Dave Brubeck on the influence of Johann Sebastian Bach

SS: Dave, you often identify Bach as your favorite composer. What influence has Bach had on your musical career in terms of both composition, and your improvisations? DB: Well, I love the Brandenburg Concertos, and I think they\u27re so rhythmic, and so full of life, and so related in a way to jazz. Or, jazz is related to it (laughter). The fact that many people at his time knew how he could improvise, and he liked to improvise on Sunday in church, and the minister would usually not like it at all that he was improvising because the audience, the congregation would get so wrapped up in his improvisation that they wouldn\u27t listen to his homily. And so, he would ask Bach not to improvise so much, and would say, The congregation doesn\u27t like it when you change the harmonies, which probably he didn\u27t like it -- the minister. But, the similarity between the figured bass that Bach used with the choir, and the chord progressions that a jazz musician uses are kind of a similarity that you improvise in these progressions. And, that again relates it to jazz. And, he must have been a tremendous improviser. There are certain organists to this day that improvise so great, that in classical music, it\u27s been the organists that have kept alive the old tradition of improvisation, while most symphonic music has let it die out. That, again, I credit to Bach\u27s great legacy of improvisation. It carried over into Mozart and into Beethoven. SS: Compositionally, do you see a lot of influence of Bach in I guess not only your jazz tunes, but especially your larger scale, orchestral, and choral works? DB: Yeah. They\u27re always -- he\u27s lurking in the background in a nice way (laughter)