History YMMV / JohannSebastianBach

* CriticalDissonance: Bach scholars tend to rate the cantatas and Passions as his greatest works; non-scholars and fans often prefer the instrumental music, such as the ''Goldberg Variations'', both books of ''The Well-Tempered Clavier'', the suites for solo violin and solo cello, etc. The fact that the sacred vocal works are all [[RealityHasNoSubtitles sung in German]] probably has something to do with this.

* CriticalDissonance: Bach scholars tend to rate the cantatas and Passions as his greatest works; non-scholars and fans often prefer the instrumental music, such as the ''Goldberg Variations'', ''The Well-Tempered Clavier'', the suites for solo violin and solo cello, etc. The fact that the sacred vocal works are all [[RealityHasNoSubtitles sung in German]] probably has something to do with this.

* CriticalDissonance: Bach scholars tend to rate the cantatas and Passions as his greatest works; non-scholars and fans often prefer the instrumental music, such as the ''Goldberg Variations'', ''The Well-Tempered Clavier'', the suites for solo violin and solo cello, etc. This probably has something to do with the fact that the sacred vocal works are all [[RealityHasNoSubtitles sung in German]].

** The famous "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUA_TrKqVXI Minuet in G Major]]" is often attributed to Bach, since it exists in Bach's own handwriting in the Anna Magdalena Notebook, with no composer attributed. In the 1970s, music scholars deduced that the piece is actually the work of Christian Petzold, and Bach merely copied it out for his wife to play. Several of the other pieces in the notebook, formerly attributed to Bach, are similarly now recognized as the work of composers such as François Couperin, Jacob Böhm, and Bach's son Carl Philipp Emanuel.

** In 1853 French composer Charles Gounod composed [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ave_Maria_(Bach/Gounod) a setting of "Ave Maria"]] that borrows Bach's C Major Prelude from ''The Well-Tempered Clavier Book I'' for the accompaniment. This piece, extremely popular in its own right, is often misattributed to Bach himself, although he died 135 years before it existed. (It's most commonly credited "Bach/Gounod," although that hits the same problem.) To make matters worse, the edition of the Prelude that Gounod adapted has a spurious extra measure that was added by a well-meaning editor supposedly trying to "fix" Bach's faulty chord progression!

* CriticalDissonance: Bach scholars tend to rate the cantatas and Passions as his greatest work; non-scholars and fans often prefer the instrumental music, such as the ''Goldberg Variations'', ''The Well-Tempered Clavier'', the suites for solo violin and solo cello, etc. This probably has something to do with the fact that the sacred vocal works are all [[RealityHasNoSubtitles sung in German]].

* EarWorm: "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" is a famously catchy tune.

* VindicatedByHistory: Bach's music wasn't given the recognition it deserved until the 1800s.

* CreatorWorship: To the highest degree, among music academics and aficionados. The only ones who rival him in respect and acclaim are Mozart and Beethoven.

** In 1853 French composer Charles Gounod composed [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ave_Maria_(Bach/Gounod) a setting of "Ave Maria"]] that borrows Bach's C Major Prelude from ''The Well-Tempered Clavier'' for the accompaniment. This piece, extremely popular in its own right, is often misattributed to Bach himself, although he died 135 years before it existed. (It's most commonly credited "Bach/Gounod," although that hits the same problem.) To make matters worse, the edition of the Prelude that Gounod adapted has a spurious extra measure that was added by a well-meaning editor supposedly trying to "fix" Bach's faulty chord progression!

** The famous "Minuet in G Major" is often attributed to Bach, since it exists in Bach's own handwriting in the "Anna Magdalena Notebook." In the 1970s, music scholars deduced that the piece is actually the work of Christian Petzold, and Bach merely copied it out for his wife to play. Several of the other pieces in the notebook, formerly attributed to Bach, are similarly now recognized as the work of composers such as François Couperin, Jacob Böhm, and Bach's son Carl Philipp Emanuel.

* MisattributedSong: In 1853 French composer Charles Gounod composed [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ave_Maria_(Bach/Gounod) a setting of "Ave Maria"]] that borrows Bach's C Major Prelude from ''The Well-Tempered Clavier'' for the accompaniment. This piece, extremely popular in its own right, is often misattributed to Bach himself, although he died 135 years before it existed. (It's most commonly credited "Bach/Gounod," although that hits the same problem.) To make matters worse, the edition of the Prelude that Gounod adapted has a spurious extra measure that was added by a well-meaning editor supposedly trying to "fix" Bach's faulty chord progression!

* ActorInspiredElement: Bach tended to work with the same musicians a lot because they, like him, had the same employers, and you can tell which ones he especially admired, because a cantata will show up with e.g. a juicy trombone part. He wrote some of the most florid and difficult trumpet parts of the era, chiefly because he enjoyed for many years the services of one Gottfried Reiche, perhaps the greatest virtuoso practitioner of the natural trumpet. And he loved incorporating unusual and novel instruments into his works, such as the ''oboe da caccia,'' a tenor oboe made of metal and curved in the shape of a hunting horn.

* SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic: Too many examples to list, but just one would be the Chaconne for solo violin. The other works for solo violin are all excellent, but the Chaconne (which is just the fifth and last movement of the Partita No 2 for solo violin) is notably longer than any of the other movements, and packs an epic, symphony-sized amount of musical information into just about ten minutes. It's been transcribed for numerous other instruments (Segovia did it on guitar), it's one of the ultimate challenges for any violinist, and players as well as composers have been marvelling at it for centuries:
-->'''Creator/JohannesBrahms''': On one stave, for a small instrument, the man writes a whole world of the deepest thoughts and most powerful feelings. If I imagined that I could have created, even conceived the piece, I am quite certain that the excess of excitement and earth-shattering experience would have driven me out of my mind.

* CreatorWorship: To the highest degree, among music academics and aficionados, the only ones who rival him in respect and acclaim are Mozart and, to a slightly lesser extent, Beethoven.

* CowboyBebopAtHisComputer: At least two recordings of the Third ''Brandenburg Concerto'' supposedly consist of the "First and Second" movements. As most fans know, Bach only wrote First and Third movements (and a placeholder cadenza to stand in for the Second; it is believed that the musicians were supposed to improvise something leading up to it), and the Third Movement is definitely in the style of a Third, not a Second. No prizes for guessing what the so-called "Second Movement" in these recordings actually is.

* DescendedCreator: The first movement of the fifth ''Brandenburg Concerto'' turns into a lengthy and highly virtuosic solo for the harpsichord, which would have been played by Bach himself.
* GenreAdultery: J.S. Bach, the composer most associated with sacred music, writes a mini-drama in cantata form about a sassy girl addicted to coffee.

* SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic: Too many examples to list, but just one would be the Chaconne for solo violin. The other works for solo violin are all excellent, but the Chaconne (which is just the fifth and last movement of ''Partita No 2'') is notably longer than any of the other movements, and packs an epic, symphony-sized amount of musical information into just about ten minutes. It's been transcribed for numerous other instruments (Segovia did it on guitar), it's one of the ultimate challenges for any violinist, and players as well as composers have been marvelling at it for centuries:

* SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic: Too many examples to list!

* CriticalDissonance: Bach scholars tend to rate the cantatas and Passions as his greatest work; non-scholars and fans often prefer the instrumental music, such as the ''Goldberg Variations'', ''The Well-Tempered Clavier'', the suites for solo violin and solo cello, etc. This probably has something to do with the fact that the sacred vocal works are all sung in German.

* CrowningMusicOfAwesome: Too many examples to list!
* VindicatedByHistory: Bach's music wasn't given the recognition it deserved until the 1800s