Talk:Johann Sebastian Bach

Wife/children
Johann Christian Bach was Bach's eighteenth child/11th son? 207.225.17.172 (talk) 16:33, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

One of the most influential
does a statement like "Bach is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential composers in the history of Western music" really need to be cited? I would have thought it was a sky-blue kind of statement. It seems to me to be better suited to the lead than "Since the 19th-century Bach revival he has been generally regarded as one of the greatest composers in the history of Western music" and less awkward. Harold the Sheep (talk) 22:52, 29 July 2023 (UTC)


 * That he has been seen as influential may be blue-sky, but this proposed statement IMO goes well beyond that - it would indeed benefit from citation. Nikkimaria (talk) 23:00, 29 July 2023 (UTC)
 * The proposed statement is "Bach is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential composers in the history of Western music". I personally can't see how that is in any way controversial. In any case I don't think it would be difficult to find sources for it. Assuming it was sourced, do you have an opinion on which of the sentences is better? Harold the Sheep (talk) 04:06, 31 July 2023 (UTC)


 * It would depend on the sourcing, but in general the existing sentence seems more precise. Nikkimaria (talk) 04:11, 31 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Bach's influence is complex. No, it is certainly not as clear cut as Beethoven (or to a slightly lesser extent, Mozart) who have always been hugely influential since their lifetimes and beyond. The tendency to see the three composers as a trio whose greatness surpasses all others is a modern invention, which is fair enough, but to equate greatness to influence is simply incorrect. Bach's central importance sprouted in the mid-19th century, a hundred years after his death. Could his influence from then on be comparable to Beethoven? Maybe. Could it not? Maybe. Either way, the lead is not the place for a blanket/decisive statement for such a nuanced subject.  Aza24  (talk)   05:04, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

First Sunday of Advent 1714
Bach did not attend the service at the St. Thomas Church on the first Sunday of Advent in 1714. According to Bach Digital, Bach's note in the autograph score of BWV 61 about the order of service in Leipzig was added for a re-performance after 1730. 85.76.112.148 (talk) 22:37, 21 November 2023 (UTC)


 * Are you referring to the Bach Digital page here? The Spitta ref gives us a cross-reference to his Vol. I, which itself has a footnote which reads:
 * "The note is given in the preface to the cantata; it is by this alone that we know of Bach's journey to Leipzig. It is evident that it was not inserted later, when Bach was cantor at Leipzig, because he entered on his office there in the spring of 1723, and by Advent of that year could certainly no longer have needed to make any note as to the order or service." (Spitta 1899a p519)
 * I'm not sure how convincing that is, but it's clearly something he's considered.
 * The Bach Digital page reads "...subsequent performance after 1730 (autograph addition to the order of service in partially autographed score P 45)" - I wonder if it's indicating that Bach wrote the order of service in 1714, and then added to that after 1730? i.e. autograph addition to the order of service, not autograph addition of the order of service. Ligaturama (talk) 14:46, 18 December 2023 (UTC)
 * The same order of service is found in the autograph score of BWV 62, performed on Advent I in 1724. Curiously, "u. Credo intoniret" is crossed out in both of them. Anonymous7002 (talk) 18:09, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Featured Article
Wikipedia has Good Articles (deemed to be of high quality) and Featured Articles (of higher quality). Among composers, Claude Debussy has a Featured Article and Igor Stravinsky has a Good one. Surely Bach, one of the greatest and most influential composers in Western music, should have a Featured Article?

The other day I added the following from Jan Swafford: "In one of the gods' occasional literary touches, the name Bach is German for 'brook'; and the music of J. S. Bach is one of the inexhaustible wellsprings of Western music." This was reverted, as Swafford is not a Bach scholar. True enough, but he is a music critic of note, and his book is a valuable reference. With due respect, I think it's a good addition to the header. Many headers end with a quote that provides a segue for what follows; the header for John Updike ends with his description of his style as an attempt to "give the mundane its beautiful due." I think the Swafford quote is similarly useful; Bach is "one of the inexhaustible wellsprings of Western music", waters which hopefully flow through the article which follows.

I also added that Felix Mendelssohn led the Bach revival with his performance of St Matthew Passion, which was reverted. But that's useful history, I think. (Mendelssohn also has a Featured Article.)

