Donald Satz <[log in to unmask]> writes:

>I don't really want to write about Vivaldi anymore than I want to listen to
>his music, But I feel I've been challenged to point out differences in the
>music of these two composers.  The best I can do is explain the basic
>differences as I subjectively identify them. ...
>
>Given my subjective "take" on the music of Vivaldi (little depth,
>unattractive surfaces, note spinning), I can't possibly appreciate and like
>his music.  Also, since I have the opposite opinion of Bach's music, the
>only reasonable conclusion for me is to love Bach and not appreciate
>Vivaldi.

Mr.  Satz, whether intentionally or not, once again raises the specter
of whether or not complexity is itself evidence of something having more
development, interest, and sophistication.  The notion that things more
complex are also things more "advanced" is found in such early writers as
Aristotle.  And yet, a pernicious insistence that simplicity can be ever so
much developed, interesting, and sophisticated persists in our own day.

Bach's fugues illustrate Aristotle's point.  While a singular theme may
begin the work of a fugue, and given that a singular theme may have its own
intrinsic worth, nonetheless it is in the imaginative development of the
theme's polyphonic texture, tone, expansion, opposition, and
reestablishment when of imitative counterpoint that makes the fugue
significantly more "developed, interesting, and sophisticated."

An excellent counter-example is Gorecki's "Sorrowful" Symphony 3.
Beautiful as Gorecki's symphony may be, and despite its own sophisticated
development, color, and idiomatic bravura that penetrates the listener
affectively as much as it does logically, it remains the fugue that is the
more complex work. Many argue convincingly that Bach's fugues will endure
long past the current interest in Gorecki's work.

The perennial sustainability of Bach's popularity based on the permanence
of his sophisticated technique in his art of the fugue, vis-a-vis Gorecki's
ephemeral, indeed chimerical, popularity based on an interest developed
almost by an entirely affective technique, illustrates the point, viz., the
coloratura and complexity of the fugue is more developed and therefore
intrinsically "better" than the product of affective technique.

That something is "better" than something else by virtue of its complexity
doesn't undermine the "other's" interest or significance, only that the
greater complexity in technique or virtuosity will endure long past the
simpler construction of transitory interest.  Thankfully, there is room,
indeed interest, in both techniques, but when push comes to shove, Bach is
a master in many ways that Gorecki is not.

Stephen Heersink
San Francisco
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