Hey. How are ya? I hope everyone reading this is having the best day of their lives. If so, it's about to get even better. Today's writing is going to be a gem.
I have decided this one's about music. Yesterday was Jerry and I was claiming to go to the beginning. But now I'm going to the beginning. Yup. J.S. Bach. The discussion doesn't need to be technical and the last thing I want to do is convince the few people who are reading my blog to tune out after only 2 posts!
Bach is thinking music. I was doing work while I was listening (Violin Concertos) and I swear I had no urge to check facebook, chess moves in my online games or Israeli politics. I even forgot the Leafs were playing/losing! It's 9:30 now and without checking the score I'm confident they're behind. They're also playing the worst team in the league (playing ourselves is impossible but Tampa is garbage too). I have digressed quickly. The cool thing about the JS B man is the harmony. But even that pales in comparison to the melody. The rhythm is dope too. OK I think that's every component of music!
COOL BACH FACTS: did you know that half of everything he composed in his lifetime burned in a house fire? My father believes that Bach was not only a much greater composer than that kid Mozart or Beethoven, but that he was a greater composer than Lemieux was a hockey player, or Einstein was a physicist, or Madoff was a crook! It's very likely that we have never heard his greatest pieces! Scary thought.
Bach wasn't popular in his day because the musicians wanted to play easier music! 100 years after Bach died Beethoven was leafing through some papers one day and stumbled on my man Johann and realised quickly how dope he was. But it wasn't until a Canadian piano player named Glenn Gould played the Goldberg Variations in the 50s that Bach came back into favour. Before that he was respected, not loved. Gould lived in an apartment building at St. Clair and Avenue...there's a plaque in front of it and there's a park named after him beside it.
I had a guitar teacher at Dalhousie who toured as a classical musician. I told him about what my father said to see if my old man was really just an insane bastard posing as my father. Douglas Reach agreed too! My dad plays Bach on piano and he used to teach too...he knows how to tickle the ivories!
Is anyone still reading? I wasn't sure I could make an entry about Bach accessible or entertaining (and I don't know that I have) but this comes back to an issue I've been considering since I began blogging yesterday. Should I write for peoples entertainment or my own? I have decided I have to wait until someones pays me before I can sell out, so I am writing things that really are on my mind. I could have gone on about Bach longer but I thought it was enough. Actually I have one more cool thing to say!
So not only did Bach come back into the mainstream after Goulds recording, but Gould did too. Overnight success. International hit. He is Canada's greatest musician (shout outs to Neil and Oscar Peterson...apples and oranges). Anyway, this was his first recording and a major one by all accounts. In 1982, a week before he died, Gould made his final recording: a revisit of the same Goldberg Variations. Only it sounds almost nothing like the first one. The first shows a young kid with dazzling talent whipping off Baroque riffs which swing like a Jazz musicians. The final recording is that of an introspective mature musician who has nothing left to prove. He died a week later. WOW. Talk about symmetry! Wouldn't it be a coincidence if the word "symmetry" was a palindrome? Or is that Ironic? It would certainly be cool. How does a guy who writes blogs about Bach get to determine what Cool is?
I used to tell this story when I worked at Madrigal in Halifax because there's a double CD available which features both versions. It's a dope CD...I wasn't just telling this story to sell products. I hope one of my custumers is reading this so they know what a genuine young fella I was! Doubt it.
Next post will be about something mainstream. OMG did you hear singer Chris Brown Bobby Browned his girlfriend Rihanna?? Isn't that totally random?
OK I'm really done. Confirmed: Leafs lost; Bach is dead; Jerry lives.
It was a moment or so before you made your comment about why you are blogging, that I realized this is one of the primary reasons you seemed to be writing, and one of the main questions I have about my own writings.
ReplyDeleteOtherwise man, U did a pretty solid job of making Bach bearable.