The comment thread on that page gets into Newton and Neumann, but I think artistic/scientific achievements are apples/oranges. Doesn't make sense to compare the two, because the standard of quality is so different.
Even within artistic disciplines, how would you compare Bach, Shakespeare, and DaVinci? Shakespeare alone added 1,700 new words to the English language (that we still use today). DaVinci painted so meticulously that his works have hundreds of layers of paint that are thinner than a strand of hair.
Comparison is the thief of joy - better to just envision a "hall of fame", where once reached, it doesn't matter where you place.
Comparing others is a source of joy, people love gossiping or just talking about who is better etc. Comparison is only a thief of joy when you compare yourself to others, but comparing Newton to Einstein etc is an endless source of fun, many people have enjoyed these discussions over the years.
Yeah, but those are people who are nowhere near that level of excellence at all.
Gossip for those people is often just a mechanism to increase their self esteem in front of bigger than life artists who truly changed the world. It is a bit like music lovers who have strong opinions about everything, while not being able to play a single note on any instrument. For them comparing the great musicians on that level makes them feel important too – if they can't walk the walk they at least try to talk the talk. Meanwhile most actual musicians are usually far more tolerant about the types of music they would consider interesting, because for them everything new they hear is something that can be used as an influence for creation.
So if someone asks whether Bach or thee greates Jazz musicians on the height of their game were the greater artists, any musician with half a brain cell would reject the question, because the question doesn't even make sense. Both things are absolutely masterful within the ideas they tried to explore. And those were different ideas.
That would be like comparing a masterfully built modern bridge to gothic cathedral. They are from different times, have been created in different societies, with different goals in mind with a different knowledge base, etc. Any comparison that would be worth anything would have to account for all these different factors and then land at a result that would be highly subjective anyways (which is not a bad thing if you are interested in using that comparison to increase your own self worth in front of the architects who planned those – but futile otherwise).
If earth suddenly had to be evacuated and I was limited to grabbing the ten best people to save, [Bill] Watterson would definitely be in there. There is a point where you stop rating people — you just rate them among the best. Can I say that Mozart is better than the Beatles? I can’t. I can just say that they both have gone above the cloud layer and are up there near the sun. They both are on that short list of things that are essential. Watterson is an essential.
— Brad Bird, Academy Award-winning director of Ratatouille and The Incredibles
I've never loved this aphorism. Comparison is a crucial component of knowledge discovery. It would be more apt to say that ranking is the thief of joy.
> DaVinci painted so meticulously that his works have hundreds of layers of paint that are thinner than a strand of hair.
DaVinci had really bad technique and couldn't help but endlessly fiddle with his paintings. Many of his paintings never saw the light of day because he ruining them and never finished them.
The Last Supper that we know and love was actually a superior copy made by one of his proteges because his original fresco fell apart after a few years owing to his "innovative techniques" - he painted on dry plaster because he took way too long on it.
DaVinci was wonderfully imaginative and a very unique artist, but I don't think his reputation has been fully earned by his achievements.
Around the year 2000, amongst the other things that were going on, it was also the 250th anniversary of Bach's death. Someone at the record label Teldec got the bright idea to release the entirely of Bach's work, and so a 153-disc box set was produced:
Edit: Somewhat related, is the All of Bach project:
> All of Bach is a project of the Netherlands Bach Society with the aim to perform and record all of Bach's works and share them online with the world for free. With the finest recordings, performed at special locations and with great attention to image and sound. Don't want to miss a recording of All of Bach? Then subscribe to our YouTube channel. If you would like to help us complete All of Bach, please consider a donation.
The Netherlands Bach Society (which sounds like an organization for people who are into Bach, but it's an ensemble, though one that has been in existence for more than 100 years) is fantastic. Some of my favourite Bach performances are by them [1].
Another Dutch "complete Bach" project from recent years that I enjoyed: Leusink's complete set of recordings of Bach's sacred cantatas with the Holland Boy's Choir and Netherlands Bach Collegium (1999-2000), recorded over the span of just 15 months. A year ago I listened to the entire thing, which took me three months.
(It's quite good. But in my opinion, this haste is reflected in the performances a little bit; they are very competent, to be sure, but they lack some nuance, perhaps especially in the sound mix. For whatever reason, I much prefer the NBS recordings of most of these cantatas. (I don't really like Sytse Buwalda's voice, either.) Compare their BWV 21 [2] with NBS [3]. The beautiful interplay between first violin and oboe in the NBS recording is rather lost in the Leusink version, and the sound muddier. Admittedly the NBS version appears to replace the organ with some extra strings, but to me it just sounds crisper and more carefully performed. This really extends to everything. I hope NBS will one day release a complete cantata box set.)
