And So?

And so this young man went to prison—well, what of it?

He smoked a drug that makes some people feel good, and makes others act irrationally. Which was certainly the case with him, since the theft of a rare blue macaw requires either a profound if quirky criminality, or a very heady stew of chemicals swirling through the cerebellum. And so this young man, Montalvo, has ended up at last in prison, to be confined there for several weeks.

Again I ask—what of it?

His misfortune was to be young, imprudent, poor, and slightly darker in skin tone than the ruling class. And all of that condemned him. But was it any different for him than for me? Because I too was thrust into jail, in the year 1717, and for reasons every bit as inane as the reasons that catapulted Montalvo into prison.

My crime?

I had grown weary of the bickering that lead to a feud between two powerful dukes: William Ernest and his nephew Ernest August. And however bitter it might have been, was there any question of who would win? Even before Ernest August became one of the two dukes ruling Weimar, William Ernest had seized all the power, as well as the purse strings.

And so there were two competing households, and the musicians of one were forbidden to make music, or indeed even to befriend, the musicians of the other. That might have been endured, but soon the politicking grew even more heated. For the enfeebled Kapellmeister, whose work I had mostly done for some years, at last succumbed and died.

Had I been happy in Weimar?

Yes, reasonably so. Because while the rulers of the small nations and duchies all warred to gain ascendency over each other, I was left to my own devices. Yes, I had many duties, but it was in those years that I composed most of my organ works, and a great deal of my secular works. The Brandenburg Concerti, the cello suites, the violin sonatas and partitas—all stemmed from those years.

Nor was Weimar in any way a backwater: it attracted some of the best minds and thinkers of the era. Here, I could meet the great scholar Johann Matthias Gesner; here also I was exposed to the Italian style of composition, in particular the works of Vivaldi. And so I was able, by in large, to ignore the rift between the two reigning dukes; all that, however, was to change with the death of the Kapellmeister.

The letter that I wrote was polite, almost fawning, since my beloved María Barbara had flatly insisted: the original letter, she felt, was far too demanding.

“How can you say, Sebastian, that you have no doubt that the appointment is to be yours? And to ask what pay you will receive? That will infuriate the duke!”

“But it is the truth. I have undertaken the work of the doddering old fool for years now, without a single pfennig being given to me! Isn’t it just that I now be given the appointment, and that at last I be compensated for the work I have done, and am to do?”

“Yes, Sebastian, but will the duke see that? Won’t he feel that you are demanding—presumptuous, even? Do you expect the duke to take orders from one of his servants?”

I protested, of course, since who but I was more qualified for the position? Had I not proved myself? Throughout Europe, my fame as an organist, and especially as an improviser, had grown; once, visiting Dresden, I had been invited to compete against the greatest French organist of the day, Louis Marchand. And what had he done? He had crept into the church as I was playing, and then promptly left town! My position was solidified: was it not right that I should be given this title of Kapellmeister?

We argued and argued, and at last compromised, but what did the Duke do? He chose to appoint the son of the old Kapellmeister to his father’s old post, and I was left with the humiliation of being cast aside.

Would any man of spirit accept such a stinging insult? Was I to go like a kicked dog through the streets, through the halls of the castle, only to hear the whispers and the jeers behind my back? For I well knew my worth, and never did I fail to let the world know it. The “musicians” who sawed and tooted and warbled away—did I fail to note their deficiencies? Of course not, why should I? I had struggled, I had done the work, I had made myself the greatest musician of my time. Must I bow down or curtsey to those lesser than I?

Yes, I had done what this young man, Montalvo, had not. For I don’t understand these children, who think that fame and fortune are as easy to obtain as plucking an apple from the tree! Not a day went by when I hadn’t striven to improve myself, no nightfall arrived without my repairing to bed exhausted! I worked until I could work no more, and even then on most days I pushed myself further. But this boy, now in a savage prison, ruled by brutes and peopled with brutes? Has he done the work?

We had, perhaps, the drugs that were good for us: a hearty beer and a pipeful of tobacco. Yes, we knew of the opium takers of the Turks and their neighbors, but it would only be a century later that the drug would be given to our own women to calm their nerves. But all we had was beer, and we may have been better off for it.

And it was over a beer that I approached my other employer, Duke Ernest August, and it was through him that I learned that the position of Kapellmeister was available at the court of Anhalt-Cöthen. And it was then that the Duke William Ernest revealed how petty and despicable he could be. Yes, for nearly a month, I was jailed in the ducal prison for having “too insistently pressed for his release from service!”

