I'm not religious, but I do believe that music means something important even if though I don't know what. I might follow a pied piper off a bridge.
So I couldn't help thinking of music when I read the work of a philosopher who believed that his ability to imagine something more perfect than anything he'd ever seen proved the existence of a god. When I play the violin, I always have an idea of the way the music should sound, though I can't play it that way. The music exists abstractly, more perfect than anyone can actually play it. This music god, if there is one, shows itself in the major section of the Ciaccona from the D-minor partita.
Bach added the Ciaccona as an extra movement to the D-minor partita after his wife died. It's 64 variations on a four-bar phrase. Can you imagine Bach playing, maybe pacing up and down, saying to myself, "I'm just going to keep playing these same four bars until something happens." Then the major section happens.
It doesn't sound like Bach planned it. It sounds like he just opened the door and there it was, like a beautiful woman to cheer him up when he was grieving. I don't expect a happy section in this piece the way I might expect a sad one in piece written in a major key. And I definitely don't expect a section of beautiful chords that are swelling, as if the violinist can't put enough love into them.
Afterward, the music resumes its minor walk. Vision over. He goes on for another page or two, wistfully at first, sorry for the beautiful part to be over, but then he rebounds in some fast flourishes.
And the last note is an open D string played along with the same note fingered on the opposite string. I love that it's neither a minor chord nor a major chord. Bach left it ambiguous. I like to imagine it's a happy ending.
Sunday, September 30, 2012
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