Much has been written about Bach – with new biographies coming out nearly every year. When going about writing something about Bach, what can one say that hasn’t been said many times already? Very little, most likely, that the average attender at an All-Bach organ recital would not already know.
So I opt to say something that only I can say: namely, what it’s like for me, personally, to play Bach’s music.
Of the tens of thousands of composers of organ music, there is only one that stands out as the pinnacle of the expression that the instrument is capable of, only one that consistently brings young people to discover the majesty of the organ, and only one that perfectly marries craftsmanship with soul: Johann Sebastian Bach. So it is with some fear, humility, and trepidation that I approach a performance of this music. In performing virtually any other composer, I generally feel that once I have the music (in my hands, in my mind, and in my heart), I can sit down for a performance and know, with a fair amount of certainty, what will transpire over the course of the performance. Not so with Bach’s music! Bach’s pieces that I have played over and over for decades, when pulled from my collection of music, must be practiced almost as if for the first time. Every organ seems to have a different nuance to Bach’s music. Different pipes are nearer to me at the organ keyboard, from one organ to the next, which can be very off-putting at first hearing. And regardless of my comfort with the music, at performance, almost anything can happen. A momentary lapse of concentration can make the difference between a glimpse of beauty or a confrontation with a train wreck!
It’s the extreme level of concentration that makes an all-Bach performance so intriguing for the listener and the performer. Generally there two paradigms of both listening and performing: complete immersion in the music (being in the moment), and critique of the performance (reflecting on the past). When I, as performer, tell myself that a given performance is or is not going well, I have effectively removed myself from the moment of the music, and in so doing, invariably lapse into playing by rote – and generally losing the possibility for the music to communicate through me. It’s a dangerous trap that all performers have to guard against. And it’s not simply the concentration of the performer that can make or break a Bach performance, there is actually a trinity at play here: the performer, Bach himself, and the listeners. What happens, when that trinity is in equal proportion of commitment, is the possibility of transformation; and transformation of the heart is what music is about at its most primal level.
We now know that there is a neurological response to the music of Bach. The brain seems to replay what it hears in order to try and create understandable structures. These structures (often appropriately called “Bach’s architecture”) then quite literally serve to organize the brain itself – often enabling the discovery of new solutions to problems which may have been vexing us.
In order to communicate something of the heart of Bach’s music, the performer has a multitude of tasks. On the most basic level, there are the notes. Once those are mastered, the music has to be discovered. This requires an understanding of the performance practices of the day – from articulation to registration to phrasing to harmonic movement, etc. If I fail to grapple with performance practice, I end up making a “personal” musical statement, typically less likely to serve the listeners’ need for transcendence. But, just like learning the notes can become an end in itself, slavish adherence to musicological understandings can also become its own idol. This is where the humanity of the performer comes in.
As far as we know, it is only humans that have the capacity for self-reflection, sharing of the soul, and awareness of the numinous, or the metaphysical. And this is where it starts to get really interesting. The music of Bach, perhaps more than any other, requires an atunement to the metaphysical in order to be truly transformative. This means (and I will go out on a limb here) a conscious or sub-conscious channeling of the composer, himself. It is Bach’s spirit, itself seeming to channel the essence of the cosmos and the complexity of the Divinity, that we performers seek to resurrect with each performance of his music.
Many well-known performers today pride themselves on memorizing Bach’s music (and other composers’ music). But this is actually a complete anachronism for music of the baroque. (Memorization of keyboard music began with Clara Schumann in the mid-nineteenth century as a schtick to create a performer ethos.) Bach didn’t memorize; he improvised. Memorization serves to draw the attention to the performer, not the music. (How many times have I heard people say: “and he plays from memory!”?) The feat of memorization actually attempts to lock a “perfect” performance in place and leaves little room for the work of the Spirit serving as a direct conduit to the composer himself and beyond, to the swirling cosmos around us.
Music in general, and Bach’s organ music in particular, requires that the performer get “out of the way.” One can only get out of the way of the piece after developing a working hypothesis about what the piece is trying to communicate in its affect. With the music of Bach, this often comes after having played the piece several times in public. I can’t think of any other composer of organ music that has the same requirement of vulnerability on the part of the performer. It’s as if Bach is saying: “Play this piece several times, and trust me!”
Many, although not all, of Bach’s major works employ a deliberate architectural sense of proportion that is based on the Golden Mean. The Golden Mean (or golden ratio) is roughly 5/7 of the way through a piece of music. It is at this spot that Bach often changes key into something surprising, or introduces a new musical idea. The reason this is significant is that no other composer that I know uses this technique to maintain interest in a given piece of music – only Bach. Perhaps this is why neuroscientists today are taking so much interest in the music of Bach, trying to understand just what magic is in his combination of melodies, harmonic movement, and complexity.
For us, the listeners and performers, we are in awe of Bach’s ability to tap into Divine solace, power, and transcendence. We sometimes struggle to keep Bach human, wanting to put him on a god-like pedestal. In the many performances of Bach in which I’ve played continuo, I’ve selfishly assumed that I had a secret “in” with Bach since I, like him, have spent 40 years working as a church musician. I, like him, have known clergy struggles, attempts to flesh out a choir, trying to make do with the instrumentalists or singers on hand on a given day, and the methods we church musicians all come up with to prevent boredom from seeping into our work. But in reality, that very human notion of Bach, and my identification with it, is also likely a romanticized way of putting Bach on a pedestal (and my ego, by extension).
In the end, we’re only left with wonder and gratitude that this music exists, that somehow we can continue to bring it to life, and that the Divinity continues to speak directly to our hearts and minds through it.
©2014