At least, that’s the way I frequently feel when I’ve just heard Bach. And the funny thing is that I never feel that way about any other composer. Yes, I can’t imagine a world without the Beethoven string quartets, and I would miss sorely the Brahms’ symphonies. But if I had to take only one composer to the famous desert island, there’s no question who it would be.
Among musicians, this is hardly a radical statement. In fact, most musicians would say exactly the same, and I’ve never met a musician who didn’t like Bach, or was indifferent to him.
What’s surprising about Bach is how little anybody knows of him, and how, in general, unpleasant a man he must have been. As you can hear in the clip below of John Eliot Gardiner, a clinical psychologist brings in a list of symptoms of a personality disorder, and reads them off: deeply suspicious, feels that others are after him, feels surrounded by enemies, refuses to believe that he may be wrong. That’s Bach completely, says Eliot Gardiner, or words to that effect. And what is the disorder? Paranoid Personality Disorder.
Well, he didn’t have an easy life—he lost both of his parents when he was nine, and had to go off to live with an elder brother. As well, he did poorly in school, and may have been bullied; there was also a cruel schoolteacher. But he pulled himself together, got a scholarship as a chorister, and then set out to study.
Everybody in the family was a musician—in his part of Germany, the name “Bach” was virtually synonymous with “musician.” But in a letter written by his son, Carl Phillip Emanuel Bach, the names of Johan Sebastian Bach’s teachers are written and then drawn through. Did the son remember—his father wanted to appear as if he had had no teachers, as if he sprung fully formed on the world?
And nobody can say that he was a particularly happy or pleasant employee—he was complaining constantly about one thing or another: the quality of the musicians who would play his works, the living conditions, having to teach Latin to the school boys. In his first or second job, in fact, he simply got up and left, walked a couple hundred miles to go see the great Buxtehude, and stayed four months. Oh—and this was without permission.
He composed an insanely hard passage for the bassoon, and then abused the poor bassoonist, calling him the equivalent of a “prick.” So the bassoonist, with friends, jumped Bach, who drew out his rapier in self-defense. It was either this, or a dispute over wages that landed Bach in prison for a month.
Bach had twenty kids—only ten of whom made it to adulthood. And his first wife, to whom he was devoted, died before him. His second wife, Anna Magdalena, was both a musician and bore him 13 children.
So it doesn’t seem that Bach had much pleasure in his life. Yet however difficult an employee he may have been, there’s no question: he delivered the goods. And so frequently, Bach surprises by being “cheeky,” as Eliot Gardiner puts it. Check out the clip below….
But then, Bach can grab your heart and absolutely wring it of every last drop of blood. And nowhere he does he do it more effectively than in the aria Ebarme dich, mein Gott from the St. Matthew Passion. Here, Peter has betrayed Jesus, and the violin and alto trade long, agonizing lines. Here’s the German text with the English translation:
Erbarme dich, mein Gott,
Un meiner Zähren willen!
Schaue hier, Herz und Auge
Weint vor dir bitterlich.
Erbarme dich, mein Gott.
Have mercy, my God,
For the sake of my tears!
See here, before you
Heart and eyes weep bitterly.
Have mercy, my God.
Lastly, there’s often a glorious, triumphant quality to Bach—a jubilant quality that no other composer can match. As nowhere does Bach do it better than in one of his last compositions, the Gloria from the B Minor Mass. And the Et in Terra Pax that follows?
Sublime.
Bach died at the age of 65, probably because of two botched operations to attempt to restore his failing sight. And the question remains—did he know how great he was? Was he aware of what he had accomplished in his life?
This man, surrounded as he thought by his enemies, would be compared to Shakespeare in literature and Newton in physics. And guess what?
It’s hard to believe that anyone will ever topple him from top of the heap.
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