Happy Birthday, Mr. Bach!
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Next Tuesday, March 31st, is the 330th anniversary of the birth of German composer Johann Sebastian Bach. If you enjoy classical music like I do, Bach is probably one of your favorites from the Baroque period.
I was first introduced to Bach in 1965 when I started taking piano lessons from Elsa and Bomar Cramer. Considered to be the top piano teachers in Dallas in that day, the Cramers had students as early as age 3 up to age 18. Mrs. Cramer took the younger kids and then when someone turned 14 year old and was proficient enough, they were sent to Mr. Cramer. I was a little old to start at age 11 but I'm glad I did. One of the early pieces I learned were some of Bach's two and three part inventions, composed for the harpsichord and piano, and a few easier pieces. Later on I started learning compositions from his Well-Tempered Clavier which included preludes and fugues in each of the major and minor keys. Bach was an organist by training so most of his body of work was written for organ and voice, with over 300 cantatas, Brandenburg Concertos, variations, his Mass In B minor, and numerous chorale preludes and fugues. All told over 1100 of his works remain today although many have been lost as well. His music combines artistic beauty but you can also hear the technical demands and the intelligence of the compositions.
When I attended Baylor University in the fall of 1972, I was the evening DJ on KWBU-FM that had a classical music format at night. As a radio/TV major, I got the job as someone had left and I knew classical music. I was the only freshman on the air with the remaining student staff either juniors or seniors. There were many evenings that the playlist had me playing music from Bach.
In the fall of 1965, three female recording artists from Queens NY: Barbara Harris, June Montiero, and Barbara Parritt, recorded and released a song on the DynoVoice label that hit the Billboard Top 40. Simply called "A Lover's Concerto", the song was adopted from Bach's Minuet In G Major From The Anna Magdalena Notebook. It debuted on the charts on October 2, 1965 and was an instant success. It reached #2 for three weeks and eleven weeks total on the Top 40 Chart. Listen to the song for yourself.
In our area you can hear great classical music 24/7 on 101.1 WRR-FM and on Sirius XM 76 Symphony Hall.
Happy Birthday Mr. Bach! See you next time.