Bach - Brandenburg Concertos No.3 - I: Allegro Moderato

and you know that no milkmen hummed his tunes how? Yes Bach remained relatively obscure until Mendelssohn disinterred Bach's voluminous collection, but Bach wasn't a nobody. His reputation as an organist was second to none and late in his life he was a local legend. His sons of course enjoyed more notoriety than he did. What is important to note is that there wasn't this gradual "oh now I get it" revelation when it came to Bach. As with Mozart, there was immediate appeal.

or, epiphany would be a better word

"not emotional" is so subjective and relative to the listener's own talent, intellect, and experience. Please listen to BWV 543 at least ten times by a great organist, come back to me and tell me that a fugue cannot contain emotion. You just can't conceive it until you experience. It will be quite a revolution for you if you can ever get past this juvenile complex that structure abolishes latency for emotion in art. Silly.

These are obvious truths. Of course mathematics and structure do not tug at the heart strings. Do you think there is any structure in Michelango's Pieta or David? How about the Sistine Chapel? Thought so. Are they beautiful? Do they embody the structure it took to create them? no. See my point? All you may hear is structure but you're not listening hard enough. You either havn't played Bach as much or listened to him intently. You fall prey to a classic artistic rut.

Somehow I missed this. You do understand that the compositional process is driven by improvisation? Consequently, the greatest pieces are typically written by the greatest improvisers. And, yes, I am a composer. I have composed and won International Composition Competitions. I'm not tooting my own horn. You asked and I'm telling you the truth. We could talk about our respective credibilities but I see no point. There will always be a parenthetical "yea, buut..." lurking after achievement

But, to be very clear, dissonance WILL continue to evolve. Just read about how Eric Whitacres compositions have grabbed ahold of younger generations free of the adulterated mindsets concerning dissonant music. I heard someone once compare Whitacre to Debussy, which is a bad comparison. Whitacre's harmony is MUCH more dissonant and a logical flow into the future. If you know anything about the overtone series you know that, harmonically, music follows this strict course...more to say...

Some scholars I know believe that the reign of Palestrina and others like Gesualdo were the pinnacle of expressive music. One could argue that Romantic composers underestimated man's ability to read between the lines and find the endless beauty and expression of the Baroque and Renaissance period. Sometimes when I listen to Ravel I could choke myself. It's so obvious that he felt nothing when writing ostensibly emotional music. It's blatant duplicity. It's country music to my ears!

You see, it's people like you who say it's ok to pee in a cup and call it art. Expression does not and will never come before beauty. Expression can be anything...dull, fat, happy, reticent, ugly. So what? Expression is good yes. It's relative. A person rationalizes their inability to perform something well or original by saying "look at me, look at my genius, look how I'm expressing". I think you're grasping at straws here. Egalitarianism is a nice utopia in a Brave New Worldish way.

It's ironic that you would quote someone like Glenn Gould, who I believe was extremely overrated. (by academia no less) I've heard pianists interpret the Goldbergs with much more poignancy and much LESS pedantic eccentricity than Glen Gould. Gould played what he thought seemed emotional to others, whereas someone like Angela Hewitt phrases Bach with understanding and emotion. And, regardless of these examples, they are just performers, no?

atonality? It won't. And to confirm my speculations, you spout off more hackneyed ideals that are characteristic of the ivory tower musical hierarchy that pervaded (and still does) in academia the past century. Only a musical genius can change the culture and ideas as they relate to music. Cage and Schoenberg were not. Collectively, they threw things together with convoluted ideas and bad philosophy. If I want philosophy I'll read Goethe, Hegel, Neitsche etc.