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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