I recently heard a quote about J.S. Bach that made me think harder about something than I have in quite some time.

Bach, it was said, was better at what he did, composing and performing music, than any other human in history has been at what he/she has done. This is rather mind-blowing for, although it can never be proven or disproven, it is fun to think about the extraordinary talent a person must have even to be considered in such a group.

If you are like me however, you long ago grew tired of these endless lists of the “the best” or “greatest” and perhaps such discussions should be left to internet chat forums. What good does it do, after all, to endlessly argue whether Richard Feynman was the greatest physicist of all time, Ted Williams the best baseball player, or if Shakespeare had an equal as a writer?

Trying to make sure comparisons across generations is a fool’s errand—these luminaries simply lived in a different world than we do. Is it not better just to enjoy and benefit from the work of great minds? Life is, after all, not a race to find out who the best drummer or painter or scientist in history was.

Ah… but then we come back to Johann Sebastian Bach—a man whose creative genius was so breathtaking that scholars, performers, and audiences are still interpreting his work and trying to divine how he created it all.

So transcendent was Bach’s talent that even the most jaded modern listener, one who might not even like orchestral music, has to admire both the ethereal sounds he coaxed from his scores and the near mathematical precision with which he did it. In fact, the quip is often made that Bach was really a mathematician in a musician’s clothing.

I know this discussion can quickly grow shopworn, but it does make one wonder if, in his case, his talents were the product of nature or nurture. Was he “born this way” or did he hone his skills, hour after hour, at the workbenches of music rooms?

He was certainly born into a family of professional musicians and had excellent training including a solid grounding in Latin, Greek, and Italian. He was exposed early to the works of composers such as Pachelbel, Jean-Baptiste Lully, and a musician with probably the coolest name ever in the business: Dietrich Buxtehude. (Ok, Snoop Dogg and Buckethead are pretty cool names too)

Add to these opportunities he worked—very hard. He was a pure composing and performance machine. He met, early in life, the 10,000 hours of practice rule so there is no doubt that he did the necessary spadework.

Other composers worked hard however, and yet it is Bach’s creations that seem to stand at the pinnacle in the musical firmament. Thus we, the mere mortals, can be forgiven if we believe that there was some ineffable streak of genius baked into his nature—one that simply linked up with his impressive work habits.

What is even more remarkable about him is that he offers so much. The serious students of music in the conservatory who beaver away 26 hours a day (yes, 26—just ask them) plunging into the most technical aspects of Bach’s works and construction techniques find as much satisfaction in his works as does the average person who hears his music in a cathedral or concert hall once or twice a year.

That he can remain accessible to the average person is a hard needle to thread for the more specialized music becomes the more remote it seems to be for the non-expert listener. Just think of how enjoyable it is to hear Miles Davis’ jazz standard Kind of Blue but how hard it is to listen to some of the jazz that came out in the decades to follow. Its shifting keys and time signatures and odd chord structures became just a bit too challenging for the average Joe. The same is true for a good number of orchestral works.

No worries though with J.S. Bach and his fugues, cantatas, counterpoint, mastery of the organ, pieces for the cello and violin, and of course the magnificent choral arrangements. His output was as deep as it was broad and forward thinking. In fact, some of his composition seemed 300 years ahead of its time. Here is Rick Beato (see link just below this paragraph) talking about this aspect of Bach’s composition. Note his mention of how it has only been recently that some of Bach’s chord choices have been revisited.

 

Here then is a thought experiment: What would you do if you could reincarnate Bach to the present day? What music and artists would you have him listen to? What composing tools would you put at his disposal so he could continue to create? And perhaps, most intriguingly, after he became familiar with today’s musical standards what would he create?

I will admit that mine is a decidedly amateur opinion at best, but here are my thoughts:

First you would have to acquaint him with all the music and technology that followed his death. Remember, artists like Mozart, Beethoven, and Chopin were all born after Bach had already died so there would be a lot to learn. I would enlist a reputable music historian, armed with all the histories and recordings, to step him through the last 250 years of musical evolution.

He would need to learn how the instrumentation has changed. The pitch and timbre of the instruments he worked with was different than it is today. Even something as simple as the Concert A that orchestras tune with was, in his time, not at the 440 Hertz that it is now.

Speaking of instrumentation… electricity would be new to him. He spent countless hours constructing sounds within the orchestra that required many instruments and players. Today a reasonably priced keyboard could do that all for him with a touch of a button.

Looping tracks to provide the foundation for his compositions are a luxury he never could have imagined. Back then to had to assemble a group of players to try something new or else work it all out in his head—obviously not easy tasks.

Yet I am confident he would soon grasp all this. He would even understand how an electric guitar player produces a sound that can be both sustained and distorted for effect. He would enjoy having an orchestral backing track to work with as he noodled around with new ideas. In other words, he would do what thousands of musicians do every day as they compose—experiment and never cease to try new things.