Michael Parloff: Lecture on Bach’s ‘Musical Offering’ at Music@Menlo

Michael Parloff provides insight into the late music of Johann Sebastian Bach. This 60-minute lecture focuses on The Musical Offering. It is the first part of a 2-hour Encounter entitled “The Art of Late Bach.”
Part 2 (about The Art of Fugue) can also be viewed on KZbin at • Michael Parloff: Lectu...
This Encounter was recorded on August 4, 2013 at Music@Menlo; Chamber Music Festival and Institute, David Finckel and Wu Han, Artistic Directors

[@ByongSun]

Get this man a water!

[@Igor_Itkin]

Thank you for sharing yours knowledge with the world.

[@benkebret8363]

I love your lectures. May you please do more bach lectures. He is such a wonderful composer. Thanks.

[@michaelparloff1155]

Thank you, Ben. Here's my talk about Bach's Art of Fugue: kzbin.info/www/bejne/j52bfmSMrqaGrM0 If you would like to watch my talks on other musical topics, please visit this webpage: www.parlancechamberconcerts.org/video-lectures-interviews/

[@jeroenbakker52]

What a wonderful lecture!

[@SergioValenzuela]

By far the best lecture on Bach i`ve seen, love the amusing anecdotes and funny interjections. You are a fantastic presenter. Thanks so much.

[@dmly]

This is a gold mine to understand Bach. I read “Godel, Escher & Bach” and truly appreciate your lecture as it’s not as dry. Thank you very much for opening my mind, sir.

[@michaelparloff1155]

Thank you very much for your kind comment. I'm happy that you enjoyed my Bach Talk so much.

[@jonrussell8519]

I know it's kinda off topic but does anyone know of a good site to stream newly released tv shows online?

[@jonrussell8519]

@Ali Jeffery thank you, I signed up and it seems like a nice service :D I really appreciate it !!

[@alijeffery8518]

@Jon Russell you are welcome =)

[@gandalfgrey91]

@@michaelparloff1155 “Bach Talk” is definitely an underrated pun. Everyone’s a sucker for “I’ll be Bach.”

[@DIONYABA]

t h i s i s g o l d !!!!!! Thank you, Sir ! Excellently presented !

[@saldana7395]

This is amazing 🤩🤩 thanks for uploading this lecture on Bach's works!!

[@kuldeepbarve]

Really, the first lecture I have heard on Bach which talks about the nuts and bolts of his music. Added a lot to my understanding of music in general and Bach in particular. Thanks for this!

[@troensspring2650]

More! These are wonderful lectures. Thank you.

[@michaelparloff1155]

Thank you -- I'm glad you enjoyed the Bach Talk. More lectures on various music topics can be seen at www.parlancechamberconcerts.org/video-lectures-interviews/

[@salahhamze]

Thank you for re-uploading. Was halfway through when the original disappeared. Thankful to have found this again :)

[@michaelparloff1155]

Thanks, Salah. It's nice to be back...

[@nathansankersingh8824]

@@michaelparloff1155 Don’t you mean “Nice to be Bach”

[@Bach6032]

Splendid video! While watching it, the time just flew by. More, please!

[@michaelparloff1155]

Thank you for your note. I'm happy you enjoyed the talk. You can see more talks about Bach's Art of Fugue and other musical topics at www.parlancechamberconcerts.org/video-lectures-interviews

[@Bach6032]

@@michaelparloff1155 Just watched your lecture on The Art of Fugue--another completely captivating video. Your work is sincerely appreciated.

[@davidliverman4742]

Thank god for the piano! This was very entertaining! Grateful to everybody! God bless you! Bach was great!

[@Phorquieu]

Dieses Bach Talk ist Vunderbar! Bach did not compose easy listening music, but he certainly composed deeply meaningful and spiritual music which satisfies the soul more than that other kind. Thanks for posting this video here on KZbin where all Bach lovers can have access to it! Bach for Christmas - what could be better, musically?

[@rafikbaladi6555]

Professor Parloff thank you for elevating my spirit from a weary and dark zone (given the current failing world of human virtue) to the hights of the intellectually curious person I was 43 years ago, at the age of thirty.

[@home.coffee4559]

1:33 "You don't really have to know anything about this image to enjoy looking at it" That's such a mantra for Bach's music as a whole, for example many listeners don't know that the opening to the sixth brandenburg concerto is actually a canon between the two violins, but many people who are unaware enjoy it nonetheless

[@johnk8174]

This is amazing! Thank you!

