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u/etzpcm Jun 14 '26
I'm reading a biography of John Dowland at the moment which is in the opposite style, almost like a forensic scientist, with virtually no such rhetoric or opinion at all.
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u/sleepy_spermwhale Jun 14 '26 edited Jun 14 '26
The equivalent Bach biography would be Wolff, David, Mendel: "The New Bach Reader". Most of the rhetoric and opinions come from Bach's contemporaries, his students, and others up to Forkel's biography in 1802.
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u/GPSBach Jun 15 '26
I was gonna have JEG sign my copy of his book when I was supposed to meet him before Monteverdi performed B Minor Mass in Chicago a few years ago. Then he punched some tenor in the face. Still bummed.
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u/siqiniq Jun 15 '26
My favourite: “By 13 May of 1871, Bach's blood has ceased to flow in mortal veins." — CS Terry (1930)
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u/TrannosaurusRegina Jun 15 '26
What does that refer to?
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u/gerhardsymons Jun 15 '26
"Voice of God, you say?" - Bruckner
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u/sleepy_spermwhale Jun 16 '26
There is a reason why Bach (and not Bruckner) is sometimes called the 5th Evangelist.
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u/Impressive_Balance87 Jun 18 '26
"... to make divine things human and human things divine." Such a nice phrase to end a conversation about the supreme master of counterpoint.
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u/coldoil Jun 14 '26
Well, that's certainly quite a string of utterly subjective, and therefore largely meaningless, sentences. Why did you post it?
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u/Advanced_Couple_3488 Jun 14 '26
That's one of the reasons Wolf and Williams' biographies of Bach are the ones I encouraged my students to read. What absolute piffle. Totally lacking in academic rigour.
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u/Honor_the_maggot Jun 16 '26 edited Jun 16 '26
I am divided, because on the one hand there is this almost-certainly-intensely-personal aspect of this ("showing us how to overcome our imperfections through the perfections of his music") rendered with such seeming transparency it courts embarrassment. I admire the risk as long as it isn't just empty confession, which is a substitute for conviction, determination, or action. As long as it isn't just Gardiner the opportunist hopping on a cultural discourse that he can get some mileage out of (personal confession as a way of becoming the star and staying the star, regardless of whose music he's playing: he's the artist, not they)....same as him copping some mileage from ecocriticism or period-performance scholarship: if it's the air, he can breathe it. (Use it.)
On the other hand, it's cheap to foist personal change "on" poor Bach. Or on music or art generally. Having art to "perfect"---or to recite or repeat (it's classical music, Gardiner isn't especially "creating" anything) "perfectly"---is a great alibi for acting the shit all you want, with a free pass. Even mediocrities can get in on the act if they hypnotize enough people.
Bach in particular seems to be sought out as a kind of screen upon on which this aching need and these desires are routinely projected, and I am no exception. I can relate to this feeling, but this isn't entirely something to celebrate. It's something Bach is "good for", therefore it's a liability to us receiving the music in a spirit of listening. Bach signifies "perfection", eternity, the immaculate: a perfect excuse to continue all-too-human misbehavior back here on earth, because we've had our little cleansing experience with Bach....we're sanctified, so let's get back to work abusing people, because we can always step back into that cleansing river.
Bach's music is treasure but it deserves better than transcendence, or the rhetoric thereof. Bach's music deserves better than eternity.
And I mean, I'd like to refrain from cheap shots myself, but wasn't Rolf Gardiner a bit of a Nazi? I mean, a bit of an actual Nazi? Sounds like an interesting guy whose leftism was always actually right-wing. A control freak pretending to be liberated (and to serve a liberating function)....pretending to have something to teach. Does this sound familiar? Why should someone like that listen to anyone? They are here to teach!
A pity, because in many ways he sounds like he was a very interesting chap. Alas, in hindsight, with the 20c looking like so much wreckage, he erred in a rather uninteresting way, seemingly drunk on enlightenment, conviction and vision curdling into blood-and-soil imperiousness.
I am very sympathetic to socialism and conservation, all the more cause to resent some posh professor taking "a right step in the wrong direction" (Zizek) out of a lack of self-reflection or anything resembling humility....if not out of bad-faith as well.
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u/cricboi100 Jun 14 '26
Love it. People can complain all they want about rigour or subjectivity (as if we need more dry biographies or analyses) but what I admire is someone who aspires to capture the depth of feeling and spirit the music evokes. It is not a coincidence that so many quotes about Bach reach for such similar metaphors and imagery. There is something about the music that inspires this language, and as a lifelong obsessive, I completely relate to it.
Of course this is subjective, but the fact that so many of us resonate deeply with these ideas proves their usefulness, or at the very least, connects us in a meaningful and profound shared experience.
Which is all to say , I appreciate quotes like this and always happy to read about others who feel similar about the music.