Something incredible

Poststructural Pub
1

Bach wrote the Art of the Fugue while he was dying.
He was blind and his family and his students
were taking his dictation. At one point the
person writing for him asked for the next
direction and Bach was gone. ‘here the composer
died’ is written on the score, apparently.

This is perhaps the most beautiful and holy
music ever written. One of the commentators
says that Bach in his last moments reached
God.

Two of these fugues, played by GlennGould,
who plays with a kind of holy madness,
the second ending with Bach’s last note.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2EQmQUXXIc&NR=1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NE0FMAJ0RKY&feature=related

2

wow

3

Gould’s playing can be downright scary. I can’t listen without all of the lights turned on.

Small wonder that his early recording of the Goldberg Variations was used in the soundtrack to ‘Hannibal Rising’. Not your Grandma’s classical… :astonished:

4

Extraordinary confluence of genius, yes?
Bach writing perhaps the most beautiful music
of his life, the most beautiful music
ever written, performed by Gould, arguably
the greatest interpreter of Bach who ever lived.

It poses a puzzle for me. Why do we love music?
It expresses our deepest feelings and sometimes
thoughts beyond words. What’s going on?
Either this is an anomaly of the brain,
a side effect of our ability to hear and speak
a language which, for some neurological
reason is pleasing to us and links to other
parts of the brain that trigger emotions.
A Martian would hear it as static
nothing more.
On this reductive account these fugues are
really just noise that somehow the brain
is deluded into finding beautiful and
meaningful. A lucky quirk of our wiring.

Or these fugues are so extraordinarily
beautiful because they
represent a transcendent reality, they’re ABOUT
something, they express a truth beyond words
which perhaps Bach understood as he
lay dying.

If so, what can this be but God singing?

5

I guess there’s no recording I’ve listened to more that Gould’s final recording of the Goldberg Variations (the full-length video is on youtube, by the way.)

In a way, it bothers me that people try to diagnose Gould by way of psychological autopsy, but I also admit that the question of whether he had Asperger’s is interesting and not without value in trying to shed light on that disorder.

I do recommend “32 Short Films About Glenn Gould.” It’s unusual (as was he!).

Thanks for sharing this, jim. I’d not seen these before.

6

He seems not to have some of the features frequently
associated, e.g. motor clumsiness. And he certainly had
feelings for people and animals and so on. Also there
are other explanations of what we do see, e.g. genius,
his mother (!). The Jewish world in which I grew up
had plenty of people who acted
and even moved like him, but without the towering
talent. And the idea that he was fixated on a ‘narrow range
of interest.’ Good heavens!

the first fugue, which is developed fully, is either noise
or holy, I submit. If the latter, there would seem to
be more to reality
than appears to most of us–Bach/Gould
were there.

And what a species, yes? that can write and
play this music and build death camps too.
And sometimes the same people do both!

7

Many songwriters feel their inspiration comes from a greater consciousness. From famous names such as Joni Mitchell, or John Lennon, to no name hobbyists such as myself.

As for why music is appreciated, on a visceral level, singing (and music making) ability is a strong lure to attracting a mate. This was true in primitive times and is still a strong lure today. Humans with musical ability are much more likely to have children and pass on their traits.

Talk show host and author, Dennis Prager, sometimes cites Bach and his work as a strong argument for the existence of God. I find the argument curious because humans many don’t appreciate Bach and appreciate it as much as watching paint dry, much less many other species.

8

Years ago, when I was a music major, I didn’t really care much for Bach’s flute works; at the time they seemed mainly to be technical exercizes for flutists with the unique ability of not having to breathe.

There was a long period after college where I didn’t play pretty much at all, until a wooden flute took me by the hand and led me, by a rather twisted path, to Irish traditional music.

And since I’ve also rediscovered my earlier fascination with Baroque music, with one difference. I now love Bach’s works for flute, love listening to them, love playing them even more, especially the Sonatas.

