Bach & Friends (2010) - full transcript

A two hour documentary on Johann Sebastian Bach. World-class musicians share their innermost thoughts and personal reflections on the power and genius of the most influential composer in history.

There is something about the
music of Bach that does transcend,

and it really makes
you feel alive and it sort of

tells you about life,
and about the world,

in a way that
nothing else can.

One of the most amazing things
about Bach's music is

how it has reverberated
everywhere, and over time,

and through different
cultures.

It's almost impossible to
imagine a world in which

Bach had not been born, because so
many other people have been affected

in such profound ways
by his music.

There's such a humanity to Bach,
and every possible human emotion



from joy and humor and
laughter to sorrow and loss,

and it somehow reaches to
the heart of human nature.

I'm surprised when you hear
this music that you just don't

really let yourself go.

I think Bach understood that.

It's so uplifting.

I mean, it is a dance.

My love for Bach and my
feelings that I have are as

close to religion as I get.

I would say his
music is kind of cosmic.

You know, if you go and you lie
down in the country at night

and you look up at the stars, and
you don't know what any of it means,

and you're just
looking at this huge vista,

I would say that his
music is like that.



I always felt an affinity with
Bach's solo violin music,

and his use of chromaticism and
his invention of line within

harmony is really
very imaginative,

and I wonder how it
was perceived in his time.

It just absolutely slams you
in the heart or gut,

or whatever it is.

Bach has that
sort of immediacy.

It's music that
fires on all cylinders.

He represents this sort
of standard of perfection.

The music of Bach represents
a sense of cosmic harmony,

a sense of oneness
with the universe.

I can't help but think that he has lifted
all of us up onto a higher spiritual plane,

along with his own
striving toward that plane.

When I play Bach, I
occasionally will open my eyes,

and see that the majority of
people that are listening

have their eyes closed.

They're feeling a special place
that Bach really epitomizes.

With Bach, every single thing I listened to
and was attracted to, it just fit.

Then I started to think, "Wow, there's a
place for the banjo in this kind of music."

I don't think you can find
a composer who isn't deeply moved,

and hasn't been deeply
affected by Bach's music.

It's just ... It can't happen.
And that's astonishing.

It's hard to fathom an artist in any
other field having had such an impact.

Bach articulated the language
of music in the most complete

and richest and complex form
that any single person has

ever been able to do.

Skip back three hundred years
in time to when Bach was around.

Music was the technological
vortex of the day,

with things like the organ and
the evolution of instruments

going through
all sorts of changes.

And the biggest star in
the musical world was Bach.

The king of organ playing,
and as such,

probably knew more about the
instrument than anybody else.

You have to remember, the
organ in baroque Germany

was by far the most complex machine that
civilization had come up with to that point.

One of the problems with organs is
that they're so damn complicated

that they were always
falling apart. And so,

if you were an
organist in those days,

you had to know how to fix
them.

And so Bach was
in the thick of things

in terms of design and
construction of these instruments.

Bach was helping his
great-uncle Christoph to

maintain the
instrument and so on.

On the one side he was a great
help to his great-uncle,

but on the other side he was also
able to learn and to become

an organ technician himself.

I think you could almost
compare Bach a little bit like

a computer geek these days.

I mean, he really
knew his stuff.

The D Major Fugue is one of
my personal favorite fugues.

It is just full of youth
and freshness and exuberance.

It is quite literally a dance.

Bach wasn't geographically
all that well traveled

but he soaked up every piece
of music he could find,

and when he did get a chance
to boondoggle off

and hang out with people like Buxtehude,
he picked up every trick that he could.

He was like a vacuum
cleaner for this stuff,

and, so naturally, when
he came back and played,

he would synthesize all these
new impressions that he had,

and take interesting ideas from
wherever he could find them.

And because he was such
a commanding performer,

especially on the organ,

he tried crazy,
just blisteringly complex things,

that must have really
stunned people.

