I picked up a collection of several hundred of his 4-part chorales. I like to flip through the pages and pick one seemingly at random and play it. While some hit me harder than others, nearly all of them express this "simplicity to depth" ratio.

My latest favorite: Oh God, Hear My Sighs: https://soundcloud.com/nick66/oh-god-hear-my-sighs-bach

I think from a technical perspective, this is basically still true about Bach. It's not to say he has the most enjoyable music to listen to, but rather his music is built in a way that shows he was basically metagaming his music harder than anyone else ever has.

Nah Bach shits on Mozart. Mozart make extremely catchy music like Justin Beiber. I seriously do love mozart, but he merely wrote music. Bach weaved math into his music more than anyone before or after. His music sounds dense and more multi dimensional than mozart or saint saens. It really doesn't sound like he was trying to write beautiful music ( even though it is ) , it sounds like he was solving an equation and just writing out the answers as a harmonic sequence

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmsNH8t25ck - This guy is like 95 and still shredding on youtube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1xJoVzoIQg

Danse macabre is a true masterpiece. Incredible composer.

I don't care for Mozart but Saint Saens yes. The second movement of the organ symphony is utterly sublime.

By a ridiculous stroke of luck I got to perform that piece as soloist once. Unforgettable.

Bach's most approachable music might be his cello suites.

But also, I think there are two camps of fans of "classical music" (by which I mean music in the styles: Baroque, Classical, Romantic, Impressionist, etc). There are those who listen to the music, and those who play it.

For the most part, those who only listen to music often prefer Romantic and Impressionist styles. From the moody and dramatic to the gentle and contemplative, these styles are very approachable to the untrained ear.

But those who play an instrument (or sing in a choir) spend lots of time practicing and rehearsing and interpreting the music as it's written on the page. This extra time makes all of the little nuances of Baroque music truly come to life. The classic example is Bach's Crab Canon, which is a fine little piece of music... but once you realize that the whole thing is a palindrome, and you can actively appreciate how the same parts work in a forward and backward context, it becomes really interesting and pleasant.

So if Bach doesn't do it for you, and you play an instrument, try diving into playing it yourself.

Sure! When I think of why I love Bach, I often think of works where he demonstrates an ability to express often conflicting emotions at the same time. For example, in St. Mathew’s Passion, there’s a famous piece entitled “Mache Dich, Mein Herze” — it’s sung at a part where the followers of Christ are laying his body to rest, and somehow merges genuine despair with hope, representing the promise of resurrection. I think his ability to represent despair and hope at the same time is pretty extraordinary.

Other pieces I love are the 3rd and 5th Brandenburg concertos, as well as “Wachet Auf”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgXL_wrSPF0

No shade if he still doesn’t click with you. I’m just particularly ardent on the subject of Bach and baroque music!

I'm not the GP but I can recommend Bach's Partita in D minor, said to have been composed after returning from travel to find that his wife had died and been buried in his absence.

https://youtu.be/VfwVim0EybY

Brahms said of it: "On one stave, for a small instrument, the man writes a whole world of the deepest thoughts and most powerful feelings. If I imagined that I could have created, even conceived the piece, I am quite certain that the excess of excitement and earth-shattering experience would have driven me out of my mind."

when it comes to Bach I am surprised more people don't mention pieces like this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsxP-YjDWlQ (arioso from the cantata 156, here for oboe)

which I think stands up just fine against pretty much any other classical piece baroque or not.

Personally I have a very big soft spot for his organ works, as I play (badly) some organ myself, and among those I don't see the trio sonatas recommended nearly often enough (here is a live recital of all of them, which is super impressive)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eK9irE8LMAU

among those I probably enjoy the most the vivace of BWV 530. Other favorite pieces are the passacaglia and fugue https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVoFLM_BDgs the toccata adagio and fugue in C major https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Klh9GiWMc9U (the adagio especially is super nice), but there's so many. Among organists I often come back to Helmut Walcha, and am always amazed at how he was able to learn everything just by listening, him being blind.

You should listen to Hilary Hahn's renditions of Bach's partitas and sonatas. She brings out the subtleties of Bach's composing beautifully, and the purity of his music is easy to appreciate in these solo pieces.

https://inv.nadeko.net/playlist?list=PLor_18TcpRrxQmne5_SKRy... (YouTube proxy)

Try this one on for size

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ce8CDz9PUfs

The Cantatas. All of them.

> But one wonders what he could have made without those constraints.

I had a friend that said if Mozart/Bach/et al had access to modern music production equipment, they'd all write psytrance. But it is just another example of "take great talent from long ago and put them in modern day" comparisons.

This is only scratching the surface but I will present one of his most famous pieces to people who might ask why something like this is said. Keep in mind this was written 300 years ago. That's 300. fucking. years. ago. Think about how dated something from the 80s might sound. How modern does this sound? How completely universal is it's beauty? To me, this could have been written today and still sound fresh and beautiful.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWoI8vmE8bI

This piece is still deeply moving despite centuries of tastes changing. This is only barely scratching the surface of Bach. As a musician, when I listen to other great musicians speak, they all speak about Bach as the best. Of course that's subjective, and there are no 'wrong' answers on who is your favorite, but when the feeling is so nearly unanimous amount people who are often, frankly, contrarian and counter culture it says something.

complexity in software is invisibly-preceded with "unnecessary", and usually indicates software that is difficult to maintain or even to verify its behavior. A really cool software architecture can scratch a similar itch as a good fugue, but that's not its typical function nor is it the way we usually engage with software professionally.

Bach's complexity, incidentally, is seldom "for its own sake" - the pieces all fit together beautifully and without extraneous movement. Contrast that with some lesser works by later composers like Liszt, where you often get the sense that a given passage could be reduced or removed without harming the work.

Why pay a dominatrix for a flogging when you can just stub your toe

This is a riposte at the level of "Then name all composers. Nanananana." Obviously, the answer to your question is going to be "no," but really a great amount of music is available to us, and everything that came before the Renaissance was, crudely put, simple music. So the commenter can be considered to be able to weigh Bach's merits against those of other artists'.

IMO too, Bach is the greatest. There's really no-one who can so seamlessly merge content and form and achieve intellectually, musically and emotionally fulfilling results.

I understand that a comment such as mine would rankle. I acknowledge that art is subjective, that there's no accounting for taste, etc. And yet, I don't really believe that, deep down. If I did, I'm not entirely sure how I could speak meaningfully to the differences between great and no so great art. Is War and Peace really as good as any other novel? Would it be possible for any two people to meaningfully communicate about art, if it really all boils down to mere instinctual taste? I think there must be more, even if I can't quite prove it. But I will acknowledge that I can't point to some objective rubric that obtains across all art when I say what I say.

Thank you and upvote to the OP for posting this. I love Bach and place him on a pedestal of my own.

Personally I lack the physiological or cultural understanding of the significance of Tuvan Throat Singing [1] and why "Kongurei" (Konggurei / 60 Horses) is often described as the most beautiful and heartbreaking song in the Tuvan Throat Singing (Khoomei) repertoire.

I also get that the Javanese gamelan orchestral masterpiece "Ketawang Puspawarna" [2] is widely cited as the candidate for the "most important, beautiful, and pivotal" global composition. So much so, that NASA included it on the Voyager spacecraft Golden Record in 1977 (side 2 track 2, together with 3 compositions of J.S. Bach). But I probably lack the aesthetic fabric to fully comprehend or appreciate its significance.

[1] Tuvan Throat Singing, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qx8hrhBZJ98

[2] Ketawang Puspawarna, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Irt2AsxYYnI