The Carmel Bach Festival spotlights the musical genius of interconnected eras.

Agata Popęda here, in the mood for Bach. One iconic local annual event, the Carmel Bach Festival, has already started, but thanks to the fact that the programming for week one is almost identical with that for week two, you have plenty of time to purchase a ticket. To learn about highlights of the festival, read our cover story in this week’s issue of the Weekly.

My contribution is a historical piece on selected works by Bach, Mozart and Mendelssohn that taught me a lot about the times the composers worked and agonized over their magnum opuses—Bach’s Mass in B Minor, Mozart’s Requiem and Mendelssohn’s overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream opera. 

I focus on the fact that all three composers emerged from German-speaking lands, feeding off their respective genius, but also off personal connection that allowed Central Europe to musically shine in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. The German-speaking lands of that time produced an unprecedented amount of composers and musicians, many of them still considered the best composers in human history.

Music is never made in a vacuum and the musicians knew and were inspired by one another. Bach deeply admired his contemporary, composer George Frideric Handel, who was born the same year and also was a master of counterpoint. 

Mozart’s Requiem is directly inspired by Handel’s Messiah. Mozart also worked closely with his older colleague composer Joseph Haydn, with whom he played chamber music. 

In 1787, another genius composer, 16-year-old Ludwig van Beethoven, went to Vienna to meet and work with Mozart, a collaboration interrupted by Beethoven’s mother’s illness and his return to his native Bonn. 

In 1821, young Mendelssohn went to Weimar to play Bach to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the biggest writer of the Romantic era, then in his 70s. Goethe’s poems were set to the music of Mozart and Beethoven; he loved Bach's chorales, Haydn and Handel. Mendelssohn also had a close working relationship with Robert and Clara Schumann. 

Composer Richard Wagner was greatly influenced by Beethoven, but also by Mozart's Requiem. Wagner’s music became the obsession of the trailblazing philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, the harbinger of the upcoming modern era that sparks questions about German identity and causes its crisis, greatly influencing 20th-century events in Germany.

Many of the above names are featured in the 2025 Carmel Bach Festival and all of them are worth your time. The festival will last until July 26; see you there.