critique Bach in jail

[Spike]

Sorry to have been absent--I do like to try to contribute--but, you know, chrises, (of confidence and otherwise) being stuck and demoralized, blah blah blah, anyway.

Hope this isn't too annoying, but I've typed this out in the box instead of a properly formatted link, so I could include the music. For me, a star of this imagined project would be the soundtrack, the credits, featuring recorded performances by the likes of Gould, Tureck, Hewitt, Schiff, Pinnock, etc. A problem is that for Bach the piano didn't, for all intents and purposes, exist. So I imagined being inside Sebastian's head, where the actual tenor of the sound would be irrelevant. I'm not sure when the music would come in and out (I figure that's someone else's job, lol,) but this was the inspiration for this kind of montage .

Previously: Sebastian has been incarcerated, by Wilhelm Ernst, Duke of the Weimar Court, for "too stubbornly forcing the issue of his dismissal."

INT. WEIMAR JAIL. - MORNING

SEBASTIAN lies on his cot, his eyes open but glazed, his mind elsewhere.

From a piano, five tones, a C major chord, arpeggiated.

A second sequence of five notes, a C minor 7.

The fingers on Sebastian's right hand twitch, slightly, along with the tones.

A square of light, from a small window behind the cot, on the wall across from the cell

Another arpeggiated chord, a G 7.

A fourth chord now, a return to the first.

The JAILER enters. Sebastian rises and goes to the cell door.

SEBASTIAN
Coffee.

The Jailer gives him a level stare. Sebastian lies back down.

A LITTLE LATER

The square of light has crept across the floor, now just outside the the cell.

Sebastian lies, his eyes open but glazed, his mind elsewhere, his fingers slightly twitching.

The Jailer enters, carrying a tray, and places it on a shelf by a slot in the bars. Sebastian rises, takes a small mug from the tray and sits at his little table, now organized with paper and writing tools
.
On the table is a blank page lined with scores. He sharpens a quill, dips it, and writes at the top of the page:

"Preludium"

And as he rapidly begins writing notes, music plays: Glenn Gould, the Prelude in C major, from book one of The Well Tempered Clavier (BWV 846.)

As Mr. Gould plays--crisp idiosyncratic articulation--Sebastian, business-like, writes. The Jailer, curious, peers through the bars. Sebastian glares; the Jailer quietly backs off.

Sebastian sips his coffee and makes a dour face.

A LITTLE LATER

Sebastian at his desk. The music, the Prelude, continues, now Angela Hewitt, faster, more lyrical.

MARIA BARBARA enters with her four children.

MARIA BARBARA
Did you have your breakfast?

He indicates the tray, untouched, an unappetizing bowl of porridge and a hunk of bread.

She picks up the tray, drops it roughly in the jailer's desk, giving him a stern stare. The children are quiet; they know what this look means. The jailer appears ashamed.

INT. JAIL - MORNING

The prelude continues, with Andras Schiff picking up the tempo.

The grid on the wall now has two x marks.

Maria Barbara enters, followed by the four children: Katerina with a breakfast tray--eggs, pastry, fresh fruit (mit schlag); Friedemann with a large brass coffee pot--large squat base, narrow swan spout, wooden handle; young Carl with a large ornate mug; and little Gottfried with a pipe and pouch.

Maria Barbara pours a mug and sets the pot on the edge of a stove in the corner of the jail.

Sebastian sips and sighs: better--much better.

INT. JAIL - MORNING

Sebastian at his table.

Music: The prelude plays on, now Lang Lang, more legato, more expressive in tempi.

JAILER
So what is all this?

SEBASTIAN
Music.

JAILER
Ah yes. Well of course. Music.

Sebastian returns to his work, which the jailer, again, interrupts.

JAILER
What do you call it?

Sebastian, impatient, takes a page from the top of a stack and hands it through the bars.

The Jailer reads:

JAILER
"The Well-Tempered Clavier, or Preludes and Fugues through all the tones and semitones, both as regards the...
(stumbles)
tertiam majorem and tertiam minorem. Composed and made by Johann Sebastian Bach."

He hands the page back.

JAILER
What does that mean: "well-tempered."

SEBASTIAN
Tuning.

JAILER
Ah yes. Well of course. Tuning.

The jailer lights a pipe. Sebastian, now resigned to the interruptions, sits back and lights his own. The jailer pours himself a cup of coffee from the pot on the stove, queries Sebastian, who nods, and the jailer pours another.

JAILER
I was allowed once to attend service in the big chapel. My wife and I. For her birthday.

SEBASTIAN
Yes?

JAILER
The singing went on, a little, for me...long.

Sebastian smiles.

JAILER
But the organ was...
(he searches for the word, and, slightly embarrassed, finds it)
...magnificent.

Sebastian looks up.

JAILER
Is it difficult?

SEBASTIAN
All one has to do is hit the right keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself.

JAILER
Ah yes. Well of course.

INT. JAIL - DAY

The prelude continues, now on harpsichord, now Trevor Pinnock. Sebastian is handing a few pages through the bars to Maria Barbara.

