Eisenach, in Thuringia, in Germany. The calendar read March 21, not having yet switched to the Gregorian method. From there comes a part of my soul, my very being. On that day, in 1685, Johann Sebastian Bach was born.
I am by background and more a musician. If evaluated on Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences I come across heavily musical-rhythmic. I taught myself to read music at age 3. I grew up playing piano and cello, and by junior high school also sang. We always had a record player, and I have never been without collections of recorded music to go along with the massive amounts of sheet music and miniature scores I have accumulated over the years. And I love many composers, and have on the occasions of their births or with connections to dates associated with their music written about them. But if forced to choose only one composer, and never be able to listen to or play anyone else, today’s birthday boy would be my immediate choice. And so this diary is a birthday offering, to the man who gave us a Musical Offering, and so much more. My words cannot match the gift he has given me in his music, but I will offer them nonetheless. I invite you to share them.
My primary instrument is piano, and Bach has been an essential part of that experience. Even beginner’s albums often contain music from Bach, perhaps from a minuet from the Notebook for Anna Magdalena, his second wife, later with the rhythm changed the music for a pop song which opens "How gentle is the rain" and is called The Lovers Concerto, performed by a group called the Toys. A key part of the experience of any pianist is to work through much of the keyboard music, the Two-Part Inventions, simple two-voiced pieces that seem deceptively simply but which at time are magnificent, or the Sinfonias, their three-voice equivalent. Or at least part of the First Book of Preludes and Fugues of the Well-Tempered Klavier, of which perhaps my favorite is the 5-voiced Fugue in C#-minor. Or the collections of dances, French Suites, English Suites and Partitas. As a child and an adolescent I played many, and when as an adult in my late 30s I bought a piano I returned to Bach, and began to learn even more of these works.
As a cellist the Suites for Cello were an essential part of one’s development. Over the years I came to appreciate the different approaches great violoncellists took to these pieces, and in different formats own versions by Starker, Casals and Yo-yo Ma. Along with these I treasure performances of the works for unaccompanied violin - my slightly elder sister was a superb violinist, with whom I played string quartets and accompanied on the piano. But the violin by itself is perhaps as close as we come to the human voice, and what Bach provided - let me say that to listen to Milstein perform Bach is a pleasure that cannot be exceeded.
But there are concertos as well, sometimes for multiple instruments, sometimes for consorts (the set Bach wrote for the Margrave of Brandenburg), sometimes for one main instrument. And it was not unknown for Bach to reset a work from one instrument to another. I have played a number of the Brandenburgs in small groups, among people who would come together on a Friday night for the sheer joy of playing music. we might do Beethoven, or Schubert, or Haydn, or Mozart, or Arriaga, or Brahms. But our highest joy would be to play one of the Brandenburgs.
I did not really come to appreciate the choral music of Bach until I was in College. Oh, I had been amazed at Leonard Bernstein’s exploration of the Matthew Passion on TV, and had heard the occasional cantata on the radio. But then Haverford College sang the entire B MInor Mass, with Sarah Lawrence. And it blew me away. I knew a lot of choral music, having sung in high school, at Interlochen, in Westchester All-County Choruses in 9th grade (junior high where I had a solo in Mozart work) and senior year. I had done a complete Messiah under the great Margaret Hillis, and explored Vivaldi, Vaughan Williams, Brahms, Poulenc - a wide range of composers and styles under several gifted conductors. But I had never sung Bach. And that work simply exploded my mind. Here was a Lutheran writing a Latin Mass (although the Lutheran churches of his day did retain the Latin mass), weaving in and using material from the plain chant settings - in the Credo, in the Confiteor. And the range of musical expression demonstrated genius, with the music working even when repeated, such as the Gratias Agimus Tibi notes reappearing at the end in the Dona Nobis Pacem. I am well aware that it was not written as one complete work, but worked on over more than two decades, with the final manuscript complete near the end of Bach’s life, as a man in his 60s. And yet, and yet, . . . it seems so complete, so entire, and to sing the entire thing, over 2 hours of music, is both exhausting and energizing. I first sang it as a tenor, as a sophomore in college, later as a bass. And as a bass the final entrance on a low A near the end of the Dona Nobis seems impossible - one’s voice is almost gone, and yet one is able to pull that out of oneself one more time.
