Bach was a Madman…

The 'Coffee Canata' was a piece written by Bach for the opening of a Café in Leipzig in 1732-4.

It was marketing. With a few sexy twists. At the time it was written, coffee had recently arrived in Europe and had received an unsavory reputation from the older folks for corrupting the youth. Bach acknowledged this in his work and redeployed this criticism to make coffee more attractive. Quelle classe.

The story is about a Father who laments his daughter’s crazy-ass coffee drankin' ways. He says stuff like this:

Don't one's children cause one endless trials & tribulations! What I say each day to my daughter Lieschen falls on stony ground!

The daughter being a duplicitous coffee drankin' badass though keeps going to the café. She doesn’t care. She’s a rockstar. Like all coffee drinkers. This movement is one of the final ones where she tells her father that she has quit (and then winks at the audience and tells them that she just lied to her father because coffee is just too damn good).

Bach was a pretty clever dude. Marketing has the potential, always, to be amazing.