My friends—the few men of worth who could appreciate who I was—rallied in my defense. But for long weeks I stared at the bars, and wondered at my fate. But very soon I realized: I could compose anywhere. I began to compose what would be the greatest treatise on tuning, and some of the greatest music ever composed: The Well-Tempered Clavier.

Like everywhere else, I put my time to work, as had so many others before me. For prison can be a sort of freedom, if there are pen and paper at hand, and the time to use them. The great Cervantes, after all, wrote the first modern novel, Don Quixote, from a prison cell.

But how different things are now! Will Montalvo do as I did? Will he be given the chance? And when he comes out, in nearly as many days as I spent, will he be changed?

      

Montalvo Perdu

It hadn’t been a good day, nor is it ever a good thing when a dear friend calls you and asks immediately if you’re sitting down.

“Yes,” I told Lady, “and what is it?”

It was the call that I had feared, since I knew perfectly well that Montalvo, who alone could have conceived the theft of a rare blue macaw—it was variably pining on his shoulder as Montalvo walked home. Second explanation: Montalvo, greatly aided by chemicals legal in only a few states, had formed a mystical connection with the bird. After paying homage to the moment—selfies were taken—the united pair repaired to La Perla. (Sorry about all that alliteration….) Since the bird was not unattached—the owner was nearby, though apparently distracted—the police intervened.

A judge decided—wisely—that Puerto Rico’s prison population was already burdened enough, and could anyone take a parrot rustler seriously? Please! So Montalvo got probation, which came along with counseling, a curfew, and drug testing.

Know where this is going?

I did and I didn’t. Because the first time he tested positive, I felt like I had been kicked in the stomach by a horse. Yes, I was literally reeled over in the café, so sure was I that this kid—who calls me Dad—was going to go before the judge. And what had the judge told him? That he was running out of options, and one strike was all it would take to un-suspend the seven-year sentence. (Was it seven years? It hardly matters, because Montalvo, though strong and street savvy, is at least a hundred pounds lighter than most of the guys in La Regional—the “correctional facility” to which he would be sent.)

I am a pessimist by nature—show me a swimming pool and I’ll throw in the drowned child, and the fact that I still have two feet? Due only to my father, of a dye darker than I, who could not help telling me to be careful, when mowing the lawn, never to mow backwards. Each Saturday, in the living room, he would act out the scenario: the unheeding Marc, illicitly mowing backwards, the mower moving over the—probably barefoot—foot, and the moment the furious blades slashed into the foot. The agony, the shout, the fall to the ground as I lay bleeding to death….

The point of this vignette? The judge would send Montalvo to jail, and what would face him there? Rape? Murder? Both have been known to happen in Puerto Rican jails. Oh, and also in the states.

It turned out Montalvo knew the system very well. He told me exactly how it would play out: his counselor would sit him down, stay very quiet for an intentionally uncomfortable few minutes, and then ask him, “Montalvo, is there anything you need to tell me?”

“Man, I hate it when they ask that question!”

“Then why do you put yourself in a position…”

Right, he hated that one too….

And that’s how it played out. So the fact that I had utterly crumpled, and was sobbing as I listened to the saddest aria ever written—Piangero la Sorte Mia—was all quite irrelevant. Montalvo had to go more often to therapy, and piss more often in bottles, but prison was avoided. And then, it became apparent over the months that—from time to time—Montalvo would slip up.

Why?

Who can say? My best guess is that he was bored and frustrated, since he had had and lost several jobs in rapid succession.

“I don’t think they’ll have me back,” he admitted about one restaurant job. True, the restaurant had closed for the slow season, but that had hardly been a problem. And also true, the customers had loved him, and left sizable tips. The problem? Montalvo, instead of quietly stuffing the money in his pocket, had very visibly and audibly displayed it. His word for it?

“I guess I was kind of cocky….”

It was in vain to tell him: many an incompetent worker goes on to get that gold watch. Who gets fired? The pains in the asses. So Montalvo had time on his hands, and he was bored, and he was pissed, because why was life hitting him so hard? And how was he going to pay his rent? And how does a kid deal with all of that?

Now you know why I had to be sitting, when Lady called, and why, for most of the weekend, I was uttered dejected.

I only know that I will see him. I also know that he will be wearing an orange prison suit, and will have been shorn military style, for “security” reasons. And I know the people who will be there, because for years I rode in the same minivan with them. They were, in fact, mostly quite cheerful, and they consisted of girlfriends and wives and mothers. Off hand, I can recall no fathers.

So Lady and I will go, this Friday, to see him. And that is what I don’t know: what will I say to him? I thought about it all weekend, picturing and more often hearing my father.

