Bach is techno — ask DJ Marc Romboy if you don't believe it's true. Romboy takes classical masterpieces and gives them a 21st century, electronic music face-lift.
Image: DW/S. Sanderson
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Popular electronic music comes in all shapes, sizes and forms — from ambient rhythms designed for chilling out on a lazy Sunday afternoon to techno club sounds beating faster than a ravenous cheetah's heart in the night. But classical music rarely gets a mention in this pumping world of synthesizers, soundcards and sampling.
This is even less the case when it comes to the earlier giants of music like Johann Sebastian Bach, who wrote his Baroque masterpieces three centuries ago.
Yet it is perhaps the mathematical precision with which Bach composed his works that would allow his music to be presented in a modern setting — for example on a dance floor over a heaving bass drum sampled through computer programs.
With such potential for a "techno Bach," someone was sooner or later bound to approach classical music with a 21st century electronica mindset. And that someone is German music producer and DJ Marc Romboy.
Romboy is a recognized feature on the global electronic music circuit. Having spent almost 30 years in the music business, Romboy has seen it all, heard it all and is always up for a challenge.
His interpretation of Bach is rendered with a sense of reverence and awe in an stage production that also includes visuals. Titled "Reconstructing Bach," the show was most recently performed not in a trendy Berlin night club but at the Cologne Philharmonic concert Hall on November 9 on a sparsely populated stage that creates an atmosphere of gravity and immediacy much like the Gothic cathedrals of Bach's time. The colorful stage lighting underscores the warmth and drama of the intimate music like rays of sunlight piercing through stained-glass church windows.
Violinist Miki Kekenj leads a small ensemble of musicians to Romboy's rhythms and beats busting through his DJ equipment as Romboy lives up to his bold claim that "Bach is techno."
The seasoned DJ says he hopes his take on the Baroque heavyweight would have pleased the composer who died in 1750: "I personally think that Bach would be quite amazed by our works because when you look at his old compositions, you realize how open-minded he was when it comes to his own music."
Miki Kekenj says he appreciates the amount of detail that goes into electronic dance musicImage: DW/S. Sanderson
J.S. Bach on the turntable
In the absence of a time machine, we'll never know what Johann Sebastian Bach would actually have made of this novel interpretation of his rich body of work. But the enthusiastic audience left no doubt that this mash-up of classical music and modern beats was a long overdue marriage of sounds.
What would Bach say about this daring approach to his music?Image: picture-alliance/dpa/M. Schutt
While other artists have repeatedly tried their hand at sampling motifs of classical music to house and techno beats, few have been as daring as Romboy in highlighting the music of the old masters so directly that playing this music in a concert hall setting feels natural — even necessary.
It's music that can be danced to on a dance floor, whether or not one does it. Interestingly, Romboy long refused to learn how to play instruments or read music.
"I refused to go to music school. I told my mother I didn't want to learn the flute. So my way into music was through collecting records. And through collecting records, I became a DJ. And through becoming a DJ, I got interested in understanding classical music more," says Romboy. "Classical music is a real treasure box. I would probably need three lifetimes to get through that box."
Baroque, Impressionism and beyond
Prior to interpreting Bach, Romboy and Kekenj worked together on creating a techno framework to the work of another composer of serious music: Claude Debussy. Having explored Baroque and Impressionist music, the next step the duo wants to take together is to interpret Igor Stravinsky.
Violinist Kekenj stresses that even the complex rhythms of Stravinsky can lend themselves to a techno-style reinterpretation:
"What we do is: we take small pieces of music and arrange them to a beat, to a rhythm," says Kekenj "Or we can do the opposite. We can take a melody and really take it apart and make it sound strange. I think there's a lot we can do with this. Let's cook something up!"
Romboy is equally eager to give Stravinsky a techno treatment. Both their eyes light up when Romboy mentions Stravinsky's Firebird Suite. Watch this space!
In addition to Bach and Debussy, Romboy and Kekenj want to next tackle Igor StravinskyImage: DW/S. Sanderson
Around the world in 180 BPM
When he isn't busy remixing and rearranging classical tunes, Marc Romboy still loves touring the world as a club DJ. The night prior to the performance at the Cologne Philharmonic hall, Romboy played at Berlin's famed Watergate nightclub. From Argentina to Lebanon to South Africa, he has seen the entire world through the lens of electronic music.
But wherever he goes, Romboy says the crowds strike him as always seeking the same things: "These people, they all want the same things in life, you know. They want peace, they want a family and sometimes they just want to dance in a night club. It's the same everywhere in the world. That's wonderful."
Not only does he travel the world, but so does his music. Romboy has produced tracks that have entered the music charts around the globe, especially in the 1990s and early 2000s.
The famous DJ hopes that his collaboration with Miki Kekenj will also reach people around the world — and just not on the dance floor.
The world of Bach in images
Only one historically verified portrait of Johann Sebastian Bach exists, but the great composer left us with diverse visual motifs — and inspired a new one! DW presents a sample, from Leipzig to Lübeck and God to Google.
