writing the book

So I've been doing some reading lately.  For one thing, it's good for me.  It's gotten my brain out of my otherwise sluggish, unmotivated, grieving-over-my-parents'-divorce funk.  Turns out I get a huge high from pulling out my old textbooks and blogging about it.  My previous post about Monteverdi kept me going all weekend, other than the meltdown I had yesterday afternoon.  But life is hard and sometimes, meltdowns happen whether we want them to or not.  We're going along, telling ourselves that it's ok and we're doing great and we're going to make it and the next thing you know, well, there you are on the phone with your mother, laying on your front porch, sobbing loud enough for the neighbors to hear and do you care?  No, because you're having a meltdown.  It happens.

But then you have a glass of wine and watch a movie with your roommate (one that you've seen so many times you can explicate the implicit of an Austen period piece... in the modern) and do some reading and get up the next morning and go for a run and realize that it really is going to be ok.  Because God is good and he will not let you fall to the ground when you're doing what he's called you to do.  And even when you're not doing what he's called you to do, he's still not going to let you wander outside the scope of his will for your life because whether you realize it or not, your wanderings are in his will for you too...

... which brings me to Bach.  Last night's chapter on Bach was kind of earth-shattering for me in a way that totally reminded me of the How I Met Your Mother episode where they all realize each other's annoying habits and, each time one of these is mentioned in front of the group, you literally hear the glass shattering in their heads as they grapple with the enormity of these new realizations about people they've known for a long time.  As a pianist, I've known Bach for... a while.  But not in the way I came to grips with him last night.  You could say I've known his music for a while.  But the man himself... well, it turns out he had a veritable stick up his ass.  And when you've fallen in love with one side of a person and envisioned them in such a way for so long... inevitably the glass is going to shatter at some point.

And it makes sense that Bach was difficult to work with.  His output is enormous.  Somebody once told me that if you copied out all of Bach's scores by hand, you couldn't finish them in a lifetime.  Whether or not that's true is beyond me.  I suppose I could Google search it, but that's not really my point here.  Bach was a genius, there's no doubt about it, and geniuses don't always have the best interpersonal skills on the face of the planet.  It's why he's easy to fall in love with if you listen to his music and ignore his personal life.  His harmonic schemes are not only inventive, but well... divine.  Hauntingly beautiful at times.  And his counterpoint is beyond reproach, since well, he wrote the book on it.  I mean, let's be honest:  he had polyphonic compositional techniques down to a science.  Literally.  Take a look at The Art of Fugue for any period of time, and you'll find your jaw hanging open and your eyebrows crossed in horror / awe.  It's enough to give you an inferiority complex as a musician, throw up the white flag of surrender, and consider going into another field.  Of course he was a bear to work with... he operated at one of the highest levels of musicianship in the history of western music and he was a perfectionist.  His personality, combined with his genius, made it really difficult to be around people who just weren't quite there yet... basically, everyone he knew.  With the exception of maybe a few... like Buxtehude and Handel.

And this is where I come to my point:  Bach wasn't really competing with anyone.  For all of his genius, he was just doing what he knew how to do.  He was isolated in Leipzig for most of his career and he was expected to provide music for Sunday service at St. Thomas' and for teaching the boys at the school.  My professors in college tried to stress this point often enough, which I failed to fully come to grips with until I was on my run this morning:  musicians in the Baroque and Classical periods weren't writing for eternity.  They weren't competing with other musicians in their regional areas or even musicians of the past.  They were just doing their job.

Prof Schonberg writes,

"Like all composers of the day, [Bach] regarded himiself as a working professional, one who ordinarily wrote to fill a specific need -- a cantata for Sunday, an exercise book for the children, an organ piece to demonstrate a particular instrument.  He did publish a very few pieces of which he was especially proud, but by and large he fully expected the bulk of his music to disappear after his death.  When he became cantor in Leipzig, he bundled up all his predecessor's music... and he knew that his successor would just as summarily get rid of whatever Bach manuscripts were around.  It was a cantor's job to present music that he had composed not the music of another man (39)."

If only we had the same attitude today.  Just do what you are called to do in life... whatever that is.  If it's pilates, do your pilates.  If it's teaching piano, then teach piano.  If it's blogging, then blog.  If it's cooking, then good grief... get out there and cook tasty food for the people you love.  And I'll tell you a secret, for those of you who aren't exactly hip to this idea of calling:  we're called to the things that we love and are good at.  And maybe those things don't make us any money.  So maybe you work at a job you don't really like because it pulls in an income to feed the hungry mouths that depend on you.  Or maybe you work part-time at Starbucks so that you can at least have money coming in while you start up your photography business.  Whatever it is, make sure you have time to do the things you're called to do.  Forget about posterity.  Forget about the competition.  Real artistry, real creativity happens when you're doing what you love over and over again, getting really good at it over time... til you've nailed it down to a science... til you yourself have written the book on counterpoint.  And maybe no one will ever find that book or care that it exists.  But you do.  And you'll have done something really worthwhile while writing it:  lived.  

Sources:
- Schonberg, Harold C.  The Lives of the Great Composers, (Third Edition).  pp 36-54.  New York:  W.W. Norton and Co.
- Bays, Thomas, and Lloyd.  How I Met Your Mother.  Season 3, Episode 8: "Spoiler Alert."  Nov 12, 2007, original air date.