Evanston: Bach and me
Evanston: Bach and me
I finished reading REINVENTING BACH yesterday morning, but not before it cost me an additional $49: $24 for a three disc recording of the SAINT MATTHEW PASSION conducted by Philippe Herreweghe; $10 for the Kindle edition of a book by Eric Siblin, THE CELLO SUITES: J.S. Bach, Pablo Casals, and the Search for a Baroque Masterpiece; and $15 for a second, more recent recording of the Cello Suites by Janos Starker with which to compare the Casals.
I have listened to the Casals recording and the sound on the Opus Kura reissue is fine, at least to my aged ears..
I spent late afternoon and evening listening to the SAINT MATTHEW PASSION which Herreweghe completes in a swift 2 hours and 38 minutes. Some performances, particularly a famed one directed by Otto Klemperer, take an hour longer. The booklet, or rather book, that is packaged with the discs is itself 135 pages long and includes the text in German, English and French. I followed along on my first listening and was stunned by the music’s complexity, power and beauty.
I already had twenty-one albums of Bach’s music, including four different versions of ART OF THE FUGUE, but the SAINT MATTHEW PASSION was entirely new to me. It is a creation almost beyond imagination. I’m sorry it took me seventy-one years to discover it.
Bach died at age sixty-five in 1750.
During the last years of his life, his health deteriorated and his vision failed, probably due to diabetes. He twice had his eyes operated on by an Englishman, John Taylor. My mind recoils from even considering what that must have been like.
To quote from the Bach Cantatas Website:
Taylor, born the son of an apothecary in 1703, studied medicine and specialized in ophthalmology. He soon rose to the post of eye doctor to King George II and became a shameless self-promoter.
'By the time Bach and Händel began losing their sight, Taylor was traveling widely on the continent. During a visit to Leipzig in 1749, Taylor operated on Bach's ailing eyes. When the first operation failed, he tried a second one. After those operations, Bach's blindness was total and his health failed. He died less than a year later. Taylor had probably killed him.
'By then Taylor's unsavory reputation was well known. As early as 1740, an anonymous comic opera, The Operator, ridiculed him. Samuel Johnson called him "an instance of how far impudence will carry ignorance."
Modern medicine not having killed me yet, I’ve made reservations to fly to San Diego on March 6 for six weeks.
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I walked down to the lake yesterday and took the above photo. As you can see, our ice and snow have mostly melted; but a little more fell last night.
Friday, February 15, 2013