convelling the subject bach to RC's question I used to drive a pantechnicon. It was "pan-" because it would hold everything (especially furniture}: but why "-technicon"?

A word, invented as the name of a bazaar of all kinds of artistic work [see previous comment on pantechnic], which has (through the fortune of the building) come to be applied to a large warehouse for storing furniture, and also to be colloquially used as short for pantechnicon van, a furniture-removing van.
1830 Mech. Mag. XV. 393 Pantechnicon [Heading of Article, describing the building, in Motcomb Street, Belgrave Square, which was originally intended for a bazaar, and was afterwards converted into a warehouse for storing furniture].

hope you guys enjoyed yourselves on your bachanal.

Yeah, but his output under said circumstances was so damned prodigious, as was his output of progeny!

Hm. And he was such a little bloke. You don't think that maybe his wife ... nah, wouldn't happen.

His use of rhythm was restricted in many ways, most of them by his own historical circumstance.

Wasn't he so lucky, then, to have later performers/composers/arrangers such as Jethro Tull and Sky to ease those restrictions for him?

Bach wrote a lot of rubbish as well as the brill stuff. Most of the 48 preludes and fugues in the Well-tempered Clavier suite are eminently forgettable. Except, at least, for the prelude in C# Major, which I taught myself to play on the piano because I like it so much. My parents, piano-teachers both, usually managed to find somewhere else to be when I was playing it ...

Lord, y'all don't give old J.S. credit where due. (Or the mesdames Bach either.) Some clarifications:

1. Bach, more than anyone else, gets the credit for the adoption of tempered tuning. While he was not its inventor or its only proponent, his stature was such that when he championed it, and used it to tune organs and other keyboard instruments, it was quickly adopted universally. For those of you not familiar with the subject, tempered tuning is a compromise tuning method which allows an instrument to be played in any key, as compared to natural tuning where an instrument is tuned to a particular key, say C-major, which is fine if you are going to play in that key, or in a closely related key like a-minor or G-maj., but which won't sound right if you try to play in A-flat-maj. or c-sharp min. or some other unrelated key.
2. Bach was the first keyboard player to use the thumbs. Earlier keyboard players used only the fingers, stretched out straight and flat over the keys, which made for some really involved fingerings. Bach not only used the thumbs but also kept his fingers curved over the keys, as is the method drummed into every piano student today.
3. J.S. had 19 children in all, by two wives. The first, Barbara Bach, was the mother of Wilhelm Friedemann and Carl Philip Emmanuel, both notable artists and composers in their own right; she died after eight children. Her husband was away on a trip with his employer when she died; he came home to find she had been buried a week earlier. The second Frau Bach, Anna Magdalena, was made of sterner stuff; she bore 11 children, including Johann Christian, the "London" Bach, who was 16 when his father died. He went to Italy to study and converted to Catholicism, which must have had The Old Wig (as the boys called him) turning over in his staunch Lutheran grave.
4. J.S. Bach's greatest work was "Die Kunst der Fuge", or The Art of Fugue, which he wrote at the end of his life, literally finishing it on his deathbed, if his son Friedemann is to be believed. It is the last word on the Baroque polyphonic style in general and the art of fugue-writing in particular, and, as such, was out of date the day it was done, since polyphonic music, including fugues, was already going out of style in 1750. The work takes a simple subject melody and applies all known treatments, including inversion, retrogression, inversion-retrogression, etc. (see Musick's post above in which he mentions these techniques), also using different time arrangements, switching back and forth from square time to double time to triple time. After a large number of fugues, having exhausted all possibilities of his subject, which is a simple, solemn and rather mournful tune, he introduces, in another voice, another subject, the B-A-C-H motif, which is B-flat-A-C-B in our notation, the only time in his life he ever used the tune composed of the letters of his name. This goes for only a few lines and then the work stops dead in mid-phrase, since, according to Friedemann, it was at that point that he died. He dictated the entire work to his wife and one of his daughters, as he had gone blind and was dying as the result of an infection from an unsuccessful cataract operation (performed without anesthesia, which was unknown in 1750).

I've read that Bach had 21 and 22 children...some died in childbirth or very young. My sources are from long ago, so I am curious now about the discrepancy in Boby's reference. Curiosity is now aroused...

