I find this poem just the way it should be. It gave me back the almost
imperceptible anguish I had when I was reading Bach's life: time and work. I
also agree with you that something is missing. What I remember of Bach are
those longest walks he had all through Germany (Saxony?) to go to a concert,
I think it is from them that he gathered his sound architectures.
On 8/19/07, Joanna Boulter <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Here's a poem someone asked me to write, some years ago now. She thought
> it
> was fine, but I wasn't too happy with it and feared I'd responded too
> simplistically, even sentimentally, to the subject. I'd be interested to
> hear what any of you might think.
>
> ODE ON THE MUSIC OF JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH
>
> *Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit* -- Cantata 106
>
> For you
> there could never be enough of it --
> composing timeless music in the gaps between
> taking choir practice and teaching hated Latin,
> your wife called from washtub or cooking or children
> to make fair copies from your rough
> so often that her writing
> was in the end almost the twin of yours.
> In that ordinary room
> such extraordinary music; every week a new
> cantata as the church year spun.
> Not enough time, not enough
> music, not enough time
> for music. The unstoppable metronome
> of weekdays, Sundays, seasons, years.
>
> Still at your death The Art of Fugue unfinished.
> And you, like those perpetual canons, never come
> to a full perfect close --
> but poised upon an arbitrary pause,
> the end of earthly life: your voice transposed
> to an immortal key, unheard by human ears
> but singing still: God's time is best time.
>
> Behind the times, they said.
> Even your sons, once you were safely dead,
> the old man, out of fashion. Almost as if
> your music, hidden in the coffin with you, slept.
> Yet the continuum
> of Music kept
> you as its favoured godson safe
> as if it knew your time would come.
>
> Now sing me how
> God's time is best time. Tell me what you know.
>
>
> joanna
>
> Oh hell, reading this over now, I realise there's so much more I ought to
> have said! Subject is too huge for me. j
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Mark Weiss" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Sunday, August 19, 2007 8:29 PM
> Subject: Bach
>
>
> > Yesterday the Bach Edition--Complete Works, which I had ordered from
> > Amazon for $125 (86 euros on French Amazon), arrived. It's 155 CDs. I
> > immediately went to pieces I know well--the Toccatta and Fuge in D Minor
> > for organ (very fine), Wachet Auf (superb interpretation, soloists
> > adequate), the Goldberg Variations excellent), the 6th Cello Suite
> > (respectable and a bit more), the first solo violin partita (likewise),
> > the B Minor Mass. I also dipped my toe into the Saint Matthew's
> > Passion--difficult to turn that one off, but not enough time. It seemed
> > very good indeed. Most of the work is on period instruments, but there's
> > no preciosity. The Goldbergs on harpsichord produce nuances that the
> piano
> > can't. Interesting mistake--the B Minor is listed on the sleeve as by a
> > small, unknown to me ensemble, but it's in fact Klemoperer and the
> > Philharmonia with Baker and Gedda, and I'm not complaining.
> >
> > All of these I alreasdy own performances off, sometimes several. The
> real
> > fun is going to be all those pieces I've never heard. Of the cantatas,
> for
> > instance, I know maybe 20.
> >
> > The first citizen reviewer at the Amazon site is Kamau Brathwaite, by
> the
> > way.
> >
> > There's a CD at the end of bio, notes, and the libretti (vo, french and
> > english) of all the vocal works.
> >
> > I can't think of a better way to spend $125. Bach's was one of the great
> > minds --up there with Shakespeare, Michelangelo,Newton, and maybe
> > Montaigne and not a whole lot of others. What the hell could the burgers
> > of Leipzig do with the rest of Sunday after leaving church? Art, sex or
> > ice cream it had to be. Me, after those hours of listening I hiked
> > through my forest on one of the summer's loveliest days.
> >
> > Mark
> >
>
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