Bach In B Minor

In the face of all that is crooked about the world, when I listen to the music of Bach things straighten out.

Dana Bate
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Hello Frosty
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Dear Friend, I know you are probably not going to do this, but I'm telling you to do it anyway. At some point soon in your progressing life you must listen to a performance of the B minor Mass by Johann Sebastian Bach. Bach wasn't a Catholic but he wrote a lot of religious music, most of it in German, The Christmas and Easter Oratorios, The Saint Mathew and Saint John Passions and many Cantatas. So composing to the Latin Mass was a special venture for Bach. What he created is a conglomeration of some of the greatest music ever composed.

If you can't bear to hear the whole thing then at least listen to the opening section. It's a stately fugue for chorus and orchestra based on only the first 2 words of the Mass: Kyrie Eleison. It is a landscape of music. I promise.

If you keep going and get to the middle you'll hear Cum Sancto Spiritu, which lifts off and flies.

Later on Et Resurrexit jumps up out of silence and dances with so much joy it almost tumbles over itself.

As you listen don't just think it's beautiful, which it is, but listen into the music, try to hear every note from the kettle drum to the high trumpet, from the bass to the sopranos.

If you make it to the final chorus, you're life will have progressed, I guarantee it.

If you don't listen to this music I will still talk to you anyway.

DB - Vagabond
Never Give Up
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By The Brook

Music owes as much to Bach as any religion does to its founder.

Robert Schumann
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If you want to know what nature does go into the forest, sit by a brook, watch and listen.

Most people who have ever read Vagabond Journeys are not classical music lovers. That's a shame and a condition I wish I could change. Don't mistake me. There is nothing wrong with preferring country music, folk, rock or jazz. I enjoy the best of those kinds of music myself. But I was blessed with an ear for concert music and opera when I was very young.

There are and were many inspired composers. Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert, Schumann, Mahler, Wagner (a particular favorite of mine), Strauss, Stravinsky, just to name a few, were all inspired composers.

Johann Sebastian Bach was not one of them. Bach was beyond inspiration. He was music. Music issued forth out of him like breath. Every serious music student has sat with Bach, watched and listened to him describe music effortlessly. They have analyzed his chorals and fugues. And at last the music they make is traced right back to the source.

Someone estimated that if you sat down with a ball point pen and printed music paper just to copy all the music that Bach wrote and worked at it 7 hours a day, 5 days a week it would take about 40 years. And Bach did it with an ink well, a quill pen, in a house full of kids, with no electricity and no indoor plumbing. Plus he had a fill time job as choir director and organist at the cathedral.

And the music? It's astonishing. Crystal clear, beautiful, grand and never repeats itself. He was gifted, that's certain. But more than that he was a gift to the entire world.

If nothing else one should hear the opening section of the B minor mass. It's a long 4 part fugue for chorus and orchestra. It lasts 10 to 12 minutes depending on who's conducting (I suggest van Karajan). And the chorus only repeats the two opening words: Kyrie Eleison. Bach was not a Catholic and the Mass was written at various times but altogether it is a work of pure genius. If you want other suggestions, ask me.

"Bach" is the German word for "brook."

DB - The Vagabond
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WEEKEND PUZZLE

Let us now praise middle names.

These are the middle names of some famous and infamous wh dwellers.
Who are they?

ABRAM
ALAN
CLARK
DAVID
EARL
GAMALIEL
HENRY
HOWARD
KNOX
RUDOLPH
SIMPSON
WALKER
WILSON

Good luck
DB
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Kind Kappellmeister 7/29/09

When Bach and Beethoven and all those guys were doing their thing, it was an absolute pinnacle of our consciousness, and ever since then we've been re-exploring different avenues of it.

Maynard Keenan
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Tune your fiddle and have a seat.
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If you are reading this you are probably not a fan of classical music. Most people aren't. But whether you prefer jazz, rock, folk, new age, easy listening or whatever your choice, you should know that if your favorite musician had formal training in a music academy or college department he or she had to analyze Bach chorals as part of the training.

Johann Sebastian Bach was the organist and music director of his very large church. Bach was a Lutheran. He composed, rehearsed and conducted a cantata every week to commemorate what the Sunday service was about. These cantatas were written for orchestra, chorus and usually solo singers. In between he managed to write an enormous amount of music. It was calculated that if a modern day musician sat down with a ball point pen, in good lighting and worked a 40 hour week it would take him many decades just to copy out what Bach wrote. And Bach did it with a quill pen, an inkwell, by candle light in a house full of his children.

Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and many others were inspired composers. I have a different feeling about Bach. Bach wasn't inspired. Bach WAS music. Music flowed out of him like breath. It was a divine exhalation. And that's why every true musician needs to know it.

I used to know a folk singer who graduated with a Bachelors degree in music. For her honors thesis she did an analysis of the Bach B minor Mass, a formidable task for any music student. It's a personal thing I know, but I happen to believe that the B minor Mass is the greatest piece of music ever written.

Far from my intent is to proselytize and try to make a classical music lover out of you, if you don't want to be. But if you don't listen to anything else you should listen to the amazing opening chorus of the Bach Mass It lasts 10 to 12 minutes depending on the conductor. It starts with a few basic chords and then begins a slow stately fugue for orchestra and chorus. During it the chorus sings only two words, Kerie Eleison, the opening two words of the Mass. It is a work of pure genius.

It's true that ever since Bach composers and musicians have been trying to re-explore and recapture that genius, to reinvent that wheel, to regain that amazing level of consciousness that brought such music to the world. And some have succeeded. Bach is always there to show us the way.

DB - Vagabond Journeys
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Join me for a happy Wednesday.
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PS: Whenever I write on classical music people seem to find out about it ahead of time and all head for the hills. Hence, no readers, no comments.