I confess that I am not a Bach scholar, but I believe those additions would be worthy. And, to begin where we started, shouldn't Bach have a Featured article? If it's not yet polished enough to be Featured, let's polish it! Charlie Faust (talk) 18:50, 22 March 2024 (UTC)


 * Hi Charlie, I can see you're relatively new to WP, so I welcome you! Raising an article to featured status is a very long and difficult process. It must pass through Featured article candidates and being thoroughly assessed through rather demanding Featured article criteria. In a topic like Bach, pretty much every sentence must have a citation to a modern scholarly book/article on the composer. It also has to the article deeply reflects a comprehensive survey of all modern and important Bach literature.
 * This article is rather far from Featured status-worthy. The biography section is all over the place, citing 200 year old biographies and random online sources. The Musical style and Legacy sections are ripe with missing citations and WP:OR; the compositions section is an almost worthless choppy section which accomplishes nothing. Most of these sections, save for the biography—which is at least thorough—would probably have to be entirely rewritten.
 * I'm not saying this to deter you, but simply posting on the talk page, "hey everyone lets make this featured" is a significantly more difficult task than you may have expected.
 * As for the reverts, Wikipedia avoids puffery (see MOS:PUFFERY) and the lead is meant to be a highly general summary of the existing article content. Mendelssohn was important to the Bach revival, but this article is about the composer, not the revival. His name doesn't really belong in an extremely general lead summary.  Aza24  (talk)   21:05, 22 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the input. I hope raising an article to Featured status is a long and difficult process, or else they'd just let any article be Featured, which would defeat the purpose. I hope you agree that Bach is a worthy candidate for a Featured article. My intent was not to say "hey everyone let's make this featured"; rather, that we should undergo the demanding process of making it Featured.
 * I know the article is far from Featured. Under Reception, we learn "In the 20th century, Bach's music was widely performed and recorded, while the Neue Bachgesellschaft, among others, published research on the composer. Modern adaptations of Bach's music contributed greatly to his popularisation in the second half of the 20th century. Among these were the Swingle Singers' versions of Bach pieces (for instance, the Air from Orchestral Suite No. 3, and the Wachet auf... chorale prelude), as heard on their album Jazz Sebastian Bach and Wendy Carlos' 1968 Switched-On Bach, which used the Moog electronic synthesiser." That's all OK, but shouldn't it go under the Twentieth century subheading? And, indeed, Wendy Carlos' Switched on Bach is referenced there, as are the Swingle Sisters. No need to have it twice, that I can tell.
 * I learn from John Eliot Gardiner's Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven that Friedrich Nietzsche wrote in 1870: "This week I heard the St Matthew Passion three times and each time I had the same feeling of immeasurable admiration. One who was forgotten completely Christianity truly hears it here as Gospel." Nietzsche was an important thinker who wrote on music, and his quote shows both the composer's universal appeal and how far his stock had risen by the 19th century. Wouldn't that be worth including under 19th century? If "The biography section is all over the place, citing 200 year old biographies and random online sources", Gardiner's biography would be worth citing. (Unlike Swafford, Gardiner is a specialist in the Baroque repertoire.) I'm sure you're right that "The Musical style and Legacy sections are ripe with missing citations and WP:OR; the compositions section is an almost worthless choppy section which accomplishes nothing. Most of these sections, save for the biography—which is at least thorough—would probably have to be entirely rewritten." If they have to be thoroughly rewritten to be a Featured article, then they should be thoroughly rewritten. I think Gardiner is a source worth citing.
 * I am not a Bach scholar, and am not the one to write a Featured Article. But if I can help, even a small way, to make the article worthy of being Featured, then I will have accomplished something. I'm not saying rewriting the article to make it Featured quality would be easy. Making a Featured article should be difficult, if the criterion is to have value. But many things worth doing are difficult, a philosophy to which I think Bach would have subscribed. In that spirit, let's make an article worthy of him. Charlie Faust (talk) 21:52, 22 March 2024 (UTC)
 * I think you're still missing the point. To put it simply, it's not a feature article because it's not at the quality a feature article needs to be at. It's not as simple as "this topic deserves it" because theoretically the goal is that EVERY article eventually become feature (not a realistic scenario but it is the drive). Feature is unrelated to the notoriety or importance of the topic itself. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 05:23, 23 March 2024 (UTC)
 * I realize that "Featured" refers to the quality of the article, not the importance of the subject. But surely an important subject is deserving of a first-rate article? Shakespeare has a Featured article, and rightly; he is a giant of literature. Shouldn't a giant of music have one?
 * Yes, I realize this article, as it is, is far from Featured-quality; a lot of it seems to have been assembled from disparate sources, Frankenstein-fashion, and much of it is redundant; Wendy Carlos and the Swingle Sisters are mentioned under the heading Reception and again under the subheading 20th Century.
 * Yes, ideally all articles should be Featured quality, but we have to start somewhere, and where better than with a composer who, as Swafford noted, "is one of the inexhaustible wellsprings of Western music"? Charlie Faust (talk) 17:08, 23 March 2024 (UTC)
 * I've made (what I hope are) improvements. Under "Reception", the first paragraph mentioned Mendelssohn's precipitation of the Bach Revival with his 1829 performance of the St Matthew Passion, and 20th century performances of Bach by the Swingle Sisters and Wendy Carlos. These were mentioned again under the subheadings of 19th and 20th centuries. No reason for them to be mentioned twice, and the performances are better suited to their respective centuries.
 * Under 19th century, I changed 'first performance of Mass in B minor' to 'public performance' since, as noted, it had been performed privately {"A new generation of Bach aficionados emerged: they studiously collected and copied his music, including some of his large-scale works such as the Mass in B minor and performed it privately.") 'Forkel published Ueber Johann Sebastian Bachs Leben, Kunst...' yes, but why give German title on English language page? Most Bach works are referred to by English titles. 'From 1873 to 1880, Philipp Spitta published Johann Sebastian Bach, the standard work on Bach's life and music.' May have been the standard, but surely it's been surpassed by Wolff, et al.? 'By that time, Bach was known as the first of the three B's'; yes, by Cornelius; von Bülow swapped Berlioz for Brahms. Times change, but Bach remains a lasting influence. Speaking of influence, I think there should be more on how Bach influenced later composers. We're told that Haydn owned a copy of Mass in B Minor "and was influenced by Bach's music." Yes, but how? We're told that Beethoven played the Well-Tempered Clavier (by heart, I think) and called Bach Urvater der Harmonie (progenitor of harmony.) That's specific, and it's good to be specific about such things. Similarly, I'd like to know how Bach influenced Haydn and Mozart (and Debussy and Stravinsky, for that matter.) Bach is a river that runs throughout Western music.
 * I still think closing the header with a quote (perhaps by Swafford) would be apt. The header for the William Shakespeare article ends with the following from his former rival Ben Johnson: that Shakespeare was "not of an age, but for all time". The header for the James Joyce article ends with the following quote from Joyce himself: "For myself, I always write about Dublin, because if I can get to the heart of Dublin I can get to the heart of all the cities of the world. In the particular is contained the universal." Shakespeare and Joyce both have Featured articles, and rightly, so closing the header with a pertinent quotation is not without precedent. The Swafford quote ("In one of the gods' occasional literary touches, the name Bach is German for 'brook'; and the music of J. S. Bach is one of the inexhaustible wellsprings of Western music") is both a summation of the header and a segue to what follows; hopefully, it serves as a wellspring of waters which flow through the article Charlie Faust (talk) 00:19, 27 March 2024 (UTC)
 * I still don't really since the relevance of the Swafford quote. The Shakespeare example you cite is from an important playwright, and a very brief summation of Shakespeare's global spread. The Joyce quote is from Joyce himself and directly connects to his work. Again, Swafford is not a Bach scholar, and his 1992 book is for a general audience, not a scholarly overview like Grout, Burkholder, Stobla, Taruskin etc.
 * This "inexhaustible wellsprings of Western music" is meaningless WP:Puffery, it doesn't give any specifics (like the Joyce quote) or in part useful information (like the Shakespeare quote), and is redundant to the already prominent "greatest in Western music". Bringing up Christian god to impart a random linguistic connection, seems extremely tenuous in relevance.
 * Your changes seem like improvements, but I must stress that sourcing is by far the biggest barrier in this article, so you are really address "late-game" matters at the moment. Regardless, improvements are improvements.  Aza24  (talk)   05:03, 27 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Well, as you say, improvements are improvements, and you gotta start somewhere. I mentioned John Eliot Gardiner's Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven. It's for a general audience, but Gardiner is a conductor of note and a specialist in the Baroque repertoire. It seems like a work worth citing, as does Christoph Wolff's Bach's Musical Universe. You write that "The Musical style and Legacy sections are ripe with missing citations and WP:OR; the compositions section is an almost worthless choppy section which accomplishes nothing." The good news is there are books on individual Bach works, like Steven Isserlis's The Bach Cello Suites: A Companion. True, it's for a general audience, but Isserlis is a cellist of note. Charlie Faust (talk) 20:05, 27 March 2024 (UTC)