Yes, they are technically challenging, but the rewards for mastering them are great. I take delight in the way that they are put together. It reminds me of the plot twists and subplots of a really good mystery novel. There are twists and turns and sometimes it takes off in what seems to be an unexpected direction, only to tie it all back together in ways that are both unexpected and wonderful.

Bach had a unique and special genius, polished into a rare gem by years of both prolific composition as well as years of excellent playing as a performance musician. His combination of genius and hard work routinely took his music to places other composers only rarely reach; yet his work was not well appreciated during his own lifetime, as it was considered by many to be somewhat sentimental and unaccepting of progress.

Do I think Bach communed with God or that God somehow moved him or spoke through him? I don’t think so, though Bach probably would have hoped so: much of his music was sacred, and he was apparently a man of great faith.

To me, his unique music and his unique abilities speak more of the capabilities of the human mind than of any god. To me, to say that somehow God did it is to insult the mind that created and the hand that wrote the music which, so many years later, still moves me and others so strongly.

–James

9

There is no insult in the idea that the heights of human
genius touch and express the divine.

Bill I agree that most people don’t appreciate Bach,
but I’m not sure why this detracts from the force
of this music as an argument for God.

10

Because the music is not and never was an argument for God.

It is an argument for the genius and skill of the human mind and heart that created it.

–James

11

Well, that’s true, I guess, but it goes to the problem with this Asperger’s thing. That diagnostic idea was dormant for decades and then emerged in the 1990s and particularly in the last 10 years. The legitimacy of the diagnosis and the place it should occupy in nosology is still being shaken out. Is it a variant of autism? Is it something distinct? And, the question which I ask often, how much of its application is on people who just odd and eccentric?

12

The first sentence ‘Because the music is not and never
was an argument for God’ simply begs the question.

The second sentence is of course true, but that’s compatible
with the music also being an argument for the existence
of God. Not a coercive or decisive argument of course,
not a mathematical proof, but strongly suggestive
that there is a transcendental reality of great beauty,
depth and majesty which Bach is in touch with and
is expressing through
his fugue. The music sounds holy, which provides
some reason to think it is.

Few arguments for God’s existence are meant to be
coercive–they just allege to make it more likely.
Often this is the case in science–that ships seemed
to be sinking as they moved away from port, that the body of
the ship dissapeared first but the mast stayed visible longer,
was evidence for the curvature of the Earth. But nobody
said it was decisive; maybe there was another explanation;
perhaps the appearance is the result of yet undiscovered
properties of light. Still it counted as evidence for a curved
planet, because the hypothesis that the Earth is curved
explained it pretty simply.

Same here. The heights of human aesthetic achievement,
the greatest art we know, seems holy. It sounds as though Bach
is in touch with and expressing a supermundane reality, something well
beyond our ordinary world. And he can take us
along a good way–so it’s been said that listening
to these fugues is a transcendant experience. That’s
hardly decisive; still this music counts as evidence for such
a reality, because the idea that one exists explains
pretty simply why it seems the music is expressing
something divine.

I guess one could call this the aesthetic argument
for the existence of God. That quality–the music
has surpassed the beautiful and become
holy–is certainly
there in the best Indian music too.

13

My methodological prejudice is to err away from somatic diseases
and/or neurological conditions when there is an adequate
psychological explanation. Not to multiply such things
beyond necessity. I do think Gould had one hell
of a childhood.

Also he’s so deep in the music, it’s almost physical
space for him through which he is swimming, and
the gestures are functional–they never interfere, they’re
no deficit, which is not what one would expect if there
was a neurological problem. It’s
common enough for people to move their bodies and
their hands with music, and this guy is deeper
into music than most anybody ever was.

Genius likely rewires the brain in its own directions.

14

:boggle:

15

Are atheists allowed to listen to Bach?

dwest, I was once at a UConn-URI game. A few drunken students started a chant:

U-R-I
U-R-I
U-R-I-N-E

I was probably all of about 8 at the time, and it took a minute or two for it to sink in. I remember it 40 years later, though.

16

:boggle:

17

I’d just like to observe that the perpetrator of this thread claims, in the Proctology Clinic, to be an Atheist.


:swear:


That is all.