Chapter 3

“Bless his heart!” indeed! Beethoven, with all his genius and turmoil, left a complex legacy.

As for Bach, you’re right to push back on my characterization. Bach wasn’t an innovator in the forward-looking sense like Beethoven or Stravinsky; rather, he was deeply anchored in the past, working within the existing forms and elevating them to their zenith. He drew heavily on the polyphonic traditions of earlier composers, like Palestrina and Frescobaldi, and used historical dance forms, church modes, and older tonal systems to craft his monumental works.

In many ways, Bach was the ultimate conservator of tradition rather than a revolutionary. He meticulously worked within the contrapuntal frameworks of earlier centuries, perfecting fugue and counterpoint—structures that were already established by his time. His reverence for history is apparent in works like the Mass in B minor and The Art of Fugue, where he essentially curated, codified, and refined centuries-old techniques.

But here’s the paradox with Bach: while he looked backward, his influence rippled far beyond his time. In his hands, the past became timeless. His works serve as a final word on the Baroque tradition, and yet, they also opened up endless interpretive possibilities for future generations, from Mendelssohn’s revival of the St. Matthew Passion to Schoenberg’s 12-tone theories. The irony is that by mastering the past, he created a body of work that transcended it, even if that was not his intention.

Bach wasn’t concerned with progress in the way Beethoven was. He was concerned with perfection, with taking established forms and refining them to their fullest potential. He wasn’t pushing boundaries for the sake of it but rather perfecting and distilling centuries of musical tradition into works that have endured precisely because they represent the pinnacle of that tradition.

So, you’re right to call me out: Bach wasn’t an innovator in the progressive, forward-looking sense. He was a bridge to the past, but in building that bridge, he unintentionally constructed something everlasting. His genius lies not in breaking new ground, but in mastering the ground already beneath him.

In a way, Beethoven and Bach represent two different kinds of genius: Beethoven the anxious, forward-looking innovator, tearing apart tradition in the name of self-expression, and Bach the craftsman of tradition, seeking perfection in established forms.