THE WAY OF BACH – Three years with the man, his music and the piano

In June, I was lucky enough to be able to attend evensong at King’s College, Cambridge before dining on High Table at my college, Christs. The organ voluntary at the end was Bach’s triple St Anne Fugue, an extended moment of ecstasy that I had also experienced in 1978 in the same place during a performance of the Passacaglia in C minor (BWV 582) – I still recall the moment to this day. Only the previous day, I had attended an organ recital at the local church on an instrument that used to be at Versailles by emeritus organist from Notre Dame, Paris, Maitre Philippe Lefevbre, who had played the same fugue. I only learned later that it was symbolic of Trinity Sunday, hence it being played in these different places.

I was brought up on Bach by my mother, who was a good pianist – I still have her Steinway in my library in Scotland. She had LPs of three iconic figures: Rosalyn Tureck on the piano, Yehudi Menuhin on the violin, and Albert Schweitzer on the organ. I was especially devoted to Schweitzer, and only subsequently came to know about his life and work. Years later, I found one or two more LPs in Zürich and sent off to the company to see if I could buy the rest – they sent me back the full set free of charge. My mother and I listen to an all-Bach concert by Tureck in the Royal Festival Hall, and on another occasion in St Andrews to Menuhin playing the complete solo partitas and sonatas – he seemed to merge with the instrument.

When a friend told me about this book, I ordered it immediately. The author is a professor of philosophy at the University of Maryland, and caught the Bach bug many years ago. This book covers his felt experience of learning to play Bach as an adult, with reflections on the music, the struggle, the man, the piano (also the organ) and God. It is a book that all Bach aficionados will want to read, and every reader will have their own take. I have recently gone back to practising and playing some simple pieces, currently the Invention in A minor. Along with such introductory pieces, Moller reflects on the great works such as the Well-Tempered Clavier, The Goldberg Variations, The Art of Fugue, the keyboard partitas, St Matthew Passion (I prefer the Mass in B Minor), the Chaconne from the Partita in D Minor, the cello suites and others – everyone will have their own list, and one of my current favourites is The Kyrie Gott Heiliger Geist (BWV 671) exquisitely played on the magnificent four-manual Riga Cathedral organ by Liene Andreta Kalncieme - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n05M_o0jRcM - (her rendering of the Toccata and Fugue has over 10 million views).

An essential theme for both the author and myself is the fugue – I know countless fugues both for piano and organ, and I find that they harmonise my soul. As the author rightly observes, the more frequently you listen, the more deeply you feel; and you pick up subtle intertwinings that you had previously not noticed. Rosalyn Tureck one of the great practitioners and commentators on the nature of the fugue. She points out that we have to listen to the subject within the whole, and the whole within the subject, with variations, repetitions and inversions. Schweitzer made the same point with respect to the organ works, saying that the reason he played more slowly – this also applies to Tureck – was so that the listener can grasp the subject and its iterations in a spatial dimension. Pythagoras’ geometry and monochord make music the expression of harmony in time. This is especially true of Bach – and when one plays or listens deeply, one does become the music (cf T.S. Eliot), so that Bach is playing you.

Bach’s life was hard, and the author treats it in terms of three main themes – sadness, money and bureaucracy, and the notion of him being a Fachmann – a craftsman and an expert. Perhaps the St Matthew Passion is the finest expression of sadness – the chorale O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden – and its opening chorus is in fact a minor arpeggio. However, there are also supreme moments of joy – think of the trumpets in Pleni Sunt Caeli in the B Minor Mass. The critic Matheson was ruthlessly ironic when he parodied Bach “I had much grief in my heart etc. etc.’ Bach was never properly paid and had to turn out work every week at a phenomenal rate – nor did he have a decent choir, orchestra and organ in Leipzig. His great opportunity came with a vacancy at Saint Catherine’s in Hamburg, which had one of the finest organs in the world. This episode is vividly described, whereby Bach played for two hours in front of the selection committee and townspeople, a masterly performance that culminated in the great Fantasia and Fugue in G minor (BWV 542), one of my favourite pieces (see Leo van Doeselaar on YouTube). Bach finished the fugue on a major chord. The audience was astonished at such sustained virtuosity, but the position was given to a much more mediocre performer who could bring some money to the role – a sad reflection on human motivation.

Moller compares the cosmic dimensions of the St Matthew Passion Wagner’s Ring, commenting that they shared the same aesthetic essence but reflect diverging philosophies rather than the type of art they represented, since both were ‘cosmic in theme and scale, and musically and narratively dense.’ Each ‘was the greatest artist of his age trying to express the meaning of life as he saw it.’ The author concludes laconically that ‘for Bach the meaning of life wasn’t Christianity, it was Christ; and for Wagner the meaning of life was Wagner.’ Hence Bach’s dedication, Soli Deo Gloria. If you happen to be in Paris on a Sunday evening, make sure you attend the organ recital in Notre Dame at 5:45 before Mass at 6:30. One of my highlights was the Dorian Toccata and Fugue played by the organist from Montreal Cathedral. It was on this same organ that Albert Schweitzer was taught by Charles-Marie Widor. When asked on his first lesson what he was going to play, he replied “Bach, of course” and they worked together on an addition of the Chorale Preludes. One afternoon, Widor memorably defined organ music as ‘the manifestation of a will filled with a vision of eternity’ – a fitting tribute to Bach’s spirit and a good way to round off this review.