Re: GG: Just More Stuff...

["K. Berry" <kb@cs.umb.edu>]

    one of the things I love about playing Bach is how the music comes into
    focus more and more over time

I'd just like to second this as strongly as I can.  I'd also like to
quote some of Charles Rosen's liner notes for his recording of the Art
of the Fugue.  It was these words that gave me the courage to try to
play Contrapunctus I.  I'll never play in a concert hall to a multitude,
but being able to play any of the A.of.F. for myself has given me a lot
of joy.


  ... Let us put ourselves in the place of one of the ``happy few'', the
  rare and select forty who bought a copy of the Art of Fugue.  [The first
  edition sold 40 copies --K]  We know, as we buy it, that it is not a
  work we will ever hear in a concert.  ... Its place was in the home.  As
  we bought our copy of the Art of Fugue we would know that the only way
  to hear it was to take it home and read as much of it at a time as we
  wished on whatever keyboard we possessed.

  ... This intimate character of the Art of the Fugue is part of its
  essence: it is meant to be played for oneself and perhaps a few
  interested friends.  ... It is, above all, a work for oneself to play,
  to feel under one's fingers as well as to hear. ...
  
  It is a summary of the life that Bach had devoted to his art, a
  demonstration and proof of the contrapuntal power with which he had
  written for almost half a century.  The Art of Fugue is also, however,
  a new departure for the composer: untiul then, he had written nothing
  so sober or so auster, nothing in which his art was so naked.
  
  -- Charles Rosen.