BACH & THE AMERICAN MINIMALISTS

In Howards End, E.M. Forster wrote that “it will be generally admitted that Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony is the most sublime noise that has ever penetrated into the ear of man. All sorts and conditions are satisfied by it.” For scholar Scott Burnham, writing in Beethoven Hero, the composer has “arguably been to music what Socrates was to ancient philosophy: his music is heard as a direct expression of human values.” Yet, if there’s one transition that’s notable in a twenty-first century classical music culture, where Beethoven was a previous generation’s unquestionable genius, another might be set to replace him. In 2019, BBC Music Magazine polled 174 composers for their favorite composer of all time. Bach came out on top.  

Much as the porcelain busts, music festivals, and ample representation on concert programmes would lead us to believe, our musical heroes aren’t permanent, and are subject to constantly shifting forces. The fact that we know about Bach’s music at all is mostly thanks to Felix Mendelssohn, who revived Bach’s St Matthew Passion in 1829. (Because of his influential practice of historicism and revivalism—ideas that have fundamentally underpinned classical music culture ever since—there’s a fair argument to be made that Mendelssohn was the world’s most influential classical musician.) 

By shining a light on the way these histories are invented and constructed is not to deny the quality of the music. If anything, by showing the workings of these histories—in peeking behind the curtain—these towering world-historical figures become altogether more approachable, and we’re better placed to find ourselves amid their sometimes impenetrable legacies.Shani Diluka’s programme is not just an attempt to make sense of her own relation to Bach, but also how composers of diverse traditions and lineages are drawn to different parts of his artistry. Diluka chairs a big musical discussion, shining light that reflects back and all around. 

First comes a quartet of compositions all grouped around a single type of movement—the arpeggio, and its relation, the broken chord. Philip Glass is the modern-day king of the arpeggio; later in the programme, it’s hollowed out and hammered into shape in his Étude No. 9, but it first appears in a more incantory, scalic form in his Étude No. 2, creating something approaching the sound of Chopin. The kind of movement and atmosphere continues what’s been established in Alexander Siloti’s arrangement of Bach’s BMV855a; originally in E minor, Siloti transposes the piece down a fifth, darkens it, and adds pianistic flourishes that really enhance this romantic, watery version of Bach’s original. This section concludes with J.S. Bach’s son Charles Philipp Emanuel, and his Solfeggietto in C Minor, a fast, flourishing and popular toccata-style miniature, almost like a minor-key inversion of the Prelude in C Major by his father that precedes it. 

Later in his career, Keith Jarrett made the decision to return to Bach, a formative influence, and commenced a series of recordings on the ECM label of works like the Goldberg Variations, the Sonatas for Violin and Piano, the French Suites and both books of the Well-Tempered Clavier. Listening to My Wild Irish Rose, a song by Chauncey Olcott, and you’ll hear traces of that in the intricate contrapuntal underlay moving methodically under a serene, cantabile melody. That serenity continues in John Cage’s Dream, a gently hovering work originally used as music for a dance piece by Merce Cunningham. 

Two short pieces on shape follow. Bach’s Prelude in F Minor slowly builds harmonic shapes through arpeggiated movement, while Bill Evans’ arrangement of Danny Boy starts with unusual shapes, appearing in single gestures with a confidence, before expanding rhythmically into intricate part-leading around the second verse’s climax. 

From a pair of pieces on shape, to two pieces with a sense of procession. Mad Rush, a piece by Philip Glass originally for organ, was composed the Dalai Lama’s first public address in North America, in 1979 at New York City’s Cathedral of St. John the Divine. It’s made into an open score with multiple repeats to accommodate the leader’s entrance into the cathedral, and is quintessential Glass; almost all the material is made up of arpeggios of contrasting rhythm, whirring elliptically against one another. Though it comes from a cantata rather than a coronation, the slow-walk rhythms of Bach’s Sheep May Softly Graze give it a stately underlay. This version for solo was arranged by Egon Petri. 

During the 1960s, New York’s musically curious would be hard-pressed to miss Moondog: a blind, counter-cultural guru-like figure, dressed like a fantasy Viking and tethered to Manhattan’s 6th Avenue and 53rd Street, here was a gifted composer with a lifelong ambition to realise his particular vision in music. Two pieces by Moondog—a canon in the manner of a Bach Two-Part invention, then Barn Dance—are heard here. The latter is reminiscent particularly of Glass, who let Moondog stay on his couch for a year in exchange for an idiosyncratic musical education; it’s said that Glass learned more from Moondog than he did at Juilliard. In between these Moondog excursions come three songs of sorts: a sweetly melodic Sicilienne by Bach, Jarrett’s take on Be My Love (made popular by Mario Lanza) and Railroad, a short, insistent piece by Meredith Monk subtitled Travel Song. Two more Jarrett arrangements, of I Loves You Porgy from Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, and the traditional American song Shenandoah. 

The hollowed-out arpeggios from Étude No.9 returns in the opening of Glass’s Glassworks, a project in which the composer sought to create a more “Walkman-friendly” type of writing. This kind of movement also characterises the Tirol Concerto, between which comes a section of Bach’s Oboe Concerto in D Minor, an example of Bach’s resourcefulness as a musician: this reconstructs a section of Marcello’s Concerto for Oboe and Strings, and parts of his own cantata BMV35. Diluka concludes with a work that synthesises all these broken-chord visions: Bach’s tempestuous Prelude in C Minor.