How is bach connected to classical music

This vast repository of visual data that computer algorithms can learn from has enabled huge strides in everything from image searching to self-driving cars to algorithms that recognize your face in a photo album. The UW research team overcame that challenge by applying a technique called dynamic time warping — which aligns similar content happening at different speeds — to classical music performances.

Time warping and mapping that digital scoring back onto the original performance yields the precise timing and details of individual notes that make it easier for machine learning algorithms to learn from musical data. In their arXiv paper, the UW research team tested the ability of some common end-to-end deep learning algorithms used in speech recognition and other applications to predict missing notes from compositions.

While Handel born in the same year, 80 miles away was writing music in London for the King of England, Bach was working a series of well-paid but relatively low-profile jobs, composing for aristocrats and churchgoers.

In the middle of the 19th century, though, his music experienced a revival. Not bad for an organist who never went more than a few hundred miles from home! Johann Sebastian had 20 children, many of whom became musicians themselves. Four of them are particularly notable; here they are in order of their modern-day notability:. He was one of the earliest prominent advocates of using the thumb while playing a keyboard, a trick he learned from his father.

Bach met W. Mozart when Mozart was just 8 years old. Supposedly, J. When Mozart passed with flying colors, J. Bach was known as a virtuoso keyboard player. In fact, he originally set out to study law as a young man, but found that his employment prospects were even better as a musician. While he was a prolific composer with plenty of music to his name, he never achieved the same level of success or influence as his brothers C.

Even more unfortunately, many of his works were lost during World War II. The ones that survive are firmly in the classical vein, showing a competent and talented composer. Unfortunately, he was also difficult to work with and unreliable, in large part due to a drinking problem. While his brothers found steady work in prestigious courts, W. Bach has been in the background for most of my life, one way or another - the Brandenburg concertos in my parents' record collection when I was a boy; the Christmas music at school; and I remember being stunned when, as a teenager, a friend played me the solo violin sonatas and partitas in a double record set.

In the druggy, concept-album world of the mids, it seemed like the weirdest, most extreme music we'd ever heard. But it has been over the last few years that, without meaning to, I have found I play Bach more and more - and other music a bit less. I am not a deeply musical person - I don't play and have only the vaguest grasp of musical structures - so this cannot be intellectual, or mathematical, which is what people say Bach is all about.

I find him calming, hypnotic, meditative, inspiring and, above all, consoling. I listen to a wide variety of music, from Beck to Bax, but there's a bigness, an optimistic complexity and relish about Bach that makes me return to him in all moods, without ever getting bored. That's about all I can say. I love Bach's music because it is so comforting. To me, it feels as if I'm coming back home whenever I play Bach. It feels so naturally written and genuine. There are hidden elements in Bach; for musicians it is very knowledgeable music, but what comes out of it is more of a spontaneity of expression.

You can listen to Bach from many points of view: you can admire the science of it, the incredible intelligence of it, but even if you don't have any musical training or knowledge, you can still enjoy it for the incredible spontaneous life of the melody. It is very well worked out, but it seems almost as if it was written as it went along. Bach is definitely someone with whom I love spending time, and try to do so as much as I can.

Most contemporary music is about love between two people. This is music that is capable of endless renewal. But none of that explains the singularity of Bach, and the connection he makes with so many music-lovers. Then I have to accept the way he believed. The Cello Suites have dozens of advocates on disc, notably Yo-Yo Ma , but will forever be associated with Pablo Casals , who championed them in the first half of the 20th century after stumbling across a copy of the music in a Barcelona second-hand shop.

The Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin have similarly been a touchstone for most of the great players on disc, from Yehudi Menuhin to Hilary Hahn. JS Bach: where to start with his music. Reuse this content.