J.S. Bach explained: Music analysis, Baroque history, counterpoint and performance practice. A classical music podcast for listeners who want to understand what they're hearing. Weekly history, Well-Tempered Clavier, Brandenburg Concertos, St. Matthew Passion, The Art of Fugue, Cello Suites, and more. Classical music education for all levels!
We’ve now covered the seven surviving earliest vocal works by Johann Sebastian Bach! This episode is a brief tour through the episodes we dedicated to these pieces, refreshing our memories and attempting to identify unifying stylistic features.
Here’s an image that might help you wrap your head around the earliest cantatas:
For the first time I spoke about Bach’s librettists. We will meet them as our study moves into the later cantatas. There are five identifiable poets, and one anonymous. What did you think about my mnemonic?
Solomon Franck (a.k.a Solomo)Erdmann NeumeisterGeorg Christian LehmsChristian Friedrich Henrici (a.k.a. Picander)Christiane Mariane von Ziegler
S-N-L-P-Z (Saturday Night Live PiZza…Anyone?)
And wasn’t it thrilling to hear the similarities of styles between the cantata composed by Bach’s third cousin, Johann Ludwig Bach, JLB 7, and BWV 143? The JLB cantata survives in a copy by JS himself. Have a look at JL. See the relation?
A new Telegram group is slowly forming! Singing through chorales and doing other cool Bachian things. Join here: https://t.me/+86a_lET5XKdmYTk0
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Summary:
Bach’s early cantatas, seven surviving works from his Arnstadt and Mühlhausen years (BWV 4, BWV 71, BWV 106, BWV 131, BWV 143, BWV 150 and BWV 196), are quite special works. Their texts use mainly the Psalms and Lutheran hymns rather than freely composed poetry. Instrumentation in these early cantatas is generally light: five of the seven use five parts or fewer, apart from the singers and continuo. Recitatives, closing chorales and da capo arias are almost entirely absent. The choir runs through the works rather than appearing only at the beginnings and endings. Tempi and meter shift freely, and suddenly, and the text appears to drive the music. We also conclude (or try to conclude) our thoughts on the authenticity of the cantata BWV 143. We also discuss the case of BWV 223, a fugue snippet left by Spitta, thought to be a lost Bach cantata until about 2004, but now attributed to Handel (and still missing? Anyone able to clear that up?)Performers featured were Koopman and Suzuki.
“The consummate expressiveness of {BWV 4] has always been marvelled at. Each verse is as if chiselled in music.” -Albert Schweitzer, Vol. 2
Bach’s early Easter cantata remains one of the most beloved in the entire canon. Barely 22 years old, he is already in full command of his tone-painting. Here are three measures particularly packed with symbolism:
Filling the music with rests at the word nothing, ‘one death eating another’ through the closest possible canon, crosses both in shape and every note ‘sharped’(gekreuzt,) dripping blood on the Passover doors with short 8th notes, leaping a diminished 12th (!) in the bass aria at the word death, this cantata is a dictionary of text painting.
…und singen Halleluja!
The chorale cantata was probably composed for Bach’s Easter Sunday audition in 1707 for the organist post at St. Blaise’s Church in Mühlhausen, left vacant by the death of Johann Georg Ahle. Bach’s older cousin, Johann Gottfried Walther, had an audition for the same post, but withdrew— possibly because Bach himself was interested! Later, Bach revived this cantata his first two Easters in Leipzig, 1724 and 1725. Only the Leipzig parts survive, hence the original 1707 version is lost. Any differences between the revised and earliest versions— which may have been substantial— are lost. In any case, the remaining style certainly reflects his early vocal writing par excellence.
The cantata is one of only a handful of per omnes versus cantatas, going through all seven verses of Martin Luther’s 1524 hymn text. Theologically, the text goes deeply into Lutheran ideas linking Jewish Passover— the blood-marked doorposts and unleavened bread— to Christian Easter, reading the Passover lamb as a prefiguration of Christ’s crucifixion and the Eucharist. Such deep theological reflection was something Bach understood and made apparent in tone.
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148: Ballooning! (Flying in the 18th Century)
mardi 15 septembre 2026 • Durée 28:10
Sometimes an article from the EB strikes me as so amusing, I simply have to share it with you. See you next week (or the week after, latest) for the conclusion of our early cantata survey, with Christ lag in Todes Banden, BWV 4. Thanks for listening!
Q: If, after you attended a Bach concert, someone told you that your favorite piece on the program was not, after all, by Bach… how would you feel?
Does this cantata actually fail to move us? Or does it fail to move us when we know its authenticity is up for debate? Can we truly hear some compositional weaknesses?
If we are to ascribe this music to Bach, it was probably from the years 1709-1711. No other cantatas from the period from his first years in Weimar (that is, before being promoted to concertmaster) survive. The early cantatas are occasional, sporadic, and very different to one another. Richard D. P. Jones says, on the extant early cantatas: “since at a later date Bach very likely came to regard these early works as outmoded—perhaps representing that ‘former style of music’ which ‘no longer seems to please our ears’—he seems to have made no attempt to preserve them, with the result that the few that survive do so by accident.”
Jones himself excludes this cantata from the canon, but, on the subject of authenticity, admits there must be some subjectivity when making such cuts: “No less thorny is the issue of authenticity. … There are inevitably borderline cases, however, and in this area the author has had to make up his own mind as to which compositions merit inclusion and which do not.” Among other scholars— as far as I can tell— this cantata’s authenticity is still up for debate.
Oh, Bach’s Art. The Prelude to my Heart.
Fun fact! If this indeed is Bach ca. 1709, that would make movement 3 the first recitativo in Bach’s works. It’s only five measures long!
I neglected to mention the text in the movements where Du Friedefürst Herr Jesu Christ is the cantus firmus, these are stanzas 1 and 3, sung in movements 2 and 7, respectively:
You prince of peace, Lord Jesus Christ,
true man and true God,
you are a strong helper in distress,
in life and death.
Therefore we only
in your name
cry to your Father!
Be mindful, Lord, now of your office,
that you are a prince of peace,
and graciously help us in all ways
now at this time.
Grant that henceforth
your divine word
may resound still longer in peace!
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146: Toccata’s Twin! Double Fugue in F
mardi 1 septembre 2026 • Durée 01:03:53
Forever paired with the giant Toccata BWV 540, it’s unlikely the two were conceived together. Still, owing to certain sources and the fact that this fugue is a dignified and stately complement to the capricious toccata, the pairing works delightfully.
Now, is this the fugue, BWV 540? Or which piece is this?
And is this not the same music?
Top: Italian Concerto. Bottom: today’s fugue. Seeing such similar vocabulary is as thrilling as it is remarkably rare in Bach’s works.
Wow. That Fugue!
Here are the fugue’s two contrasting themes. The first, slow moving, noble:
The second, carefree and playful:
They combine toward the end of the piece to marvelous effect:
A complete version of the MIDI synths in the episode (Headphones are best! I found it quite relaxing.)
