Wagner and Bach and School Music Lessons
6 January, Saturday, Ampthill
‘Bach’s music is certainly a conception of the world; his figurations, devoid of feeling, are like unfeeling Nature itself — birth and death, winds, storms, sunshine – all these things take place just like figurations…’
[Richard] Wagner1
When young-Toby doesn’t have anything to write, he puts down a quote from something he’s been reading. Usually it’s relevant to his life at this point. As I type this, I’m listening again to Wagner’s ‘Die Walküre’ in the Solti recording — the one I first knew. My top artist last year on Spotify was J.S.Bach. Some things remain constant. And by this time, Toby has listened to quite a lot of classical music on tape and CD. He began with Eric Satie, after hearing ‘Nightporter’ by Japan. He revised for his ‘A’ Levels whilst listening to Chopin’s Nocturnes — attracted to the cassette in WH Smith by the title word. A little night music But it wasn’t until he got to university, and a friend leant him Glenn Gould’s recording of Bach’s Two and Three Part Inventions and Sinfonias that he finally got over his secondary school music education. A particularly unwinsome music teacher had stood in front of the class, eyes closed, and asked them what they heard in — it was probably Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony or some Sibelius. Younger-Toby didn’t hear anything. He heard notes, sounds, changes in sounds, loud and quiet bits. He didn’t hear the rolling green landscape everyone else seemed to be blithely transcribing into their workbooks. He stalled and wrote very little. He’d always had difficulties picking narrative out of abstract things. But the music teacher, when she went rhapsodic about what she heard, gave him the impression there was a correct answer, and he was failing to find it. Only when he realised that, precisely not as Wagner is saying, Bach’s Inventions were entirely abstract, and unconnected to landscape, was Toby freed from the need to get his listening right. After that, things were swell. He now hears the possibility of architecture in Bach, but knows it’s also about the mathematical arrangements of notes. It’s fine if it’s in black and white.