Image: Imago
At the Thomaskirchhof in Leipzig
For years nobody knew for certain where Johann Sebastian Bach's earthly remains were buried. After they were finally exhumed and verified around the turn of the 20th century, the "New Bach Memorial" was erected in 1908 just steps away from the side entrance to St. Thomas Church, where Bach had been the music director. The bust was patterned after the size and shape of the composer's skull.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/Jan Woitas
Computer-aided guesstimate
Due to a lack of authentic historical sources, we have only a rough idea of what Bach looked like. This image of his possible physiognomy, generated for an exhibition at the Bach House in Eisenach in 2008, was based on a plaster cast of the composer's skull and new forensic methods. He looks friendlier here than in the more traditional, severe, bewigged depictions.
The name "Bach" was once synonymous for "musician" in the central German region of Thuringia. There were Bachs in cities and towns everywhere, from Erfurt to Weimar, Ohrdruf to Eisenach, where Johann Sebastian was born in 1685 in the above house. He later listed 53 musician family members, most of them in the service of a court or a church. At family get-togethers, they — what else? — made music.
Image: picture-alliance/akg-images
Angry young man?
Having lost both parents by age ten, Johann Sebastian went to live in Ohrdruf with his 14-year-older brother and received musical tutelage. Little is known about his youth other than that he snapped up every scrap of music he could get his hands on. At one point he described a fellow musician's playing in unflattering terms. The quarrel escalated, but a duel was averted at the last moment.
Image: picture-alliance/empics/D. Lawson
St. Mary's Church in Lübeck
Hearing your favorite music today is easy: just don your headphones. To hear the music he wanted, the young Bach traveled over 200 miles (321 km) — by foot. Destination: Lübeck, on Germany's north coast. It was there the great organist Dieterich Buxtehude held his legendary "Abendmusiken" (evening concerts) in St. Mary's Church. Buxtehude left deep marks on Bach's organ playing and composing.
Image: picture-alliance/Helga Lade Fotoagentur GmbH, Ger
Court orchestra director in Weimar
In 1708, at age 23, Bach landed a prestigious gig in Weimar (above). He wrote his first cantata masterpieces and the greater part of his organ works in the following nine years there. In 1717 he opted to move on to even greener fields, but Weimar didn't want to let him go. In those days, quitting a job could mean imprisonment for insubordination, and Bach did in fact spend a month behind bars.
Image: Imago/W. Otto
Happiest years in Köthen
In the first part of his tenure as orchestra director at the court in Köthen (above), Bach had a superbly equipped orchestra at his disposal and, in Prince Leopold, a music-loving patron and friend. Many of his instrumental works were written there. But when Leopold took a wife who was less interested in music, Bach's working conditions suffered, so he began looking for a different job.
Image: picture-alliance/akg-images
St. Thomas School
Today Leipzig is proud of Bach, but this was less so during his lifetime. He was only third choice to be cantor of the prestigious St Thomas Church and School (above). His grueling work regimen included writing, rehearsing and performing a new cantata week after week. Bach eventually found himself at odds with church and city authorities, leading him to apply for jobs elsewhere — unsuccessfully.
Image: public domain
The family that plays together, stays together
20 children issued forth from Bach's two marriages. Nine survived him, and four of his sons became musicians of renown. Johann Sebastian Bach did everything he could to pass on the musical family tradition, as this image likely depicting him at the keyboard captures, but it ended with his sons. The generation to follow brought forth no musicians of stature.
Image: picture-alliance/akg-images (Ausschnitt)
The sound of money
With all those hungry mouths to feed, Bach complained about the high cost of living in Leipzig. He even dryly noted that in one year, the city's healthy air meant fewer deaths, less funerals and a regrettable loss of income through a resultant decline in fees for a musician's services.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/J. Wolf
Zimmermann's Coffee House
Restive schoolchildren, bickering with authorities, burdensome tasks and scant respect: The life of a cantor at St. Thomas wasn't easy. For a change of pace, Bach would go to the local coffee house, Cafe Zimmermann (above), and make music with friends and students in Leipzig's Collegium Musicum musical society.
Image: picture-alliance/akg-images
The portrait by Haussmann
Only one authentic image of Johann Sebastian Bach exists: the painting by Elias Gottlob Haussmann from the year 1748. For over 60 years it hung in the living room of the musicologist, historian and arts patron William Scheide in Princeton, New Jersey, in the US. Scheide left the precious object to the Bach Archive in Leipzig, and it was returned to the city by his widow Judith in 2015 (above).
Image: Imago
Soli Deo Gloria
Bach signed many of his compositions with the initials "S.D.G." (Soli Deo Gloria — To the glory of God alone). This declaration is found even on a number of his works of secular music and points to a deeply felt, personal religiosity. Even in his everyday compositions, Bach always strove for perfection. That in itself could be taken as an expression of his faith.
Image: picture-alliance/akg-images
Can you Bach?
On Johann Sebastian Bach's 334th birthday, Google greeted users with this doodle, inviting them to engage in an interactive exercise and compose a short melody. After cross-comparing hundreds of compositions by Bach, the software then embellished that melody by adding a multivoiced accompaniment in style of the composer. It seems doubtful that the results were as ingenious as the original, though.