On checking to give the facts to WW, I find I erred. Albert Schweitzer, in his monumental biography, J.S. Bach, says the following:
Of the thirteen children that Anna Magdalena bore to him, seven died; at his own death, of his twenty children only nine were living -- five sons and four daughters*. The oldest son of Anna Magdalena, Gottfried Heinrich, was of weak intellect. ...
*Two sons (Wilhelm Friedemann and Carl Philipp Emmanuel) and one daughter (Catharina Dorothea) were of the first marriage; the third son of Maria Barbara, named J.G. Bernhard, died at Jena in 1738 [having been organist at Mühlhausen at age 20 and later at Sangershausen]. Of Anna Magdalena's children there survived him: Gottfried Heinrich (1724-1763), Elisabeth Juliane Friederike (b. 1726, d. ?), Johann Christoph Friedrich (1732-1795), Johann Christian (1735-1782), Johanna Caroline (1737-1781), and Regine Susanna (1742-1809).
The following children of Anna Magdalena all died at Leipzig: Christiana Sophie Henriette (b.1723, d. 29 June 1726); Christian Gottlieb (b. 1725 d. 21 Sept 1728); Ernestus Andreas (d. 1 Nov. 1727 soon after birth); Regine Johanna (b. 1728, d. 25 Apr. 1733); Christiana Benedicta (d. 4 Jan. 1730 soon after birth); Christiane Dorothea (b. 1731, d. 31 Aug. 1732); Johann August Abraham (d. 6 Nov. 1733 shortly after birth).
Besides the children of Barbara who survived, there were twins who died shortly after birth in 1703 [sic --misprint for 1708 or 1713 ??], and a son named Leopold August born in Weimar 15 Nov 1718 d. 28 Sept. 1719.
Friedemann died 1 July 1784 at the age of 74. Emmanuel died in Hamburg in 1788.

J.S. Bach was born in Eisenach on 21 March 1685 and died at Leipzig 28 July 1750. He married Maria Barbara Bach (a cousin) on 17 Oct 1707 while serving as organist at St. Blasius in Mühlhausen. While serving as Kapellmeister to Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Cöthen, he accompanied the prince on a trip to Carlsbad in July 1720. On returning home, he found that Barbara had died suddenly and had been buried on 7 July, leaving him with the four children noted above. On 3 Dec. 1721 he married Anna Magdalena Wülken.

Well, the fugue and the prelude style that Bach developed so well may have gone out of style in the mid-18th century, but I personally think that the fugue is one of the greatest formal forms of music even today. That Bach was the master of the fugue is probably not disputed by anyone - no one else's seem to come even close to being as good.

Yes, Bach was a plagiarist. He stole melodies from everywhere. But this was quite common in those days and was not thought ill of as it is today. As Kapelmeister to two particularly musically-inclined bosses, he had to maintain a spectacularly-high output of new music, novelty being the name of the game during the Enlightenment.

There is one of his preludes which caused me some problems when I was studying for my advanced Trinity exams for classical guitar many moons ago. I had it as a piece of lute music. My mother had it as a piece composed for the clavier, and a slightly differently fingered version of it for the harpsichord - played today, of course, on the piano. There was also an arrangement of the same damned melody, in fact the whole fugue, for chamber orchestra. Since I had to attribute the efforts of all involved, I spent several weeks trying to track down who had arranged the piece I had for lute. It was only after I contacted a knowledgeable music librarian in Germany that I found out the truth - Bach had actually done them all himself. Wily, lazy old bastard that he was! I'd have dug him up and done for him myself if I could have, at the time.

I'd hesitate to agree that Bach was more than just one of a bunch of (mostly German) composers and musicians who were early adopters of the new tempering system. He was probably one of the more prominent, but during his own lifetime he wasn't all that well known, or at least, no better known than several others.

But, no matter what his faults were, there was always the fugue. JSB forever, I say!

This topic is really very interesting once one understands the meaning of pantomath. Who are indisputable pantomaths? Certainly Michelangelo and Shakespeare.... Any others come immediately to mind?

