How can I move on from Bach?

Books. There are loads of books about music after the 50's (Paul Griffiths' "Modern Music: The Avant-Garde after 1945" is a great introduction to the later 20th century music), the experimental music until the 70's (Michael Nyman's book "Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond", one of the best books on experimental music, focusing mainly on the american scene, but also on the european scene, with artists such as Cardew), contemporary music (David Toop's books, among others) and you can find loads of books on individual composers, and of course the endless articles on wikipedia. I realise it's a bit hard to have access to CDs and audio samples/scores of more contemporary composers, but you can definitely find loads of samples in websites such as bmic.co.uk and criticalnotice.co.uk (and the respective music information centres of other countries). You can always check iTunes and Amazon.com audio samples, before buying a CD, and you can find loads of CDs for a cheap price on ebay. For scores, you can preview scores at most of the music information centres and sheetmusicplus.com . Of course, becoming a member at a library with loads of music scores and CDs can also be very helpful.

You have to explore these things on your own, and you may shape your journey on exploring composers by asking people to suggest pieces to you, but their suggestions will mostly be based on what you already like and what they might think you'll like, so it's not as if someone could make a certain list of things to listen to for people who are "stuck on Bach" or something.

I haven't listened to much Reger, but what I've listened to so far is fun.

My recommendation is to just listen to modern music. Lots of it. In fact, lock yourself out of anything before 1900s for a while and just listen to stuff until you find SOMETHING you like.

From personal experience, I had a "Bach" phase for around, oh, five years, to the point of memorizing practically his entire organ repertoire, until someone told me it could be a good idea to invest as much time in modern music as I did in Bach, so I did.

Sometimes, you have to force yourself to listen to things, hate them or not. You have to sit there and actually forget about what you liked before and see what is it about what you're listening that you like now.

(Though it does help that before Bach I listened to a lot of pop/rock/game music..and oddities here and there, so "tuning out" wasn't such a problem when I tried.) All of this is in essence still present in modern music, and probably it won't be going away any time soon. You just have to get comfortable with all the new sounds/textures and stuff, and then you'll probably start making connections automatically.

Counterpoint is one of the main integral bridges between modern composition techniques and the entire tonal-harmony period, and it's not by accident. When it comes down to it, you can say anything works in some way or another like counterpoint.

The interaction between sounds, and sounds against other sounds, is precisely what counterpoint is about. Paired, of course, with horizontal thinking rather than vertical (melodic vs chords.)

I'd say it's less about giving other music a chance, and more about giving yourself a chance to actually find more things that you may enjoy, and that endeavor is really worth the risk in my opinion.

I would only hold on to the last phrase you said, SCC, I don't really find any use for the rest

Just listen to new stuff.
Stop wanting to suck something of Bach's and look at some different stuff.
It is easy. 99% of people listen to more than one artist. Try and be normal.

:-p

Originally Posted by jujimufu

I would only hold on to the last phrase you said, SCC, I don't really find any use for the rest

You're just suffering from a tl;dr syndrome. :>

Originally Posted by Corbin the Violist

Try and be normal.

Being normal would mean to mostly listen to the top charts music! Hmm... I'd rather listen to Bach

Bach was a great composer, no doubt, and it isn't wrong to exclusively listen to him. But seriously, the majority of his pieces are short and focus on the rythmic aspect of music. In my opinion, this style doesn't... carry me in my emotions. Mozart and Haydn lack emotional harmonies as well. So, I think you should try listening to some Dvorak, Tchaikovsky, and Brahms. This will give you a good idea of the importance of chords. Then, work your way back to Beethoven. I feel that his music is the perfect balance between harmonious and rythmic complexity.

...huh? Have you been listening to the same Bach as I?

Maybe he's confusing Bach with Bartók. Happens all the time.

That's just my opinon... as i said earlier. And yes, I believe that with GOOD reason. I, personally, am not emotionally affected by ANY of his violin concertos, fugues, inventions, violin partitas, and other concertos (including Brandenburg). And, yes, contrary to public notion, I HAVE listened to all of these. I like it. It's just not powerful, in my opinion.