Bach the Humorist

Abstract

From chortling gags heard in his church music, to the off-beat physical humor enlivening his first published keyboard music, to the jesting chutzpah of his Brandenburg Concertos, Bach’s wittiest creations display the composer/performer’s irreverence for expectation and reflect his musical—and social—daring. While no composer’s image is sterner than that of Johann Sebastian Bach, his early admirers painted a more varied picture of the composer than did later commentators driven by the imperatives of Art and the rigors of unsmiling scholarship. Convivial, dramatic, domestic, and courtly contexts could spark Bach to indulge in droll escapades and jokes, but even beyond such occasions, the prankster lurks in the transgressions of genius.