[LAU] Some new Bach

[James Harkins]

Ralf Mardorf <ralf.mardorf at ...> writes:

> 
> On Wed, 2013-02-13 at 14:11 +0000, James Harkins wrote:
> > In grad school, I had a full-semester seminar on Bach's cantatas. I
> > thought I knew Bach before that. I was wrong.
> 
> If already musicians need an academic seminar to "know" that music, then
> I won't call it music anymore, or at least I agree with the "pedestrian"
> statement. Something that reaches the heart, doesn't need academic
> explanations.

Bach doesn't reach the heart? Are you mad? "Erbarme dich" from the St. Matthew's 
Passion?

Well, what I was trying to say is that I deeply loved Bach's music before taking 
the seminar. After the seminar, I had inhaled the style much more deeply and my 
understanding of it jumped to a new level. Add to that the extra dimensions of 
baroque genres, their stylistic norms and the ways Bach toys with them, and it's 
like the hypothetical flatlander, living in two-dimensional space, suddenly 
experiencing three dimensions for the first time. Or like seeing Monet only in 
grayscale reproductions, and then seeing the paintings in color.

This idea that knowledge of music -- its history, context, vocabulary, technique 
-- inevitably destroys the music -- it's pure nonsense, in the way physicists' 
awe of nature is qualitatively different from that of someone who doesn't know 
how completely insane matter is. When Bach pulls out a Neapolitan 6th, I feel it 
*more intensely* (not less) by knowing it's a Neapolitan 6th and further by 
knowing how N6 is commonly used in the genre.

But I'm just lucky, I guess.

hjh