Why did bach like the numbers 14 and 41?

Answer 1

1. There is no evidence whatsoever that he did "like" those numbers.

2. Some scholars, and many more non-scholars, believe that Bach busied himself by applying a kind of letter-number code to music, in which A = 1, B = 2, C = 3 etc., I and J being treated as the same letter. If you apply this code to the letters BACH, you get 14 as a sum; if you apply it to Johann Sebastian Bach, the result would be 41.

3. When you start counting whatever is there in the music, you might, with Bach, fairly regularly get 14 as an interesting clue to follow. Therefore, even the sceptics among Bach scholars tend to acknowledge that there might be something to the code thesis.

Other scholars applied the randomly chosen number 13 to the same music, coming up with other, comparably interesting results.

The problem is when to stop counting, since in music, just about everything can be counted (notes, beats, bars, instruments, movements, singers, occurences of a motive etc); and, in Bach, just about everything has been counted. Numbers are open to all kinds of symbolisms (1 = God/unity, 2 = Jesus, 3 = trinity, 4 = evangelists/elements/temperaments/humors/seasons/... , 5 = books of Moses/Old Covenant, 6 = twice 3 = number of days in which God created everything ...). So, more often than not, you get an indistinct cluster of information which, in the end, means nothing and tells you even less about the music in question, which, of course, follows musical rules.

Of which Bach was a master beyond any other.