Johann Sebastian Bach: Genre-Bender Extraordinaire | Big Think
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@jjsc4396
January 31, 2026 at 8:29 pm
"I don't look at the guy next to me and think, 'hey, I'm doing better than him'. I mean, compared to Bach, we all suck." – Pat Metheny.
@abcxyz8787
January 31, 2026 at 8:29 pm
I think that Bach didn't compose operas because for him music had a connection to the divine, it was a way to glorify god and not for the "cheap" entertainment that operas provide where the words that are composed are of stories and dramas that have nothing to do with religion or god.
@jalapablocrypto
January 31, 2026 at 8:29 pm
Come to think of it, Schutz didn't compose opera either, a contemporary of Monteverdi. Yet his passions are full of dialectic drama and energy.
@felipeechavarria7229
January 31, 2026 at 8:29 pm
I think also, since 18th century composers themselves were practical musicians, there was not an opportunity for Bach to compose opera. If he had worked at a opera loving court, instead of a church, I'm sure he would have been inspired to compose operas.
@clivegovier2871
January 31, 2026 at 8:29 pm
Opera was to the secularist what oratorio is to the religious. Bach had not a secular bone in his body. A devoted Lutheran who had a passionate attachment to Christ Jesus. Everything he wrote was dedicated to him, by the initials “J.J.” (“Jesus help me”), or (I. N. J) “In the name of Jesus”, or “S.D.G” (“😅”Solely to the glory of God”).
@felixpizza
January 31, 2026 at 8:29 pm
Super hard to understand his answer. So why didn’t Bach write opera? ‘Because he wrote mutant opera / his own type of opera’. But so what? He could have still written opera.
@andreslasaga6036
January 31, 2026 at 8:29 pm
Unless you consider Coffee Cantata as an illegitimate opera in his catalogue?
@lordsharshabeel
January 31, 2026 at 8:29 pm
Opera is tedious and Bach ain’t got time for that.
@kellyhanselman3489
January 31, 2026 at 8:29 pm
Looking forward to adding the phrase "mutant opera" to my students' glossary of studied terms.
@elletuppen4844
January 31, 2026 at 8:29 pm
Thank you for another gem of a discussion by Sir Gardiner. I can listen to anything he has to say, esp about Bach.
He gets under the skin of musical and psychological matters and makes such valuable sense of them. And obviously these insights of his are palpable in his interpretations.His understanding about Bach’s misunderstood complexity, darkness and sensuality is so exiting and elements that have resonated with me since I was a you g musician. 🌈❤️🌹
@shnimmuc
January 31, 2026 at 8:29 pm
Handel was the greatest master of opera in the 17 hundreds and wrote some of the greatest music conceived by man. I do not agree with Gardiner with regard to placing Handel in this bad light, on the contrary, many things he mentioned do not pertain to GFH.
@NotJonJost
January 31, 2026 at 8:29 pm
He did write a few perfectly stagable works that went under the listed genre of "dramma per musica"– which is how operas often got referred to– in things like Hercules At The Crossroads (BWV 213), The Contest Of Pan And Apollo (BWV 201), and the Coffee Cantata (BWV 211). The last two, especially, it seems like people say they weren't staged just because Bach wrote them, but they are clearly very dramatic and diologic.
But Bach's Matthew Passion is definitely the greatest baroque opera, and it's not even an opera.
@juanpablovelez7656
January 31, 2026 at 8:29 pm
I would love to watch a big think interview with this man.
@johnbarry5036
January 31, 2026 at 8:29 pm
and this is why Classical Music is dead today. JEG the quintessential British musical scholar… SNORE.
@suzyserling277
January 31, 2026 at 8:29 pm
What a privilege to listen to Sir John E. Gardiner’s thoughts about J.S.Bach!; thanks….No question, in part it was a political and especially a psychological response for Bach to express many deep emotions and connect with his personal history through the Passions and Cantatas, all the religious beliefs, romanticism, sensuality, all there “no special dresses, no wigs”. Thanks again!
@donna25871
January 31, 2026 at 8:29 pm
Bach was so devoted to his God he probably though anything not associated with it was frivolous.
@johnpurcell827
January 31, 2026 at 8:29 pm
Damn, the whole time I was waiting to find out what was going on with the gender bending.
@jwallguitar
January 31, 2026 at 8:29 pm
So wait….he was trans?
@17attewell
January 31, 2026 at 8:29 pm
Bach left us such wonderful music to express the eternal truths of the bible. He had no need to express his gift in opera. Church music was the highest form as it points to the eternal word of God.
@aliasreco
January 31, 2026 at 8:29 pm
Utterly interesting video! I detest operas too….and maybe that is because of my choise for audio and not video… I sang a lot of Bach. It was great!
