Is Bach best? Was Bach a genius? Or simply a superb technical craftsman? Simon Heighes tries to pin down Bach's genius with a little help from some friends On one thing most musicians are generally agreed: Bach was probably the greatest of all. Explaining his elusive genius, though, is not so easy. Asked why, in Dylan Thomas's words, 'Bach is best', even seasoned professionals find themselves struggling. 'It's impossible,' says Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. 'His music is the language of the soul, so we can never fully understand him.' Soprano Nancy Argenta is prepared to have a go, though. 'The key to Bach is the spiritual dimension. He was further along the line of godliness than most of us. For me, Bach is a seer, a wise man, a beacon along the path.' For conductor Helmuth Rilling — who has recorded more music by Bach than most — his genius had a more earthly foundation. 'He was the great consolidator, summing up the best of what had gone before, refining the best ideas of his own time.' The true extent of Bach's genius, Rilling believes, is only now becoming apparent. It's not enough, he says, simply to look at Bach's own work alone. 'He's the teacher par excellence. His music has influenced every later generation of composers and musicians — a heritage that continues right up to our own time. My friend Krzysztof Penderecki told me that without Bach he would never have written his own St Luke Passion.' Canadian pianist Angela Hewitt marvels at the way Bach's music still sounds so fresh and vital. But it's the richness of his invention that elevates his work above all others. 'It's music that makes you think. It compels you. The more you listen, the more you hear; the more attentive you are, the more you realize there is to discover in it.' The secret of Bach's unassailable position in the pantheon of great composers is partly due, she says, to the didactic nature of much of his instrumental music. 'Many players get their first taste of Bach through his keyboard music. It's an experience that stays with them throughout their lives. And kids respond really well to it both because of the dance element, and also because of the music's seriousness. It's not off- putting. All children want to be taken seriously and Bach does just that.' Sir John Eliot Gardiner has never forgotten his early acquaintance with Bach. 'I actually grew up under his very eyes. The original of the famous Haussmann portrait of the composer hung in my parents' house during the war for safekeeping. It spooked me, but I've since grown to love it. If you look at it from the nose downwards there's a much more sympathetic, compassionate human being than the nose, eyes and wig of the serious Thomaskantor suggest. 'There's a similar dichotomy in the music. For me it's like the intersection of two planes. The horizontal plane is the melodic and contrapuntal writing, the vertical plane is the dance rhythm based on a basso continuo of incredible elasticity and, buoyancy. And it's the intersection of these two that's so gripping and entrancing to the listener at so many levels. It can appeal on a visceral and purely sensual level, or at a more highly intellectual level in terms of the brilliance of the working out of his contrapuntal lines, and then there's the spiritual level.' Gardiner is more willing than most to discuss Bach's music in clear-cut technical terms. But even though he's currently engaged in performing a complete cycle of the church cantatas, we run into problems trying to pin down the so-called 'spiritual quality' in Bach's music. 'Thank goodness it is indefinable,' he says. 'If we could define what it is that moved or uplifted us in Bach then we'd have killed it off. The wonderful thing is that the music of Bach can appeal to the eye and intellect when you look at it on the page. But its fundamental appeal is to the ear and to the emotions and to the spirit when it's performed. And that's the huge joy of performance, that you can see it coming alive before your eyes. The challenge for the interpreter is to be technically on top of the huge demands that he makes of both instrumentalists and singers.' There's strong agreement among performers that one of the most appealing qualities of Bach's music is the extraordinary technical challenges it sets them. The composer's great skill is that this seems to arise naturally from the fundamental substance of the music rather than being grafted on as mere virtuoso display. 'You get such huge rewards from playing his music,' says Angela Hewitt. 'The more you put into it the more it pays back, and with much greater interest than from other composers.' But having just performed the entire Second Book of the 48 from memory at a concert recently, Angela Hewitt wryly observes that the fugues, for instance, don't sound obviously impressive. 'Listening to the music, people simply don't realize how difficult it is to play. We all appreciate Bach on different levels. The amazing thing is that such intimate music works so well in a concert hall and has the power to draw everyone in, and that such subtle music has such popular appeal.' Bach the healer Nancy Argenta wonders whether it's the sense of order and balance in Bach's music which helps explain its appeal to such a mixed congregation of listeners. 'Bach can be very reassuring. When you're feeling frazzled you need Bach not Beethoven to relax you. He has a calmness that makes people feel that all's well with the world and that they'll be all right.' But that same carefully ordered and regulated quality has sometimes led to charges of pedantry and longwindedness. John Eliot Gardiner will have none of it. Even when Bach is austere he never finds him dull. The music 'has a sheen and a fascination and it may not always come from the instrumentation, it may not even come from the gratifying way he writes the vocal lines – sometimes they're not very gratifying at all – but there is an unquestionable intrinsic interest in the music itself which is both intellectual and sensual. Even in some of the most austere of his pieces I find there's a sensuality.' Angela Hewitt – who admits to having yawned through some bottom- numbingly-long performances of the St Matthew Passion – feels that many of the problems people have with Bach are the result of interpretations that have been ill-considered or simply boring. 'Bach should never bore us,' she says. 'From time to time he may have been a little less inspired, but then his own standards were so high.' For Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, the problem with many Bach performances, both live and recorded, is their lack of spontaneity. 'It's an easy trap to fall into. The music obviously requires careful preparation, but there's a danger of over-rehearsing (a problem that Bach must seldom have faced). I remember a performance of the St Matthew Passion with Mengelberg in which I sang the Evangelist. "We are not rehearsing this work; we are doing it as in Bach's time," he said. Somehow it all came together, and how exciting that was. I felt the composer's presence vividly.' Bach the obsessive We know very little about Bach the man, but it's always tempting to extrapolate from the music and draw our own conclusions. Nancy Argenta found her recent experience of singing Bach's German adaptation of Pergolesi's Stabat mater surprisingly revealing. 'It's hard to improve on the simplicity of Pergolesi's original design, but Bach just couldn't keep his fingers off it. He couldn't resist tinkering, even down to the smallest detail. He seems to have had an obsessive streak; he was obviously a perfectionist, striving for some impossible goal.' But did he have a sense of his own greatness? Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau thinks he did. 'As Schiller said, the genius knows what he is.' John Eliot Gardiner thinks not. 'I think he saw himself as an artisan – a very good artisan – but not a "great" composer. I don't think that was a meaningful concept to him. I think he had a sense of his own worth as a keyboard player and as a servant of the church. We do, of course, have The Art of Fugue and the B minor Mass which might be interpreted as having an eye on posterity. But I prefer to see them as just a personal testimony: this is what I've achieved, this is the best of me.' Gardiner is suspicious of people who try to tie up composers' biographies too closely with their music. But in Bach's case he's prepared to chance his arm. 'The fact that he was so theologically absorbed, even obsessed, doesn't necessarily mean that he was a joyless or humourless person. I can't help feeling that as a human being he must have been immensely lively and vivacious and had a jolly good sense of humour.' Would Gardiner have liked him? 'I'd have been terrified, because of his prodigious musicality and indomitable, implacable will to get things right. But I'd have adored to have heard him play and conduct his music.