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Do not forget that Bach's music needed to feed 20 of his children over the course of his life. (10 survived)

I have a hard time believing that he was intentionally carving out the rules of eg _Gradus ad Parnassum_ rather than consistently trying to make music that sounded good with good timbre given the constraints of his living situation and employer.

What seems prescriptive to the children is often originally descriptive to the elders.

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He was definitely aiming for a certain style, which involved following certain rules. There are surviving draft manuscripts where he makes edits to follow voice-writing rules like avoiding parallel fifths, etc. It seems pretty clear based on this (and his training, and even a cursory study of what he wrote) that his compositional practice was intensely theoretical. The dude was not out there freestyling.

In fact, the places where he broke certain fundamental rules are so rare that they form a rather short list, despite his voluminous output: https://www.bach-chorales.com/ConsecutivesInChorales.htm.

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