Why JS Bach still matters

Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2024 on Sunday 20 October at Church House, Westminster.

ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION

From the introspection of his solo cello suites to the grand drama of his choral works, Johann Sebastian Bach is one of the musical greats – uniting technical mastery with a profound understanding of musical form and structure. Although exceptionally talented, his real genius lay in his ability to synthesise tradition with innovation, to create music not merely mathematically precise, but capable of expressing the full cosmos of human emotion.

But, in this year, the 300th anniversary of the premiere of Bach’s St John Passion, does this godlike figure of classical music still matter? Alas, it seems, even among music scholars, he is no longer considered a Titan. In some academic circles, the fact that Bach was a heterosexual white male makes him merely an irrelevance – and even offensive to modern sensibilities.

For example, take a pivotal scene in the Hollywood film Tár, in which self-declared ‘BIPOC, pangender’ music student Max says that Bach’s reputation for misogyny and cisgender-white-maleness make it hard for him to appreciate the composer’s music. Lydia Tár, the fictional conductor of an orchestra in Berlin and masterclass tutor at Julliard, suggests students should focus on the music instead of immutable characteristics. Edited phone footage of her comments becomes a contributing factor in Tár’s eventual cancellation from the heights of classical music fame. The scene seems entirely plausible.

In recent years, other composers of Western classical music have also faced hostile investigation. From claims that music theory is a racial ideology to be dismantled, to suggestions that studying white European music causes students of colour distress, it has become almost impossible in classrooms and peer-reviewed journals to assert the intrinsic value of classical music. In a bid to ‘decolonise’ the music curriculum, an Oxford professor branded musical notation itself ‘colonialist’. Beyond academia, efforts to popularise classical repertoire to new generations have been denigrated as the white supremacist project of an imperial society.

While some fight back by asserting that Bach and his companions in the canon are unassailable accomplishments of Western civilisation, is it enough to treat classical works with uncritical reverence? How can we judge an exemplary work like his St John Passion? Need we defend Bach the man to celebrate his music? Can we champion the transcendental quality of Western classical music against politicised opposition, indifference or claims of irrelevance?

SPEAKERS
Ivan Hewett
writer and broadcaster; chief music critic, Telegraph; professor, Royal College of Music; author, Music: healing the rift

Dr Lola Salem
lecturer in French and music, University of Oxford; author; professional singer, Maîtrise de Radio France; critic

CHAIR
Elisabetta Gasparoni
linguist; teacher; founder, Aesthetic Study Group