Glenn Miller <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>And did not Steven Spielberg use a Bach keyboard work (cannot recall the
>piece) in the movie---Schindlers List.  This was supposed to be based
>on eyewitness testimony of some comander playing Bach while his (he found
>a piano in a room) soldiers were hunting down Jews who were in hiding.

Yes, a Bach piece played altogether too frenetically.  (I too am not
sure of the piece - it may have been one of the preludes.) In the scene
another soldier asks the one at the piano, "Ist das Mozart?" I had always
felt that the scene takes what could have been a trite observation - the
Nazis loved classical music - to a deeper level: they had so debased
their own cultural roots that the common German was unable to distinguish
Bach from Mozart.  Thus what we tend to interpret as a symbol of dichotomous
erudition was in fact nothing of the kind.

 - seb