The Baroque Revival is all about us—and at every turn we are confounded by deep thoughts on the purity of its music as compared to the “decadence” of the Classical and Romantic eras which followed. I will concede that this new found land of contrapuntal art has helped break down the fear of Bach which, once upon a time, otherwise sensible listeners of music professed. As of this day, it takes no more than an open mind to respond to the Magnificat, to the wonderful lilt of Wachet Auf, or to the resplendently textured clavier concertos. So acceptable and accepted has become old Johann Sebastian that the far-out critics, applying reverse English, are beginning to tell us again that he is too difficult—if we listen a-right.
I am, however, disturbed by this talk of “purity” when the work of the greatest of the contrapuntalists is discussed. How pure are the notes we hear in concert hall and from phonograph records? Is the sound that envelops us what Bach had in mind, what he put down on paper? Or is it the product of a twentieth-century mind seeking an answer to the frequent riddles of a Bach score? Poor Mendelssohn, who brought Bach into Western musical consciousness after the Classicists had buried him, was well aware of this problem—and he complained bitterly about Bach’s Baroque insistence on leaving almost everything to the performer. Initial tempo, dynamics, phrasing, and the hundreds of meticulous directions with which later composers embroidered their scores—these are missing from the sheets of Bach’s music.
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