On other Monday nights I might enjoy and marvel at Bach's contrapuntal brilliance as I listen to Gould or Hewitt perform his Art of the Fugue. All of these are defining works of western music, and all acknowledged as some of - if not - the highest musical achievements of mankind. It is no surprise to me that Gould's rendition of the Forty Eight Preludes and Fugues and the Goldberg Variations were recorded on a golden disc and placed into the 1977 Voyager spacecraft and sent into deep space. The intention being that if the spacecraft and disc were discovered by some far off civilisation they would represent some of the greatest achievements of humankind. Nor can I disagree with Dr Toby Lipman's comment that: "If humanity and all our works were to be destroyed but just one thing saved to represent us, I would save the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. For if that small remnant of what we were was discovered by Intelligent beings across the galaxy, then they would say of us: ‘they must have been a great and noble race’."
I have loved Bach for almost as long as I can remember - certainly since I was about 9 or 10. When I was about that age my mother somehow came by a second hand piano. She could play a little and sent me for piano lessons - which, as I became teenager, and to my later shame and great regret I did not take too seriously. None of my friends played musical instruments and football, cricket and other teenage pursuits took over, much to the frustration of my mother and I think the sadness of my piano teacher - a gentle and kind silvery haired lady called Miss Sylvia Halton. So, although I learned to play the piano, I never pursued it to the level I ought to have done - a thing I regret to this day.
However, when we got this piano there came with it a piano stool and in the space under the seat was a pile of old sheet music. Most of it was of no interest and unknown to me but one piece stood out - Bach's Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring. In the early and mid 1950s when all this occurred this piece was often heard on the radio (no TV for us then!) - it was popular request on radio shows like Two Way Family Favourites. This was only 10 years after the war had ended and the piece had become very famous during the war. The great pianist Dame Myra Hess (picture left) often played it in lunchtime concerts that she organised and were broadcast to the nation throughout the blitz from the National Gallery in the centre of London (click link Hess Jesu Joy ); it was a small act of defiance but an important rebuff to Hitler's bombers who flew over the capital every night with their deadly payloads - and as such it caught the nation's imagination. So, when I saw the sheet music for Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring my enthusiasm for the piano suddenly increased and I can remember deciding that I was going to learn to play this work that I had heard so many times on the radio. It, was, of course far too difficult (Bach's music is never easy!) but I persevered and slowly but surely I managed something approximating to the real thing - and as the years passed I could play it without the sheet music! It became part of me - and is still today very much part of who I am. Patricia and I had the piece played at our wedding in 1969 and throughout my teaching career it became part of almost every week. It was not unusual - especially if it had been a bad day - to find me sitting at the piano in the empty school hall before the school day, at lunchtime or when the kids had gone home, playing Jesu Joy. It wasn't just about relaxing or destressing but I think more about reconnecting with what was important to me as a person.
And that is what my Monday nights are. A time to indulge myself and reconnect with what is important to me. It's not always Bach that I listen to when I'm alone - Handel, Scarlatti, Vivaldi, Purcell, Telemann, Rameau and other Baroque composers get a look in - but Bach is my first and last love. As I say, I'm a creature of habit!
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