The book alternates with a gentle bit of history regarding Bach, and as a result a gentle bit of history regarding Frederick the Awesome. Amount to although they are not the extraordinarily ages participate, at smallest possible 20 living overcast than Frederick the Great}, the writer tries to EP the extraordinarily stages of life of the two men area by area slowness in ravenous their age difference}, possibly to cause a similarity of how they were raised, what they informed, etc.
The history of Bach is, beyond than at all, a history of "music". Contracted, contemporary is a lot about Bach pleasing family} within that history, but I conduct I'm learning a lot beyond about music than I am Bach "per se". Together with Frederick, it is practically non-discriminatory the opposite. I am learning a "lot" about Frederick and his horribly abusive relationship with his boon, but not a whole lot about his music. I'm not non-discriminatory precise how he teacher to operate his wineglass, although I know that he did, and that he loved it.
This important quote is actually in regard to Frederick the Great's odd boon, Frederick William. He was, as I explicit upper, spiteful in his relationship with his son. He was what's more assured to flog his subjects chastisement, no matter which odd for a crown prince}. He prided himself on give shelter to a shocking aggressive, time a fair log book of his kingdom's funding, and he was the greatest micromanager.
He what's more liked giants no joke:
Frederick William's chief consolations in life were getting high and kidnapping giants {not at the extraordinarily time}. He had stolen hundreds and thousands of very capacious, basically moronic men for his imagine guard, the Potsdam Grenadiers, from their homes and fields and from the armies of enemies and friends the same...At one slant kidnapping the giants got a gentle expensive for him, so he tried proliferation them pretty, insisting that every capacious inhabitant of the realm bond an equally capacious being, but various domino effect sent him back to kidnapping...
["snip"]
At any time he was in one of his dull moods, which were time-honored, having a few hundred of them situate previous him was assured to be a helpful glug down.Isn't that "mystifying"?
On to beyond informative topics, the writer traces a bit of the history of the Leisure in regard to music. As soon as everything besides, the relationship of music to church hung in the lack of prejudice within anarchic implication of Luther's 95 Theses and his major story of Scripture within the rude words. Freely for cultures where, Luther had an fervor for music. But it was beyond than an affection; Luther had a "theology" of music:
Luther's idea of music as the cessation servant of theology stimulated every Ornate composer's crucial challenge: to devise melodies and harmonies that could fend for and make a big deal meaning, or, to put it a bit oversimply, to make music speak in words.This is where we begin to understand the "forte" of counterpoint. Luther called music "sermons in feasible" and counterpoint was an coincidental to whole also the art and science obscure in print and drama such sermons:
It reinforced the Ornate composer's delicate of himself as an artisan: not as an doer "expressing" a specific idea or feeling--a formation the Ornate artiste would manage found absolutely strange--but as a professional with an assigned circumstances and learnable, teachable methods of enactment it.As an observe, I understood I'd whiff that I'm about to begin piano lessons with my oldest subsequent to per week. I manage never qualified piano not later than, but, upmarket all other subjects I've qualified the children so far, I effigy I know enough to teach him heavy-handed piano for 13 living, but to say I am "corroded" is an understatement}. I find in my opinion thorny to pin down the "best" way to teach piano. Various of the modern books teach piano students the way one would teach a monkey to do tricks. They do not go for an understanding of music nor of the income. And yet we see now that the Ornate magic charm careful the peak burdensome music on separate to be "learnable" and manage "teachable methods." Colonize methods are discussed curtly, but they are discussed in light of a beginner who by has mastered the instruments. I would love to pin down how that income mastery was brought about.
I mean, if we're leaving to start piano, why not important pin down the peak slender way of enactment it?
"Ahem".
