Is Bach the greatest achiever of all time?
marginalrevolution.com
marginalrevolution.com
Even within artistic disciplines, how would you compare Bach, Shakespeare, and DaVinci? Shakespeare alone added 1,700 new words to the English language (that we still use today). DaVinci painted so meticulously that his works have hundreds of layers of paint that are thinner than a strand of hair.
Comparison is the thief of joy - better to just envision a "hall of fame", where once reached, it doesn't matter where you place.
Comparing others is a source of joy, people love gossiping or just talking about who is better etc. Comparison is only a thief of joy when you compare yourself to others, but comparing Newton to Einstein etc is an endless source of fun, many people have enjoyed these discussions over the years.
Gossip for those people is often just a mechanism to increase their self esteem in front of bigger than life artists who truly changed the world. It is a bit like music lovers who have strong opinions about everything, while not being able to play a single note on any instrument. For them comparing the great musicians on that level makes them feel important too – if they can't walk the walk they at least try to talk the talk. Meanwhile most actual musicians are usually far more tolerant about the types of music they would consider interesting, because for them everything new they hear is something that can be used as an influence for creation.
So if someone asks whether Bach or thee greates Jazz musicians on the height of their game were the greater artists, any musician with half a brain cell would reject the question, because the question doesn't even make sense. Both things are absolutely masterful within the ideas they tried to explore. And those were different ideas.
That would be like comparing a masterfully built modern bridge to gothic cathedral. They are from different times, have been created in different societies, with different goals in mind with a different knowledge base, etc. Any comparison that would be worth anything would have to account for all these different factors and then land at a result that would be highly subjective anyways (which is not a bad thing if you are interested in using that comparison to increase your own self worth in front of the architects who planned those – but futile otherwise).
Why does this matter?
> That would be like comparing a masterfully built modern bridge to gothic cathedral.
That sounds really fun! Those two are both massive structures that need to support a lot of weight, they are more similar than you might think. I can see a video looking into that getting many millions of views.
I think you really underestimate how much fun people derive just from learning things from these discussions. It isn't about feeling superior to Bach or Gauss or Newton etc, its just fun discussions about the world.
I, as a practical person that does things have learned that very often that the layperson has a completely non-existent image of what any art or craft entails. They are then still allowed to have opinions, I just don't value them as much. My experience is also that the layperson is very often correct about their feelings, but rarely correct when they propose solutions to what they believe will fix it for them.
I agree that your proposed comparison would be interesting, and I whole-heartedly agree with your point about learning things feom discussions. However, we discussed comparing which is better, not how different things are made. I could imagine a ironic version of a "who is the best"-discussion to be quite entertaining, but we were talking about deadpan serious "who is better"-comparisons here.
Comparisons like these make sense if you compare similar things or if you try to compare them on the same merit, e.g. would an early top athlete in a sport be able to compete with a top athlete in the same sport today if they had the same training, material etc.
We are a social species. And a pattern-sensing species. Enjoying comparing things, especially people, combines our defining traits.
It’s a personal choice whether you are gossipy or not, but that decision is guided by subconscious factors.
— Brad Bird, Academy Award-winning director of Ratatouille and The Incredibles
Take Led Zeppelin, who basically spawned an entire subgenre of rock and roll. What genre did the Beatles spawn? What new vibe or style did they introduce? Just a bunch of pop songs. Even their druggie stuff really isn't that great.
In terms of sophistication, is it any of the classical masters? No. It was remarkable given the desert of creativity it appeared in. Are they better than Jazz masters or the like? I'd say no.
Were the Beatles at the forefront of leading a cultural revolution, a fundamental political shift? Sure they were part of the hippy culture, but are the associated with strident antiwar, communal living, or extreme free love? There are many other 60s acts you can point to as more influential.
Christ, even U2 has a more coherent origin story and central focus around antiwar and activism, as bubble gum as their variant is.
The tension in the band isn't even interesting. Just people making bank from pop success and arguing over attribution. The schisms were bland, not even really about ideology. Just ... credit.
When I hear them now on the radio, when I hear them on the radio, it's not like I change the station, but I don't turn up the volume. In the end, they are a pop band that sold a lot of records. Ok, maybe I turn it up for Elenor Rigby, but just a bit.
I've never loved this aphorism. Comparison is a crucial component of knowledge discovery. It would be more apt to say that ranking is the thief of joy.
DaVinci had really bad technique and couldn't help but endlessly fiddle with his paintings. Many of his paintings never saw the light of day because he ruining them and never finished them.
The Last Supper that we know and love was actually a superior copy made by one of his proteges because his original fresco fell apart after a few years owing to his "innovative techniques" - he painted on dry plaster because he took way too long on it.
DaVinci was wonderfully imaginative and a very unique artist, but I don't think his reputation has been fully earned by his achievements.
that is not true: he new that he was not able to paint a normal fresco, so he tried a different technique, that didn't work out.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Supper_(Leonardo)#Med...
* https://www.gramophone.co.uk/features/article/the-complete-b...
* https://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2013/Apr13/B...
