In some ways, I miss how I used to understand Bach. I learned several pieces from the Anna Magdalena  in my early years as a pianist, but my teachers did not express to me much regarding Bach. I experienced little effort from others to humanize Bach. That is, until I learned my first prelude from the Well-Tempered Klavier, in B-flat minor, Book 1. Before I decided to study that piece, my teacher encouraged me to listen to the entire Well-Tempered Klavier, and more importantly, to listen to...

*Disclaimer: This post is not peer-reviewed. I do have experience in historical research and writing, and my goal here is to analyze, not to compare. Dimitri Shostakovich is a particular example of someone who faced both public adoration and political scrutiny. Consider how Soviet music critics received composer Shostakovich’s opera, Lady Macbeth,  in the primary newspaper Pravda . Critics published Sumbur vmeste muzyki  (Chaos Instead of Music) on January 28 th , 1936, full of scathing...

*Disclaimer: This post is not peer-reviewed. I do have experience in historical research and writing, and my goal here is to analyze, not to compare. The formation of musicology as a separate field of study did not evolve until the mid-1800s, when a curiosity to explain the relation between music and culture, ideology, race, ethnicity, and nationality emerged. It is a field that attempts to explain the “fundamentals” of a person and how they influence their creations.  In the establishment...