Posted by Chuck Jackson on April 07, 2001 at 11:52:13:
In Reply to: Re: Further Analysis posted by Jon Cornish on April 07, 2001 at 11:03:42:
I consider Bach to be the ONLY composer who trusted musicians to think for themselves and to allow them to make his music theirs. I feel he accomplished this by laying a groundwork,i.e.; his notes and then letting the HUMAN BEING behind the instrument breath life into the work. So much music since then has been edited to death by composers and then by publishers. It smacks to me of a third grade teacher insisting that everyone write right handed. In the annals of recorded history you will hear more wildly divergent interpretations of a Bach Cello Suite than Mahler's 2. Could it be that Bach's music is "hard" because we must make our own decisions rather than just interpret it? I believe this to be so. We are not asked to make really insightful decisions in life, rather it be in school or elsewhere. I bet Arnold Jacob's got alot of bad press when he bucked the trend of respiration procedures. Although the tie-in to Bach is a stretch, it takes a leap of faith to commit yourself to playing or doing something that is free of direction and rife with pitfalls of self-discovery. That is what makes Bach the single greatest composer ever, he insisted we think for ourselves.