* https://www.amazon.com/Bach-2000-Johann-Sebastian/dp/B00001I...
A few years later they released a digital copy, with all the music made MP3s on a USB stick, with PDFs of the booklets:
* https://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/apr/17/complete-bach-...
Edit: Somewhat related, is the All of Bach project:
> All of Bach is a project of the Netherlands Bach Society with the aim to perform and record all of Bach's works and share them online with the world for free. With the finest recordings, performed at special locations and with great attention to image and sound. Don't want to miss a recording of All of Bach? Then subscribe to our YouTube channel. If you would like to help us complete All of Bach, please consider a donation.
* https://www.bachvereniging.nl/en/allofbach
It is stunning in every way; I highly recommend it for any Bach fans!
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8EuGZk74io
I am so tempted to get this (even at CA$ 800, per amazon.ca), but I'm not sure I have the actual physical space to store it.
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4jjc7SCCeXZ0PmvnKZgjpx?si=...
750 performers contributed to 260 hours of recordings. The three hours I rounded up would represent a major part of some other‘s work.
Another Dutch "complete Bach" project from recent years that I enjoyed: Leusink's complete set of recordings of Bach's sacred cantatas with the Holland Boy's Choir and Netherlands Bach Collegium (1999-2000), recorded over the span of just 15 months. A year ago I listened to the entire thing, which took me three months.
(It's quite good. But in my opinion, this haste is reflected in the performances a little bit; they are very competent, to be sure, but they lack some nuance, perhaps especially in the sound mix. For whatever reason, I much prefer the NBS recordings of most of these cantatas. (I don't really like Sytse Buwalda's voice, either.) Compare their BWV 21 [2] with NBS [3]. The beautiful interplay between first violin and oboe in the NBS recording is rather lost in the Leusink version, and the sound muddier. Admittedly the NBS version appears to replace the organ with some extra strings, but to me it just sounds crisper and more carefully performed. This really extends to everything. I hope NBS will one day release a complete cantata box set.)
[1] https://youtu.be/N6sUlZa-IrU?si=0Ls7CTQ4UiMyDB0b
[2] https://youtu.be/JGT0iPpU9is?si=qVMJTYhANI8adHop
[3] https://open.spotify.com/track/6MLmB5GDhAJr3cxMKKXUzs?si=xcV...
I don't think this is correct. Bach was seeking a position of court composer (like Handel) and even sent his 6 Brandenburg Concertos to Margrave of Brandenburg-Schwedt in 1721. He didn't get the position. Brandenburg Concertos are some of his best works and I can't imagine how much top-quality secular music he could have written if he got the position.
0: https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/bach-and-the-high-ba...
It was Euler.
He also lived without electricity, and went blind too. And yet he figured out a huge amount of interesting stuff, roughly corresponding with high school math. Euler also moved across countries.
His contributions in physics were truly groundbreaking, a lot of traditional theoretical mechanics is coming from him mostly.
And not even all of his works in Latin were translated yet...
and based on the complexity of Fugues he was probably the world’s best multi-threaded programmer too :).
His fame also took a long time to establish. He was well known during his life but nothing like the mythical legend he is now today.
Anyhow, there are many many great composers from different genres, and if you consider the aim to be communication (rather than the quality of the music itself) who would argue against the Beatles, or Taylor Swift as the greatest achievers of all time in music?
* Baroque c. 1600–1750 – Pachelbel, Purcell, Albinoni, Telemann, Bach, Händel, Vivaldi
* Classical c. 1730–1820 – Haydn, Mozart, Salieri, Beethoven, Schubert, as well as Bach's sons C.P.E. Bach and J.C. Bach
* Romantic c. 1800–1910 – Strauss, Wagner, Chopin, Mendelssohn, Liszt, Dvořák, Tchaikowsky, Grieg, Sibelius
with quite a bit of overlap, of course – for example Beethoven and Schubert were both influential figures in the Classical–Romantic transition.
Define better; Bach wasn’t appreciated that much when he was alive. Only later we decided that his works are the bees knees.
“Throughout the 18th century, Bach was primarily valued as an organist, while his keyboard music, such as The Well-Tempered Clavier, was appreciated for its didactic qualities.”
Do you remember being instructed not to cite wikipedia as a source?
The Brandenburg Concerti were ignored until around 1849 and nearly lost again during WWII. How ridiculous is that?
This guy isn’t writing a thesis, he’s posting an internet comment.
Sorry for adding negativity :/
The piece I'm missing is that J.S. Bach's work contains several homages to Vivaldi, and there was something transmitted between them that is an understanding not just of counterpoint, but about symmetry and form that is fun to pursue in spare moments.
Mozart, who was himself a great master of counterpoint, was understandably delighted by the Bach fugues that Baron Van Swieten showed him. Mozart was of course very heavily indebted to Johann Christian, but several pieces were clearly homages to the elder Bach; the subject from the K. 394 fugue was clearly derived from the first of the WTK, and the K. 574 Gigue (composed in Leipzig, no less) is obviously Bachian pastiche. The armoured men chorus from the Magic Flute sets a protestant chorale (often used by Bach) in a Bachian setting. That's not to mention the string quartet arrangements of Bach's fugues that Mozart made.