Relevance of the Thomaskantor contract
There is an interesting NYU law school paper discussion of Bach’s contract as Thomaskantor here  that may be worthwhile to integrate into and reference within that section. Zatsugaku (talk) 14:54, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

Footnote 101 is incorrect
The page numbers for footnote 101 is incorrect. It should be David, Mendel & Wolff 1998, pp. 251-252, not pg. 191–197. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:46:582:8c10:951f:df5:db81:df (talk • contribs) 20:43, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

It should be "Sebastian Bach"
With "Johann Sebastian Bach" in the opening paragraph. Just like it's "Joseph Haydn" and then "Franz Joseph Haydn" in the paragraph. Nobody called him Johann. He was Sebastian. Borges123xyz (talk) 19:22, 9 May 2023 (UTC)


 * Doesn't matter. The majority of secondary reliable sources call him Johann Sebastian Bach, so Wikipedia does too.  Aza24  (talk)   19:34, 9 May 2023 (UTC)
 * The preeminent biography of Bach, Christoph Wolff's JS Bach, the learned musician, calls him "Sebastian". Tony (talk)  02:19, 1 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes, but the average person is more likely to know him as "Johann Sebastian Bach," so per WP:COMMONNAME the current title should be kept. Benpiano800 (talk) 16:51, 17 July 2024 (UTC)
 * The biography's title is "Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician".....  Aza24  (talk)   17:05, 17 July 2024 (UTC)