[@Tylervrooman]

Just read Eric Siblin and Christoph Wolf. These lectures are amazing... thanks for sharing

[@user-vz3io2xp7o]

Thank You very much !!!

[@FirstGentleman1]

I like The Musical Offering, for me it is such as beautiful as for example The Brandenburg Concertos. Good lecture, I really learned something.

[@praaht18]

Phenomenal, thanks

[@Oenloveslife]

Thank you sir! I enjoyed this very much and heard you quote Glenn Gould (one of my favorite artists) just after 7 minutes!

[@Oenloveslife]

PS Is there an extant version of the "six part fugue on a theme of my own making" which Bach did for the assembled luminaries that night? Thanks!

[@suesandlin-plaehn3565]

Excellent!

[@franco7905]

Vielen herzlichen Dank! Ich liebe Ihre Performance. Grüße aus Köln 💐

[@ganazby]

Very enjoyable and informative. Thank you.

[@bammealy7609]

Amazing lecture, I learnt so much, thank you, really, you are my friend XD

[@poplife123]

Fantastic lecture ....bravo

[@antoinegaillard9440]

Ah, so this is the mysterious first part which was missing from KZbin. Thank you! I enjoyed learning the relation between Bach and the king, which I could not at all feel from the movie clip of the meeting between the two, which is also available on KZbin.

[@emilianocorradi4079]

Mind blowing...

[@charlesgrant-skiba5474]

Great composers are like Himalayas. There is only blue sky above them. But higher up, Bach begins...

[@cacciato69]

damn straight I recently read the Evening inthe Palace of Reason; J R Gaines. Stumbled on this youtube. the first episode (Bach's symbolic code) reminded me of Goedel Escher and Bach. Which in the end Parloff refers to briefly! Btw I graduated Stanford Chemistry 1962 so was interested to find the location as Menlo Park . What a great lecture! I hope to revisit it again.

[@sinclairwhitbourne2090]

Thank you for a very enjoyable and informative presentation. It says nothing very good about me, but the Musical Offering is my favourite JS Bach work. I have read the work criticised for being arid and superficial and I think there is something in that. However, as music it appeals to me in a way that I find almost spiritual. It seems that I must worship the dry and superficial. We are what we are.

[@CapellaStars]

I am in a book club studying Hofstadter's marvelous book, Gödel, Escher, Bach, and your lectures add a lot of insight, especially the Bach monogram and Bach Goblet and the Crab Canon. We are presently just short of finishing the first part, and expect it will take a year for us to finish it. There are a lot of puzzles and word play.

[@michaelparloff1155]

Thanks for your note. Making your way through the entire Hofstadter tome is quite a project. Have fun!

[@richardburt9812]

What a wonderful lecture! You are a master storyteller. And actor too. Thank you.

[@mihordeadana2368]

I love the roast the homophonic music at 20:00😂. Such a quirky and smart man.

[@hamidassadi1438]

Your lecture is as ingenious as Bach's Musical Offering itself.

[@michaelparloff1155]

Thank you for your kind comment, Hamid.

[@A_Muzik]

As someone who spent May - December 2020 studying, and composing in strict canon forms, I can attest to the fact that canons are more rule bound than fugues.

[@jenelosedire7159]

Why this has only 1k viewed?

[@peterlewis3540]

Superb lecture, thank you for the pleasure of discovering Bachs music

[@klavierdragon4552]

wow

[@andrewashdown3541]

Dien Wachstum sei feste is my favourite mvt in the Peasant Cantata! Does this demo the very opposite of the point he is trying to make - trying perhaps too hard to make?

[@JedShura]

Is there a KZbin link to that graphic animation you play 16:30? Absolutely INCREDIBLE!!

[@michaelparloff1155]

Voila: kzbin.info/www/bejne/roargmWvl7mYoLc

[@JedShura]

@@michaelparloff1155 Thanks very much. I was also wondering if you have recommendations for books/texts that examine the Bach's music (I'm looking for more music theory than historical, particularly his unique harmonic inventions).

[@lUwUvie]

Gödel Escher Bach? Why, this is the book that led me here!

[@DavidDacaro]

Doing commission work for wealthy and powerful idiots is always a dilemma for artists. However, Bach appears to have taken the opportunity to push some of his work. Impressive, as expected from such an amazing human.

[@FighterFred]

Regardless of historical details, Bach's music is for eternity whereas nobody cares about that prince. And that should've been obvious even then.

[@A_Muzik]

"Complexity conflicts with nature" Said no one from Dixie Alley.

