Status Updates From Bach

Res severa est verum gaudium
True pleasure is a serious matter.
This motto is on the wall of the Gewandhaus Concert Hall, opened in 1781 and still there.
Noted! :)

Family members and students often helped copy out box parts for rehearsals and performances that were often imminent. And his choirs weren’t always amazing and yet Bach wrote on master of this craft.

I think I need a hard copy of this book and read it again flipping to the notes at the end of each chapter. Packed full they are and hard to do on a kindle.

Check out the Musical Offering Bach wrote. 10 canons among the most complicated he ever wrote.

His constant practice in the working out of polyphonic pieces had given his eye such facility that even in the larger scores he could take in all the simultaneously sounding parts at a glance. His hearing was so fine that he was able to detect the slightest error, even in the largest ensembles.

….. although he is executing the most difficult parts himself, noticing at once whenever a mistake occurs, holding everyone together, and repairing any unsteadiness, full of rhythm in every part of his body – this one man taking in all these harmonies with his keen ear and emitting with his voice alone, the tone of all the voices

If you could see Bach singing with one voice and playing his own parts, but watching over everything and bringing back to the rhythm and the beat, out of 30 or even 40 musicians, the one with a nod, another by tapping with his foot, the third with a warning finger, giving the right note to one from the top of his voice, to another from the bottom, and to a third from the middle of it…

Copyists writing out parts sometimes same day as the rehearsals. Oh what a time.

This author has obviously lots of experience and musical knowledge but sometimes a little too much guesswork.