SEBASTIAN
For Friedemann. Make sure he tries to understand...

MARIA BARBARA
Do you want an instrument? The clavichord? We could probably get...him to look the other way.

SEBASTIAN
It's not needed.

INT. BACH HOME - DAY

Friedemann at the harpsichord, hand written score in front of him, finishes playing the prelude.

INT. JAIL - MORNING

Sebastian lies on his cot, his eyes open but glazed, his mind elsewhere.

On the wall, a week of x marks. On the table, a stack of pages.

********

Anyway. Parenthetically, this is something most people, when trying to be creative, probably know, but something that I've never been able to really internalize: It makes a difference, writing to be read. Otherwise it seems sterile, pointless, and, usually, is abandoned. So thank you.

 

[mlesemann]

So here's the thing...things.

1. I like the story. I know who Bach is/was, and I even have a general idea of what his music sounds like.

2. I wouldn't know an arpeggiated chord if it hit me in the head. And I suspect that most producers and/or screenplay readers won't either.

3. By indicating who the actual performing musicians would (ideally) be, you're just making your own difficult job (selling/funding the screenplay) even harder.

I totally get that there are ideal musicians. But there are also many unknowns who would, I'm sure, do a great job if you ever get to that point.

So I recommend that you simplify this - just the story, and maybe a brief description of how/why a particular bit of music is awesome.

But that's just me, an admitted heathen on classical music.

 

[Spike]

Yup. Arpeggiated just means a sequence of notes, indivicually, which I tried to mention in the line. And yea, this was just an idea, that is, thinking of the credits and the soundtrack. To decide if it is worth it, or practical, would be someone else's job, I think. But just the idea excites me, lol. But of course you're right. None of the link stuff would be in the actual script, and they can just be ignored here.

It was somewhere around the summer of 69 (god I'm old) and four albums from my older sister's collection moved me, were played all the time: Sweet Baby James, Sargent Pepper, Bridge over Troubled Water, and Switched-On Bach. I got, from Wendy Carlos, a love and a appreciation for Bach that I've carried with me all my life. And my idea, and it's just an idea, would be to do for someone, for anyone, what Wendy Carlos did for me.

Edit: I just re read this, and it was a little hard, so I moved the interspaced links to the bottom, to not interrupt the story. I thought it might be fun to hear what might be the score as one read, but this, I think, Mara, doesn't work. So thanks, and thanks, again, as always, for your attention.

 

[Nate North]

I think the scene is fine. How good it would be would depend a lot on the director, and the editor. While I agree with Mara that not everyone will understand what an arpeggiated chord is, I feel like it's a super easy thing to communicate, by simply having a pianist play the individual notes one at a time as he's writing them at the beginning of the sequence, disjointed, not really coherent, and then having it escalate into the full blown performance during the scene. The way I'm reading this, the greatest impact would be if the music hit a rapturous state that mentally transported him out of the jail cell, like it was lifting him up out of his reality, and then he comes crashing back down as the guard interrupts him.

It kind of seems like that's what you're going for anyway though, so not sure I'm actually adding anything.

For some reason I thought you were maybe 27. I always thought, "it's so unusual for a young person to be interested in classical music these days." lol, mystery solved. It's probably the avatar picture, and the occasional internet lingo.

 

[Nate North]

I got, from Wendy Carlos, a love and a appreciation for Bach that I've carried with me all my life. And my idea, and it's just an idea, would be to do for someone, for anyone, what Wendy Carlos did for me.

I actually really love Wendy Carlos's work. I listened to switched on Bach some in the 90s, but my all time favorite composition of hers was this.

She understood how to use dissonance in a structured and effective way, and her pioneering work in cinematic scoring had an enduring effect on how composers combined emotion and dissonance to create a headspace that felt otherworldly.

 

[Spike]

At this point in the story, we have Bach in prison, for a month, and what is notable is that, at this time, he composes the collection of keyboard pieces he himself will title The Well-Tempered Clavier. This is actually kind of legend, but there are a few pieces of documention that point toward him at least working on the pieces here, and so it is accurate enough to have in the story.

Anyway, this scene is kind of a, on the surface, low-key montage, about 3 minutes, the length of the prelude in c major that is featured. The idea is that we first hear the notes, while focusing on Sebastian's face, "hies eyes glazed, his mind elsewhere, his fingers twitching along with the notes," and get the idea that he is composing in his mind.

I like Nate's suggestion, about a kind of transcendent moment in Bach's consciousness, but I think it might not really apply. The moment is transcendent, is in fact, monumental, but I don't think Sebastian would think like that. For him it is just another day at the office, wherever that office might be.

The reason I say it is monumental, is that The Well-Tempered Clavier, a collection of 48 keyboard pieces, a prelude and a fugue in each of the 24 major and minor keys, will be studied, admired, played, and frankly, marveled over, by every serious composer--Beethoven, Mozart, Chopin, etc.-- every serious pianist--Andras Schiff, for example, calls them "just colossal,"--for the next 300 years. It has rightly been called the most influential piano work in the history of music.