I don't think this is correct. Bach was seeking a position of court composer (like Handel) and even sent his 6 Brandenburg Concertos to Margrave of Brandenburg-Schwedt in 1721. He didn't get the position. Brandenburg Concertos are some of his best works and I can't imagine how much top-quality secular music he could have written if he got the position.
Also, why on earth would this metric be important? Failure is a fact of life; one needs to experience it many, many times on the road to grandmastery. I’m pretty sure Bach had. It makes more sense to cherish than deplore it.
10 of his 20 children and his first wife died. That's enough setback for most of us. He was imprisoned over quitting his appointment, if you want to add some. It really is a weird criterium.
I'm not affiliated or anything but The Great Courses' "Bach and the High Baroque" [0] course is a great Series on Bach (Robert Greenbert's courses are great overall).
I feel like I have to channel my old math teacher.
It was Euler.
He also lived without electricity, and went blind too. And yet he figured out a huge amount of interesting stuff, roughly corresponding with high school math. Euler also moved across countries.
The saying we had in my uni is that most math discoveries are named after the second person to publish them, because we can’t name everything after Euler.
Math-wise Euler was more about establishing standard approaches than anything else. In addition to that, his contributions to graph theory and topology were substantial if not defining.
His contributions in physics were truly groundbreaking, a lot of traditional theoretical mechanics is coming from him mostly.
And not even all of his works in Latin were translated yet...
I thought Bach was relatively obscure till Mendelssohn promoted his music to a new generation?
Anyhow, there are many many great composers from different genres, and if you consider the aim to be communication (rather than the quality of the music itself) who would argue against the Beatles, or Taylor Swift as the greatest achievers of all time in music?
Well, between Bach and Mendelssohn, baroque music had been out of fashion for a century. Mendelssohn revived interest in Bach's music. Doesn't mean Bach wasn't renowned in his own time.
Define better; Bach wasn’t appreciated that much when he was alive. Only later we decided that his works are the bees knees.
“Throughout the 18th century, Bach was primarily valued as an organist, while his keyboard music, such as The Well-Tempered Clavier, was appreciated for its didactic qualities.”
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Even within artistic disciplines, how would you compare Bach, Shakespeare, and DaVinci? Shakespeare alone added 1,700 new words to the English language (that we still use today). DaVinci painted so meticulously that his works have hundreds of layers of paint that are thinner than a strand of hair.
Comparison is the thief of joy - better to just envision a "hall of fame", where once reached, it doesn't matter where you place.
Comparing others is a source of joy, people love gossiping or just talking about who is better etc. Comparison is only a thief of joy when you compare yourself to others, but comparing Newton to Einstein etc is an endless source of fun, many people have enjoyed these discussions over the years.
Gossip for those people is often just a mechanism to increase their self esteem in front of bigger than life artists who truly changed the world. It is a bit like music lovers who have strong opinions about everything, while not being able to play a single note on any instrument. For them comparing the great musicians on that level makes them feel important too – if they can't walk the walk they at least try to talk the talk. Meanwhile most actual musicians are usually far more tolerant about the types of music they would consider interesting, because for them everything new they hear is something that can be used as an influence for creation.
So if someone asks whether Bach or thee greates Jazz musicians on the height of their game were the greater artists, any musician with half a brain cell would reject the question, because the question doesn't even make sense. Both things are absolutely masterful within the ideas they tried to explore. And those were different ideas.
That would be like comparing a masterfully built modern bridge to gothic cathedral. They are from different times, have been created in different societies, with different goals in mind with a different knowledge base, etc. Any comparison that would be worth anything would have to account for all these different factors and then land at a result that would be highly subjective anyways (which is not a bad thing if you are interested in using that comparison to increase your own self worth in front of the architects who planned those – but futile otherwise).
We are a social species. And a pattern-sensing species. Enjoying comparing things, especially people, combines our defining traits.
— Brad Bird, Academy Award-winning director of Ratatouille and The Incredibles
I've never loved this aphorism. Comparison is a crucial component of knowledge discovery. It would be more apt to say that ranking is the thief of joy.
* https://theworld.org/stories/2013-08-19/did-william-shakespe...
DaVinci had really bad technique and couldn't help but endlessly fiddle with his paintings. Many of his paintings never saw the light of day because he ruining them and never finished them.
