Well Tempered Clavier Quotes

“The fact that the work today has become common property may console us for the other fact that an analysis of it is almost as impossible as it is to depict a wood by enumerating the trees and describing their appearance. We can only repeat again and again—take them and play them and penetrate into this world for yourself. Aesthetic elucidation of any kind must necessarily be superficial here, What so fascinates us in the work is not the form or the build of the piece, but the world-view that is mirrored in it. It is not so much that we enjoy the Well-tempered Clavichord as that we are edified by it. Joy, sorrow, tears, lamentation, laughter—to all these it gives voice, but in such a way that we are transported from the world of unrest to a world of peace, and see reality in a new way, as if we were sitting by a mountain lake and contemplating hills and woods and clouds in the tranquil and fathomless water.”
― Albert Schweitzer

“I feel Bach's voice in those three notes, like a message in a bottle, trying to cross the ocean of harmony he himself has created. What's the message? Those notes don't say we're in a place. How could they? We're still en route. But they remember being in a place. They remember having a home, while the chords, time, life keep shifting on.”
― Jeremy Denk, Every Good Boy Does Fine: A Love Story, in Music Lessons