“For the last 80 years, I start each day in the same manner … I go to the piano and play preludes and fugues of Bach.” ~ Pablo Casals
I love this quote from cellist Casals, about playing the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, because I agree in sentiment, if not actual practice. (Since I’m awake earlier than others in my household, I’m not sure they would find this experience quite as transcendent!) Bach was a prolific and masterful composer, and I enjoy playing his music on the piano and organ.
You’ve perhaps heard it said that aptitude and interest in music and math are related. As someone who “wasn’t good” at math in school, this always struck me as odd, though I can list many cases that seem to back this up (including fellow columnist on this page, Tim Pennings!) and my math-loving husband thinks my experience had more to do with bad teaching or a poor pedagogy of math education, than my lack of natural ability.
But I do wonder if this connection might help explain some of my attraction to the music of J.S. Bach. I find his music very calming and satisfying. I often say that my head and thoughts feel more ordered when I’ve been playing a bit of Bach, but it’s not just that I’m drawn to the logic. Bach’s music is the culmination of a certain set of rules and patterns of composition (18th-century counterpoint) that could be described as mathematical, but these are combined with transcendent beauty and timelessness.
There was a time when Bach’s music was considered out of fashion and boring, and not played or discussed. For about 100 years after his death, until the composer Mendelssohn fell in love with it and worked to bring it back to the public’s awareness, it wasn’t performed or studied. Since that time, though, it hasn’t faded from popularity.
Why is this? There is a myth of genius that some composers have acquired, that might not have so much to do with their music as with a cultural narrative about what’s worthy. I tried to convince an older friend once that music as masterful and transcendent as Bach’s was still being written today. I gave her a CD of choral music by Arvo Pärt, the Estonian composer whose music is both groundbreaking and timeless. But she couldn’t seem to even accept the idea, never mind be open to sounds that were new and different to her ears.
This is a ridiculous and frustrating narrative. Obviously, music of today sounds different than Bach, just like food that was considered a delicacy in the 17th century would not be considered so today! Contexts change. So I’m not saying Bach was touched by God in a way that no other human being has been. I am saying there’s something, for me, about sitting down at a keyboard and playing music that so perfectly seems to crystallize beauty and form together, that my head always feels a little bit clearer, my body a little bit lighter, like after a good meditation sit, or Tai chi class, or hike in the woods. Does it work for everyone? No, in the same way that Tai chi, or meditation doesn’t either.
I just visited my piano teacher from my undergraduate college days, and he showed me a family tree of sorts, maybe something I’d seen 25 years ago, but it hadn’t really stuck in my head. It showed a direct line of teacher and student, going from Bach down to he and I. Maybe you could argue that my affinity for Bach was inherited in this way, or passed down. But I’m sure there are other composers whose music could do a similar thing for me — or do something different altogether! I’m not really interested in finding other composers who sound just like Bach. Why would I need that? I want to hear something new and original, that blows my mind in a totally unexpected way. What about John Luther Adams’ orchestral music, inspired by nature, or the amazing music of Caroline Shaw (who, please o please, if she would write an organ piece), or … I could go on and on.
Genius isn’t a title only for dead, white men. Genius is alive and well today, so start looking for it! But also, I’ll take my daily dose of Bach.
“If you play Bach everyday, you are not so alone.” ~ Pablo Casals
— Rhonda Sider Edgington is a professional musician who writes about music. On Thursday, March 21, at 7:30 p.m., she will be performing a concert in the chapel at Calvin University, featuring music of West Africa for organ, percussion, and voice.
