John Eliot Gardiner: Bach's Habit of Imperfection
Gardiner, author of the new book, Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven, has a unique perspective on Bach (http://goo.gl/J7gH2K). He is both a historian and a ...
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I think there's been a slightly deplorable tendency amongst Bach's biographers to paint Bach the human being in a very complimentary light. To imply that great music requires a great man and a great human being and a great personality to be behind it. Well, of course great music requires a creator but it doesn't have to be a paragon -- he doesn't have to be a paragon of virtue. And Bach certainly wasn't. The more that one discovers about him, the more one discovers that he was a deeply flawed character. That even though we have very, very few family records and letters to go on there are incidents that keep cropping up in his life at almost a repetitive pattern of antagonistic behavior between him and authority -- the authorities for whom he worked. He was very combativ...
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I think there's been a slightly deplorable tendency amongst Bach's biographers to paint Bach the human being in a very complimentary light. To imply that great music requires a great man and a great human being and a great personality to be behind it. Well, of course great music requires a creator but it doesn't have to be a paragon -- he doesn't have to be a paragon of virtue. And Bach certainly wasn't. The more that one discovers about him, the more one discovers that he was a deeply flawed character. That even though we have very, very few family records and letters to go on there are incidents that keep cropping up in his life at almost a repetitive pattern of antagonistic behavior between him and authority -- the authorities for whom he worked. He was very combativ...
