Re: GG: Bach & analytic/creative tasks

[Greg Romero <gregory.romero@yale.edu>]

On Sun, 4 May 1997, Robert Clements wrote:

 Personally: i've always
wondered why... i think i could make a
> pretty fair case that any alien intelligence decoding such a disc would
> suspect we were a race of aesthetic automatons. The style which JSB is most
> associated with is, basically, mechanical (many of his scores could fairly
> easily be changed into graphs); & the respect granted to him is due to the
> subtle way he manipulated a less-than-subtle theory of musical
> composition... while any assessment obviously depends on the actual pieces
> selected; without a suitable grounded in baroque musical history, our
> hypothetical aliens might wonder whether JSB was some kind of compositional
> typewriter....
> 
   That's an interesting view of fugue, but I think you're too quick to
dismiss the versatility of the form.  An excellent site that might change
your mind about fugues and other contrapuntal devices is
http://jam.ucc.nau.edu/~tas3/bachindex.html

It is by far my favorite Bach site on the web, delving into those sticky
(and fascinating) technicalities of Bach's work, and explaining them in a  
lucid fashion.  I wished I had never read Gradus ad Parnassum now.

            Greg Romero