this harmony in Bach is INSANE 😲 | Evan Shinners
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 20 มิ.ย. 2023
- Evan Shinners shares his discoveries around a particularly surprising chord in Bach's Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue, BWV 903.
Check out Evan's podcast WTF Bach: wtfbach.substack.com/ and on Instagram: @wtfbach
Watch Shinners teach Bach and more on Tonebase! app.tonebase.co/piano/library...
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Bach, during his time-travels, must have snuffed that chord from Bill Evans
I would love to like this comment, but I would feel bad to change the like-counter from 69
Or bill evans got it from Bach during that same trip
And Bill snuffed it from Debussy, I guess...
Brahms wasn't kidding when he said "Study Bach! There you'll find literally EVERYTHING!"
😂😂LOL😂😂 touchè
it's sounds like something from a modern composer. That's why Bach was an absolute genius.
By modern do you mean classical? Most modern composers don’t stray too much further out from the pentatonics
Well the same could be said of Debussy since his music is littered with chords found in modern jazz music
Bach and Debussy music is sepparated like 150 years so...
@@Quim141 what about folk songs that sound like they were influenced by greensleeves lol
Proto-impressionism!
The problem is solved when you consider Bach didn't call them "chords". They are intervals above a bass that are moving horizontally and resolving by step. So many Bach pieces can sound like they have "wrong" notes if you stop in the wrong place.
the lost art of counterpoint
Interesting. They didn't use the word 'chords'? The triads and added tones were obviously in use. Did they have a different name ?
@@guitarplayerfactorychannel You don’t need to describe „chords“ or using another word for it when every „voice“ has it’s own movement/tension/line. The example is clearly a point in a piece where a resolution is approached.
Anyway… of cause there also were „chords“ back then.
Hi ratboygenius ily❤
While I generally agree with this, the chord in question is really weird, even when you take the context into account - not something you typically find from Bach's music. I think the most plausible explanation is that the copyists made a typo. They probably missed some accidentals (E natural). The C in the middle is quite strange too, when you combine it with the Db on top.
Typically this kind of weird harmonies are simply the result of suspensions, but that's not what's going on here.
BTW, this is not just a random isolated harmony from a more polyphonic context - this is from a section that is very "chordal".
My boy Johan was laying some Proto-Jazz back in the 1700's 😎
lol definitely not
@@MaxIsBackInTownit kind of is. Its Almis like Bach improvised
@@elias7748 He did. People like Bach and Mozart where GREAT improvisors!
No
sounds like debussy tbh
Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue in D minor
BWV 903
Thank you
Thanks so much
thank you kind sir
Exactly! I was able to recognize the excerpt, and that's my fav piano piece. Never saw a 'mistake' there; rather, as you say, it has some special weight for sure, but this piece is the trickiest one I've seen (I'm no pianist, I play the guitar, but I study on the piano). Cheers!
Thank you.
I always find funny how classical pianists say "this chord is a monstruosity" and them you hear and yeah it's a chord with dissonance but they say it like it's some sound an elder god could only produce and it's C9
Its because this music is deep and spiritual
well it’s about context! in the baroque era (as far as I know) the harmonies weren’t typically like that, so this chord would be strange. But if like.. Debussy wrote it, no one would bat an eye
C9 is dissonant? 😂
@@recel503oh please
@@FreeBrunoPowroznikyes,
Hearing that chord in isolation, it sounds very mid-20th century postwar era, particularly the compositions of Fred Rogers (yes, Mr. Rogers from TV).
No way Mr. Rogers also had a composition carreer! I tought playing piano only.
@@Aleksandr_Skrjabin Nearly every song you hear from his 'Neighborhood' was written by him.
@@WBensburg I knew he was a pianist, which almost all pianist compose music, how stupid of me as musician and composer to not saw that.
@@Aleksandr_Skrjabin Not at all!! Very few know of Mr. Rogers's background in music. He was a music major at Rollins College in Central Florida.
@@WBensburg Understandble, i have a bad memory so i couldve forgotten, i always focus on the background music wherever i am. I havent heard of Mr. Rogers in a long time.
“Oohh that sounds expensive” P. McCartney
"Oohhh spicy!" Adam Neely
Nuno's great.
didn't expect to find a fan here. lol
Bach was probably trolling music theorists in the future
These are key strokes that emulate human emotion. It’s funny how it trips them up when they can’t reconcile technique with the notes lol. Humans created this. For other humans. Don’t forget hahahaha
That chord is gorgeous
It's because of voice leading , you can't say it's weird when you don't see the motions of the 4-5 voices that are before that chord. Oftentime (always) , his "added notes" come from the last chord and are resolved in the next . It could be because of a chromatic upscent or descent also.
He's not saying it's a "bad" chord he's saying it's a bizarre chord to find in a baroque piece.
@@thebenevolentsun6575 the comment is not saying it's an issue of chords, it's saying it's an issue of chromaticism or passing notes.
@@stefanmirica6485 yes but the harmony itself is still bizarre to find in a baroque piece.
