I read on a friend's blog today a quote from George Eliot: "It's never too late to be what you could have been." I was so touched that I had to go out and buy Middlemarch at Borders today at lunch. It helped that work wasn't really holding my attention. While I was there I picked up Glen Gould playing the Bach Goldberg Variations and Solti conducting selections from Matthaus Passion. Perhaps the heat is getting to me. I've never enjoyed Bach, but today I thought I should give it a go. I've undergone a total detoxification of all chemicals stronger than coffee and I reasoned that my new found sobriety would help me appreciate the composer I've always seen as a little simple. I am told by numerous Bach fans that it is his clarity that makes him so endearing and really with all the linear motion Bach is far from simple. Whatever, I'd shrug. I prefer more turmoil and tension making that resolution all the sweeter. I prefer Liszt and Chopin and Tchaikovsky. Swoopy. Brooding. Triumphant. Emotional. I told people that my ear was too immature for Bach and that was fine by me.
I listened to the Goldberg Variations on my way back to the office, and found myself rather pleased with my purchase. There's probably something to the context: driving on a sunny day with heavy puffy clouds hanging in the sky like enormous air cows, surrounded by trees on either side of a small road, and the crisp sound of Gould's treatment of music that for me has always conjured images of hiking. I imagine Darwin listened to Bach in his head as he was going about his scientific research. Bach is musical lemonade, and on a day like today with a heat index hovering around 106 degrees Farenheit every possible relief counts. And Glen Gould really is a monster. He tears through the piece and when his left hand starts moving on a separate line it's such a treat.
I still haven't cracked Middlemarch (but that will soon be rectified) and the Passion remains unheard today. I'm happy to be enjoying a piece of music that I've merely endured in the past. The switch has been flipped.
1 comment:
You are making me feel bad that I am typically only listening to the soundtracks to all three Lord of the Rings movies when I just need noise in the background at work.
I guess I will que up Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition (the original piano version...NOT Rimsky-Korsakov's orchestration) out of guilt of my gauche musical tendencies. :)
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