And now, another word from our friend, Mr. Bach:
People have been wondering for a long time what they can
do to become not just better pianists or organists, but
how they can become great. Because, after all, why
settle for anything that won't get us worshipped by
throngs of adoring fans, right? And who knows the secret
alchemy to greatness better than our own Johann
Sebastian Bach, possibly the greatest composer who ever
lived, and certainly a great organist and harpsichord
player as well. So let's ask him. Let's shove a
microphone right up in his face as he's leaving St.
Thomas Church in Leipzig, Germany, and see what he
thinks it takes to become great. Are you just born with
it? Do you need some special diet or workout, or can you
pay some guru five installments of 88.95 for the secret
so that you, too, can be the one everybody is talking
about? Oh Mr. Bach,,,?
The Great Master: Ja!
Pianonoise: We would like to know what it takes to
become great.
GM (translated, and brought to us courtesy of the New
Bach Reader, available at fine bookstores everywhere):
Anybody who works as hard as I did will achieve the same
result.
(stunned silence, during which Mr. Bach rushes off to
finish another cantata before the weekly deadline)
Wow. Hard work, is it? I mean, really, it can't be all
that easy, can it? Just....work really hard??
Well, I suppose a case can be made that most of us have
no idea just how hard this guy worked. That cantata he
was rushing off to finish, another 20 to 30 minute
composition for small (or large, depending on the week)
ensemble, soloists, chorus, and continuo--he wrote one
of those every week for at least three years. Some
two-hundred plus survive. We aren't sure how many were
lost. If I gave you a pen and paper and asked you simply
to copy down what he had already written, no
compositional decisions to be made, just copy it, you
might get an idea how much labor it would be just to
write the notes. And if I wanted to be mean and give you
a quill pen and a bottle of ink so you could see how it
really was done....
And those are just the cantatas. We aren't talking about
the organ works, the harpsichord works, the orchestra
works, the pieces of ensemble and solo instruments, the
massive choral works like the passions and the B minor
mass...Bach spent a lifetime turning out page after
page, measure after measure, meeting deadline after
deadline...
It was his standard practice, however, to spend hours at
the organ, taking a theme, and carefully working it out,
on the spot, improvising in one style, exploring every
method in which it could be worked out, exhausting the
possibilities, and then trying another one. Not a new
theme, a new way of working out that theme. For hours.
Bach was famous for doing this at the organ. It didn't
just happen....well, I mean, it did just happen, but he
spent hours, days, years, learning to make spontaneous
music. You can practice that art and improve.
There are secrets, if you have the patience to find
them, and to make them your own through practice.
Bach's son said that Bach could tell, just from hearing
a fugue subject, what ought to be done with it, what
methods tried. And he would excitedly jab his son in the
ribs when the composer they were listening to did any
one of those things.
In rehearsal, Bach had to keep everyone together, now by
singing their part with them, now playing the line for
the violist, who was late on his entrance, now by
shouting at the contralto to sing the right notes, now
adding a florid counterpoint of his own...he must have
really gotten a workout. The poor ensemble only got a
day or two to learn every one of these difficult pieces
and then....Sunday, you know. They keep coming. Like,
every seven days. It's wild!
I think it is fair to say that we underestimate Bach's
work habits. We have to. It might kill us to even think
about it.
But there are going to be people who still insist that
the only reason all this work paid any dividends is
because of what was there to begin with. Lots of people
work hard, they say (doubtless conflating people who
work moderately hard with ...well, you know who), and
never become Bach. Didn't people like Czerny just turn
out reams of music and still not get to musical
Valhalla?
Well, we might want to be careful assuming quantity
automatically assures quality. I had a roommate who used
to practice hours a day while watching television. On
the one hand, he was working hard, and on the other, he
wasn't really all that engaged. Hard work comes on many
levels.
But I suppose that Bach still may have known, or
guessed, that what he was saying might not have been
entirely correct. Maybe there were some people, just as
industrious, who tried with their pens and their minds
and their hearts and their souls, and...just didn't have
it. It doesn't really do much good insisting on the
virtues of hard work to people who are equally sure that
life has given them lemons and that, try as they might,
they are just never going to get there. Life isn't fair,
you know. And maybe, just maybe, the guy at the top of
the heap feels that just as acutely as the guy at the
bottom. And doesn't mind taking the air out of the
situation. So when it is time for the profound oracle to
speak, he lets himself just be a regular guy, mystified
like the rest of us. I'm not great, I'm just some guy,
you know?
I mean, It's possible that Bach was trying to be funny.
You know, 'just hit a few keys and the instruments plays
itself' kind of funny.
The thing is, Bach didn't seem to have much of a sense
of humor.
I mean, the letter Bach wrote to the the council laying
out the requirements for decent music in the churches
isn't that funny. His complaint about not having enough
funerals so he could feed his family with the extra
compensation isn't that funny. Then there is the time he
threw that kid out of the choir loft during a church
service because he was in a fight with the school's
headmaster. Not exactly the hallmarks of a guy who could
laugh at himself.
On the other hand, there is this:
[listen]
This is the penultimate variations from Bach's massive
Goldberg Variations. It's a quodlibet, a mashup of
popular songs. One of them is about turnips and kale
aided the digestion, the other...I forget the other one.
The point is this is a very silly thing to insert into
what people regard as one of the great masterpieces of
Western music. And it fits so well you wouldn't be able
to tell he put it in there if you didn't know the tunes
or somebody didn't tell you. There goes Bach letting the
air out of a stuffy situation again.
Well.
I don't think we are going to settle this any time soon.
We all know now that Bach worked really incredibly hard,
and that none of us are Bach.
But then, I don't know why we should be. He left us
enough great music to last us a while. Even listening to
it all could be a mammoth undertaking.
You, however, are probably tired from whatever you've
been doing. So when you get the time, the energy, give
some of Bach's music the attention it deserves. In the
meantime, relax, take a load off. Listen to one of the
Brandenburg Concertos.
And be glad there once was a fellow who just didn't know
when to stop. And that you don't have to try and live
with him!
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