More Bach in Cambridge

Abstract

The ninth Bach Network dialogue meeting took place at Madingley Hall, Cambridge, UK, from 8 to 12 July 2019. The number of delegates was almost double that of the 2017 meeting, with 16 countries being represented. Thus the Bach Network’s meeting is now a crucial biennial event for Bach scholarship internationally. The main dialogue meeting (lasting three days) was framed by a programme of ‘fringe’ events, which served to introduce various relevant discussion topics. For example, a concert in which movements from the Art of fugue were played as keyboard duets (two players, one harpsichord) reminded us that, even in an apparently abstract context, a fundamental ingredient of Bach’s art is its performability. Harpsichordists Ulrika Davidsson and Joel Speerstra commented on the surprising ease with which the music lends itself to this mode of performance. The practical aspects of Bach’s musical personality, as well as a broader consideration of his physical, ‘earthly’ presence, was the basis of the opening roundtable discussion, led by Isabella van Elferen, Joel Speerstra and Bettina Varwig. They noted that the most extravagant praise lavished upon Bach during his lifetime related not to his compositions, but to his performing abilities. Who would deny that these abilities informed his compositions in myriad ways? Broadening the discussion, van Elferen argued that in Bach’s age, one’s physical manifestation was unlikely to have been understood strictly according to Cartesian dualism (that is, with body and mind conceived as discrete entities). Rather, body and mind were likely to have been conceived as fundamentally interdependent, even if competing and evolving worldviews rendered the nature of this relationship unclear. One might regard Bach’s music—which, for many today at least, seems to have an unusual capacity to reconcile the abstract and the sensual—as a nuanced response to this situation. Research into Bach and materiality, one might imagine, has the potential to enhance our understanding of Bach—the man and the music—as historically contingent.