miserable now

miserable now

Thursday, July 28, 2005

Volgens schrijver Maarten ´t Hart behoort Bach, tezamen met Mozart, tot het type componist dat, ´om 1 Samuel 10 te parafraseren, ´van den schouderen opwaarts groter zijn dan al het volk rondom hen´. Een gigant dus.
En nu is hij dood.
Niet Maarten dan, maar Johann Sebastian. Vandaag precies tweehonderdvijfenvijftig jaar is hij dood. Maar in onze gedachten blablabla

There must have been a world before
the Trio Sonata in D, a world before the A minor partita,
but what kind of a world?
A Europe of vast empty spaces, unresounding,
everywhere unawakened instruments
where the Musical Offering, the Well-Tempered Clavier
never passed across the keys.
Isolated churches
where the soprano line of the Passion
never in helpless love twined round
the gentler movements of the flute,
broad soft landscapes
where nothing breaks the stillness
but old woodcutters' axes
the healthy barking of strong dogs in winter
and, like a bell, skates biting into fresh ice;
the swallows whirring through summer air,
the shell resounding at the child's ear
and nowhere Bach nowhere Bach
the world in a skater's stillness before Bach.

Lars Gustafsson/"The Stillness of the World Before Bach"

10:00 | posted by roel |