When Bach was 23, which is right
around my age as a matter of fact,

he was appointed
court organist in Weimar.

And to get such
a great appointment,

such a big appointment
at such a young age,

was quite an achievement.

And that was actually when he
wrote a big part of all his organ works.

And the D Major Fugue,
as a matter of fact,

it's very likely that it was
composed during that time.

And the organ was really the instrument
that inspired Bach to be a composer.

Improvisation is a major
element of the work of an organist,

and Bach wanted to try out
all kinds of new things,

and I think most of the organ
works originated, actually,

as improvisations that
were written up at a later point.

So, improvisation is a very
important element also in

Bach's compositional process,
and this kind of experience

stayed with Bach
throughout his life.

Improvisation has been key,
the main driving force,

the main way I've
made music all my life.

It's like Papa Bach
handed that to me.

"Make Penny Lane a gigue!"

In Bach's time,
and probably before,

and certainly thereafter,
but not now,

improvisation was a huge
part of a musical life,

a huge part of a
musical education.

In the recording of
Bach Meets the Beatles,

they really were improvs.

I knew what songs I was going
to do, and I knew the mood

that I was going to
create with them.

In Bach's period and Mozart,
the cadenzas in concertos,

they didn't write those out!

They did them differently
every night.

And that was, if you will,
the American Idol moment.

That's when the
stars were born,

when they would show off.

They would show their
command of the keyboard,

and be able to smoke,
if you will, at the keys.

Just ... amazing stuff coming out.

I've been challenged today by a
young man named Anatoly Larkin.

We're going to give
it our best shot.

In the Baroque period
in the time of Bach,

events were staged.

They were happenings.

Spontaneous,
combustible moments,

if you will, where
keyboard players,

organists,
harpsichordists would duel.

And these contests were the
reality moments in that period

where they would get together and
see who would outdo the other.

During improvisation you
have to think on your feet.

You discover new things, and
over time you build almost

an intuition about what the other
person is thinking,

and those are the magical moments.

Off we go and soon we are in
completely uncharted territory.

We modulate keys, and end with this
really Rachmaninoff-Liszt-like fanfare.

I remember reading a story, this famous
story, of Bach and his competitor.

He had been challenged, Bach
had been challenged, to a duel,

if you will, to improvise.

And each contestant was
given a period to warm up.

The one who was challenging was this
French keyboard player named Marchand.

He goes to the site,
Marchand goes to the site,

and he, I can just see it, he
peers in, and leans his ear in,

to the sanctuary
where the organ was,

and he listens to
Bach warming up.

It's more than he could bear.

He bolted.

He bailed.

He left town.

And all the public was there to
see this, and what did Bach do?

He did this big six-hour
improvisation marathon.

I would have loved
to have been there.

In classical music where
you already know the answers

before you even
begin the piece,

you know what
the answer is.

Improv is you're
questioning all the way through.

You're constantly
asking yourself,

"how does this go,
where does this go,

"why does this go?"

And not necessarily in my
compositions, but being an improviser,

I know that I do travel in the
Bachian sort of style and world.

I've got to tell you a story about
the Bach Violin Concerto in A Minor.

I sang the entire concerto

with members of the San Francisco Symphony
standing behind me in a semi-circle.

And in the second movement,
I got completely turned around and lost.

And the musicians were playing,
and you could see it in their eyes,

"Are we going to stop? Are we going to stop,
are we going to start over again?"

And they were wondering
what I was going to do.

And so I improvised my way to
a spot that I recognized,

and then took it from there.

And anyway, we finished the
piece, and intermission comes,

and I'm very embarrassed and sorry
that I had put them through this experience.

And I'm apologizing
profusely to the players.

I was a brand new conductor, and I
had messed up and all that kind of stuff.

But one of the women in the
orchestra was this older woman

and she came up to me and
she looked at me and said,

"Bach would have loved it!"