WW

I thought we were in agreement, more or less, that a pantomath would know... well, everything. to me it almost seems a joke term. didn't someone earlier suggest that the writer that used it may have erred for polymath? to me, polymath is the word you want in describing someone such as those you're starting to list.

tsuwm: The question would be is there a difference between a pantomath and an omniscient being? And I would guess, were the term pantomath taken seriously, that there would be such a difference if pantomath were applied to men and omnisicient were reserved for the supernatural. A pantomath would be comparable to the Renaissance man--well-learned, both broadly and deeply.

I didn't realize that we'd cast the term altogether out the window. I was just starting to develop an affection for it!

Best regards,
WW

the question would be (and the point I guess I didn't make very well): is there a difference between a polymath (a person of much or varied learning) and a pantomath? if you want to make the argument that a pantomath is a person of much AND varied learning, I will gladly see that you get an appointment to the Tetrapyloctomy
Society. it's an unnecessary word, best reserved for applying to someone who *thinks they know everything.

-joe (pantomath is my middle name) friday

I don't believe there is anyone but we two on this board who is particularly interested in JSB, so I'll stop posting about him for the moment. But before I do, let me recommend to you the music of Dietrich Buxtehude, one of the North German masters of the generation before J.S. Bach, and whom Bach, in his youth, visited to learn from him. I love Buxtehude's organ works almost as much as Bach's (and they are easier to play!). Finally (really) for more on Bach, this is a good site: http://www.jsbach.org

Split ends! Agggggghhhhhhhhh! Where's that boar bristle brush when you need it?

Thanks for tetrapyloctomy and for mathanein...and far be it from me to wish to split any hairs with you.

May your hairs be single and strong,
And may they be both broad and deep...

WordWonderer

the Renaissance man

Interesting to see this phrase and yet no mention of the one and only Leonardo Da Vinci! (by the way, the Danes just built a smaller version of a bridge he designed...where did he get all this engineering insight way back then? Does our resident architect, Jazzo, have any theories on this?) But I nominate Leonardo as the truest of pantomaths! And I do it through a Mona Lisa smile.

(I enjoyed all the Bachian discussion, by the way)

yes! thank you.
http://www.artchive.com/artchive/L/leonardo.html

(please note the subtitle :)

Ah, yes! Great link, tsuwm! It seems the equation is purely polymathematical! :)

Interesting to see this phrase and yet no mention of the one and only Leonardo Da Vinci! (by the way, the Danes just built a smaller version of a bridge he designed...where did he get all this engineering insight way back then?

Well, there's the supernatural or X-Files-type explanation for Leonardo. Planted by aliens or visitation by aliens.

I read an article years ago which had a much more plausible theory.

Leonardo was just one of those dilettantes who doesn't perhaps understand everything to any great depth, but who has the ability to create new knowledge from the synthesis, in its philosophical sense, of existing knowledge. He was trained as an artist and engineer, the rest followed simply because he had an inquiring - and intelligent - mind. You have to remember that the vast majority of his "inventions" were totally impractical. Our astonishment is at his grasp of the basic principles so long ago rather than at his achievements themselves. What his work did do, however, was to show that there may be a way to make some of these things happen. He thought the previously unthinkable. And perhaps that's where his true genius (aside from his undisputed talent as an artist) lay.

An English inventor built a computer that had the means to search every database, every library and in fact every source of knowledge physical or non-physical that exists anywhere in the world. He was justifiably proud of his magnum opus, and on the night he finished it be was so excited that he woke up his neighbour to tell him the news. His neighbour, rather understandably, was less than overjoyed at being disturbed at 6 a.m. and was not in the best of tempers.

"Go on, go on!", the inventor urged him, "Ask it anything. It'll know, for sure!"

The neighbour gave in. "Okay then, where's my father?"

The computer murmured away for a few moments, then responded in an electronic voice, "Your father is fishing off the end of Brighton Pier."

"Ah well, then," the neighbour said. "See, it doesn't know everything. My father's been dead for years."

The inventor was a little put out, but soon recovered.

"Maybe," he suggested, "you should rephrase the question slightly. Give it another go."

"Hmmm," muttered the neighbour, then "Okay, where's my mother's husband?"

The computer hummed away to itself for a few moments, then responded.

"Your mother's husband died of a heart attack in 1973. However, your father is still fishing off the end of Brighton Pier."

-------

Ah well.

For every panthomath who knows everything, we would need three others to tell us if it's true - did your thoughts go in this direction?