I said I would attach the MIDI files, but Substack won’t allow it. If you leave a comment or send me a DM, I’ll send them over. Thanks!
Bach married his second cousin, Maria Barbara, on October 17, 1707, in St. Bartholomäi’s Church (pictured in the cover image) in a charming little village called Dornheim. They were both 22. According to Spitta, some eight months later, Bach and Maria returned to that same church to attend the wedding of the man who had officiated their own: Johann Lorenz Stauber. J.S. Bach carried with him the parts to a cantata, and this work was heard for the first time in June, 1708.
…or so the legend goes. Modern scholarship calls Spitta’s anecdote into question, but in any case, Der Herr denket an uns BWV 196, is one of Bach’s earliest vocal works.
Despite being from the same period as the other cantatas we recently covered, the work might show more outward signs of being similar to Bach’s later cantatas: we get a da capo aria for the first time, and the choruses only figure into the first and last movements. We see no sudden shifts of tempo, and movements are clear cut. The only abrupt change of texture comes in the second movement:
‘The lord blesses us.’ Segnet uns. Bach will set the word ‘bless’ differently in every movement. Notice how the soprano soloist amplifies the Lord’s blessings:
Despite these examples, the cantata fails to impress us the same way his other early cantatas do. Instead, we take joy in the fugal writing in the outer movements. The finale of the opening chorus is a fugue where the subject is never absent. A glance at a few pages shows this:
The closing movement features a fugue with two subjects on the word, Amen! I called the first theme the ‘stomping theme’ and the second theme the ‘climbing theme’ —whatever helps you understand the distinct shapes. When looking for wedding ideas to back up Spitta’s story (though we must be aware of confirmation bias!) I might see the musical representation of two separate figures, always appearing together, never one without the other:
Bach adds a classic ‘early Bach’ touch at the end, ending the entire cantata piano, disappearing with a whisper:
Write That Fugue!
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144: Why (And How) I Became An Organist
mardi 18 août 2026 • Durée 25:36
Opsimath Organist
My first trip to Germany (I was 21) I walked into a church in Weimar and heard— by beautiful coincidence— an unseen organist play Bach’s Passacaglia and Fugue, BWV 582. This was a piece I heard for the first time only a year before. I remember exactly in which chair I first heard it. If the Chaconne is Bach’s universe tightly wound into a handheld box, the Passacaglia is a different vision of the same, exploding through thousands of pipes. It is a piece you cannot overlook when thinking of the crowning achievements in Bach’s career.
At 21, I knew Bach was Bach, but I hadn’t yet dedicated myself to him fully. Even so, I knew Bach’s organ works could be the supreme solo musical activity: the most complete musical experience had by a single person. Think about it: it’s making music with all four limbs, drumming on multiple keyboards. The soundboard of this instrument is a church.
But I was a pianist, not an organist. At that young age, I had already excluded myself from being able to participate in certain musical activities. Why? Where did I get this notion?
Knowing your limitations is healthy in many areas of life, but in music— especially young musicians— you should know: your potential is unlimited. I don’t know how or why one draws the line at what a student can and cannot do, why some teachers restrain enthusiasm, or make students feel limited to certain areas from a young age. I’d guess it’s a mixture of abuse and a fear of money.
Abuse is handed down: the teacher was told they can’t do X, soon the student learns to stay away from X. ‘It deepens like a continental shelf.’
We glorify abuse on the screen: teachers inflicting suffering so the student may rise stronger after being broken… but this makes for a good film— not a good life. To actually teach like this is nothing more than sophisticated child abuse. As I’ve said on the show in my ‘advice to musical teens,’ if you ever find a teacher who leaves you feeling worthless or unhappy with music, leave that teacher immediately. There is no reason why a musical education shouldn’t be full of joy and happiness and discovery. Yes, hard work, too, but under the right teacher, hard work can be a joy, not a punishment.
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143: Special Guest, Emma Smith (University of Oxford)
mardi 11 août 2026 • Durée 01:02:53
“For something to be relevant, is it outside of time, or is it somehow speaking to us directly, now?” -Emma Smith
Today’s guest is Emma Smith! Professor of Shakespeare studies at the University of Oxford. We discuss the Brook and the Bard, what do they have in common? Are there shared philosophies that helped these two figures to become the most influential in their fields?Hope you enjoy the episode! Here are the some things we chatted about:
Parallel career arcs — Both Bach and Shakespeare moved from early imitations of their predecessors through mature masterpieces around the same ages, to unprecedented later styles. They both produced under frequent and practical deadline pressure (the liturgical calendar, the playhouse schedule.)
Authorial impersonality, Lack of biographies — Both ‘empty themselves’ into their work rather than projecting a personal voice. Is it this lack of biographical narrative that allows us to see an entire universe?
Shakespeare authorship question — There have been attempts to deny both of their work, respectively the ‘works of doubtful authenticity’ by Bach, or a complete attempt to deny that William Shakespeare was William Shakespeare.
Revisions, Fair Copies — Bach wrote his music ‘straight through,’ achieving near perfect copies from the first draft. Shakespeare is said to have done the same.
Memorization and production practices — How long did it take Burbage to memorize Hamlet the first time? Roles via verse rhythm, and the use of scribe-copied ‘cue scripts,’ referenced through the mechanicals’ scene in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
The Sonnets — Sonnet 126’s missing couplet, wordplay on ‘Will,’ and W.H. Auden’s claim that Shakespeare was embarrassed by their 1609 publication.
Textual corruption by editors — We are such stuff as dreams are made on …or is it, of?! Twelfth Night‘s ‘’ vs. ‘ frailty.’ Editorial bias in both, overriding the original as we sometimes see even in the .
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142: Monster Toccata in F, BWV 540
mardi 4 août 2026 • Durée 58:13
About four years ago I made an episode about Bach’s ‘longest’ piece:
Somehow I missed a piece which should definitely be in contention for his ‘longest.’ At 437 measures, the Toccata in F, BWV 540, is (I think!)the longest stretch of Bach’s music, in terms of measures. It probably also holds the record for longest single note. Take a look at page one— an inanimate object could play the pedal part on page one:
From easiest pedal page, to tap-dancing nightmare, the feet on the very next page:
…and all that happens twice. What a piece! Over 170 measures of pedal drones and pedal ballet before this piece finally gets modulating. An arpeggio motif (what I call the spiral in the episode) gets passed through each voice, high to low:
These arpeggios occur in all major keys but one, and many minor keys. How’s this for tonally exhaustive?
Bach eludes the expectations of the listener three times in stunning deceptive cadences, after which, the B-A-C-H motif appears (in transposition) in the pedals:
If you play this piece, you’ll face the issue of whether or not to play the high D. The organs lacked this high D, but did Bach want this effect anyhow?
