Bach

[Oaky]

(maybe this belongs in the RANT thread? or the rnarR thread?)

I should be packing for tomorrow, but something earlier this evening made me crave to hear again the Aria to the Goldberg variations, and now I can't stop.

Now I'm going to have to listen to the bloody lot and then probably most of the Well Tempered Clavier too.

Johann bloody Sebastian bloody Bach.  It wasn't funny two hundred and fifty mumble years ago and it's not funny now.

Just go back to not being here and stop tormenting me with audial exhibitions of what a genius you were.

I need to pack (G)od damn you! 

It's worse now -- I'm hearing stuff in variation 7 that's making me feel a  _need_ to re-read "Goedel Escher Bach, An Eternal Golden Braid".

Not happy    i should be packing

I suppose that's why there was stuff other than the great composer on the Voyager gold disc, lest we were seen to be showing off... I'm sure there was a Carl Sagan quote to that effect, but I've just spent 8 Goldberg Variations Googling for a definitive reference and come up blank despite the fact that I'm sure I've seen one previously 

Oh did I mention earlier.. I'm meant to be packing??? I think I did but it was 12 variations ago now... how time fliesslips past when one is listening to Herr Bach.....

But ...ohhh it s beautiful.  Variation 15 just landed 

[Wowbagger]

You are Organ Morgan AICMFP!

But you are of course quite right. Bach without a doubt. Bach every time for me.

[Oaky]

on the plus side: I'm 80% packed!! 
one the minus: The Gboldberg variations just finished 

Therefore in accordance with the 80/20- rule I will now start listening to the Well Tempered Clavier in the full knowledge that I probably won't finish packing before the end of book 2, and I'll probably need to leave the house before then anyway.

I hope somebody else (i.e. Oscar's dad!) knows where they are going tomorrow and they don't mind the sound of snoring from behind.

[Moloko]

I should be packing for tomorrow, but something earlier this evening made me crave to hear again the Aria to the Goldberg variations, and now I can't stop.

You're not off to visit Clarice Starling are you?   

[Cudzoziemiec]

It is said that the official music of heaven is J.S. Bach, but when the angels are alone, they play Mozart.

[Peter]

It is said that the official music of heaven is J.S. Bach, but when the angels are alone, they play Mozart.

For example, when God's at the Newcastle match?

[Wowbagger]

Bit of a resurrection. 

Mozart died and went to heaven. God said to him "Ah! There you are! I want you to train the Heavenly Host in all their musical offerings."

"Wow!" replied Mozart. "That's an enormous honour. Where is Bach?"

"I am Bach." replied God.

[rogerzilla]

I think Arthur C. Clarke nailed it in "2001: A Space Odyssey".

Bowman was aware of some changes in his behaviour patterns; it would have been absurd to expect anything else in the circumstances. He could no longer tolerate silence; except when he was sleeping, or talking over the circuit to Earth, he kept the ship's sound system running at almost painful loudness.

At first, needing the companionship of the human voice, he had listened to classical plays--especially the works of Shaw, Ibsen, and Shakespeare--or poetry readings from Discovery's enormous library of recorded sounds. The problems they dealt with, however, seemed so remote, or so easily resolved with a little common sense, that after a while he lost patience with them.

So he switched to opera--usually in Italian or German, so that he was not distracted even by the minimal intellectual content that most operas contained. This phase lasted for two weeks before he realized that the sound of all these superbly trained voices was only exacerbating his loneliness. But what finally ended this cycle was Verdi's Requiem Mass, which he had never heard performed on Earth. The "Dies Irae," roaring with ominous appropriateness through the empty ship, left him completely shattered; and when the trumpets of Doomsday echoed from the heavens, he could endure no more.

Thereafter, he played only instrumental music. He started with the romantic composers, but shed them one by one as their emotional outpourings became too oppressive. Sibelius, Tchaikovsky, Berlioz, lasted a few weeks, Beethoven rather longer. He finally found peace, as so many others had done, in the abstract architecture of Bach, occasionally ornamented with Mozart.

And so Discovery drove on toward Saturn, as often as not pulsating with the cool music of the harpsichord, the frozen thoughts of a brain that had been dust for twice a hundred years.

[Wowbagger]

On a whim, I decided to record the C minor prelude from Book 1 yesterday. It's a bit scruffy in places, but I only did one take. The iPhone's microphone has dampened the sound a bit as well. When I plan a recording session, I've a rather nice little device with two microphones that I stand inside the piano on a tripod. I originally put it on facebook, but my pal Penelope requested that I send it her on Whatsapp. Rather than that, I shoved it on Youtube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YC4vCA8J0o&ab_channel=wowbagger1954

[Wowbagger]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88qhiQGZ300&ab_channel=StringVirtuoso

That's a lovely rendition of a 'cello suite arranged for double bass.

[hellymedic]

Was that link from a Facebook suggestion?

[Wowbagger]

Yes.

[hellymedic]

I'd followed a similar link a few days ago.
Sometimes FB suggestions are acceptable!

[Wowbagger]

I don't know what Bach did to deserve the treatment I meted out to him this afternoon...

[Robh]

I think this is rather wonderful. I've had the album for years but was just reminded of it when I heard this track on the radio recently: https://youtu.be/2wL5SYg7390