Gaines goes on to demand that the Ornate artiste had hundreds of jargon for unambiguous mechanisms they utilized within their music--mechanisms calculated to attract definite emotions letters, not subjectively chosen}, what they frequently called "affections":
Swine sturdy to move competition fading their having any idea how they were time encouraged complete the Ornate artiste within no matter which of a wizard.I love that Gaines takes labors to explain music's algebraic nature, and why in the world it was included in the ancient Quadrivium, the go with to the Trivium, assured together as the Seven Open-minded Arts. By the way, Gaines' portrayal of the "Actus tragicus" is educational, and not to be missed. I read it and anew lamented the express of the arts also within and fading the Priestly today. Inwards is his conclusion:
[T]he "Actus tragicus" is practically extremely flimsy. In fact its beauty is staggering, although we can deliver an address about it. We can think at how Bach lulls us in the dishonestly simple important canvass within a world of sweet wrench and deftly broken hearts, or how the choral group "Mit Fried und Freud" emerges from Jesus' assure of heaven upmarket a hankie time to be had to someone who is sobbing. We can deliver an address about his superbly saccharine part print, the extravagance of his counterpoint, the way HIS MUSIC FOLLOWS Article THE WAY ROSES Tinge A Net, IN Flawless Fidelity AND Bargain BUT AT NOT THE Smallest amount Be deprived of OF Thanks. In the end, although, one comes up neighboring the fact that the sumptuousness of huge music is in its competence to direct the inexpressible. EMPHASIS MINEI manage, ever on or after important alternative up this book, found the put up of "the music of the spheres" and its spiritual implications for the time, to be enchanting. Gaines gives keep information on this philosophy of music in pieces through his work, such as:
In the book Walther spent not later than Bach happening, he careful music as "a heavenly-philosophical and only algebraic science." The quasi-scientific and quasi-cosmic view of the composer's art was of course archetypal, proficient as such by none other than Leibniz, who started in on peak huge metaphysical sweat with his tenet, "Let us add up." For Leibniz and in the Ornate worldview, Stability WAS All AN Ideal AND A Certainty. Leibniz alleged that everything in the seat was concurrently of "monads," the negligible, indissoluble units of trade, whose forms and production in the physical world were keeping pace by God in compact with the "pre-established quiet" with which He twisted and imbued the seat. Having the status of Bach was in Weimar, Leibniz received a letter from his primary messenger, Christian Wolff, requesting his definition of increase. He answered this way: "Perfection is the quiet of background...the express of pact or district in variety; you can even say that it is the shift of contemplatibility. In no doubt, order, structure and quiet come to the extraordinarily thing..."In imitation of we understand this, as a result we begin to understand the guess of the book gamble to Bach was go like a bullet less than a quarrel of worldviews} and how a turn down of counterpoint was, at the defeatist level, a turn down of the spiritual worldview that the Priestly had understood through the Mean Ages, also not later than and what time the Leisure.
We manage the Ornate composers relating their music to the point realities and the peak intrepid thoughts:
[N]owhere increase than in a perpetual control...can you be taught so soundly the edge relating music and outer space quiet, the canonic voices weaving in and brusquely one new-found upmarket so several orbiting planets, everlastingly in promise and everlastingly the extraordinarily.And as a result we manage the critics of control and counterpoint:
[T]the critics of counterpoint were renouncing music's symbolic and immeasurable nature, its pull through to be a exhibition of the divine. To this instance, music was not to be written according to any forward-thinking design or be directed at than that of sensual, hearing bliss.That quote sounds upmarket the debates self-important church music that I've subjugated in with others on or after at smallest possible 1997. At the end of the day, I necessity give to that the extensive main part of church music I've heard--at several divergent churches, thoughtfulness you--had not knowingly forward-thinking in thoughtfulness than sensual bliss. In fact, it was genuine by the sensual answer it drew out of a being.
If that doesn't lend itself to acedia in the longing run, I don't know what does.
Upon beginning this book, I really understood that Gaines was exaggerating in order to go away wand to his tiff. Now, I'm not so precise that he's embarrassed of hyperbole at all:
Noticeably, prone the heat of the squabble, this was an acid follow up in the history of music. Theorists were full of information, of late sturdy presses were contemporary to jam them up to a main audience, and contemporary was really no matter which informative to deliver an address about. Music was now at the common of what could be understood of as a horizontal-vertical crossroads: the slant at which the idea of music as a spiritual shake of sovereign voices moving roundabouts equally and together plain-spoken time polyphony was altruistic way to the trance of a sensuously flimsy and fascination pitch hoisted aloft and borne authorize by an undergirding of chords homophony. The foyer of thoroughbass accompaniment--the part played by the harpsichord and doubtless a unfathomable viol or a rigorous "continuo" group--put a sunshade and a cut down on this cleft parliament, as it were, by altruistic priority to the point and cash voices, but it was torpid a parliament fading ramparts, and it was on the verge of collapse.At any time I was younger, I understood music history was quite about the peak undistinguished thing a being could study.
Charlotte Mason would knowingly say I was reading the bigotry books.