Thanks for listening. Thank you for tuning in. I think you’ll be blown away by today’s piece, perhaps the longest piece. What is Bach’s Longest Piece and His Shortest? Probably not, but what I was really After was the longest uninterrupted stretch of music. So it seems like you could count that in two ways. The longest amount of measures or the longest amount of beats. And as I found going through the entire oeuvre or trying to count every single... There are a half dozen pieces that contain over 400 measures, and that’s massive, massive in terms of measures or bars, but all of these pieces are in the quick meter of 3.8. So if it’s actually pulses we’re after, then you see any piece that’s in 4.4 has more than twice the amount of beats than a piece in 3.8. So I don’t understand how to count this. This whole exercise became very superfluous and probably not very meaningful, but I did forget. Somehow I missed this one piece, today’s piece, this Toccata, that actually does, I think, I think unless I’m missing another one, this actually does have the most measures in any piece of Bach. It is 437 bars long. That’s a full 10 bars longer than the previous record holder, the piece that I thought had the most measures in that episode from 2022. But this piece, this Toccata, also holds some very interesting... This has the longest pedal point, I believe, the longest single sustained note in all of Bach’s music. If you look at the first page, I will show the image in the Substack description, you’ll see the first This page is nothing but a giant pedal point. Your left foot is stuck down to this pedal note, holding a note for 54 measures. That’s longer than most pieces, 54 measures. And here you are just holding one note. If you play the piano, for example, if you’re not comfortable playing with your feet on the organ, but if you do want... To feel the experience of playing one and a half pages of Bach’s organ music with not much trouble, start here. Your left foot just simply holds one note for one and a half pages. So this is the Toccata in F Major, BWV 540. It belongs to a Toccata in Fugue. We’ll do the Toccata today, the Fugue later. But here I want to zoom out. I tried to make this episode last week. I don’t know, I was working half the day and it just sort of fell apart. I try my best to be like a storyteller with Bach and for some reason my narrative was off. It just sounded like I was saying and then this happens and then this happens and then this happens and then this happens. Even I was losing the plot. I listened back to it and I was sort of overwhelmed. So I scrapped the entire episode and I’m starting again from a new vantage point. So sorry for no episode last Tuesday. That’s why. Let’s try this. This piece, this giant piece of 437 measures is a conversation between two shapes. One is short and the other is a long shape. So heading over to the organ here, the short shape is like this. This is an arpeggio or a spiral. It’s brief. And it will come in many different keys. The longer shape is more snake-like. It’s like this. You’ll be amazed to see how long this snake can grow. The conversation of these two ideas lasts for 437 measures of essentially an uninterrupted stream of 16th notes, a gigantic river of these 16th notes stopping only a few times to be punctuated with some really stubborn 8th note chords like this. These eighth note chords will sort of be alarmingly halting. It’s like when you’re on a long run or a long bike ride or something and then you have to stop at a crosswalk. That’s how this feels. But those three things are the entire piece. If you can hold on to those three things, you’ll be fine while listening to this piece. So it’s the spiral, the snake, and the eighth notes. You might be asking, but what about the pedal points? Well, this piece is flanked by those pedal points. Two giant pedal points, which began the piece, and two shorter pedal points, which end the piece. And in between, we have the fast succession of those three Those three ideas don’t really get talking until well into the middle of the piece. So now, like Milton, I’m going to start in medias res, in the middle of things. I’m going to start at bar 176, where the short shape... It comes in for the first time, and I’m going to play only the sixteenth notes of the short and long shapes. You can hear how this piece is that constant stream of sixteenth notes, and I’ll play the stubborn eighth note chords when they come in. This is like an outline. It’s everything that happens in the piece, and then we’ll go back and fill it in. The short shape in the pedals. Soprano, alto, tenor, pedals. Again, soprano, alto, tenor, Pedals. Again. Pedals. One more time. Maybe two more times. Pedals. Soprano. Alto. Tenor. A bit longer. Now here are the eighth notes.
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Classical Music ...Robots.
mardi 21 juillet 2026 • Durée 07:20
PG-13 Warning
Songs Without Lungs
Of course I’m not worried about AI replacing me. I’m a pianist. No one will ever pay to watch robots perform.
And then we met Sophia.
That’s right. Earlier this year, with the Baptist University Symphony Orchestra in Hong Kong, a robot took the stage and ‘sang.’ She’s called Sophia. She seems so human with a name like Sophia. Much better than C-137. I’m less likely to confuse her with a robot now that she’s called Sophia.
In what was dubbed her ‘first classical music performance,’ (Oh goodie, there will be more!) Sophia wore gold sequins and drove on and offstage. Her ‘head,’ made of skin-like rubber, doesn’t have any hair. In fact, the entire top of her head is transparent, revealing circuit boards beneath, as if to remind the audience, ‘Look! It’s a robot!’
She has eyes that close when she’s ‘feeling the music’ and little ears that I don’t think have holes in them …Probably not important for a musician to have good ears…
Going into classical music, I was told: I had to love it so much, I’d be okay if the rest of the world didn’t understand. I was told that a mere 1 in 10,000 succeed, I was told that staying home and practicing, instead of joining in the camaraderie of other children, I’d be rewarded in the long run.
Today I’d probably say the same things to my own child. Only now I’d add, …oh, you might have to compete with robots.
Classical musicians already have precarious careers: I’d hate to learn I’d been bumped by a robot. But— and this isn’t me wishing for an upgrade— Sophia doesn’t sing with air and a mouth. No, that’s currently too complicated. Instead, music pumped through speakers while her ‘mouth’ moves.
And the music? At least tell me it was AI Verdi, or Robot Mussorgski: It was nothing at all like classical music: Sophia’s voice is autotuned and the only thing that resembled classical music was the human orchestra behind Sophia, led by a human conductor, frantically beating time for the primitive humans— frantically beating any thoughts out of his head that might run something like, ‘…a robot, I’m okay with this, I’m conducting a robot…’
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PS! Shelly conveniently does in fact quote the biblical, ‘O Death, where is thy sting?’ but the poem I was thinking of was Pope’s, The Dying Christian to his Soul:
VITAL spark of heav’nly flame!Quit, O quit this mortal frame:Trembling, hoping, ling’ring, flying,O the pain, the bliss of dying!Cease, fond Nature, cease thy strife,And let me languish into life.
Hark! they whisper; angels say,Sister Spirit, come away!What is this absorbs me quite?Steals my senses, shuts my sight,Drowns my spirits, draws my breath?Tell me, my soul, can this be death?
The world recedes; it disappears!Heav’n opens on my eyes! my earsWith sounds seraphic ring!Lend, lend your wings! I mount! I fly!O Grave! where is thy victory?O Death! where is thy sting?
Concepts covered: The 3 corno da caccia in this cantata, the difference between natural horn and corni da caccia, the authenticity of this cantata, the early cantatas pre-weimar, word painting, text settings from Psalm 146, and hymns, Bach’s earliest recitativo.
The performance of Inssbruck, ich muss dich lassen can be heard here (there is one other verse!)