> He seems to have been entirely internally driven by his genius and his commitment to the eternal and divine.
That's probably the only way to go strong for that long.
These people pushed forward human civilization. They are all an inspiration to us.
Why is that a criteria? Most setbacks aren't really something the person can control (Although, in Napoleon's case, he probably could have).
Also, failure is going to happen in life. You just need to accept it.
https://derctuo.github.io/notes/hacker-calendar.html
possibly being among the greatest achievers of all time is not compatible with being perfectly obedient
i'm not sure how tyler cowen doesn't consider this a 'true defeat or setback', except in the sense that today only bach scholars remember the name of the guy who imprisoned him
Also, > 8. Ending up so great that he could learn only from himself.
how does greatness prevent you from learning from others? For example, don't greatest athletes continue to benefit from coaches?
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
Obviously, "it depends". In fact, in the article, a comprehensive list of criteria is given.
1. Quality of work.
2. How much better he was than his contemporaries.
3. How much he stayed the very best in subsequent centuries.
4. Quantity of work.
5. Peaks.
6. Consistency of work and achievement.
7. How many other problems he had to solve to succeed with his achievement.
8. Ending up so great that he could learn only from himself.
9. Never experiencing true defeat or setback.
There's a reasonable case to be made that Yeshua bin Yusuf was one of the more successful apocalyptic prophets in that time and place considering how much of his teaching comes down to us. I'd say there's a good case for checking off 1 and 2, but that's about it.
(Betteridge's law of headlines, etc.)
Without dismissing Bach's work (or the others named in the discussion, I would had picked Leonardo with my shallow default knowledge on the topic) we should acknowledge how biased is what we know. Not just because how we select what we should focus on, but how partial is the information that managed to reach us today.
No it isn't, history is written by people looking at old documents. Losers write a lot of history as well since it isn't like the victors go and kill all the losers or burn down all their documents.
> The greatest achiever of which work reached us, by the criteria that we pick, of the things we know today, and the "we" changes from culture to culture.
Yes, the history taught to us depends on where we live, not who won back then. If you are in country A they will say their glorius wars conquered B, if you are in country B they will say the tyranny when ruled A was a horrible time. History wasn't written by A, both sides gets to write most of the time.
> No it isn't, history is written by people looking at old documents.
Perhaps in very recent history but the old documents have been written by contemporary and there are many clear cases when the history has been rewritten by a tyrants e.g. politicians. I even know at least one large country based on multiple historical lies they tell to themselves and try to force upon others.
Defacing old sculptures and paintings to erase people from the history is another clearest example of this practice.
People are quick to dogpile on entities that do self criticism while proud egoists who never analyze themselves rarely get that.
But Bach didn't even write the history, did he? Wasn't considered that great in his time. Rather, he was almost forgotten.
And let's forget about the rest of the analogy by ignorance.
Maybe for some really old stuff, but musical production at the time of Bach's is something entirely different. There's no other genius like him out there, and that's a fact.
I know you imagine that this is a profound observation but unfortunately it isn't. We all have it in our teens and twenties then we realise (decades later if we're unlucky) that it means much less than we thought.
We imagine that the work that reaches us now is so incomplete as to render present judgements about the past invalid or so inaccurate as to be misleading or useless. But culture and civilisation, are in a real sense, defined as what _endures_.
When it comes to the values that endure, it is more likely than not that humans pass along "the best things". Culture, after all, is downstream of genes and evolution.
There is no "better culture" hiding somewhere but hidden by our biases or by a conspiracy of victors. There are no better artists lost to the past who were so good that had they not been lost our knowledge and appreciation of art today would be far different and superior to what it is now.
"Acknowledging how biased is what we know" is similarly not as valuable an idea as it sounds because acknowledging bias doesn't actually reveal better information. The worst that bias can do is impede arriving at rational logical conclusions, and that is easily corrected by debate amongst enough people over a long enough period.
Another way to say this is we are always collectively evaluating stuff in the past based on the best information we have available now. To acknowledge a putative bias doesn't take you _outside_ of the sphere of our knowledge of the past in which we are making judgements because even the fact that you can think and utter that statement is a result of the cultural values that were given to you and are thus already a part of the culture.
There is nothing _outside_ of culture.
How we evaluate music is deeply subjective. The complex harmonic and counterpunctal vocabulary of the Baroque was passe by the time Bach died, replaced by the simplicity of the Classical period. And then romanticism kept the harmony, but created sweeping emotion rather than deep craft. Then look at jazz where the relationships of chords are entirely changed. So yes, there are works that people overlook and reevaluate.
I understand your point. But you're missing my point in order to make a point of your own, about something different. Forest-trees.
It’s like Cowen can’t help himself at this point. The world would be better served if he spent more time reviewing ethnic restaurants than publishing thoughtfarts like this. I guess it’s a better use of Koch Brothers money than their usual pursuits, at least.