BACH and VAPORWAVE

In 1721, Johann Sebastian Bach wrote a series of six concertos, now considered a pillar of the classical music canon. The power and grace with which Bach crafted and melded each melodic line remains unparalleled; he is, after all, the master of polyphony. In Concerto No. 5, for example, the music is not only structured in rondo form (ABACA), but each instrumental section starts playing in a different part of the form, phasing the piece into an ingenious interwoven sliding web not seen again until the likes of Steve Reich during his experiments with electrical tape in the avant-garde electronic music scene of the 1940s. The mind-bending and complex lines are topped with silence that frames the jewel of the piece: a virtuosic harpsichord solo that dances its way across the final C and into the A, where all instruments have met after a filling lunch and fell back into sync to end the first movement. Bathed in all his brilliance, our plucky and starry-eyed friend Johann sent his hot-off-the-press pieces to the Duke of Brandenberg in hopes of winning over the spot of his personal composer. As with many things in life, the Duke ended up ghosting Bach and he was forced to move onto other projects.

Fast forward 290 years, and Hans Zimmer has just been ghosted too. He wrote not to a Duke, but to Christopher Nolan, famed film director of mega-hits like Inception and The Dark Knight trilogy. Nolan had a new project in the works, a sci-fi odyssey that the world hadn’t seen since Kubrick decided to make the “proverbial good science fiction film” in 1968. Zimmer was interested in getting involved, and subsequently wrote the director with some ideas attached, but never heard back. Had he been more like Bach, he would have given up there, but, unlike our German friend Johann, our other German friend Hans persisted. Unannounced, says The Atlantic journalist Katie Kilkenny, he showed up at the director’s home, and two hours later, a deal was brokered between the two: Zimmer would have carte blanche to do whatever he liked with the film’s music. But how did this happen? What did our friend Hans do to win over Christopher Nolan? Simple. He sat him down and played vaporwave. 

In 1979, German group Tangerine Dream released their major force Force Majeure (1979)— an album that proved to have a great influence on the electronic music scene. Daft Punk, Hot Chip, and one of the forefathers of vaporwave, DJ Shadow, all called Force Majeure one of their greatest inspirations. DJ Shadow would, of course, go on to later inspire such vaporwave giants as 2814, Vektroid, Oneohtrix Point Never. The alluring synthetic pulses and chill beats that mark the genre flowed through Chrostopher Nolan’s more than modest Los Angeles home. 

“This,” said Zimmer confidently according to Kilkenny, “this is what your film needs.”

Nolan was confused, not yet as confident as his German friend, but intrigued. So, Hans flew him out to Leipzig, Germany, where Bach spent much of his life composing, and took the director out to an old church. Hans Zimmer sat down at the organ, one that has stood for hundreds of years, and began to play Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. (Think the resurrection of Frankenstein’s Monster, think Count Dracula in his Transylvanian castle, think horror and halloween—that motif that is piercing its way through your mind is what Zimmer played that day.) It’s a polyphonic piece–as complex as Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos ever were–but as he played, Nolan witnessed something astounding: Zimmer’s left hand (the one that’s usually in charge of the pretentious, baroque-era ornamentation) slowed down, and began laying down a vaporwave bassline, while his right hand began building the main theme of the film’s score: “S.T.A.Y.” 

Hans Zimmer successfully blended the super-complex music of Bach and the super-cool music of Vaporwave, a feat as momentous as the blending of jazz and rock to create a Nietzcheien ubermusik, all to get a lousy job. Can’t blame him. 

Article by Luke Dominick