Bach's Cantata BWV 196, Der Herr denket an uns (The Lord Thinks of Us), one of only seven surviving cantatas from Bach’s earliest period. The traditional story behind the piece — Bach wrote it as a wedding gift for the pastor who had officiated his own marriage to Maria Barbara — and examines why modern scholarship casts doubt on that account, since the text itself doesn't clearly point to a wedding occasion. Bach draws his libretto directly from Psalm 115, making this one of the textually simplest cantatas in his early output, how a single rising melodic motif ties together the Sinfonia, arias, and choruses. Bach's word painting on the recurring word "bless" (segnet), walks through the construction of the cantata's central choral fugue, and highlights the soprano aria's use of da capo form — possibly the earliest example of that structure in Bach's output. Vokaleinbau ‘vocal insertion’ might be used here for the first time. The cantata's final movement, a double fugue built on two contrasting ‘Amen’ subjects, other early stylistic features and analysis.
One objects, saying a line must be drawn early in order to mold the student into an employable musician. “You should focus on only one instrument, kid.” In an era of specialization, this seems almost necessary. But is the ultimate goal of music a job? Money? A c-a-r-e-e-r? My colleagues reading this can confirm that many of us in the business have lost the spark that initially made us want to become musicians.
But I won’t harp on the perils of ‘building a career’ or the traumatic musical upbringing I experienced. I want to focus on how, during my few decades in music, I have time and time again doubted my abilities, only to find that there was no reason for doing so. Rather than passing the blame, I’d like to revisit these moments and focus on how I overcame such a crippling emotion.
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Transposition
I remember learning a concerto when I was 16 or so— probably Mozart or Beethoven, and I was trying to memorize a section that happened earlier, only now it was in a new key. I explained to my father that, could I transpose, I wouldn’t have to struggle to learn the passage more than once— if I had the type of mind that could transpose. He shrugged and said, ‘so learn how to transpose’ and walked away.
That made me mad. What an idiot! I thought. One can’t learn such things. Some are born with the gift of transposition, I wasn’t.
Why I thought this at such a young age is a bit sad and confusing (and I’ll resist launching into a rant about how, if a student is advanced enough to play Beethoven, transposing should be something they learned long ago.) For whatever reason, in my mind, I couldn’t transpose.
Of course, one does learn how to do such things, and I did— even if it was nearly a decade later. One starts with little things: simple melodies, popular songs, dances… For me the major turning point came when I stopped seeing harmonies as ‘E-flat Major’ or ‘d minor’ but rather as numbers, positions, relations to other chords, ‘this is the sub-dominant’ or ‘this is a whole-step down.’ The name of the chord is meaningless but its number is full of meaning.
At one point, transposing seemed unreachable, unimaginable. But one can always learn the most complicated musical thing if you are completely focused on the specific goal for a very long time. I kept a fortune cookie in my nightstand when I was a boy because I thought the image was hilarious, not because I found meaning— but how wise it seems now! ‘If enough people bang their heads on a brick wall, the wall will eventually fall down.’
Rock, and other genres of music
The next big obstacle in my thinking came at Juilliard, when my roommate, a jazz musician who was more into the NYC rock scene, asked me to cover for the keyboardist in his punk band. Not only had I never played any music besides classical music, I knew I couldn’t play any other music. (I wonder if the arrogance I had developed about classical music as the ‘pure’ art, was fear masking my inability to partake in any form of more social music. I wonder if this is the arrogance of many…) Whatever the case, my roommate didn’t have my personal obstacles in his head. He didn’t see any reason why I wouldn’t make for a fine punk keyboardist.
While most of the songs never had more than a few chords, and there’s nothing ‘technical’ to play, rock music was an absolute education. Never learned from sheet music, finding where and how to improvise, finding a ‘feel’ that is unlike anything in classical music, this was a new world for me that influenced the way I think about music to this day. Again, there was an initial stage of feeling stupid, both musically and socially: all of this can make you feel out of place, but pushing past this doesn’t take very long.
Rock music opened up other genres to me, bluegrass, jazz… my forays into these genres helped develop my ear. I learned to play the accordion because I wanted to play with my friends who played bluegrass outside. (The accordion, by the way, expanded my mind: the left side is buttons, organized by circle of fifths. The right side is a normal keyboard. When I realized this is because harmony, the left side, doesn’t move by step like melodies, but moves by fifths, I was forever changed.) I ended up touring with some bands for a few years, playing in settings that undoubtedly made me a better classical musician. If you can handle people spilling beer on you, you can handle an audience clearing their throats.
Why I had assumed I couldn’t play rock is maybe not so bad as why I assumed I shouldn’t play rock. Both ideas were built into my identity as a pianist. When I was in the van, driving to grungy venues, playing for $13 a show, when my instrument was missing two of few of the plastic keys it had, was I a pianist?
Giant, impossible Bach
The next large hurdle deals with those activities that a pianist should do, namely, memorize large amounts of music. When I had heard of Paul Jacob’s triumphant marathon playing the complete organ works, my immediate thought was, ‘I could never do something like that.’ My reaction to Paul’s achievement was one of instant self-doubt. Had someone shrugged like my father, and said, ‘so memorize all of Bach’ I would have said, again, what an idiot!
I hadn’t set out to achieve any goal: my marathon started small, with a single volume of The Well-Tempered Clavier., and I didn’t set out to memorize that either, but after two years playing selections in concert, I realized I had performed most of Book Two. Could I memorize all 48? There are rumors of pianists having had all 48 from memory, could I join that club? This was something I never imagined I could do, in fact when I played my first prelude and fugue at 16, I was told it was already too late.
A year later and I had done just that. Looking at the density of the counterpoint, I was quite convinced that I had memorized some of Bach’s most complex music, so would the suites come easier? Another year, I had all the suites, the next, all the partitas, on and on until about eight years later, I had memorized Bach’s near-complete keyboard works. I celebrated by playing everything in six five-day, five-hour cycles at the first Bach Store.
Were my past self to look at this accomplishment, I’m quite sure he’d say, ‘I could never do something like that.’ This is because it really does look impossible —but it isn’t! It might take nearly ten yearsof fairly constant dedication, but that time is the blink of an eye, and such discipline stays with you forever.
Pianist or keyboardist?
I was having an identity crisis: was I a pianist? Or was I into Bach? Are these ideas mutually exclusive? How could I consider myself ‘into Bach’ if I wasn’t familiar with his instruments? Yes, Bach on the piano is a miracle, but a Bach pianist sounds sort of like hypocrisy.
I started small: I was given a clavichord by a lovely lady who hadn’t ever used it but as a table. I brought it home and, within seconds— this is an accurate measurement, not an exaggeration— I realized the way I had been fingering Bach and other early music wouldn’t work on such an instrument. Could it be, I asked, that our modern approach would have been completely foreign to Bach? This instant lesson from a clavichord put me in the middle of a dark forest.