There is a population that, when hearing the first series of notes, would recognize: Oh my god, it's the Prelude in C major from Book One of the Well Tempered Clavier! Of course, the majority of everyone else wouldn't immediately grasp the gravitas of the moment, (and i am in no way saying i believe they should) but I think it could be conveyed, through the mood, the direction, the sound, the cinematography, that something important is happening, beneath Sebastian trying to get a good cup of coffee.

Anyway. After this, a few quick scenes of Sebastian getting released (with, from Wilhelm Ernst, a very unfavorable recommendation, lol) and then on to Kothen, to a new instrument: a dream-team orchestra of virtuosi, to his new boss, Prince Leopold, who, for at least a few short years, will love and pamper his new kapellmeister, and to the Brandenburg Concerti, the solo works for violin and cello, the two and three part inventions, and more.

Thanks, Nate and Mara, again, for taking the time

 

[Spike]

I actually really love Wendy Carlos's work. I listened to switched on Bach some in the 90s, but my all time favorite composition of hers was this.

She understood how to use dissonance in a structured and effective way, and her pioneering work in cinematic scoring had an enduring effect on how composers combined emotion and dissonance to create a headspace that felt otherworldly

Yup, I agree. As a cinematic composer Ms. Carlos is the real deal, a true pioneer, and her understanding of Bach (after Switched on Bach, she had several more Bach synthesizer albums) can't have hurt her sense of music theory and structure.

 

[Spike]

. . . And Nate, say what you will about my writing, but my art, my self portrait--it is, I believe, the best thing I've ever done.

 

[Spike]

Ah god. Sitting in a coffee shop, typing and putzing around on iPad, I just found this:

https://archive.org/details/lp_switched-on-bach_walter-carlos_2/disc1/02.05.+Brandenburg+Concerto+No.+3+In+G+Major:+Third+Movement.mp3

And it gives me great joy.

The album only exists, now, on vinyl, and in a recent CD re-release, both of which are useless to me--i no longer have the hardware.

Anyway. I had thought, in this jail sequence, of at least one more entry from the Well-Tempered Clavier, the second prelude, the c minor, with Sebastian pacing and with Wendy Carlos in his mind--here track 8--as a tribute to Switched-On Bach.

Before this landmark album, the synthesizer was, I think, kind of a noise maker, for strange effects, something like a theramin. But here, the mighty Moog was refined and introduced to the world.

I also want to take a moment to note track 11. The second movement of the third Brandenburg Concerto is only two simple chords, and the orchestra, and/or the soloist, is invited to improvise, to compose the movement themselves. I love comparing the second movement in various Brandenburg 3 recordings; occasionally just the two chords are played, but usually a unique piece is created. And here, Carlos does something extraordinary.

(I had found this, by the way, once before, on this Internet Archive site, and it was taken down, probably for copywrite reasons, and this will likely happen again.)

 

[Nate North]

Ah god. sitting in a coffee shop, typing and putzing around on iPad, I just found this:

https://archive.org/details/lp_switched-on-bach_walter-carlos_2/disc1/02.05.+Brandenburg+Concerto+No.+3+In+G+Major:+Third+Movement.mp3

And it gives me great joy.

The album only exists, now, in vinal, and in a recent CD re-release, both of which are useless to me--i no longer have the hardware.

Anyway. I had thought, in this jail sequence, of at least one more entry from the Well-Tempered Clavier, the second prelude, the c minor, with Sebastian pacing and with Wendy Carlos in his mind--here track 8--as a tribute to Switched-On Bach.

Before this landmark album, the synthesizer was, I think, kind of a noise maker, for strange effects, something like a theramin. But here, the mighty MOOG was introduced to the world.

I also want to take a moment to note track 11. The second movement of the third Brandenburg Concerto is only two simple chords, and the orchestra, and/or the soloist, is invited to improvise, to compose the movement themselves. I love comparing the second movement in various Brandenburg 3 recordings; occasionally just the two chords are played, but usually a unique piece is created. And here, Carlos does something extraordinary.

(I had found this, once before, on this Internet Archive site, and it was taken down, probably for copywrite reasons, and this will likely happen again.)

I'm embarrassed to admit that after our discussion the other day, I stayed up all night at the piano (connected to 4500 VST synths of course) trying to write something in the style of her original work, and just totally failed. I mean, I wrote some decent music, but then got angry and deleted all of it, like Salieri crumpling up score sheets and throwing them across the room. I sit and watch interviews with her and carefully note any thoughts of significance, but it's just so hard to free my mind to that level where literally every note in the scale seems to always resolve into a logical but unforeseen pattern. I am genuinely perplexed by her level of genius, similar to how I feel about Stravinsky and Mussorgsky.

 

[Spike]

Very cool, Nate--the inspiration, and the effort, may be as important as any results.

And I get it. I don't have the critical vocabulary, or the understanding of music theory, to come close to describing it but . . . when it's right (for me, all of Bach) it is a perfection seemingly beyond comprehension.

And yet is understandable; it can be known. There is, as you say, a logic, with every bit fitting between the previous and the next as tightly as blocks in the great pyramid, as words in a Shakespeare sonnet, creating, synonymous with, the architecture of the whole.