My Bach, and Michael Johnson's

Johann Sebastian Bach

When I think back to my college days, I realize that I did learn a lot in those days, although what I learned in the classroom was rivaled by what I learned outside. I discovered Bach my freshman years in both ways: My favorite class my freshman year was a "music appreciation" class, which I loved because it exposed me to lots of wonderful music. The music it covered included a far amount of Bach, including Cantata No. 140, the "Wachet Auf" cantata. It is still one of my favorite classical music pieces, and in fact I listen to the cantatas more than I listen to any other Bach. Michael Johnson, though, in his fine new Substack piece on Bach, concentrates on Bach's solo ins trumental music, which makes sense, as Michael is a heavy metal guitarist. 

In my dormitory my freshman year, there was a guy down the hall, a friend of friends, who had an album called "Switched on Bach," and so Walter/Wendy Carlos was another source of Bach education for me. One of the more impressive pieces on the album was "Sheep May Safely Graze," and while still a college student, I tracked down and bought a recording of the cantata it appears on (e.g,, the "Hunting Cantata," BWV 208.) 

Buying that album, a minuscule part of Bach's total work,  took a bit of real effort, and I had to spend real money. Nowadays, I have access to a huge treasury of Bach recordings available for free (from the public library digital music services) or cheaply (from the commercial music services.) Young people take this cornucopia for granted. You have to be old to really appreciate digital music. Vinyl has made something of a comeback, for some reason, but in the 1970s, listening to music in your car meant listening to eight track tapes. I notice there isn't much nostalgia for eight track tapes.

One of my favorite novelists, Richard Powers, has Bach references in much of his work, perhaps most obviously in The Gold Bug Variations, but Bach pops up in many other novels, too, including the latest one, Playground. I enjoy Powers' Bach bits in much the same way that I love Robert Anton Wilson's writings that discuss Beethoven.