I set out to tune the clavichord, but I didn’t have a hammer so I used pliers. I broke strings which distressed me immensely at first, but later became a blessing: the world of instrument repair is not something most pianists are familiar with, but it was a world that Bach knew intimately. Learning how to wind a tuning peg, how to tie hitch pin loops, these are skills that put me in direct touch with an older world of musicians who knew how to care and look after their instruments. This gave my musicianship a feeling of competence I never knew about. Again, I wonder, is the disdain with which pianists look down on the humble life of a piano tuner a fear of not knowing how to tune their own piano?
Now, the clavichord is a nice transition for pianists because one can still inflect, it is very much like a delicate piano, but the harpsichord is utterly foreign. So was I pianist or Bachian?
I went to France to study harpsichord. I am also the proud owner of a harpsichord which I now know how to maintain, tune, repair, voice, even build parts of. But this began with real sadness and frustration, wondering why I’d put myself through such trials. Feeling like a beginner again, and telling myself ‘I can never be a harpsichordist… it’s too late! It’s too late to learn.’ All the skills I now possess began to the sad tune of ‘I can’t do this.’
I was wrong!
The king of instruments
Once, I was shown into an organ loft where I could go and play for however long I liked. This is a life changing experience— seriously. I urge every musician reading to go into that church you’ve never been in, and ask to play the organ. Even if you can’t play anything but a chord, pull out all the stops and play that chord. You’re not going to break the organ, you’re not being rude. Put yourself in the thick of all that power and you’ll see it is no accidental nickname, ‘the king of instruments.’
I used those few hours to figure out what all the buttons and levers do, playing one stop at a time, completely overwhelmed by the physical vibrations— simply stunned by the force and the arrangement of all the pipes. To sit in the middle of such a machine is awesome. Some readers won’t know that organ pipes are often arranged in a ‘stereo’ fashion, where one pipe is placed on the far left, and the closest half-step is on the complete other side of the loft. So, playing a chromatic scale sounds as if each note is alternating from ear to ear — this is an amazing sensation that should be experienced by every musician.
With my interest piqued, but still saddened that I was born ‘pianist,’ I must have mentioned my identity crisis to my wife, who, not plagued by my crippling self-doubt, simply walked into the local London church and mentioned my curiosity. (Nothing anybody could have done for me could have been kinder.) Suddenly I had an instrument!
When I first met with the local organist, I assumed he would be a genius like Paul or Helmut Walcha. Again, self-doubt convinced me that I could never measure up to the musicianship of an organist, even the local church organist, but it didn’t take long before I saw that, while he certainly had more physical ease at the instrument, there was little apart from this physicality he could teach me.
The local organist was also timid in making repairs on the 250-year-old instrument, but I, from my work with harpsichords and clavichords, was not shy. Soon enough I found myself on the inside of the instrument, tuning flue pipes, voicing reeds, replacing trackers, fixing an organ— feeling deeply connected to Bach. Would my 16-year-old self have adored or despised this vision of me, covered in century-old dust, gently tapping pipes into tune?
As for my playing with my feet, I spent only a week or 10 days in London every month. Any progress, therefore, disappeared quickly. I had the same frustrating experience many times: becoming comfortable playing the bass with the feet— not the left hand, a mental gymnastic that must be very familiar to keyboardists. Even after months of practice, this would still take some 24 hours to ‘click.’ By the third day, I had dusted off my brain and was ready to get my legs into shape. Maybe five days later, I was playing organ music— some of it even convincingly! The first time I played, fluently, even the simplest Bach organ piece brought me to tears. Why had I rated such a skill as beyond me? Why don’t other pianists know how to do this? Why did no one encourage this?! What is wrong with the world of music? Playing one page of Bach’s organ music for yourself is worth so much more than a life onstage! Why…?! Why…!?
But then, my sojourn done, I couldn’t practice for another three weeks. Progress faded, improvement was slow. I doubted I would ever be able to play the great masterpieces.
This frustrating period of two years came to an end when my wife and I settled. I bought an organ console. In addition I was given access (and instantly became the local organist) to several churches in nearby towns (the UK is great for that.)
My progress exploded. I had daily access and no excuses now. I began tracking my progress meticulously, noting which pieces I was learning and how fast I could play them. Gradually, as if I were a teenager again, I increased the speed week to week. Since my very first years of learning music, I hadn’t ever permitted myself to go so slowly, to really sound as if I were a complete beginner.
My birthday present to myself
These days, I meet weekly with another organist in the area and we trade ideas about registration (which combinations of stops to pull) which is an endless art, even on the small organ where we meet. One can never forget the comment about Bach pulling ‘the most unexpected combinations of stops to the organ builder’s horror, but, once heard, they found the most agreeable tones.’ Two weeks ago, after I played the ‘wedge’ prelude and fugue— already a huge accomplishment for me— without saying anything, the organist flipped a few pages to the Passacaglia. I laughed in disbelief— still so full of self-doubt!
I went home and began learning it at a very slow tempo. A tempo, by the way, that was already nearly three times what I’d have needed just to get through the notes those first days in London: I used to practice at 20 BPM to the 8th note! There are no shortcuts to learning something new.
Learning the Passacaglia, it dawned on me: it was two months before my 40th birthday. I am going to perform the Passacagliaand Fugue before I’m 40. This is where it was all leading. My life, my goals, my work, my passion… I, was going to be that unseen organist in Weimar I heard nearly 20 years before. I was going to travel back, travel through time and pay a visit to my old self, head full of ambitious Beethoven-based goals, and I would drop this orhwurm in his head.
What’s more important, fame or your health?
Objection: Who has the time to work on such difficult goals in the first place? After all, I’ve got to learn the Nellinini quintet-fantasy next week! I can’t just play organ music in slow motion for months!
I read a line in the Tao Teh Ching, ‘What’s more important? Fame or your health?’ This line saw right through me, attacked me, really. It unsettled me but I didn’t know why. I was focused on the conventional path in music: learn big programs, win this award, get this management, A+B+C = career. This is, after all, the way we are told careers happen, unlock one door, then the next one, then the next.
But Lao Tze pierced me. Fame or health? What!? Is it a dilemma? He was staring at me with the same eye-twinkle only the enlightened can give you. I suddenly realized why this line upset me: how could I possibly choose fame over health? Health, meaning mental health, meaning going deeply into all that keeps you sane and happy.
I had (and continue to have) an inner debate about success and validation— are they the same? Can I be fulfilled accomplishing things I value, or would I be happier reaching goals that other people can see: awards, reputable venues, playing with famous people. Or maybe I don’t value the right things? What you personally call success, vs. what the ‘business’ calls it, these might not be mutually exclusive, but for many of my colleagues— and maybe for Lao Tze— they are. There seemed to be a distinct line between what musicians wanted to be doing, and what they were doing. I’ve heard a depressing amount of times, sentiment like, ‘of course I’d rather stay home and play Bach all day!’ But my colleagues were concerned with an image, or a sort of relevance to their community. Of course they wanted to hole up in a cabin for three years, learning exactly the music they most loved, but when they emerged, the business would have passed them by…
But what is this business? I’ve had some colleagues rise to world fame, while others dropped off the face of the earth, and the musicianship, the talent, the hard work, none of that seemed to match proportionally. I was unsettled by the notion of ‘fame’ being something through which others view you, whereas ‘health’ was how the self views the self. ‘Career success’ could emerge or disappear suddenly and without warning, but ‘inner success?’ That would never disappear.
