Why don’t they compose music like Bach any more?

 [[{“value”:”Well, they do, or at least they did once.  I am thinking of a recent recording by Nikolaus Matthes, namely Markus Passion, which fills 3 compact discs and sounds remarkably like a Passion from Bach’s time.  It could even be by Bach.  The text is from the time of Bach.  Yet Matthes was born in
The post Why don’t they compose music like Bach any more? appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.”}]] 

Well, they do, or at least they did once.  I am thinking of a recent recording by Nikolaus Matthes, namely Markus Passion, which fills 3 compact discs and sounds remarkably like a Passion from Bach’s time.  It could even be by Bach.  The text is from the time of Bach.  Yet Matthes was born in 1981.

To be clear, it does not rival Bach’s best work, but I have no problems comparing it to a median Bach cantata, which still is pretty good.  It is also better than many of the works by Bach’s contemporaries, including the better-known ones.

And yet no one cares.  Have you heard of this work before?  How many times will you hear of it from now on?

Perhaps you doubt my judgment as to the quality of this work?  Well, you might check out Fanfare, the world’s number one classical music review outlet.  Fanfare gives the work six distinct reviews.

Colin Clarke for instance wrote: “But does it work?  Absolutely.  This is the most remarkable Baroque music of our time — by which I mean this does not feel like the 21st century looking back, instead, it feels as if it were written back in Bach’s time, with the exception of the odd detour forwards.  Most of the time, it could be music written by Bach himself, and I can offer no higher praise to Matthes’s achievement.”

Or from David Cutler: “…Matthes has accomplished something marvelous.  It has more than a hint of Bach, but is it Bach?  The jury must be out on that, but is that not the idea?”

James A. Altena writes: “In sum, both the work itself and this performance are a complete triumph, and do full and worthy honor to Bach.  I cannot think of higher praise than that.”

All the reviewers are very positive, as was a composer friend of mine who listened to the piece.  The home page for the work offers further positive reviews.  And no, I don’t like Prokofiev’s “Classical” Symphony.

You can buy it on German Amazon, and a few other places, streaming links here.

I feel I need to update some of my views on aesthetics, I am just not sure which ones.  And who exactly is Matthes?  Is this another Ossian thing, or rather the inverse?

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