May 28: A Musical Offering (Gustav Leonhardt, harpsichord)

A swaggering Bach

Great, go have high artistic aspirations, but you also have to make a living.

European musicians in Bach’s time in Europe typically hodgepodged a career by performing in local churches, teaching, gigging around, and currying favor with the nobility who might bestow a stipend. (To be fair, it’s not too far from how most musicians live today.)

Nearly all the great composers dealt with this instability: Beethoven yearned for high social status but needed to hustle and grovel for cash, all the while loathing and resenting the nobility. Brahms was usually in hock to his publisher who would advance him money for compositions. Bach held a series of steady positions in churches, but he had several encounters with Prussian big shots, including King Frederick II.

Frederick knew of Bach’s improvisational skills. When they met in 1747, Frederick presented Bach with a musical theme to jam on:

Let’s be clear: this theme sucks.

It’s is an amateur hour Bach knockoff composed by the king — the guy to whom no one ever dared say ‘no’. The descending chromatic line is awkward, the rhythm seems designed to prevent flow.

Let’s be generous: maybe it was royal dare, like, “This is so weird and dumb that even Bach can’t possibly make it sound good.” But that doesn’t pass the sniff test: we all know high ego people who are good at one thing (or who are just rich) and think that makes them good at everything.

(The theme is reminiscent of Bach’s Two-Part Invention in D Minor. Here’s Glenn Gould.)

Bach probably looked at it and suppressed an eye roll, maybe even uttered a few complimentary words. But imagine knowing that you have the power to transmute the dumbest shit into gold. What kind of swagger did Bach have walking to the piano?

Bach crushed the improvisation, of course — Frederick loved it. He then published a set of pieces based on the theme and dedicated it to Frederick. What a baller.

Today we’ll listen to clips from a 1974 recording of The Musical Offering (BWV 1079) by the trio of Gustav Leonhardt, Sigiswald Kujiken, and Robert Kohnen. (In college, I had an orchestral recording of this piece on Naxos that never resonated with me; I bought it after reading this 1999 article by Charles Rosen in the NY Times. This smaller scale adaptation is more successful.) (YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music.)

Old Fritz of Prussia is pictured. (On balance, he was one of the good ones — religiously tolerant, patron of the arts, an Enlightenment hero.)

Bach is trying to charm: he makes it easy for the king to hear his theme. Here it is in the viola while the harpsichord and flute comment on it:

The flute gets a turn: 

And here it is in the left hand of the harpsichord:

In the Ricercar a 3, Bach invents circus tent music:

By the time we get to the later dance variations, Bach in his brilliance tucks the melody into something new and beautiful. Voila:

Normally I’d end there, but the pianist Charles Rosen called the Ricercar a 6 from this work as “among the greatest achievements of Western European civilization.” It’s a 6-voice feat of harmony, but I’m not the same level of fan as Charles… Who am I to deprive you all, though? Here’s Leo van Doeselaar performing it for the Netherlands Bach Society:

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Bonus non-Bach praise music:

Pastor Brady Blade Sr. has been leading the Shreveport, LA Zion Baptist church since 1961. He is soon releasing his first album — at 85 years old. The superlative band includes his son Brian Blade on drums, Greg Leisz on pedal steel guitar, and Daniel Lanois on electric guitar.

Jewish clergy frequently preach about ruach, referring to the spirit of God that suffuses the world that can manifest when congregations gather to prayer. Pastor Blade’s performance maxes out ruach — it’s half-inspiring me to move to Shreveport and convert.