Reader Response III: Bach to School

Note the original instruments (no chin rests on the violins and violas, no endpin on the cello, funny looking bows) and the Baroque pitch--lower than A=440, which is standard now.

In response to the preceding post, RBUD noted the similarity between Vivaldi and Bach: "I am just noticing how much Vivaldi sounds like Bach. Has anyone else ever noticed this? Is it just the instruments? Autumn sounds to me like it would be at home among the Brandenburg Concertos."
Bach's dates, 1685-1750, roughly correspond to the Baroque period, RBUD. Further, whereas many great composers are innovators, Bach was more of a culmination of all that came before. Thus you may well hear similarities between Bach and Vivaldi, Telemann, Corelli, and many other Baroque composers in Bach's music. (Handel, who was a contemporary of Bach, seems to me more distinctive.)
I am no musicologist, but I would say that on the whole Bach's use of harmony and counterpoint is more sophisticated than that of his predecessors. A particular weakness of Vivaldi and Telemann seems to me to be their use of sequences, that is the same pattern begun on consecutive notes, which can be very repetitious and predictable. In Vivaldi's defense, however, he often wrote for children, since he worked at a school for wealthy, illegitimate girls. Sequences are pedagogically useful because while each requires a distinctive set of finger movements, the ear can relate new sequences to the pattern, which allows students to check whether they are in tune or not. Sequences are also useful in teaching phrasing, as they are easily identifiable and should usually be played with crescendos or decrescendos.
weirsdo