@@thebenevolentsun6575 Bach does "choral", it's Counterpoint not Harmony (classical era). You are supposed to hear each voice not to think them as chords. As a result, if you play it as chords, you'll be amazed by the complexity of the "Harmony", still despite the inspiration each voice follows a precise and coded path, rules are numerous in Counterpoint.
@@slatebook2384 It's still strange to find in a baroque piece though.
Bach was so ahead of his time🎉
Sounds wonderful.
Bach was jazzy af
I was expecting a really dissonant chord when he said that but then he played it and I was like
I listen to too much jazz
Genuinely beautiful
It's beautiful
Genius
BACH was 1000 years ❤❤❤ahead of his time❤❤❤
John Mulaney is a great musician
doesn't look too much like mulaney to me, but his vocal mannerisms sound so much like him
Doctor Who (David Tenant)
Sounds EXACTLY like him! Brilliant 😂
You know he's sophisticated because he says "baCHXHC"
Whoa...I went to high school with Evan. He was and is so talented! He even sold me a burned CD of his recordings back then. Mind blown. So happy to see him thriving! 🤯🙌
Bach rules
Ayyyy priorizing melodic lines over harmonic stability leads sometimes to spicy chords that aren't meant to be considered as structural chords in the sense of the term used here but standard voice leading in the late-Baroque period. Who would've thought.
It might look crazy on paper and when you're trying to play it, but when you hear it, it makes perfect sense.
beautiful chord from I believe the Chromatic fantasy ? I do like to add the thought that Bach loved the "space" in between the notes , the counterpoint allowed him the utmost expression possible. It is why I personally love Baroque and Classical music so much, even moreso than the romantic greats.
I heard the fantasy and it sounds nothing like it. I need to know what is this piece.
@@leomilani_gtr it is the Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue from J.S. Bach. Remarkable piece!
love Back!!!!... he was so so brilliant, and genius..
I love this guy and the words he chooses. And most of all his beautiful playing
One suspension, enormous chaos
Your playing piano is lovely 😍
Bach was very dense in his harmonies, and many people interpret it differently. That's nearly what makes his music so great
What's the piece?
It kind of sounds like a C7b9, the passage kind of sets up this C diminished thing but then you hear this C7b9 chord which maybe indicates that Bach may have been utilising the two modes of the diminished scale. Truly far of his time.
I wasn't expecting something so floaty and a lovely sounding. Sounds curious, looking around... "searching" is right on.
When played in sequence rather than as a chord, it’s like a score from a film about space exploration. Bach was literally centuries ahead of his time.
A fine example of the genius of Bach. So interesting as, in isolation, it has the quality of a modern modern jazz voicing...Very cool !
Absolutely love this chord. Early inceptions of rebirth of the coolness.
That's actually "La Quinte Superflue", an augmented 5th over the "III grade" in the minor scale. You can find it in Dandrieu's Teatrise, or in Couperin preludes and a bunch of music from the same time 👍
Sounds perfect to me
Genius.
Fascinating!
I can't stop watching this!
Bach's dissonant chords are like jewels, especially in the toccatas and partitas. I play some of them over and over.
It’s so beautiful because there’s so much to resolve
This is beautiful
It is indeed "strange" for this era, but it is less strange and more understandable if we read the music horizontally/contrapuntally. These chords must been seen as multiple part harmony, where each note comes from a previous one and goes to the next one. The concept of a chord is here just a "frozen" moment in the contrapuntal texture. Like one filmshot. It can create strange dissonances if we analyze them just vertically. Bach thinks horizontally in different layers. The "chords" are snapshots.
Check my channel if you're interested in voice leading and counterpoint!
Reminds of that passage in a Chopin Nocturne where I heard and saw three different versions of a particular chromaticism
It's beautiful.
What’s it called? Beautiful playing☺️
Bach , der Genie.
Gender is weird in German.
“Genie” is neuter, so even though Bach is masculine, we’d still use the neuter article and say “Bach das Genie” rather than “Bach der Genie”.
Bach, der Geniale
That face when you played the chord after saying "it sounds like Bach didn't know what he was hearing here"
Gorgeous, love it
Love the d Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue BWV903
and just like that, impressionism was created!
Robert Hill’s recording of that B Minor prelude is super good.
beautiful
I did my thesis in Musicology around Bach Harmony and more you go deep in the rabbit hole more you are amazed by the Bach Genius.
this is a wild change. i didn't expect to hear a lot of stuff in this tonal universe pre-berlioz
You don’t usually think of the classical composers having the harmonic sophistication of the modern jazz guys, but bach was laying down a spicy jazz chord there!
All those jazz composers got h
Their harmonic ideas from the impressionists and modernists
They'd never do this in Jazz, though, they pretty much always do the exact same extensions, never this one though.
@@althealligator1467You are not serious right?
@@vadim4252 _You_ are not serious, right? Name me one occasion in Jazz where you have a m7 chord over its major 6th. It's like a cardinal sin in Jazz to put the perfect 4th (usually they call it an 11th though) over a major chord, so if it's a major chord like a dominant or maj7, you'd put the #4 or #11 to avoid the minor 2nd / minor 9th between the major 3rd and the perfect 4th. You'd get that same dissonance with a major 6th in the bass of a m7 chord, so you'll never see that. You have plenty of counter examples in Pop music, but in Jazz it's pretty much always ii-V-I galore and b9, #11, b13, and no 5th over a dominant chord. Same extensions. Always.
