Bach’s birthday

Johann Sebastian Bach.

Yesterday (Saturday, March 21st, 2015) was Johann Sebastian Bach’s 330th birthday.
March 21st, 1685.
I don’t know what to say, since I blogged Bach’s birthday before.
I know as a classical-music junkie, I’m supposed to venerate the three “Bs,” Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms.
Bach is a slam-dunk.
Brahms ain’t bad, although about the only composition of his I can identify is “Academic Festival Overture.”
To me, Brahms is comparable to Saint-Saëns, Ravel, or Claude Debussy.
Beethoven is more important, the best of his genre, which includes Tšaikovski and Rimsky-Korsakov.
I know quite a few of Beethoven’s compositions, like his symphonies and piano sonatas.
Bach I can listen to all day. Most of his compositions are extraordinary, especially the Brandenburg Concertos, “Sheep May Safely Graze,” “Air on a G-string,” and “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring.”
I always like that filigree he puts on top of the melody-line, or sometimes underneath.
But anything of his is worth listening to. There is stuff by both Beethoven and Brahms I consider forgettable, but not Bach.
Perhaps my greatest joy in attending Houghton College (“HO-tin;” as in “hoe,” not “how” or “who”) was discovering they were into Bach.
So began my feeding-frenzy, gobbling every Bach composition I heard.
If anything, their penchant for Bach made me a Bach-geek.
They went overboard about it.
Every four years they’d do a Bach-festival; mine was my senior year.
I was recruited to do a Bach poster, so I did one of Bach winking.
The powers-that-be were extremely incensed. It was as if I had pilloried one sitting at the right-hand of Jesus.
They didn’t understand — I thought the world of Bach.
Of course they misunderstood; I was a ne’er-do-well and of-the-Devil.
Pointing out my appreciation of Bach made no difference.
“That Hughes, he’s always mocking.”
No, they made me a Bach-geek, and I wasn’t mocking.
Almost 50 years have passed since that contretemps, and I’m still a Bach-geek.
The last rock album I bought was by Def Leppard in the ‘80s.
I still have my Bach albums.
Def Leppard I gave away.

• “Houghton College” in western New York, is from where I graduated with a BA in 1966. I’ve never regretted it, although I graduated a ne’er-do-well, without their blessing. Houghton is an evangelical liberal-arts college.
• “Hughes” is me; Bob Hughes, “BobbaLew.”