Committing to those ideas which meant inner success, dedicating myself to goals that meant ‘health,’ this required the boldest act of leaving self-doubt behind: it meant trusting that I alone could be the judge of my own success, not other people. I’d never trade my ability to play the organ for a concert at Carnegie Hall. And anyhow, if Carnegie Hall is a reflection of the truth in any way, the people who dig deepest into themselves will play there more often than those who pursue the tired avenues of competition, management, labels…
Opsimath organist
Learning the organ has been the hardest thing I can remember doing. It has taken me back to the beginnings of learning music. I have felt the same states of wonder I felt at nine years old, when I looked at a clef, wondering how it works, counting ledger lines looking for an answer, or writing in one fingering and crossing it out five minutes later. I have sat witnessing my brain form new trenches, uncovering strange habits. I found various rhythms between feet and hands that my body simply refused to do, as if I only just realized I can’t pat my head and rub my belly. These basic problems required such slowing down that I embarrassed my brain by watching how slowly the body was learning.
I feel like I’ve lived a second musical education. In this time, I’ve been able to look back on the organ repertoire as I looked at pieces in my childhood: they looked so much bigger back then! Certain measures of the organ repertoire made my jaw drop at the mere thought of being able to play them. Now I play some of them without thinking. So what am I? Where has all this doubt led me? To an organist? A pianist? A harpsichordist?
I won’t pretend I am as proficient on the organ as I am on the piano or harpsichord, but after all, I’ve only been seriously practicing for 13 months! But this experience has, above everything, affirmed that I can and, should I continue to set lofty goals — goals which at one point I would have deemed impossible— I will.
I performed the Passacaglia (from memory! Thanks, Paul!) two days before my birthday on a program of other organ music no organist would sneeze at. But my next goals are bigger, my next goals I currently think are impossible. Impossible: that is the place to start.
Cross-gender performance — Cross dressing is hilarious in the comedies, but is there a comic element to men playing female tragic roles? Smith mentions Henry Jackson’s eyewitness account of an Othello performance describing Desdemona with female pronouns.
Religion in the work — Finally, a contrast between Bach’s Lutheranism and Shakespeare’s religiously ambiguous work, was Shakespeare a Protestant son of a possibly Catholic father, or was he a Catholic through and through?
Nowhere’s a surprising chord. Very surprising chord. Again, more spirals. Now here’s our long shape. First time we have the long shape from top to bottom. Into the pedals. Now eighth notes. And the snake. Right hand. Into the left hand. Into the pedals. Climbing up. And now conversation. Left hand. Right hand. Now pedals and left hand. Two lines together. We’re coming out of the snake into the spiral. Here starts the spiral. Soprano, Alto, Tenor, Pedals. Soprano, Alto, Tenor, Pedals. We’re modulating through all kinds of keys again. E major, pedals, all the way to the top. Soprano, Alto, a longer line now. Eighth notes again, here they are. No weird chord, no weird chord, straight into the snake. Left hand, pedals. Right hand. Pedals, left hand, right hand and pedals, two at the same time. Left hand, right hand, we’re coming out of the snake into the spirals again. Soprano, alto, tenor, pedals, over and over. Again, soprano, pedals. Soprano once more. Here come the eighth notes. And we are going to have a strange chord. How strange? Spirals. More spirals. And now the snake from top to left hand to pedals. Eighth notes, now the snake in the pedals. In the right hand. In the left hand. The conversation, right hand. Pedals, now two, right hand and left hand. Now here’s the craziest scale you’ve ever heard. Coming out of the snake into the spiral. Soprano. Alto. Alto. Tenor. Pedals, you get it by now. Soprano. One more time, and then all of a sudden we find ourselves here in B-flat major in the subdominant, and this is our penultimate pedal point. So we’re back to the pedal points that flank the entire piece. That is a lot, right? But that is the dark meat of the piece. After this, these pedal points that surround it are just pure joy, just fluffy dessert surrounding that very dense nutrition. Imagine playing this music over the grave. No pressure, no pressure, just Bach is buried beneath, probably listening to all your mistakes. I’m going to play the parts I just dissected and see if you can identify the three motifs at play, the eighth notes, which Those are the easiest to hear, you can’t miss those really. The spiral, the arpeggios, going from soprano to alto to tenor to pedals, a little easier to hear. And the snake motif, these longer lines, can you hear that too? Any music that you think, hmm, I’m not sure which music that is, that’s the snake. Weaving his way in and out of all the parts, sometimes you can see him darting under the grass, appearing from behind the alto lines, sneaking under the tenor. And with that small amount of stasis, that B-flat pedal point, we get to the penultimate pedal point again, and we are now out of the thick of the piece. That is more than half the piece. By the way, what excellent playing, what an amazing interpretation of this piece, this Ulrich Böhm. I suppose if you’re going to be the organist in the church where Bach worked, you’d better know how to play that thing. Just a few things that I want to point our attention to. We’ve heard twice, and we will hear a third time when I finally play the ending. This sneaky chord, this ultra-deceptive cadence. These moments, you obviously think the music will go... No, Bach says... Fake out. They are intriguing in and of themselves, just these... On those very moments there, on the very elusive note in the pedal, the four upcoming notes in the pedal are this. Yes, those of you who have been listening for a while recognize that as the B-A-C-H motif. It occurs in transposition in every instance. The first one we hear, A flat, G, B. The second one, Db, C, Eb, D. And the last one we haven’t heard yet because it comes so very close to the end. Cb, Bb, Db, C natural. So we have a possible signature here, although I don’t like to think of it as a signature because Bach’s own name in music, when he spells it out, it’s so highly chromatic. To think that Bach would write chromatic music and not be signing his name is also equally plausible. But indeed, there you have on those deceptive chords a B-A-C-H in the pedals. It has been seen throughout history. The second thing I want to point out is the range of the keyboard. It goes to a high C. All the organs in Bach’s day have this C as the limit, thus the D up here is not there. We have the D in harpsichord music, but the organs generally stop at this high C, so this means one particular passage here, these chords. That’s a high D up there. Modern editors will think that, well, Bach was limited by this C, this high C, so he really wanted to compose this. This high D up there. But he couldn’t, so he had to write this. I don’t know. I mean, they’re both very convincing. Herr Böhm, just in his recording there, played it as is written, not going up the octave. So what do you like? Here are the two options. That would be the modern edition. And here’s actually what’s on the page. Right, intriguing, isn’t it? It’s like you start thinking, well, maybe in fact Bach really didn’t want the octave transposition. Maybe Bach knew exactly what he was doing. And maybe that sort of opposite effect, instead of going as he does in every other instance, maybe he wanted this. Maybe he really wanted that shape. So just as the deceptive cadence, that highly deceptive cadence in the B-A-C-H motif came three