Bach's grim childhood?

[ardcarp]

In a semi-sleepy state this morning I heard a snippet on Radio 3's news bulletin (at 8am I think) about J.S. Bach having had a disturbed childhood, including bullying and sodomy. This was courtesy of some biography by JEG. Does anyone know anything about this...or have I made it all up? Is there an iconoclastic streak in biographers?

[doversoul1]

No, you haven’t. Here is the proof.

http://www.for3.org/forums/showthread.php?9394-The-violent-thuggish-world-of-young-JS-Bach

[MickyD]

There's a full article about it in today's "Guardian"..

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/sep/21/secret-bach-teenage-thug

[ardcarp]

One is tempted to suggest that JEG knows how to sell a book....nothing like a bit of sex and violence. And the old thing of saying previous scholars have got it all wrong is the classic way many PhD theses begin! Obviously I haven't read JEG's book yet, but his finding some 'reports' which refer to schools Bach may have attended is not the same as finding Bach's school reports. I dare say there were many sadistic schoolmasters in all countries over the centuries. And rowdy goings on among teenagers is not new to mankind's history.

[Are we in need of a thread merge here?]

[french frank]

Yes - a thread was started - I'll merge.

I wonder how atypical a 'thuggish' childhood/youth was in those days - we know so much about Mozart's cocooned life under his father's eye, perhaps that's the wrong impression? Certainly, life could be very 'nasty, brutish and short' in all the social strata in the late Middle Ages.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

such a childhood built the Empire eh? never did the brit ruling class any harm what? ....

[ardcarp]

Nice one Jazbo.

I was going to draw parallels with the English Public School, but you have done it with style.

[amateur51]

One is tempted to suggest that JEG knows how to sell a book....nothing like a bit of sex and violence.

Does he know Paul Kildea, I wonder?

[Mary Chambers]

Does he know Paul Kildea, I wonder?

You have said it for me, ams

[VodkaDilc]

Does he know Paul Kildea, I wonder?

Yet another illusion shattered! I had thought that Sir John would be above such sensationalism - but I suppose there's a book to sell. What's next? A television interview with Jonathan Ross?

[mercia]

I seem to remember thugs and fights entering the Bach story in JEG's BBC documentary

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiQbppQq54E

[Miles Coverdale]

There's a full article about it in today's "Guardian"..

http://www.theguardian.com/music/201...h-teenage-thug

'For punishment, Bach's contemporaries endured beatings and the threat of "eternal damnation".'

Good to know that Protestants are just as capable of peddling pernicious nonsense to children as Catholics - or any religion for that matter.

[mercia]

Radio 4 this morning has a Bach programme which might cover the same ground - 11:30am [when we ought to be listening to Essential Classics]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03bds3t

[ardcarp]

Yes, I heard the programme:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03bds3t

...more entertaining than Essential Classics. Presented by Rev Richard Coles (who he?) and of interest to the general music listener. It does mention the JEG 'research' though much of the fallible side of Bach is related to his fallings out with authority as an adult...which is better documented. John Butt features incidentally. BBC budgets only sent the Rev gentleman as far as the East End of London and to Scotland. Ryanair to Leipzig was obviously a step too far.

[VodkaDilc]

Yes, I heard the programme:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03bds3t

...more entertaining than Essential Classics. Presented by Rev Richard Coles (who he?) and of interest to the general music listener. It does mention the JEG 'research' though much of the fallible side of Bach is related to his fallings out with authority as an adult...which is better documented. John Butt features incidentally. BBC budgets only sent the Rev gentleman as far as the East End of London and to Scotland. Ryanair to Leipzig was obviously a step too far.

Richard Coles has done a lot of R4 work and introduced the nightly arts magazine programme when Artsworld (now SkyArts) started - with Tim Marlow. I think Mr Coles was once in a pop group, but I'm the wrong person to know which one.