No son of mine has ever gone to jail….

This had better be the LAST time I see you in this place.

The day my mother died? That’s about how bad this day is.

Lady is more pragmatic.

“You knew this was coming, right? OK, but the good news is that he’s accepting responsibility for being there, and says it’s where he needs to be. And he’ll be out in three weeks….”

I don’t tell her what I’m thinking, which is…

…yeah, and how long will he be in the next time? 

  

Slacking away at Religion

“Who would have thought you a slacker,” said Lady, imaginatively passing by my tables, “since I see you writing here all the time? But where is the parable for last week? You know, the one about the king’s son’s wedding? Though to preserve the Biblical flavor, perhaps we should eschew the Saxon Genitive, and call it the wedding of the son of the king.”

“That does sound better,” I told her. “And really, inventing this religion is much more of a bother than I could have imagined. I see now why Jesus is so completely inadequate, when it comes to the miracles and the parables. This week, for example, the readings are drawn from Ephesians and from John. So I checked that out, and got the usual adjurations about putting on the shield of God, since the devil…OK, let’s bring on the King Jame’s…”

For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

“How prescient of the Bible to foresee the presidencies of George W. Bush,” said Lady. “OK—got that message. Now then, moving on to John?”

“Well, the reading—John 4: 46-54, with which I’m sure you’re intimately familiar….”

“I believe I was discussing the passage the other day with Elaine Pagels,” Lady replied.

“Yeah? The Harrington Spear Paine Professor of Religion at Princeton?”

“Yes, she calls, once in a while, when a particularly knotty problem presents itself….”

“Good of you to help out,” I said. “Anyway, you undoubtedly remember that Jesus, fresh from turning water into wine—a really superior miracle, by the way—now sets about healing the nobleman’s son. This he does telepathically, since the son is some distance away. Anyway, the nobleman returns home and finds his son was healed at the seventh hour of the previous day, which was just when the nobleman was talking to Jesus. So bam! It’s legit!”

“Good news indeed. So now you’re a parable and a miracle behind. Get to work!”

“You know, I begin to despair, which is a grave sin indeed. Because not only do I have to produce miracles and parables, I’ve also had to listen to three of the darkest cantatas ever written. And here, courtesy of the bachvespersnyc.org, is just a teaser….”

By Jesus' grace alone will there be

     comfort before us, and forgiveness,


     for due to Satan's deceit and cunning


     the entire life of humanity


     is a sinful abomination before God.

“Lovely,” said Lady. “Nothing like that old time religion!”

“The problem is that Bach is all over the place, emotionally. There are four cantatas for the 21^st Sunday after Trinity, and two or three of them are musical incitements to suicide.  Cantata BWV 38 is particularly bad, being drawn—again!—from the psalm ‘out of the depths I cry to you,’ though here it’s ‘out of deep agony I cry to you.’”

“Very nice,” said Lady. “Throwing in the word ‘agony’ does lighten the picture, doesn’t it?”

“Then there’s BWV 109, which is just as bad. In fact, it takes its inspiration from Mark 9:24, which, since you hobnob with the glitteriest of biblical scholars…”

“’I believe Lord; help me in my disbelief,’” finishes Lady.

“Well, you as a poet should understand that, and it may be that I do as well. But anyway, the first three or four movements are all about spiritual crisis, doubt, and lack of faith. And boy, is the music grim! Bach, when he wants to be, can be completely nasty! But then the alto sails in, and sweeps that all away, saying that God never fails anyone, no matter how dark that night of the soul is. Of course, what he doesn’t say is precisely when he will step in and give succor to the unbelieving. In my case, he’s waited for decades.”

“You have to persevere,” said Lady. “And perhaps do some mortification of the flesh. You know, you might fast for forty days and nights. Or have you considered self flagellation?”

“I refuse to consider it,” I told her. “Though I have contemplated doing a pilgrimage from Arnstadt to Lübeck—walking it as Bach did, when he went to see Buxtehude.”

“Excellent idea,” said Lady. “We could crowd-fund it—you can count on me for a generous contribution. But how long would it take?”

“Maybe ten days,” I told her. “Unless, of course, I choose to do it on my knees, which is getting a bit extreme, don’t you think? But the real question is what I do when, at the end of the journey, I arrive in Lübeck just as infidel as I started.”

“Very easy,” said Lady, “Walk back to Arnstadt again!”    

The Past, The Present

And so, I have been called from my well-earned rest back to life, only to be insulted by a half-witted and unemployed “writer!”

He finds my humor lacking, it seems, and makes several condescending remarks about the coffee houses of my day. Might I be allowed a few observations of my own?

