Bach: Italian Concerto, Chromatic Fantasy & Fugue and Other Works - Jörg Demus

MHS 0R 173 Bach

“In his judgment of works he was, as regards harmony, very severe, but otherwise he valued everything that was really good, and gave it his acclaim even if it contained human weaknesses. With his many activities he hardly had time for the most necessary correspondence, and accordingly would not indulge in lengthy written exchanges. But he had the more opportunity to talk personally to good people as his house was like a beehive, and just as full of life. Association with him was pleasant for evetyone, and often very edifying. Since he-never wrote down anything about his life, the gaps are unavoidable.” These are the words with which Emanuel Bach described his father in a letter to Forkel, Johann Sebastian Bach’s first biographer. It is sometimes difficult, in the mid-twentieth century, to realize that the men and women whom we now regard as immortal once had their own family life, their own financial pressures and headaches, and, in brief, a life of their own. It also frequently comes as surprise to realize that many of those keyboard works which we regard as masterpieces and models of their kind, were primarily written as exercises or studies for the composers’ students, whether they are the sonatas of Mozart or the two and three-part Inventions’” of Bach. a