As a devotee of classical music, I always think there is something to be learned from J.S. Bach. Consider the question: “Who is music for?” Bach’s answer to this question has defied and perplexed every generation that followed.
At the time of Bach’s death in 1750, the Enlightenment was in full swing. Amid that first flowering of liberty, equality and fraternity, music was thought an application of humanity’s “own native genius … that would revive his spirits and enliven his taste”. Who was music for? The audience’s pleasure.
Track forward to the Romantics of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and enter stage left the lone genius, misunderstood and heroically persevering in a world that can’t keep up. Beethoven has been canonised as the archetype of this in music: writing works thought difficult and opaque in their day, but within a generation of his untimely death, effectively deified. Who was music for? The discerning few who recognised true genius.
