Re: Passacaglia for Bernhard

[Jost Ammon <Jost.Ammon@t-online.de>]

Bradley,

very well said:

>Things change, but they also
> stay the same, but they also change, but they meanwhile stay the same.
You
> know that a few seconds in the future the harmony is going to move in a
> specific direction, and another few seconds later it will move again...
> But you don't know how the journey to get there is going to be.

> I suppose it's like the euphoria that marathon runners say they
experience.

You mention Louis Couperin which makes me recall (off the top of my head)
the Musétees de Choisi et de Taverni by his nephew Francois. Though they are
neither conceived in a passacaglia nor in an ostinato form, they are based
on a repeated and varied basic structure that is gradually reinforced and
comes to an euphoric climax.

A quartet that unmistakably reached this form of euphoria by means of a lot
of ostinatos - though in jazz - was the Coltrane quartet with McCoy Tyner,
Jones and Garrrison - and Marathon playing was indeed what they did.

Jost