The Complete Works of Bach

And so there it is, then. Just within the year of having bought the 172 discs, all of them have been played, if not quite every note heard as I left the room for a few minutes. I finished this morning with some most enjoyable flute sonatas with dogged bassoon keeping up the bass line, and then keyboard arrangements of concertos by other composers. I think halfway through the year it was announced that some further fragment attributed to Bach had been discovered but the definite list of the complete works, lost and/or found will forever be beyond us and so one can't worry about that.

Perhaps it's inevitable that there's a feeling of, is that it, then, like there would be if one read all literature, knew all there was to know or witnessed the whole universe. It wasn't infinite after all even if at times it implies eternity. And, in such a reductive, begrudging mood, one might have to say Bach is reduced rather than increased by the idea one has 'heard it all'. Of course, it's not been inwardly digested. I never did get to the end of John Eliot Gardiner's Music in the Castle of Heaven which becomes a survey of the cantatas more than anything else. One lifetime wouldn't be enough to grasp it all so thinking that one has in any way covered Bach would be a silly mistake. 

But perhaps some of the mystery has been taken away. One was familiar with most of the best bits. As with reading 'all of literature', one would find great things one didn't know about but one does know Hamlet, John Donne, Anna Karenina, Dr. Johnson. One would become accustomed to the mannerisms and ways of doing things of anybody and Bach benefits from a sense of impersonality more than most. The more convincingly one can slip the surly bonds of personality, the 'greater' and more eternal one can appear to be, if indeed escaping them is desirable.

So, other composers will now get more of a look in again and I can check back through these postings for BWV numbers noted along the way for things to play again.