@odconstant
January 31, 2026 at 8:29 pm
Aw, c'mon, where's my gender bender? Worst video ever.
@Rog5446
January 31, 2026 at 8:29 pm
Did any of his sons, who were also composers, compose operas?
I'm not aware any of them did, so it might be a family preference to exclude composition of opera.
@Sunicarus
January 31, 2026 at 8:29 pm
“As opposed to other composers, Bach targets the very young, the child, and people of a certain age, like me. And tries to leave out the middle. What I mean by this is that there are all kinds of mental, psychological dispositions from the opera that he totally shunned. Envy. Greed. Lust. Jealousy. I mean, this is the bread and butter of the opera. He never went there. He had no interest in that. His music tries to express things like, awe. Grace. Thanks. Fear. Trepidation. Hope. All kinds of sentiments a child can have, and an older person can have." -Bernard Chazelle
@edgarvalderrama1143
January 31, 2026 at 8:29 pm
I like (love) Bach and can't stand operas, so that much is fine.
Even though the religion/Christ thing isn't for me – tears run down my cheeks when listening to Christ being martyred in Bach's St. Mathew's Passion and I almost become Catholic at the B minor Mass. (even if Bach didn't)
Bach is my way of "worship without religion." He's saved me from falling into sectarianism through his universality!
@MatthewJayasekera
January 31, 2026 at 8:29 pm
Bach was always breaking the rules, and doing his own thing.
@chipsnegativeharmonyrips7187
January 31, 2026 at 8:29 pm
Not a bad essay but the video title is a bit of a stretch. It could be something like "Why didn't Bach write opera?". Maybe only two sentences of the video is about Bach genre-bending and it really doesn't seem to be a well-defended or important point.
@iwanabana
January 31, 2026 at 8:29 pm
The word after Monteverdi was Rameau, one of the great French Baroque composers.
@MrKeithMontgomery
January 31, 2026 at 8:29 pm
Opera took a wrong turn leaving Bach as the real thing and passed it on to Mozart? Maybe opera seria took an odd turn (partly in reaction late Monteverdi — the Coronation of Poppea ) and Mozart helped put it back on track with Cosi and Don Giovanni and the Abduction and so on. But I don't see Bach in this development.
@annamcancarini6953
January 31, 2026 at 8:29 pm
Mr. Gardiner, if you love Bach , why don't you learn to play the organ instead of speaking so much?
@AikiNickAMV2
January 31, 2026 at 8:29 pm
More of Gardiner!
@kinetic.vibe.
January 31, 2026 at 8:29 pm
Air by Bach is one of the most beautiful pieces of music I've ever heard!
@celticph
January 31, 2026 at 8:29 pm
bach was a hipster dude
@R.T.and.J
January 31, 2026 at 8:29 pm
So I'm not the only one who came here thinking Bach was a cross-dresser.
Nevertheless, I am still disappointed. Would've made for interesting discussion 😀
@queuesnake704
January 31, 2026 at 8:29 pm
Mutant Opera
@uberandy666
January 31, 2026 at 8:29 pm
I think he didn't care much for opera.
@Beachapeeater
January 31, 2026 at 8:29 pm
It took me the whole video to realize it didn't say genDer bender.
@dockvernct8760
January 31, 2026 at 8:29 pm
Бах е един! Бах е един! Един е той!
@VexylObby
January 31, 2026 at 8:29 pm
I think Bach, like many musicians, got tired of hearing the same thing, hearing what was popular, and hearing simple patterns. I think he want something different.
@ClaudiaMoldovanCM
January 31, 2026 at 8:29 pm
So true… extraordinaire ♥
@zenzylok
January 31, 2026 at 8:29 pm
Bach, altering the existence of mankind with music since 1700.
@miketv2331
January 31, 2026 at 8:29 pm
Bach suchs.
@CentrifugalSatzClock
January 31, 2026 at 8:29 pm
Wonderful it is to hear such a great interpreter of the Cantatas talking about Bach. Many of his interpretations are my favorites because they do give a dramatic touch to this very magical of musics.
@patrickmulvaney7262
January 31, 2026 at 8:29 pm
to paraphrase a feminist claim: History was never made by a person who accepted the "status quo".
@superhund14
January 31, 2026 at 8:29 pm
His voice is nice but… this is completely uninteresting if you're in to thoughts rather than pretentious drivel about dead masters.
@onvogmasaj
January 31, 2026 at 8:29 pm
ELO
@hellosaera
January 31, 2026 at 8:29 pm
Just curious– why use the term "mutant-operatic" and not "oratorio?"
(I am not trolling, I promise. I'm in university, studying music education. I genuinely want to know…)
Comments are closed.