And it was because
I was improvising,

I was just sort of
making something up.

I'll never forget that,
I'll never forget that.

But simply from the
joy of music making,

that's what I think
is sort of missing,

is this constant quest.

And composers
like Bach, I think,

were always asking this question
every time that they wrote.

I think Bach understood that.

I think he knew all of that.

I think Bach's
mind was huge.

You know it's funny that the
musicians that are revered

in all the conservatories and music
schools were absolutely fabulous improvisers.

You know, Bach and
Mozart and Beethoven.

And it made it
authentic and genuine.

And I think a lot of times in
classical performances, we forget that.

You know, we get so locked up
in technique and how it sounds,

and playing the right notes.

What people want to hear,
they want to see the performer

actually disappear into the
music, so that all you hear is

the music and not so
much be enthralled with the

performance but enthralled with
the experience of the music making.

You know I think that there's
some similarities between

Baroque music and Bach's music
with jazz.

The walking bass line,
the figured bass,

which sort of outlines chords
but allows the keyboard player

to fill in the harmony the
way they want to do that.

I always thought in my own
mind, as a jazz musician, that

Bach sort of had his own place
in music history,

in the sense that there was a lot of
things you could learn from him

as a musician, especially
how his harmony moves, and how

the intricacies of the
counterpoint that he's setting up,

how he writes fugues,
all those things.

And if you love something, and
you study it, and you bring to it

a seriousness of purpose
but also a sense of fun,

a sense of the joy of playing
music in a way that's real.

It's not something that's heavy-handed
but something that's natural.

You know, maybe you can bring a
different point of view to how you're playing.

For me, it's totally selfish.
I just love playing the music.

Well, the whole point was that
we use our voice instrumentally.

And that is the essential
description of the Swingle Singers.

Fine. That's good, except that -

It was, I think, new.

People hadn't
scatted Bach before that.

The singers that were
in that first group were

instrumentalists who sang.

We were ad hoc singers in the
recording world in Paris,

and that kept us alive because
we spent a good two years

preparing that
first recording.

And we would never have
thought that it would have had

the success that it did.

That's very good, people!

We did have
certain guidelines.

We just basically made it as
simple as possible, so as not

to get in the way of Bach's counterpoint,

and that was quite sufficient
because Bach took care of everything else.

The Badinerie came from one
of the orchestral suites,

and I suddenly saw that melody going,
and I could hear

Christiane Legrand singing it.

A tempo!

But it was
extremely sing-able.

It's a jovial piece.

And one can't so much
accuse Bach of being jovial.

I think he undoubtedly
had a good sense of humor.

There are a lot of little
traces of that in his work.

I think I do it vocally,
rather than with scat.

Ah.
Can I hear it?

Yeah. That 'ya dah'.
I kind of like that. It's a little quaver.

There is every
emotion imaginable

in Bach's musical
creations.

And you do wonder how he
was able to get so high,

such high emotivity, at the
same time such incredibly

complex, but yet exacting,
musical writing.

That's, I would say,
a puzzle. It's a mystery...

and "vive le mystère"
as they say in France.

Bach was one of the
great improvisers.

He must have been a
kind of fountain.

You have never the
idea of effort with Bach.

In the jazz context, I hear
the great improvisers,

and you realize what an
extraordinary feat it is.

Well, Bach, I think, did that,
thinking about something else,

and the notes just came to
him in some miraculous way.

But, no, it is fascinating,

how often I would almost dream about
having the idea to explore Bach's mind.

I think they're
doing some very,

very interesting neurological
studies these days,

on, for example, improvisation.

What happens to a
musician when he improvises?

What is that particular
click that

gives him the material
to improvise?

This business of the brain
being influenced and developed

somehow in improvisation
is quite mind-boggling.

Just a few months ago I
was on the road with my dad.

He gives me this piece of paper,
this newspaper, from USA Today,

and it said, "Scientist has
developed brain scan for improvisation,"

or something like that.

