Taruskin the Persuader

Disclaimer: I read this review online, thus my page numbers are different from the hard copy.

As a musician who has so far avoided worshipping at the shrine of JSB, I have still heartily agreed with that book-mark sentiment: "Bach gave us God's word, Mozart gave us God's laughter, and Beethoven gave us God's fire." Leaving aside the thought that maybe Mahler gave us more fire than Beethoven, Bach certainly gave us God's word(s). Many and more of them, in fact. An endless stream of words flows through the cantatas, the Passions, and the B minor Mass, not to mention the interminable amount of notes which accompany them. And that's not even taking into account the verbosity of the cello suites or the keyboard works!

I realize that I am speaking what amounts to musical blasphemy, but I feel it allows me to have much less at stake than others when Taruskin takes aim at cherished illusions about one of the three B's.

Taruskin, at whose own shrine I might admittedly be found as a catechumen, gives here another textbook example of his guru-like ability to pull the metaphorical rug out from under his readers. The opening paragraphs set up a situation which encourages the unwary to feel comfortable (after all, who would argue that music is not "the art of pleasing by the succession and combination of agreeable sounds"?) and, as Taruskin continues, the reader allows his or her own prejudices to come closer to the forefront of their thoughts. The "music itself" does contain implications, does it not? Things that can be explicated and studied and that affect performance practice and performance reception. All that extramusical baggage, those "contemptible German church texts, which suffer from the earnest polemic of the Reformation," (p. 2) could get in the way of a true appreciation for the musical genius that is Johann Sebastian Bach.

BAM!

That's the noise Richard Taruskin makes when he suddenly turns and destroys the pedestal on which Bach has been placed. Being "hearty, genial, [and] lyrical" (p. 2) is only one aspect of his musical personality, Taruskin proclaims. Another side is more concerned with the truth (or more accurately the Truth) than with beauty. And the Truth for Bach is that "the world is filth and horror, that humans are helpless, that life is pain, that reason is a snare." (p. 2) Like Olivier Messiaen a few hundred years later, all those religious trappings weren't mere decoration for Bach, as Taruskin goes into detail to prove.

It is because of these details that my own admiration for Bach is now much more than when I began reading the review. Using the limitations of the performers' own equipment to further illustrate a text is surely a stroke of genius, whether that be intonation issues with period instruments or the lung-power of a vocalist. I found myself wishing I could listen to the performances before even completing the reading!

Thus, despite my earlier heretical sentiments, I am slow and surely coming to love Bach's music more and more, now thanks in part to the machinations and skillful pen of Richard Taruskin.