His language was rather different, owing to the stylistic development of two intervening centuries and the curious, perhaps prophetic place, he and some of his like-minded contemporaries found themselves during a most turbulent and menacing time in history.
But in Paul Hindemith I see a German musician who exhibited a sensibility with many points of confluence to Bach’s. Try me again in a decade and it will probably be a bit clearer.Īll subsequent musicians within the German legacy, and many outside of it, had no choice but to recon with the force of Bach’s will, and they did it in various ways. Does that seem lofty? Many musicians find themselves contending with Bach’s legacy, and that’s my best attempt at summing it up in 2015. He absorbed everything around him, spake it fresh, and then proceeded to catalog every possible chemical reaction in the universe through his encyclopedic contrapuntal works which are still peerless in their completion and craftsmanship. Bach is almost supreme in his powers of summation, like a god (but a recreative one, not a creator) who is able to see inside the entire flawed universe, warts and all, and reorder it to resonate with utter divine harmony. And what results from this sensibility is a body of aural work that is always flawless in principle, never needlessly flamboyant, and frequently clever to an astonishing degree. However the people he encountered reacted to him and his artistry, he always seemed so supremely convicted of his proper path, but never boastful. I think it’s the only way to explain his sensibility that guided his life, which exudes the quality of never needing to justify himself. In studying his life and personality one is struck with the sense that, while on one level Bach was a very practical and successful professional, on another, parallel, level he truly sensed he was writing for the source of all universal ideals, and that he knew it. So much of Bach’s music feels this way, and shortly after his death other musicians began to sense this superhuman aura that was somehow largely neglected during his lifetime ( see this post for a story about that). The music is constantly alive with a potency you would expect from that combination. The decisions that placed the abundant notes in those pieces seem at once inevitable and astounding, as if there’s only one route to perfection and a human actually found it. Events are…charged, and with a kind of energy that seems to draw its momentum from the fabric of the universe. It’s hard to explain, probably impossible, but the more you study, listen, and appreciate, the deeper you are drawn into his mystical world. I started to have the experience I understood my mentors to have in listening to Bach. Once I started college and began to mature a little more, the attitudes I had encountered, and continued to, regarding the musical contributions of the great Bach began to come a bit more clearly into focus. I knew his name was regarded with an almost sacred reverence by my musical mentors, but I couldn’t have exactly told you why. I had even listened to much of his music. Like any young musician, as a child I had known of Bach. Why is this? The answer is deep and complex, but I’m going to try to sum it up for you.
It seems that musicians simply cannot help but to admire Bach’s musicianship. I find his admirers far-flung across diverse musical styles and modes of expression. You hear his name all the time in musical studies, don’t you? You’re never that far away from hearing Bach’s name if you are involved with music in any way. It was impossible for any musician working within the German legacy (a legacy which still informs the classical training of today very deeply) to escape the incredible gravity of Johann Sebastian Bach. But to understand how we got here, it would be good to go back a couple hundred years. The two pieces were written by the German composer Paul Hindemith in 1942 and they represent a deliberate choice which reflects a certain way of thinking about musical composition. Smartandsoulful on Music About Snow, Day 4…Įlizabeth Saunders on Music About Snow, Day 4…ĭoes anything strike you about the two? They are actually the same. Smartandsoulful on Weekend Gems #2 – Robert…
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