Kayleen Asbo, Ph.D
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Week Three: The Violin Partitas and Sonatas and Cello Suites

​The six sonatas for clavier and violin were composed sometime during his years in Cothen and represent a perfect balance of light and dark: three are in major keys, three in minor ones. We will listen to No. 4 in c minor, available on my cd Orpheus’s Lyre  with violinist Julija Zibrat . Notice that even though it is in the "dark" key of c minor, there is infectious joy in the final fugal movement.
 
The six partitas and sonatas for solo violin were completed by 1720 but not published until 1802.   Even then,  they were  largely ignored until the celebrated violinist Joseph Joachim   (dear friend of Robert and Clara Schumann and Brahms)  started performing these works. They are fiendishly difficult, requiring both  consummate technical prowess and the utmost soulful expression. Brahms himself was so bowled over by the Chaconne in d minor that he transcribed it for left hand alone at the piano in an effort to re-create the technical demands for a keyboard player.
 
I listened to Itzhak Perlman’s recording for about a decade almost every week. Among my many favorite recordings are Rachel Podger and Hilary Hahn, but my favorite recording ever is Morimur by Christoph Poppen and the Hilliard Ensemble. You must buy a version where you can read the exhaustive liner notes, however to truly appreciate what this recording does. Inspired by the doctoral dissertation of German scholar  Helga Thoen, the ensemble recreates the inner relationships between the Lutheran chorales on death and hope with the music Bach wrote for solo violin in the aftermath of his wife’s sudden death.  The ultimate piece superimposes fragments of these chorales on top of the extraordinary Chaconne, and the effect, for me, is simply stunning. Listen to it in the dark with a single candle burning to achieve the optimal effect, one that might just bring you hope on the darkest of days.
  
The six suites for unaccompanied cello were most likely composed during the period 1717–23, when Bach served as director  of music (Kapellmeister) at Cothen and during the time in which he met and married Anna Magdalena, an accomplished singer and cellist.  Like the violin partitas and sonatas, these suites for unaccompanied cello are remarkable in how they achieve the effect of  sounding polyphonic even though they contain only a single musical line.  After an opening prelude, each suite consists of a standard Baroque dance suite (Allemande, Courante, Sarabande and Gigue) plus an additional pair of dances (minuets, bourrees or gavottes). They have been described as “ a dance of God”.

Though ubiquitous ( and even required!) now, the cello suites were scarcely  known and rarely publicly performed until Pablo Casals introduced them to the world in the early 20th century.
We will sample performances by YoYo Ma (modern cello), Anner Bylsma (period instrument and Baroque performance practice) and arrangements by  Edwin Huizinga (violin) and Bill Coulter (guitar).
 
 For a meditation on how so much beauty is lost on us and a call to attention, see  the videoclip of Joshua Bell in the subway: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UM21gPmkDpI

 This poem by the amazing Mark Nepo (cancer survivor) speaks to what Bach was able to do so beautifully with his grief: turn it into a song and a dance of celebration and hope. If you are suffering from a sense of despair (and these days, who isn't?), Nepo and Bach make a perfect pairing, reminding us that no matter how much darkness there is, there is also beauty and light and love to be found.

Before The Twice-Locked Gates byMark Nepo
I come to you from a land where elders have shown their grandchildren how to sing their way through. I write this in a land where skin pounds skin. From the outside in, we call this brutality. From the inside out, we call this song. The gift of Africa tells us that song is the only thing that can outlast brutality. Whether you suffer an unjust system or an oppressive father, whether you have been in a prison of another’s making or in a cage of your own construction, this sun-baked continent that carries the tremor of the beginning tells any who will listen that song is the only thing that can outlast brutality. The drums, if leaned into, will carry you along. The drums, which have no beginning or end, will circle you through the many faces of pain and joy. The drums sound the heartbeat of God, clear and unending. Even when oppressed to the point of silence, the drumbeat cannot be silenced. Even if you are born a funé, a storyteller who is not permitted to sing, there is song in how you raise your eyes to the unwatched sky. Even if you are forbidden to cry your truth, there is the Geuca Solo, the dance without words before the twice-locked gates. Pain held in is pain. Pain let out is dance. Worry held in is worry. Worry let out is the cry of a bird that lives on the branch of heart that no one sees. Sorrow held in is sorrow. But sorrow let out is the song of the continents moving together. Even if you are forbidden to cry your truth, there is still the dance without words before the twice-locked gates. No matter if the gates are generations old, no matter if the gates are in your mind, no matter if when you move, you stumble. It is the gift of Africa for the children of the earth: God is the wood of the drums, drums sound the heartbeat of the living, song is the thing that will outlast brutality...




Contact Kayleen Asbo: mythicamuse@gmail.com
  • Home
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