I have studied the denizens of the coffee house in which he writes—or rather, I have glanced at them, and gleaned all there is to know. For in my day, people gathered, drank, smoked, and made friends—and occasionally, enemies. There was laughter, there was music, there was above all camaraderie. But in this new coffee house? I find nothing by zombies connected to devices.

Two girls—sisters—are slouched on a sofa nearby, and though physically touching, they are worlds apart. Their “smart phones” are feeding them music or games or social media—whatever that is—and they are “connected.” Indeed?

I don’t understand. Where is their mother or father, to tell them to sit up straight? Surely flopping down on a couch and remaining there for hours is not good for them—what of their spines? And have they no chores to do, no rooms to straighten and arrange and clean? They can play no instrument, they cannot sing, they know but one language.

They have the advantages I never had. Yes, I grew up in a family of musicians, and yes, my part of Germany—and especially Leipzig—was at a crossroads in Europe. But how I strived to educate myself—I who, at the age of these girls, knew German, Latin and Greek. Later, I would acquire a bit of French and Italian. Yes, I strove to improve myself, even when my own health suffered, as a child, and I was often absent from school. And how much I had to depend on luck! Were it not for a relative travelling abroad, I would never have been introduced to Vivaldi, and how greatly my music would have suffered!

We had little; we made the most of it. They have everything; they do nothing.

I listen in complete astonishment at my music being played to his ears: what extraordinary achievement! The precision, the passion of these players of the Bach Stiftung! Not a note misplaced, not a nuance lost—I never had the chance to work with musicians anywhere nearing this level! And this “writer” knows no German, but is that a problem? No because the machine keeps playing the divine sounds, and somehow the screen appears with the German and the English translation! There is a church in Boston, apparently, that has been playing my cantatas for decades; they have “uploaded” their translations.

The amount of information is staggering—one could study the architectural plans of any one of Thailand’s 4,000 Buddhist temples, but what do they use the Internet to do? Examine the nether parts of Thai girls!

It was never so easy for me. I walked in 1705 from Arnstadt to Lübeck—nearly 300 miles, all to hear and study with the great organist and composer Buxtehude. Then I walked back again, to an employer who was considerably annoyed with my prolonged absence. Did I care? Of course not—I cared only to learn more, to develop my gifts. The organist I had left in my place did a perfect adequate job—how much skill was needed to plunk out the chorales and hymns each Sunday?

Yes, I walked those hundreds of miles to attain knowledge, but this man who has awakened me, what does he do? He rises in the morning, and his machine feeds him a steady stream of misfortune. I peered over his shoulder, yesterday, and what did I learn? A reporter from a paper in New York, which his machine delivers to him in Puerto Rico, is in a part of India, in which half of the children are stunted.

Are you confused? New York, Puerto Rico, India? Like everybody else, he is everywhere but where he is. Even the air he breathes has been chilled to his liking, so much so that he will take a sweater to the “opera.” Why the quotes? Well, it is opera if you are seeing it in New York, at the Metropolitan Opera. But it is “opera” if you are seeing it as he does, for the affair is being filmed and beamed up to a dish in the sky, which beams it down again to every part of the world!

They have found a way, these modern people, to do seemingly everything. How curious it is that, having done that, they can think of nothing better to do with the riches they possess!

I knew every foot of the ground between Arnstadt and Lübeck: I saw the flowers growing alongside the road, I heard the birds sing, I felt the cold and damp. But today? The trip would be made by a tube in the sky, and how convenient! Except, of course, that they have missed what I savored: the wind on my skin, the fatigue at the end of the day.

What did the trip teach me? That anything worth having can be achieved by patient, methodical, and seemingly endless routine. They marvel at me—these centuries later! How could I have produced such a huge amount of work? The keyboard music alone would have been an enormous legacy, but add in the cantatas, the passions, the B Minor Mass, and then the secular works! The concerti, the suites, the sonatas and partitas for violin! This great mass of music, which is only half of what I had written, the rest being lost! How did the great Bach do it!

I did it the same way I got to Lübeck. I took no short cuts, though if a farmer going to market offered me a ride with the turnips, I gratefully accepted. There was no machine that accepted my “clicks” and delivered the quivering face of Buxtehude. And when I arrived there, unknown and unwashed, and demanding that my talent and youth be heard? He saw my worn shoes, my sun burned skin, and he gave me his seat at the organ.

He taught me much, and when I walked again back to Arnstadt, I had the time to reflect on his words and consider his message. I had the time, you see, to learn and to grow.

Time these “modern” people don’t have!