JS Bach: where to start with his music

With religious music so involving he could inspire faith in non-believers, the German composer’s sense of harmony makes him a shared reference point for all classical composers

‘The immortal god of harmony”: that’s what Beethoven, no less, called Johann Sebastian Bach. “Music owes as much to Bach as religion to its founder,” is how Schumann put it, and Bach’s music continues to inspire a feeling of reverence and love that borders on spirituality, in atheists and believers alike. An astonishingly productive composer, Bach perfected all the existing musical forms of the baroque period and took the use of harmony to a new level, setting out parameters that most of the western musical tradition has been working within ever since.

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from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2QpAyEN