ROOTS (IMPORTED)
The same attitude Bach displayed in intensifying and transforming the traditional techniques of his trade characterized his relationship to all the styles of his time. Despite the seemingly cloistered insularity of his career, he nevertheless mastered, and by his lights transcended, the full range of contemporary musical idioms. In part this was simply a matter of being German. At a time when French and Italian musicians were mutually suspicious and much concerned with resisting each other’s influence, German musicians tended to define themselves as universal synthesists, able (in the words of Johann Joachim Quantz, a colleague of C. P. E. Bach’s at the Prussian court) “to select with due discrimination from the musical tastes of various peoples what is best in each,” thereby producing “a mixed taste which, without overstepping the bounds of modesty, may very well be called the German taste.”2 Bach became its ultimate, most universal, exponent.
- Citation (MLA):
- Richard Taruskin. "Chapter 6 Class of 1685 (I)." The Oxford History of Western Music. Oxford University Press. New York, USA. n.d. Web. 21 May. 2025. <https://www.oxfordwesternmusic.com/view/Volume2/actrade-9780195384826-div1-06004.xml>.
- Citation (APA):
- Taruskin, R. (n.d.). Chapter 6 Class of 1685 (I). In Oxford University Press, Music In The Seventeenth And Eighteenth Centuries. New York, USA. Retrieved 21 May. 2025, from https://www.oxfordwesternmusic.com/view/Volume2/actrade-9780195384826-div1-06004.xml
- Citation (Chicago):
- Richard Taruskin. "Chapter 6 Class of 1685 (I)." In Music In The Seventeenth And Eighteenth Centuries, Oxford University Press. (New York, USA, n.d.). Retrieved 21 May. 2025, from https://www.oxfordwesternmusic.com/view/Volume2/actrade-9780195384826-div1-06004.xml
