Quote:
Originally Posted by Zetetic
This question is intriguing, but obviously unanswerable. I'd refute that Bach's influence has been greater than any other composer (that claim's been bandied around), since he really marked the pinnacle of a period. After his death he quickly slid into obscurity, coinciding more or less with the death of the baroque style.
|
Bach never slid into obscurity; his popularity has always been more or less the same, which is to say that those who know, know. In his life time he was mostly known as a virtuoso organist, and very few truly understood the breadth of his compositional output. After his death, he went on to greatly influence through his works: Mozart (who began to fully employ mature counterpoint in his works after encountering Bach and who, it is said, always kept a copy of DWK open at his piano), Beethoven (who earned his early reputation through the playing of Bach and, consequently, learned his preliminaries of performance and composition technique therein), Chopin (who also learned composition and performance largely through study of DWK and who, as is widely known, wrote a set of 24 preludes in tribute), as well as basically everyone on that list, and then many more.
I answered correctly.