)

Bach's Brandenburg Concertos are justly famous. This is the opening movement of No. 5 in D major.

This is a joyous aria from Cantata no. 68, possibly written for his young second wife, the famous Anna Magdalena Bach. It is sung here by a boy treble, young Peter Jelosits around the early seventies.

Towards the end of his life, Bach compiled three monumental works, the first of which is the Mass in B minor. Here is a duet from the mass: Et in unum dominum.  Another gorgeous movement from this mass filled with gems is Qui Sedes ad dextram patris.

The next masterpiece --one of the greatest works in Christian music-- is the St Matthew Passion. Here is the great opening chorus. It features three choirs: choir 1 and choir 2, and finally a small chorus of trebles in the center, singing the chorale, O Lamb of God unsullied. Halfway through the work is another great chorus, O Mensch, bewein dein Sundre gross.

The last chorus is essentially a cross between a lullaby and a funeral ode to the crucified Jesus. Sleep softly, it says, and alternates between sad mourning and gentle comforting: Wir setzen uns, mit tranen nieder.

The work by Bach that is considered a crowning glory, at least by those who consider him a secular composer, is the great compilation The Art of Fugue, which is a set of some fourteen fugues, the last of which is incomplete. Here is the opening fugue, one of the most perfect fugues ever written.

 To close on a lighter note, we present the last movement of the 5th Brandenburg, one of Bach's jollier creations.

Calendars [Here is a simple and accurate explanation of the idea of Leap Years.] As I said, at the time Bach was born, there were two calendars (at least) in force. The Roman Church, under Pope Gregory, had already established the improved calendar which is more or less the one we use today. The conservative Lutherans in Saxony defied the use of this new calendar on religious and political grounds. (The British, too, were using a different variant of the older calendar.)

For years I was confused as to why there was such a fuss about calendars. It seemed to me that if every year had 365 days, the world would be a better place. This was hardly my original idea; the world had initially gone on the assumption that this was indeed the case. Actually, though it is true that the length of a year is close to 365 days, at the time of Julius Caesar, already people were finding that the shortest day of the year was falling later and later in the year. The reason was, of course, that the calendar year (i.e. 365 days at that time) was shorter than the period between the Spring equinox of consecutive years by about a quarter of a day. Already at that time, they were clever enough to have ways of telling the dates of the Spring Equinox (e.g. Stonehenge, etc), and it was decided that this event should take place on the same date every year. Why? Because farmers needed to plan their crops and their activities, and they needed to know when the seasons would take place. Taking averages, it was found that the year was actually about 365.25 days long, and so leap years were invented. The so-called Julian Calendar only had leap years. (That is, it had leap years every single fourth year without exception.) Now there was an extra day every four years, and if the year had been exactly 365.25 days long, everything would have been all right.

Unfortunately, as Wikipedia says, this estimate was longer by about 11 minutes than the actual length of a year. The actual length of time between one Spring Equinox and the next is roughly 365.242374 days. So now, every so often, we had to take a day off. This was the improvement of the Gregorian calendar.

 Julian Calendar: One extra day every year numbered a multiple of 4. [11 minutes too long per year]
 Gregorian Calendar: One extra day every multiple of 4, but not on multiples of 100.
 Modern Calendar: One extra day every multiple of 4, but not on multiples of 100, but do add a day on multiples of 400, and other adjustments to be announced from time to time.

With these adjustments, we should be fine for some 800 odd years. At the end of last year, for instance, December 31st was lengthened by one second, I was told. That is scary. So, the main point of all the gymnastics with leap years is to avoid the drift of the seasons, where winter and summer creep around the calendar. A pleasant Spring Equinox to all my readers, and a happy birthday to Johann Sebastian Bach. No matter when he was born, it seems reasonable to celebrate his birthday on the date that he would have recognized if he were alive, namely the 21st day of March, in whichever calendar happened to be locally in force!

Archimedes