I Am a Strange Loop

Fifteen years later, I was surprised to be invited to participate in a commemoration in Rovereto, Italy, of the 250th anniversary of Bach’s death (which had taken place in July of 1750), but since I was going to be in northern Italy at that time in any case, I gladly accepted. Several memorable talks were delivered in the afternoon, and after a banquet there was to be a treat — a performance of a number of Bach pieces (transcribed for small chorus) by a well-known singing troupe. I remembered their skill and was looking forward to a rewarding evening of moving music.

What I heard, however, was something quite different, although I should perhaps have anticipated it: a nonstop display of unrestrained vocal virtuosity, and nothing but that. It was terribly impressive, but to my mind it was also terribly vapid. The lowlight of the entire performance for me was when the singers came to one of the most profound of all the Bach organ fugues — the G minor fugue often called simply “The Great” (BWV 542), a work that I loved as played by Albert Schweitzer in all his modesty, but with unrivaled depth of feeling. Regrettably, I will never forget how they tackled this meditative fugue at roughly twice the speed it should be taken at, lighting into it as if they were sprinting to catch a train, and struttin’ their stuff like nobody’s business. They bounced on their toes, as if to try to get the audience to swing along with their snappy rhythm, and they even snapped their fingers to the beat (even the word “beat” sounds ridiculous in this hallowed context). Several of the singers periodically flashed bright grins at the audience, as if to say, “Aren’t we fabulous? Ever heard anyone sing so many notes per second in your life? How about those trills! Isn’t this music sexy? Hope you’re all diggin’ it! And don’t forget, we have lots of CD’s you can buy after the show!”

All of this threw me for a real loop. Of course there is room in this world for many ways to perform any work of music, and of course there was something interesting about these singers’ speed and slickness, and the way that they executed ultrarapid trills flawlessly — it was impressive in much the same way as the engineering details of a beautiful sports car are impressive — but for me it had nothing to do with the meaning of the music. That meaning was contemplative and cosmic, not frilly and show-offy. I am tolerant of many diverse ways of playing pieces of music, but I also have my limits and this went considerably beyond them. It made me long to hear the slightly flawed, very mortal, and reflective profundity of Albert Schweitzer at his little village organ in Günsbach, but that was not in the cards that evening. It was a classic case of sacred versus profane, and it remains vivid in my memory.

Only in preparing this chapter did I come across some writings by Schweitzer himself that strangely echo (if echoes can precede their causes!) my great troubledness that evening in Rovereto. Here is what he wrote, almost one hundred years earlier, about performances of Bach in that era:

Many performers have been performing Bach for years without experiencing for themselves the deepening that Bach is capable of bringing out in any true artist. Most of our singers are far too caught up in technique to sing Bach correctly. Only a very small number of them can reproduce the spirit of his music; the rest of them are incapable of penetrating into the Master’s spiritual world. They do not feel what Bach is trying to say, and therefore cannot transmit it to anyone else. Worst of all, they consider themselves to be outstanding Bach interpreters, and have no awareness of what it is that they lack. Sometimes one has to wonder how listeners who attend such superficial performances are able to detect even the slightest sign of the depth of Bach’s music.

Those who understand the situation today will not consider these comments to be exaggeratedly pessimistic. Our enchantment with Bach is undergoing a crisis. The danger is that our love for Bach’s music will become superficial and that too much vanity and smugness will be mixed in with it. Our era’s lamentable trend towards imitation comes out also in the way that we take Bach over, which is all too visible these days. We act as if we wanted to praise Bach, but in truth we only praise ourselves. We act as if we had rediscovered him, understood him, and performed him as no one has ever done before. A bit less noise, a bit less “Bach dogmatism”, a bit more ability, a bit more humility, a bit more tranquility, a bit more devotion… Only thus will Bach be more honored in spirit and in truth than he has been before.