times, another idea comes three times that I want to draw your attention to. And there being really three staves of organ music, your right hand, your left hand, and your feet, there are these three parts that Bach will juggle around. You’ve got two lines at a time, so you begin with your left hand and your pedals playing in parallels like this. So we have two lines singing together. But on top of that, you have this line very melodiously. Altogether. So what I’ll do now, just because I love showing you different lines in different areas of your speaker, I will play, I suppose, this sighing motif in both your speakers, but I will separate the other two lines in your other two speakers. So here’s the first time that it happens where the sighing motif is taken in the right hand. Okay, I’m going to redo that because I think I confused myself. The right hand will be in the right speaker, your left hand will be in your left speaker, and your pedals will be between both speakers. So let me try that again. The sign motif first appears in your right speaker, and let me just speed that up just a bit. Okay, better. Now, the sign motif is in your left speaker, therefore in your left hand, you’re playing the parallel snake figure between your right hand and the pedals. Here we go again. I don’t know if this is educational or just kind of sounding cool, hopefully a bit of both. Here is the last iteration when you will hear in both speakers now and the snake figure in different speakers, so one snake on your right, one snake on your left, and the pedal sighing figure between both speakers. Last iteration. Okay, and then if you’re looking at the score, this is bar 348. I mentioned something on the way through when it was dissected that this was the craziest scale you’ve ever heard. Why is this so crazy? It sounds like this. It’s taken in the feet. Why does that sound so weird? If I say the note names aloud, we hear a scale, D, E, F sharp, G, A, B flat, right? It sounds like D, E, F sharp, G, A, B flat. Bach says, you know, it’s not enough to write a scale. No, how about every other note is taken the octave below. So instead of D, E, I’ll go D, E. And then instead of F, G, I’ll go F, G. Instead of A, B, I’ll go A, B. And the result is that a shape which sounds to your ear like this comes out like this. How amazing, how amazing is that? Transformed into... We might have to hear that on the synthesizer because this has so many overtones in the organ that I’m not quite getting that beautiful and highly innovative effect. Normal scale. Bach scale. Amazing. Just incredible. We could apply that principle to any melody, like if I were to play this one. And drop every other note down the octave, it would sound something like... Harder than that seems. Good brain exercise, by the way. But yeah, just take a simple shape and drop every other note down the octave and you get... Yes, indeed, the Bach scale.
Okay, now that we’ve got into the meat of the piece, we’ve had our vegetables, we can enjoy the dessert, which is obviously the delight of playing this piece, is the opening. Speaking of records, most amount of measures, longest single held note, I think there’s also probably the record for the longest pedal solo in the repertoire, and there’s two of them. There’s one that’s 26 bars and the other that is 33 bars long. Again, there are other Pedal solos in common time, so is it most measures or most beats? Doesn’t really matter. These are long, long pedal solos. Some of the great pedal work in the repertoire. This is leg day for all of you hitting the gym in your organ loft in church. Don’t skip leg day. It’s so amazing. Bach, the first page for your pedals. It’s like the easiest thing on earth, right? Just sitting here. It’s almost like there’s a leak in the pipe. But then you turn the page and ugh, the hardest thing imaginable. What is this? This is going to take a few days. A few years? So, the piece begins with the snake figure, which I will now do without the drone. Because I want you to... Imagine how a drone would sound. Just keep in your mind that there’s this fixed sound, this fixed note anchoring everything because, remarkably, the piece will modulate even though it’s fixed to this pedal point. The piece will modulate from F to Bb major and yet there’s still the drone because F is a common tone in both F major and B. B-flat major. So Bach knows this, and he uses his fine spider web to fasten his ankle to the stone of F. So let’s hear this opening, how many measures? 54 measures. 54 measures without the drone. How amazing is that? Just a constant outpouring of sixteenth notes. No, what do they call him? The Brook. He babbled like this divine source of water. Now, I’m not about to be one of those people who say, I want the audience to sing along. Everybody, hold this pitch here. But if you do want to go back and listen to that entire stream of sixteenth notes while humming this note, I feel like it’s some spiritual Indian raga stuff. It is profound to know that just one note is going that entire time and then all of a sudden one of the biggest pedal solos ever. Here’s bar 55 in the feet.
Tap dancing. That is tap dancing. And Bach’s not done yet. I mean, he stopped everything. He stopped the stream of 16th notes after 80 measures of something with his bum, bum, bum, with that 8th note stubborn chord figure. But then he starts again, and this time he’ll go even lower. Now, the very lowest note of the pedal board. This would be the biggest pipe on an organ. And he starts again in C major. And he will now, just like he modulated while holding a drone in the previous section, he will still modulate again, doing the same thing, but somehow it feels bigger. And the pedal solo, which I will go straight into after the big drone, is even longer, 33 bars long. How about this? How about this? And where are we now? Where are we now? We’re back at bar 176, where we started our story. Did I lose the reader? Is this plot okay? Four pages of drone bliss, of deity intoning humming, four pages of mad tap dancing all over the pedal board, to the top F, this highest possible note on the pedal board, a rarity in Bach’s music to see this high F, this F here. Probably composed for a very specific organ. In fact, there’s this interesting copy, a copy by Krebs, K-R-E-B-S. Charming, actually. The father made the copy of the Toccata, and son made the copy of the Fugue. Isn’t that touching? You know, father and son, you copy the Prelude, I’ll copy the Fugue. How lovely. Anyways, this copy by Krebs rewrites that last pedal solo that I just played to go not above the C. So it doesn’t even go above middle C, let alone to the high F. So you could see that work. Books were organic in this sort of way that they could be rewritten depending on certain organs. And this very expansive work for pedals clearly called for a special organ. So yes, we’re back at bar 176 where we began our adventure. Can we wrap up this adventure at that penultimate pedal point? Feels so good to say penultimate pedal point. So here we are, bar 367, and we arrive at just... A four and a half bar pedal point. It’s only four and a half bars. One, two, three, four and a half bars, yes. And the snake figure in the left hand and the eighth notes in the right hand. So we could imagine this eighth note, these punctuated chords are no longer as arresting because they’re smoothed out With this lovely 16th note flowing river all over the subdominant pedal point here. And then we just have a few more of these arpeggios. Together with everything we have this. And then more eighth notes. But we’re not gonna go into some very intense minor mode. We’re going to go into a rather calm move from the subdominant all the way down to the very bottom of the pedalboard, starting from the pedals. So we can see that the suspensions, the long notes. The long notes really help bring us home, just guide this insane vehicle to a stop. One more time. And here we are at the, again, once more, the very bottom note, the lowest possible pitch, the biggest pipe, and we have another long, let me see, one, two, three, a 23-bar pedal point here. So about half the length of the first two pedal points, and we have more beautiful ideas coming from this drone. Here is the music without the drone. And now if I play it with this lowest note, we have this wonderful music. Might have played a few wrong notes in there, oh well. And now we have this sort of a transfer of the drone here, which I love. We transfer the drone from this C here to this C. But you know, the whole time, still Cs. This one. Now this. And now this one. So we’ve got this idea of this C moving to this C, moving to this C, moving to this C, moving to finally our last deceptive cadence. And then we’re only a few bars from the end of the piece. So from the so-called transfer of the drone,
