The Hammock Papers: The Architect of Sound

31 March 2010

The Architect of Sound

I'm listening to Bach's The Art of Fugue, performed by the Emerson String Quartet. In the past I did not like this piece. It had made me feel on edge. Music can do that. But I had felt uncomfortably on edge. Today I am enjoying the way this piece grabs me. I feel connected to it as though after many attempts to understand a math problem, a masterful teacher has just shown me a new method, a new perspective, a way to solve the problem.

Before yesterday I had never heard this piece performed on anything but a keyboard (pipe organ and harpsichord, mainly). To hear the layers of score intertwining in and around each other when defined by violins, viola and cello is clarifying. I read an article once in which Bach was described as "The Architect of Sound." Hearing The Art of Fugue architecturally "deconstucted" by the string quartet makes sense to not only my ear, but my guts.

Musicologists believe that the nature of the scoring may suggest the piece wasn't meant to be played, but rather studied.

The Art of Fugue is a perfect demonstration of the balancing organization, rationality, and building that Bach musically mastered. This is the basis of Contrapunctus. This form is an integral part of Bach's fugue. "Contrapuctus," or counterpoint, was defined by Titus in 1477 as "… a moderate and reasonable concord which arises when one tone is placed opposite another, from which also the term contrapunctus, that is 'note against note', can be derived. Counterpoint is therefore a combination of tones. If this combination or mixture sounds sweetly to the ears, it is called consonance; if, on the other hand, it sounds harsh and unpleasant, it is called dissonance…" This piece is full of these point-counterpoint "balances."

I highly recommend giving Bach's architecture a listen.

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WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

"When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone and of good cheer – say travelling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep – it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence, and how, they come I know not ; nor can I force them. Those ideas that please me I retain in memory and am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this dainty morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it. That is to say, agreeable to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of various instruments etc. All this fires my soul, and, provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodised, and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it like a fine picture or a beautiful statue at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. What a delight this is, I cannot tell."

MARCUS AURELIUS

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?' neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility."

VINCENT van GOGH

"What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge. As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation."

DAN CAMPBELL