Back to Bach

The trick to playing Bach is to trust the notes. You don't need to infuse it with anything. Although technically difficult, if you play the notes clearly and cleanly, the music will be there. In a sense, you almost have to strip away all of your personal affectations until you are left with a stark, humble and often painful honesty.

I once told a man who was to become one of my mentors that I didn't care much for Bach. I was taking private lessons in music theory at the time. The next week when I came for my lesson, this man, my teacher, sat me down with a score -- The Goldberg Variations -- and then pressed play on the cd player he had brought in. As I watched/read/listened to the score unfold before me I was mesmorized. I was taken away. I felt simulataneous joy and heart break. Of course it was Gould. When the music ended, the man took the score from me and informed me that he wouldn't charge me for the lesson. Ironically, I learned more about music on that day than I had during any of the weekly lessons leading up to it.

I have just spent the last two hours reacquainting myself with my guitar. My fingertips on my left hand are sore. Grooved. I have been working on remembering the Prelude for Cello Suite No. 1. It took awhile but my hands remember. It amazes me how my fingers can do things so easily without my consciousness being aware. Instead of focusing on my hands, I am free to sing the music so that I can hear it played the way I know it in my heart.

When I was younger I would watch my mother draw. I yearned with all my heart to be able to draw like she did. She could bring lines on a paper to life. I wanted to be able to draw what I saw in my mind. In my heart. I couldn't. It took a number of years for me to realize that my desire wasn't so much to be able to draw as it was to express myself in such a way as to give a voice to a something larger than myself. A something that couldn't be readily defined. A something that I would occasionally notice out of the corner of my eye when the sun caught the side of a building and a reflection could be seen in a drop of dew. A something that can be revealed when the right shade of light is used to capture an actor's expression on stage. A something that sounds like Bach.