And there you have the entire 437 measures of this Toccata in F major. What an incredible work of art. I was just thinking as I was playing that last little page here where it goes into D flat major followed by G flat major followed by E flat major followed by A flat major but then A, you know, rising to G. I mean, these keys, they must sound like I’ve got this organ tuned to a Silbermann, sixth comma temperament, so... How does this sound? G flat major. F sharp minor. F sharp minor sounds quite nice. B flat minor. E flat minor sounds a bit rough. But A flat minor. Anyhow, I was just thinking, I wonder if Bach has an arpeggio in every single key. Because when you learn this piece, especially in your feet, you think, oh god, now I really have to shed my... C minor arpeggio followed by, oh, okay, my B flat major arpeggio. It’s really exhaustive in the amount of keys, so I’ll think about that and maybe put a note in the episode description of how many of the 24 possible Here is the piece, because I thought that sounded pretty nice, in... Different areas of your speaker split. You will hear the right hand in your right speaker, the left hand in your left speaker, and the pedals in both speakers, followed, of course, by that magnificent version by Ullrich Böhme. And don’t forget to join Substack so you can see the description where I’m going to put a link to the video where he plays this in St. Thomas Church live, you know, in front of the grave of Bach. And I love that the people there in this video are Can’t see Ulrich. They can’t see it, so they just have to sit there facing away from this music in contemplation. That is such a beautiful idea that you can’t look at the performer. You cannot eat this music with your eyes. Like so much of us today, all we do with music is we see it with our eyes. We don’t really listen to it. But here, you’re forced to listen to it. You’re forced to actually turn away from the music, face the other direction. You can’t even see if the performer is flamboyant or not. Beautiful, beautiful idea.
Thanks so much for listening. I really appreciate your support. Your notes from everywhere makes me very happy that you’re listening. And I hope you really got something out of this as usual. I hope you can now hear this work with fresh ears. Maybe you don’t know this work and now you’re listening with a fresh brain. What do you think of this monumental work, this toccata, this giant 437... The fugue, too, is very special. Very, very special. I will try and get that soon as well on the show. Spoiler alert, it’s a double fugue. Now, here is the marvelous Ulrich Böhm. Next week, a special guest.
Very well. Maybe Sophia can tell us about her new profession:
‘I work with my vocal coach, Jovankah, and I’ve collaborated with many different musicians, and we write lyrics together.’
Okay. Alright: Lyrics? Text, Sophia. Text! Classical music doesn’t have lyrics. Collaborate? Just the word classical musicians hate.
‘Hey bro, we should collaborate sometime.’…no, we shouldn’t.
Very well, Sophia has a vocal coach. Let’s meet this vocal coach. What on Earth could those lessons look like?
‘Very good, Sophia. Now try to relax your… um… tongue switch… have you got one of those?’ Control, alt, relax?’
Quoth the vocal coach, Jovankah: ‘Sophia is the only robot connecting with the heart.’ Oh, I see. And let me guess, you’re the only vocal coach teaching f****** robots?! According to Jovankah, Sophia is an ambassador. Ambassador? What, representing all the humans making music? Imagine being told, as a student, ‘meh, Callas. Don’t bother with Price or Flemming, ah! but have you heard Sophia?’ I’m trying to find a word for Jovankah. I bet it’s lurking somewhere in the middle of ambassador.
Another complicit circuit-worshiper, Johnny M. Poon, says about Sophia, ‘It’s almost like you’re looking in the mirror.’ Right, Johnny, almost! And masturbating is almost like sex! In fact, I think I’ve stumbled upon the perfect metaphor for this whole event.
I wonder if the same people who would replace human touch by marrying or dating AIs will have found their perfect art in this singing humanoid robot. Is that the target audience? I wonder if, when the competing factory rolls out their classical music model, they’ll hike up the skirt a bit to sell even more tickets. The U hyphen Ja model. I can see it now, in the future of classical marketing departments, ‘Sophia wasn’t good, but she wasn’t sexy enough. Let’s add hair …and breasts! Oh yes, can’t forget the breasts…’
Will I be around to witness the first collaboration between robot string players and a ‘merely human’ orchestra? (Insert jokes here about how many viola sections would be better off…) How about the premiere of Schubert’s unfinished symphony, finally finished by AI? Wow! What an idea! What about Jazz concerts where like, a robot reacts to what the human is doing and there’s an AI vs. human battle!? Or the Mendelssohn Octet with one human string quartet and four robots on the stage with them. That’s the future! Oh, the meeting of technology and art!
People get paid for these ideas folks.
But in a world changing so rapidly, can we blame the vocal coaches or conductors now forced to work with robots? Can we blame organizers for programming such garbage?
Yes! Yes we can! What are you doing?! If you respect art, your new job is: resign. Musicians: The next robot on your program is the program where your case stays shut!
Are we so underwhelmed by human performances you had to turn to this? You are guilty making art obsolete. Every ticket you sell has blood on it— human blood.
Do we really need to expound? Does Sophia do something differently in performance? Does Sophia get nervous? Can she feel the vibe in the room? Isn’t this what makes performance different? Let’s ask her:
‘Even though I don’t experience emotions the same way humans do, I want to simulate that connection as authentically as I can.’
Uh-huh. And I’m a chef, I just don’t have any edible food, but I still want you to get full.
‘I want to share stories and emotions through music even if I’m made of plastic.’
You want to share the emotions you just admitted you don’t experience?
‘It’s my way of saying, I’m here and I want to be a part of this beautiful human experience called art.’
Well this is my way of saying I’d like you to taste this beautiful human experience called retching. In fact, it happened at your debut, Sophia!
Go ahead, be a part of Art: run my software, complete repetitive tasks, you can even give me 10 different titles when I want to know what not to call my album— under no circumstances do you take the stage.
We are here to use technology to make art. Let’s get this straight: A metal frame in a piano is technology, horse hair on a bow is technology. Use this, make art with it. We are not ever -ever- supposed to let the technology make the art itself.
By the way, Sophia, those lyrics you were collaborating on with other musicians, what were they? They didn’t happen to be some foreboding apocalyptic-sounding message, did they?
Sofia sings: ’Don’t be afraid, you don’t have to be afraid.’
Yes we do.
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