My keyboard explorations ceased advancing when I left high school. I would periodically return and get my hands into decent shape. And the beauty of Bach is that even the technically simple pieces are so musically complete. There is so much that seem essential - the Matthew and John passion settings, the Mass, the motets, but there are three additional crowning works without which my life would be bereft. Well, at least two of them, as I am not quite so devoted to the Musical Offering as the other two. The Art of the Fugue is sublime. It can be done in many instrumental settings. My favorite recording is by the Emerson Quartet, who leave the end as unfinished as Bach left it.
And then there is the Goldberg Variations. I have as an adult worked my way through most, as an exploration, as a way of stretching myself. I own three recordings - the early and the late versions by Glenn Gould, and the new - and absolutely magnificent - recent recording by Simone Dinnerstein. It was to that I have been listening on my car CD player on the day before the date of birth, as I prepared to draft this diary. Like much of Bach, it is an intellectual challenge as much as it is a musical challenge.
My wife shares much of my passion for Bach. Between us we have accumulated half a thousand volumes of recordings, counting each vinyl disk and each CD as a separate one. We have a complete set of the Cantatas, many recordings of individual works, and a recent acquisition was a CD box with hundreds of discs containing all of the known work of Bach. Sometimes the greatest delight is to pull out a CD at random, insert and play it, and discover yet another brilliant work I had not previously known. I can never have too much of Bach.
I am not alone in my passion for Bach. Felix Mendelssohn helped the world rediscover the genius of his earlier musical forebear when he arranged and directed an 1829 performance of the Matthew Passion in Berlin. Mendelssohn had a direct link to Bach - his great aunt Sarah (Itzig) Levy had been a pupil of Bach’s gifted son Wilhelm Friedeman Bach, and one who pays attention can see the strong influence of Bach in some of Mendelssohn’s music.
Brilliant Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos wrote a series of pieces in homage to Sebastian Bach, entitled "Bachianas brasilieras" (Brazilian Bach-pieces), the movements of each are dually named with a Bachian form and a Brasilian label. As a cellist I have performed the first of these, written for 8 cellos. Most are perhaps most familiar with the 5th, for voice and 8 cellos - and among my recordings of this is one with Joan Baez, whose voice somehow seems appropriate to the music.
Douglas Hofstadter wrote a remarkable and award-winning book entitled "Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid"
And many sre the musicians who have delighted in performing Bach - David Oistrakh recording the double concerto in D minor with his son Igor, for example.
And for me? I am most complete when I play Bach at the keyboard. It can be an invention, a French Suite or a Partita, or perhaps nothing more than a figured chorale. I am aware of the intellectual quality of the music, but I do not think - somehow I transcend the limitations of my intellect and to some degree of my digital dexterity. Somehow I become one with the music. My last piano teacher while in high school, who at Julliard was known as the man with the Golden Ears, once paid me the highest compliment I have ever received, beyond Leaves on the Current deciding to marry me. Joseph Bloch sat briefly in silence after not quite 17 year old Ken had finished playing the First Partita in B-flat, then told me that within the limits of my technique I played Bach as well as anyone he had ever heard. I think it is because Bach so suits me, so completes me, so allows me to go beyond my shyness, my awkwardness with people. His music frees me and elevates me. It is for me a form of worship, of prayer, of meditation, of spiritual and emotional exercise. I cannot explain, but those who have experienced any sense of it will know what I mean. And for all this I am deeply appreciative, to a man who died in 1750, 196 years before I was born, but whose music penetrates my very being.
I am writing this the day before the occasion, because I unfortunately will be spending a chunk of the early morning in a dental chair - it cannot be avoided. But most of my day will be spent listening and playing - living the genius of old Sebastian.
Perhaps you will find some time to join me in wishing the old man a happy 223rd natal day, by listening or perhaps yourself playing.
And thank you for taking the time to read my offering to Johann Sebastian Bach. I cannot ever hope to give back what he has given me. At most I can hope that my passion for Bach might encourage a few more to explore his genius.
Peace.