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Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven QUOTES

Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven QUOTES

1 " One imagines that he might have understood the supreme value of Bach's vocal works - not primarily as objects or artefacts, but as individual visions of life and as priceless forms of communication with his fellow man. For this is what is so distinctive when we compare Bach's legacy to that of his forerunners and successors. Monteverdi gives us the full gamut of human passions in music, the first composer to do so; Beethoven tells us what a terrible struggle it is to transcend human frailties and to aspire to the Godhead; and Mozart shows the kind of music we might hope to hear in heaven. But it is Bach, making music in the Castle of Heaven, who gives us the voice of God - in human form. "

― John Eliot Gardiner , Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven

2 " Music is the hidden arithmetical exercise of a mind unconscious that it is calculating. "

― John Eliot Gardiner , Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven

3 " Monteverdi gives us the full gamut of human pssions in music, the first composer to do so; Beethoven tells us what a terrible struggle it is to transcend human frailties and to aspire to the Godhead; and Mozart shows the kind of music we might hope to hear in heaven. But it is Bach, making music in the Castle of Heaven, who gives us the voice of God - in human form. "

― John Eliot Gardiner , Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven

4 " His naivety was of the sort that Descartes no doubt had in mind when he concluded that the study of history, like travel, while harmless enough as a form of entertainment – one composed of ‘memorable events’ which might conceivably ‘elevate the mind’ or ‘help to form the judgement’ – was hardly an occupation for anyone seriously concerned with increasing knowledge. "

― John Eliot Gardiner , Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven

5 " Many people remember that when in 1977 the Voyager spacecraft was launched, opinions were canvassed as to what artefacts would be most appropriate to leave in outer space as a signal of man's cultural achievements on earth. The American astronomer Carl Sagan proposed that 'if we are to convey something of what humans are about then music has to be a part of it.' To Sagan's request for suggestions, the eminent biologist Lewis Thomas answered, 'I would send the complete works of Johann Sebastian Bach.' After a pause, he added, 'But that would be boasting. "

― John Eliot Gardiner , Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven

6 " Elsewhere, in schools where teachers had come under the influence of the Moravian reformer Jan Amos Comenius (1592–1670), shafts of sunlight were theoretically able to penetrate. The Klosterschule in Ohrdruf (previously a monastic school) to which Bach moved from Eisenach after his parents’ death and attended for four and a half years, is alleged to have been just such a place, famous in the district for having adopted Comenius’s curricular reforms. His method stressed the importance of cultivating a favourable environment for learning, of encouraging pleasure as well as moral instruction through study, and of helping pupils to learn progressively from concrete examples, stage by stage – from a knowledge of things (including songs and pictures) rather than through words alone. "

― John Eliot Gardiner , Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven

7 " Consciously, I am certainly an atheist, but I do not say it out loud, because if I look at Bach, I cannot be an atheist. Then I have to accept the way he believed. His music never stops praying. And how can I get closer if I look at him from the outside? I do not believe in the Gospels in a literal fashion, but a Bach fugue has the Crucifixion in it – as the nails are being driven in. In music, I am always looking for the hammering of the nails … That is a dual vision. My brain rejects it all. But my brain isn’t worth much.’31 "

― John Eliot Gardiner , Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven

8 " Kepler reportedly said, amid the massacres of religious wars, the laws of elliptical motion belong to no man or principality.’17 The same could be said of music. "

― John Eliot Gardiner , Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven

9 " Talent [by which I think she meant technique] without genius is not worth much; but genius without talent is worth nothing whatsoever. "

― John Eliot Gardiner , Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven

10 " Not many people, however, are content to follow Albert Einstein’s summary advice: ‘This is what I have to say about Bach’s life’s work: listen, play, love, revere – and keep your trap shut. "

― John Eliot Gardiner , Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven

11 " Music had shown that it could now articulate, reflect and project a sense of an established secular order – hence allowing the absolutist polemics of Lully’s court operas – and yet also be the mouthpiece of a radical sense of often beleaguered individuality. By 1700 music had developed techniques capable of dividing and ordering time and of holding the attention of its listeners in ways that would have been impossible a century earlier. "

― John Eliot Gardiner , Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven

12 " In the earlier Passion it was John's special eyewitness account that gave the work its authenticity and edge, while the irregular placement of arias and chorales reinforced this suspense. With Matthew's version comes a larger cast and the added pathos of Jesus presented as 'a man of sorrows'. It would be hard to better it as an essentially human drama - one involving immense struggle and challenge, betrayal and forgiveness, love and sacrifice, compassion and pity - the raw material with which most people can instantly identify. "

― John Eliot Gardiner , Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven

13 " Mattheson was perhaps too clever for his own good; nonetheless the smart money was on this sophisticated and broadly educated polymath. Later on he wrote about music from the vantage point of practical experience, not only as an observer but also as a trained professional. He considered opera houses essential to civic pride, a necessity, like having efficient banks: ‘The latter provide for general security, the former for education and refreshment … where the best banks are, so too are the best opera houses,’ he maintained. "

― John Eliot Gardiner , Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven

14 " In his imaginative response to Luther’s text, Bach makes us aware that music can do much more than merely mirror the words from start to finish: he shows that it can hold our attention and captivate us by metaphors that strike like lightning. As long as we are willing to let go and allow him to describe the world to us as he sees it, we are soon provided with a first point of entry. "

― John Eliot Gardiner , Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven

15 " Ingmar Bergman’s film The Seventh Seal (1957). "

― John Eliot Gardiner , Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven

16 " This faculty is mother wit, the creative power through which man is capable of recognising likenesses and making them himself. We see it in children, in whom nature is more integral and less corrupted by convictions and prejudices, that the first faculty to emerge is that of seeing similarities. "

― John Eliot Gardiner , Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven

17 " The way we define opera circa 1700 may help us to throw light not just on the choices facing Bach and his brilliant peer group at the outset of their careers, but on the cultural milieu which demarcates the changing role of music in early-eighteenth-century society. "

― John Eliot Gardiner , Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven

18 " We shall see shortly that Bach was to seize on a mutant type of opera that was to serve his purpose when composing the more dramatic of his church cantatas and Passions. "

― John Eliot Gardiner , Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven