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Siciliano
Stranded, I decided to travel imaginatively. Segovia's transcription of the Siciliano from the BWV1001 (Sonata for Solo Violin) is impossible to come by, so I laboured for four days over some blank staves and the pause button. It is amazing the things you hear - phrases take on new meaning in isolation, meaning which doesn't disappear when they are returned to passages, seams vanished.
There are also things in pieces like this you only hear when you play them. The Siciliano sways; fishing boats on bobbing seas returning to white daub cottages; or hips languidly wander from sunny avenues to minor shadows. The way to the minor lies everywhere and is as inevitable as death follows life follows death. There is no easy way out from that latin doubt: the lovelorn and bereaved circle in a maze of trying, rush the doors, tilt at windmills, but return to the relative minor. Cycle through modes, be confident, be desperate, leave no stone unturned till a slipway is found, and through there you will stumble on sympathetic company; people gather as distant bells chime, and sadnesses and laughter are what binds them together. Rediscover that sweet major tonic, and let it linger while it will.
Download JS Bach, BWV1001: Siciliano
Two Voices
BWV 996 is 'possibly' one of the suites we know Bach wrote for the lautenwerk - a harpsichord rather than a lute. Whatever the case, transposing from lute to guitar results in a substantial reinterpretation, because they are quite different instruments. What is clear about the Allemande, though, whatever instrument it is played on, is that it has two voices, which combine, separate, desist and return, cross over each other, and anticipate each other's transition from minor to major.
Segovia tuned his interpretation 5 semitones above the Em in which I have learnt it, and it would be nice to think that helps to make the separate voices clearer, though I suspect his technique - not to mention his enormous talent - has much more to do with it. In my interpretation there is somewhat more muddiness, and somewhat less clarity, which I can't blame on the key. That transposition does, however, alter the octave in which one of the final runs occurs (particularly the bass run of, in this case, the G up to the D#), making Am (in that case, C down to the G#) a more sensible key to play in. Maybe one day I'll try it.
Whose are the two voices? I played recently for the muse for whom the poem was written, and was asked what I thought of when I played. Impossible to answer that I thought of her. There is always an audience. There is no point in speaking, if not to someone - however imaginary - or even to oneself. If one voice is my own, is the other my imaginary friend, the Don? Is it the muse? Is it Bach? Are the two voices myself and the guitar? In any music interpreted from someone else's score, there are always two of us, since we require each other to complete the piece.
This is an exponentially proliferating polyphony of imagined voices, but there are only ever two halves of a whole, two hemispheres of one world, two people exchanging glances and gestures, censored as much by each other's conflicting pulls when they are alone, as they are by a third presence. I think that is what is in my mind when I play the Allemande from BWV 996 - and so grateful for that transition from minor to major.
Allemande
Muse
I shall make you my muse -
since sly smiles and kinds words
that may mean no more than they appear,
now reveal me
no longer on a plain of certitude,
but on a precipice of potential.
The sideways glance of your laughing eye,
the hand resting on the table
are the seeming mirror of the flooded plain -
the unspoken invisible charge
is the white spray crest of the edge
and then nothing
- but muse -
that is the vertigo
of the waterfall.
(And the way you call me 'boy'
hints cascades of possibilities)
I have made you my muse
Download Bach - Allemande (BWV 996) mp3
Sarabande
The Don shares his wisdom, and for that I’m grateful – but I wish he could impart his courage as well as his experience. I told him of my dilemma – my paralysis of inaction, which afflicts me each time I find myself wanting to speak of my feelings: I am rendered mute before the very object of my emotion. He looked at me kindly.
“There have been so very few people who were rays of sunshine in my life. I knew someone who was just such a shaft of light. She came into my life, and her joy threw shadows from everyone around her. Her smile flung away the clouds and her laughing eyes made the world a better place.
“I was in what I thought was my heyday. I thought to distinguish myself, my witty barbs and unconventional manner were magnetic. I revelled in my sharp limelight. My dart words hooked and dazzled, and I held myself guru-like in my acolytes' esteem.
“She had been away for some time, and I felt her absence as though it were a long dark night. When she returned, I put on my display. I was, I thought, on fire. My wit was my peacock feather, and in response to some small remark from a voice behind me, I shot off an offhand and withering remark. On turning round I saw it was her. She lowered her eyes, said nothing, but politely listened to me as I continued to excavate caverns of shame with my foolish words. And then, she left.
“I heard that she had spoken of my insult, and had said she thought me a brute. When I saw her a few days later, though I wanted to scream my sorrow and beg her forgiveness, my anger and pride kept me from it, and she left me in silence - a proud man guarding my horde of nothing.
“I never saw her again. I looked for her, every day, until it was time for me to leave that place. I accepted that it was too late. I never told her what I thought she was; how she lit up my eyes as though I were only half-alive when she was not with me.”
Though I could see he was drifting into a reverie, I asked, “Do you think she would be surprised, looking back on this, if you could tell her now?”
“I hope she has forgotten me entirely. But you – you should not hesitate.”
For Jo L. - wherever she may be
Download: Bach - BWV 1002 Sarabande.
Courante
Courtly ladies and gentlemen greet, bow and circle. Courtiers fawn. Attendants scuttle. The surface of things appears brilliant and refined. We accept the semblance because doing so makes the illusory into something real.
Pockmarked skin becomes truly smooth under white foundation, malicious hearts become saintly, snakes in the grass become lambs in the fold.
We have truly become cultured.
Download: Bach - BWV1009 Courante mp3
May
May 2006 is the first month of the record of Don Chihuahua's progress, return, last stand, and other punctuations. These things will become clear if they are not now.
It began with Leonard, which uses a finger-picking style which I could never play before when I tried, and then recently discovered I could play. I had, at that time, been slaving away over the Bach pieces Sarabande from BWV 1002 and Prelude for Cello BWV 1007. I was working on a trill from an old interpretation of a Sojo Cantico, and just added a string.
I like to think that playing Bach makes you better: a better person, as well as a better musician.
The Prelude took weeks to master - to the extent that it has been mastered at all... the tricky parts were not those I expected, like stretching for a large barre in the middle of a phrase, but changing my mind about counterpoints. The source I used had very little counterpoint (compared to Segovia's recording, for instance), so I added some of those by ear. Then I took them out again. Each time my fingers had forgotten what to do. And each time, I heard the Segovia version differently. Playing a piece of music changes your understanding of it totally, and there seems to be no going back.
Tarrega's Endecha, is slow, pompous, ponderous, over-dramatic and possibly not in the spirit of the thing at all. But when I played it I kept being put in mind of the passacaglias that Bach wrote for the organ, and so I played it that way. It is probably done more justice to by interpretations such as this by Braumeister.
I think June will see Don Chihuahua dwelling on lost love. I'll bring the story to you when I can.
Prelude
For my father, Andrew Flintham: 6 May, 1951 - 25 December, 2001. Not a special lover of Bach, but I think he would have liked this.
I think of it like walking into the studio of someone who sculpts in wood. The latest work has been shipped out. All that remains are the shavings, the scraps from the block that were carved away to create the form.
If we lingered, forensically, over each piece, then maybe, we could remake the work of art, the piece that is missing. Each scrap of shaved wood bears the craft and skill of the maker, and the imprint of the lost form. They are too precious to discard.
Some might sweep them away, and pretend the work came into form without the mechanics of production. I prefer to cling to them as evidence of things forever gone.
Chips off the old block: me; my finger-squeak and frett-buzz; and memories of my father.
Download: Bach - Cello Prelude in G-major BWV 1007; transcribed for guitar in D-major
