On Tue, 2 May 2000, Bernard Chasan wrote:
>The extent of this change over time is debatable.  The main outlines of
>the emotions and feelings expressed by Bach can be determined by listening
>to the passions and the cantatas where the text provides a kind of Rosetta
>Stone.  But we don't really need this aid- we can simply reflect on the
>fact that the passions remain deeply expressive and moving music to
>listeners today.  I have to assume that those slow inward grief stricken
>variations in the Goldberg Variations are meant to express grief.  Any
>other response is simply perverse.

Wait a minute, wait a minute, and hold on there, fella! Who told you
that's what Bach meant? That's quite an intellectual leap, there.

I love and live Bach and have for years, but when I press the star on my
telephone I do not reach Bach and I cannot converse with him. And you
can't either. I never HEARD any grief-stricken passages in the Goldbergs.
Even if you told me about them, and hit me on the head with a rolling pin,
I doubt if I'd recognize them as "grief." Don't you be telling me that if
I don't hear "grief" in my Goldbergs then I have a perverse response
setup.

In fact, the profound emotions I have experienced when I played or
listened Bach (and other composers) would be trivialized if I tried to
express them in words.  Who needs words, when we have the genuine article?


I said it before and I'll say it again: it is wrong to tell people how
they ought to hear emotions in music. It is unavoidable when we are
bombarded by television and movie scores, but when we listen to music
without distractions, it is a direct line to our inner life and it is
private.


My good friend Don (check the archives February 2000)  gave me much
laughter with his own version of the Well-Tempered ClavierSatz, but he
could have been describing any twenty-four other pieces by any random
twenty-four other composers. I cannot and would not reconstruct the music
I hear and feel from his own words about his own personal vision of Bach.
It just doesn't work that way for me.

I definitely feel music deeply, but I am very happy not to have to spell
out those feelings. As a performer, I could play the same piece of music
many times and each time "feel" many different feelings as I was playing.
These "feelings" might or might not have represented what the composer
"felt" at the time of composition. It isn't necessary for me to know
anything about the composer's inner states. All I need is in the score.

Composition isn't as brief a process as a feeling is. Feelings are very
fleeting. Even long-lasting ones are shorter than the process of
composition, which involves mind as well as heart.  If I were deep in the
throes of some heavy passion or deep grief, I doubt that I'd be able to
compose or perform at my best.

It is an interesting conversation we are having here, though. It is a good
way for people to talk about their own feelings about music and its effect
on them. However, what I "feel" in the music of Bach, in the unaccompanied
sonatas and partitas (and even in the Passions and sacred cantatas!) is
private and I can assure you it has nothing at all to do with God or
Jesus.

I do not hear "rape" in Tristan and Isolde, and I most certainly don't
think of Napoleon in any of the music of Beethoven. And even when I hear
the Pines of Rome I am not thinking of trees or Europe.  Unfortunately, I
still see those damned white flying horses when I hear the Pastoral. Can't
win them all.


Mimi Ezust <[log in to unmask]>