The Last Supper that we know and love was actually a superior copy made by one of his proteges because his original fresco fell apart after a few years owing to his "innovative techniques" - he painted on dry plaster because he took way too long on it.
DaVinci was wonderfully imaginative and a very unique artist, but I don't think his reputation has been fully earned by his achievements.
that is not true: he new that he was not able to paint a normal fresco, so he tried a different technique, that didn't work out.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Supper_(Leonardo)#Med...
* https://www.gramophone.co.uk/features/article/the-complete-b...
* https://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2013/Apr13/B...
* https://www.amazon.com/Bach-2000-Johann-Sebastian/dp/B00001I...
A few years later they released a digital copy, with all the music made MP3s on a USB stick, with PDFs of the booklets:
* https://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/apr/17/complete-bach-...
Edit: Somewhat related, is the All of Bach project:
> All of Bach is a project of the Netherlands Bach Society with the aim to perform and record all of Bach's works and share them online with the world for free. With the finest recordings, performed at special locations and with great attention to image and sound. Don't want to miss a recording of All of Bach? Then subscribe to our YouTube channel. If you would like to help us complete All of Bach, please consider a donation.
* https://www.bachvereniging.nl/en/allofbach
* https://www.youtube.com/@bach
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netherlands_Bach_Society
It is stunning in every way; I highly recommend it for any Bach fans!
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8EuGZk74io
I am so tempted to get this (even at CA$ 800, per amazon.ca), but I'm not sure I have the actual physical space to store it.
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4jjc7SCCeXZ0PmvnKZgjpx?si=...
750 performers contributed to 260 hours of recordings. The three hours I rounded up would represent a major part of some other‘s work.
Another Dutch "complete Bach" project from recent years that I enjoyed: Leusink's complete set of recordings of Bach's sacred cantatas with the Holland Boy's Choir and Netherlands Bach Collegium (1999-2000), recorded over the span of just 15 months. A year ago I listened to the entire thing, which took me three months.
(It's quite good. But in my opinion, this haste is reflected in the performances a little bit; they are very competent, to be sure, but they lack some nuance, perhaps especially in the sound mix. For whatever reason, I much prefer the NBS recordings of most of these cantatas. (I don't really like Sytse Buwalda's voice, either.) Compare their BWV 21 [2] with NBS [3]. The beautiful interplay between first violin and oboe in the NBS recording is rather lost in the Leusink version, and the sound muddier. Admittedly the NBS version appears to replace the organ with some extra strings, but to me it just sounds crisper and more carefully performed. This really extends to everything. I hope NBS will one day release a complete cantata box set.)
[1] https://youtu.be/N6sUlZa-IrU?si=0Ls7CTQ4UiMyDB0b
[2] https://youtu.be/JGT0iPpU9is?si=qVMJTYhANI8adHop
[3] https://open.spotify.com/track/6MLmB5GDhAJr3cxMKKXUzs?si=xcV...
I don't think this is correct. Bach was seeking a position of court composer (like Handel) and even sent his 6 Brandenburg Concertos to Margrave of Brandenburg-Schwedt in 1721. He didn't get the position. Brandenburg Concertos are some of his best works and I can't imagine how much top-quality secular music he could have written if he got the position.
0: https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/bach-and-the-high-ba...
It was Euler.
He also lived without electricity, and went blind too. And yet he figured out a huge amount of interesting stuff, roughly corresponding with high school math. Euler also moved across countries.
His contributions in physics were truly groundbreaking, a lot of traditional theoretical mechanics is coming from him mostly.
And not even all of his works in Latin were translated yet...
Deleted Comment
and based on the complexity of Fugues he was probably the world’s best multi-threaded programmer too :).
His fame also took a long time to establish. He was well known during his life but nothing like the mythical legend he is now today.
Anyhow, there are many many great composers from different genres, and if you consider the aim to be communication (rather than the quality of the music itself) who would argue against the Beatles, or Taylor Swift as the greatest achievers of all time in music?
Define better; Bach wasn’t appreciated that much when he was alive. Only later we decided that his works are the bees knees.
“Throughout the 18th century, Bach was primarily valued as an organist, while his keyboard music, such as The Well-Tempered Clavier, was appreciated for its didactic qualities.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Sebastian_Bach
Do you remember being instructed not to cite wikipedia as a source?
The Brandenburg Concerti were ignored until around 1849 and nearly lost again during WWII. How ridiculous is that?
This guy isn’t writing a thesis, he’s posting an internet comment.