BEETHOVEN AND BACH.
Sir,-Recently in the same week the NZBS broadcast two works by common consent the greatest of their respective composers-Bach’s B Minor Mass and Beethoven’s Missa Solennis. This prompts me to ask, as an ordinary music-lover, why it is that in our more exalted musical circles Beethoven is usually given only grudging praise, while it is implied that Bach is the greatest of all composers and that his music is only to bé approached with reverential awe. Why not admit frankly that Bach’s music evokes no great enthusiasm
among the non-executant class of musics lovers? To. them, the long-drawn-out fugal development, markedly apparent in the Brandenburg Concerti and the B Minor Mass, is dreary and monotonous. The trained ear can doubtless perceive the various permutations, but to the majority of listeners it is just aural mathematics. I suspect that the reason for the constant denigration of Beet--hoven by some is that they are antipathetic to the spirit immanent in his work, In another art, such people would, I suppose, prefer Milton to Dante. I do ask, however, that Bach-lovers cease from stating or implying, that it is an incontrovertible fact that Bach is the supreme composer. I want some rea« sons in support of that contention.
NAIVE
LISTENER
(Hamilton).
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 18, Issue 447, 16 January 1948, Page 5
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211BEETHOVEN AND BACH. New Zealand Listener, Volume 18, Issue 447, 16 January 1948, Page 5
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