[@sinamirmahmoud7606]

maybe his son told him beforehand and he was ready 🤔 😂😂😂

[@Maplaplaplapla]

My only issue is that the mic is much more enthusiastic to pick up the saliva noises than your voice

[@aaronmann9442]

I thought I was the only one. It is worst than nails on a chalkboard!!

[@aelfrice]

Had to apply a low-pass filter to get beyond my revulsion. The content is great, though.

[@markgriskey]

One of my first jobs in audio was “voice editing” for voice over. I spent hours digitally removing those mouth noises. Fortunately I didn’t have too much of that before my music career took off :)

[@stephenhall11]

I don't understand why,but there are not many interesting and informative lectures about Bach.When you investigate Bach you start to realize how lousy modern music is.

[@chaos-fb5nk]

I think you write off criticism of Bach too arrogantly. Certainly it's very easy to say "well bach is best composer so criticisms of his work by inferior composers are no good", but there seems to be an effort to say that composers against his contrapuntal methods, and going for a more monophonic sound were inferior. I love bach and am studying WTC currently, but often the music that truly speaks to me is the traditional folk music of all cultures. Nietzsche says one must have apollonian and the dyonesian aspects within themselves. Bach is Apollo made flesh there is little doubt about this, but when one hears the power, chaos, and humanity of a truly wild jazz performance, or even a punk show (as unaccademic and simple as the music may be) there is an element of the music that is so fundimental and primitive within it that Bach's music lacks. It's reductionist to say this only has to do with dancing and jumping around, when what causes the impulse to do such actions comes from a quality that is musically beautiful, exciting, and most artfully human. I find the criticisms of Bach you read to be an idea I myself have arrived at aswell, and they're nothing to scoff at. Listen to Huun Huur Tu, John Fahey, Moondog (who was a brilliant contrapuntalist as well) for examples of the power of a music that speaks to humanity, to god, to earth, and of course nature as well.

[@michaelparloff1155]

Thank you for watching my lecture on Bach’s late music and for offering your thoughtful commentary. I’ll leave the issue of my purported arrogance for others to judge, but you are undoubtedly correct in saying that the musical world would be a very constricted one if contrapuntal music were the only kind of value. Fortunately, as you pointed out, we are blessed to live in a fabulously diverse musical ecosystem, and we are free to draw inspiration from whatever kind of music speaks to us. As I’m sure you know, most great composers of the past - Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and Brahms among them - enjoyed the popular and folk music of their own times enough to incorporate examples into their own compositions. Along those lines, I reference my talks about Bartók’s and Kodaly’s love of Eastern European folk music (kzbin.info/www/bejne/hHLIg2yGl8p5mq8&feature=emb_logo) and the wonderful Philadelphia-based composer Andrea Clearfield’s Tibetan Buddhist-inspired cantata Tse Go La ((kzbin.info/www/bejne/aqmuZKSFmNGjh6M), which is based on indigenous Tibetan folk and religious music that she heard and recorded on her treks to the Himalayan hinterlands. As for Moondog, I’ve enjoyed listening to his music ever since I first encountered him standing in full Viking regalia at the corner of 55th St. and 6th Ave. almost 50 years ago.

[@chaos-fb5nk]

@@michaelparloff1155 thank you for reply, word arrogant was rude. I enjoyed the links a lot. And it's so cool you've seen Moondog, he is one of my idols.

[@michaelparloff1155]

@@chaos-fb5nk Thanks for perusing the links I forwarded. I'm glad you enjoyed them.

[@knutholt3486]

What I hear by listening to Bachian music is a lot of erotic hints, and erotic hints of all types. Bach was not a puritan, and especially not of the modern evangelic or Islamic type. Such a purritan could never been able to compose music like Bach did. Still I find that Bach constantly was afraid to let these hints fulfill to a climax, as if he constatly said: "Enough for this time, let us not get downrright sinful". Because of this moderation, probably caused by religious afterthoughts, I feel that the music of Bach allways gives a certrain unfulfilled impression, at least eemotionally

[@rasheedlewis1]

I was thinking the same but moreso specifically the case with the “royal theme” that the homosexual Frederick the Great gave to Bach. The prolonged descending chromatism leads itself to some sort of sexual catabasis. It’s like a precursor to Wagner’s Tannhauser and Tristan und Isolde. In both, sexual decadence is symbolized by atonality. Nietzsche himself particularly was swept off his feet by Wagner’s rejection of diatonic music in Tristan, and in turn, Nietzsche wrote the Birth of Tragedy to explain Wagner.

[@garrysmodsketches]

You're just a coomer