The Bach-Project

I came in touch with the music by Johann Sebastian Bach around 2011 when i began to learn to play the piano. The famous “Prelude in C” (BWV 846) entered my mind and didn’t leave at all. My curiosity was awakened: What is the chemistry behind that music? Where does its beauty come from?

I’ve realized that Bach’s music is enwrought with cryptic patterns and mathematical equotations. How would these patterns look like, if i could visualize them? That was the initial question that has persuaded me to begin “The Bach-Project”, an exploration of visual structures in music.

The “Prelude in C” is a sequence of 545 notes, condensed to 34 bars with 16 notes each. All notes get played in a arpeggio-like, regular rhythm. This special structure qualifies the piece to be displayed in a two-dimensional grid where each cell represents one note.

Here i applied a shade of grey to each note in the C-Major-scale, beginning with white for the C and closing with black for the B.

I really liked the simple idea of developing visual equivalents to the musical data. I’ve experimented with pitch-controlled rotations, randomness and complex shapes.