@@althealligator1467 Tell me you took one jazz theory course in college without actually telling me.
amazing!!!!!
My favorite!
Love this content.. keep it up.
Every one of those chords sounded crazy.
It's awesome
a magical chord only bach could create ❤
So beautiful! This is impressionism before impressionism! What piece is that?!?!
BWV 903
Mozart us’d to say to his young English student Thomas Attwood (to whom he taught musical composition in Vienna, 1 Aug 1785 through 4 March 1787) that ‘all dissonances, no matter how harsh on the ear by themselves are more-or-less ‘acceptable’ just as long as they are prepar’d AND resolv’d properly’ - which is a paraphrase of Fux’ Gradus ad Parnassum (1725) ‘on Dissonances & their Resolutions’ [De Dissonatiarvm Resolvtione, page 70] which boil’d down to its essence basically means ‘context is ev’rything’ …
M. himself took it on the chin from many ‘conoscenti’ in his audiences with his chromatically-daring ‘Representation of Chaos’ in the opening 22 bars of his ‘Dissonant Quartet’ in C-Major K. 464 compos’d c. July 1785..
But it is no surprise that copyists tried to ‘correct’ this very weird one-bar of strange harmony of J.S. Bach-which acts as a ‘passing tone of sorts’ so is nothing to worry your heads about -but a close examination of Bach’s musical autograph score would be requir’d to put this baby to rest …
incredible
sing us a song you're the piano man.
Thank you kindly🤍
This is two centuries ahead of its time!
How different would this sound on a keyboard NOT tuned to equal temperament?
There are dozens and dozens of different tuning schemes, so each one would sound different. Also, noone knows how Bach tuned his keyboards to his own version of equal temperament.
@@Shamanatoractually bach wrote his temperaments down and would take about 8 mins to tune the instrument to those temperaments. This marking was decyphered by Lehman very recently.
Not that different.
Sublime
Sounds good to me
That chord is both fine on its own, and makes sense within the atmosphere of the chords before and after it.
Is it because it doesn't sound complete? Is that literally it? Does every chord have to be complete on its own? How do you guys get a resolution to a melody if everything is a complete harmony in and of itself?
Bach was a monster
As a jazz enthusiast when i heard the chord i was like yeah nothing bizzarre about that
yes but this example predates jazz by centuries
That’s jazz!
Lovely little chord there
Every jazz pianist "Gee I play that chord every gig"
i know i have a musical ear when he plays the chord at the beginning and it sounds beautiful to me
Sounds nice
Name of the piece, please?
Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue
BWV 903
@@MarshallArtz007thanks!
I like his voice😂
It is an E flat minor with added six - Ebm6 - with the third in the bass, so - Ebm6/Gb - and the top voice has a D flat, the seventh of Eb minor which advances stepwise to the seventh of the following F dominant seven chord; in normal notation Ebm6/gb - F7 which is a Phrygian cadence.
The sharpness comes from the C clashing with the top voice D flat; that is the Ebm 6th clashing with the Ebm 7th above.
However, an Ebm6 - F7 is a common Phrygian cadence.
It sounds perfectly OK to my ear.
It would be sooo great to know how it's written in the other sources!!! Please
That's a result of composing by what is named "Klangkolorit" in Germany. Not all what can happen harmonically must be possible to be described theoretically in terms of his harmonical function. This searching Bach in the "Chromatische Fantasie" ist an example for the improvising Bach, not for the academic Bach driven by rules.
If you paid attention to the first chord of the bar 37 and the first chord of the bar 38, you'd notice they differ in one tone only (G flat resolves to F natural, the rest remains the same). The chord in question is just a 'connection' between the two chords that occurs on the up beat. If we analysed it as a separate harmony, we'd interpret it as some secondary dominant with terrible voice leading (parallel sevenths in upper voices). But as it occurs on the up beat, it is clear that Bach's intention was a gradual melodic movement rather than a single fancy chord. He always thought in terms of counterpoint and each of such ambiguous harmonies need to be observed within a broader context.
Classic pianist hears a jazz chord for the first time
It’s the opening chord of Piano Man by Billy Joel.
That's jazz as hell
Whats the name of this piece?
Listen to it in meantone temperament. there’s a video on YT somewhere.
There’s sometimes an additional tension with the key colours that modern composers use.
It’s been misprinted all those years !!
Could someone tell me what bach this piece is please?
That's why Bach is my favorite. Both hands are everywhere. Yeah, fancy. Skull candy. 😉
Every jazz composer: "that's cute"
i dont see any jazz composer doing a fugue, bach has always been the peak of harmony and polyphony
seems perfect to me.
I play the version in the Wiener Urtext edition, which has a natural on the G in the bass and the E (third from top).
Yes indeed , the World Master of Music Harmony and Cunterpoint, JS Bach , have probably created in germ , already, all what we can compose after him and more again when we hear such Accords that come from anywhere , Bach is for me the Start and the End of the Modern Music 🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼 Thanks