"It didn't happen instantly. But it happened pretty damned fast. We had
music in common at first, Bach and Mendelssohn. We had tobacco in
common and a mutual hatred of The X-Files. Then it was coffee and wine.
And then after some time it be…"It's a challenge," Wheeler admits, brightly.
"No, I mean it's chaotic. It's unlistenable."
"I can play anything you like," Wheeler states.
Hutchinson appears to spend a moment considering this possibility. "Bach. You can play some Bach?…
Johann Sebastian Bach
musician · 3 mentions across 2 readings
In this course
Bach appears in the course readings primarily as a cultural touchstone for human artistic mastery and expressivity—invoked in dialogue as the ultimate test of a musician's genuine skill and improvisational capacity. In the excerpts, Bach functions less as a historical figure than as a marker of irreducible human artistry that resists easy technological reproduction or algorithmic simulation, suggesting the seminar is exploring tensions between computational formalisms (which Bach's counterpoint superficially resembles) and the embodied, improvisational knowledge required to actually perform his work. The readings seem to use Bach to anchor debates about what machine learning might or might not be capable of capturing when it comes to artistic intelligence.
Background
Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer and musician of the late Baroque period. He is known for his prolific output across a variety of instruments and forms, including the orchestral Brandenburg Concertos; solo instrumental works such as the Cello Suites and Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin; keyboard works such as the Goldberg Variations and The Well-Tempered Clavier; organ works such as the Schübler Chorales and the Toccata and Fugue in D minor; and choral works such as the St. Matthew Passion and the Mass in B minor. He is known for his mastery of counterpoint, as heard in The Musical Offering and The Art of Fugue. Felix Mendelssohn precipitated the Bach Revival with a performance of the St. Matthew Passion in 1829. Ever since, Bach has been acclaimed as one of the greatest composers in the history of Western music.
Wikipedia →Mentioned in 2 readings
Appears alongside
People mentioned in the same passages — sorted by co-occurrence weight.