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Bach and Rock ‘n Roll
From Toccatas to Tchotchkes, He’s Everywhere
“I consider Johann Sebastian Bach the greatest man who ever lived, along with Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Delano Roosevelt.” Fats Waller
Maybe you hate classical music? Perhaps your only interest in Bach is on his birthday when memes with word-play such as “Bach to Bach” and images of him wearing sunglasses or sticking out his tongue pop up.
My Favorite meme is Ennis and Jack from the movie Broke Back Mountain wearing Bach-like wigs under their cowboys hats. Another creative Bach lover did a 7-minute YouTube video chronicling the life of Bach in memes.
If you’re old enough to have watched Tom and Jerry cartoons on Saturday morning, you may have seen Droopy and Butch play Bach’s “D-minor Toccata and Fugue.”
Bach Tchotchkes
Beethoven trinkets abound: socks, coffee mugs, and apple-cinnamon-soap-in-a music-box that plays the “Ode-to-Joy” from the 9th Symphony.
Without doing the rigorous research that such a claim would require, I’m suggesting that Bach has inspired even more stuff. Beethoven may be more popular, but the name “Bach” is irresistible. The most popular memes with word play on his name are printed on coffee mugs and t-shirts.
I have a book bag with Bach’s portrait on front and back and a Bach mouse pad with a bit of a Bach Prelude plus Bach socks (which are so uncomfortable I never wear them). Of course, I have the two contemporary, scholarly biographies of Bach: John Eliot Gardiner’s Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven and Christoph Wolff’s Bach: The Learned Musician.
My favorite Bach book, The Little Bach Book by David Gordon, is short and filled with delightful trivia: in 1708 Bach’s salary included “150 florins, 18 bushels of wheat, 12 bushels of barley, four cords of firewood, and 30 buckets of beer.” Want to know why Bach and and others of his time wore wigs? Or how Bach and fellow composers made their quill pens for writing their music? How about the reason they and even their children drank so much beer? You’ll find…