And I never envisioned that I would end
up on that table in Dr. Limb's MRI study.

Okay, John. Now we're
going to record you improvising.

We're going to be recording all of the
notes that are coming out of your keyboard

and we want you
to basically play

whatever improvisation you
like on that Bach melody.

And feel free to
start when you like.

What I found amazing was,
here you're lying in this

cylindrical confined
space, but when you look up,

he's invented this mirror.

And you can literally see what
notes you're playing,

and it's like you were
looking at it directly.

And then after, what was
even more fascinating,

in a sense, was that he
had printed out, or had on a

computer screen, the notes
that I had actually played.

That was quite wonderful.

That was great, John.
I think we got exactly what we need.

- How are you?
- Good.

Now this portion of the brain
during improvisation shows

areas that are kind of cool
spots as opposed to this hot spot,

and those cool spots are
areas that are going down in activity,

that are
basically kind of turning off.

I always really gravitated towards
music, and I took piano lessons.

That was my first sort
of formal instrument.

I always remember a time
when I was learning music.

As a child learning
piano with the Suzuki method,

which is what I learned,

Bach and music are the same
at that level.

The Minuet in G, one of the
first things I ever learned

when I was a child,
like 5 years old.

So what you can see here,
John, on the screen,

is brain images that
correspond to blood flow

during regular
memorized piano playing.

So, for example, when you're
playing something that you've

really learned and
internalized,

and you're not improvising at all, but you're
just doing the act of playing the piano,

these are the areas that we found
to be active during our study.

And they correspond really to
things related to sensory processing.

Here you can see your auditory
cortexes light up,

and motor cortexes light up,
and those are the things that are

involved physically in the act
of playing the piano, because

you have to be
able to hear it, and

you have to be able
to move your fingers,

and play what you want.

Now if we look at
this brain scan here,

This shows us differences
that take place during improvisation,

in comparison to
memorized or pre-learned music.

If you look at the combination
of things in the pre-frontal cortex,

we found that
the area responsible for

self-expression went up,

whereas those areas that
inhibit out-flow went down.

So, in a way, you were turning
off the sensor,

and trying to promote
the novel flow of new ideas.

You know, in some ways,
this whole dis-inhibition that

we're seeing in lateral areas
actually has to do with letting go.

I think really shutting down
everything that kind of keeps you

in the here and now,
in the present tense,

and takes you to some other
altered state of consciousness.

Whether it's sort of a
transcendent musical

experience you had in the past
that is so deeply internalized

that you can kind of
get there again mentally.

- Travel there instantly.
- Exactly.

And I think, I hope, that
what we're seeing here is the

neural underpinnings of what is
sort of a magical musical process.

I don't ever remember a
time when I could conceive of

knowing music without
knowing of the music of Bach.

In Bach's day, when he was
at the keyboard improvising,

he probably
entered a very similar,

very analogous, neural state
of activity where his front of

the brain regions were highly active,
and his filtering mechanisms were off.

I really, truly think
that that likely took place.

It's become very remarkable
to me that I have been able to

take musical questions and
medical questions, and really

try to merge the two, and
use what I've learned in a

creative way to try to solve
problems pertaining to what I

view as the greatest mystery,
and that's music and how the

brain accomplishes music.

Well, there you go!

It's amazing what you can do
with a 35-plastic piano keyboard...

- ... on your back.
- Thirty five! And two notes!

When I was asked why I was
going to do the Chromatic Fantasy,

because it's
originally for keyboard,

I said, "Well, what I can
bring to it is breath."

It's a kind of singing
improvisation and journey.

In the case of
Bach, of course,

your space speaks to you,
and starts to resonate,

especially in the environment
of the church

and this kind of acoustic.

To be swirling and somehow improvised,
and the sounds keep moving around.

I was also aware
that I could play very,

very, very quietly, and still
have the sound sustain itself.

To be secretive, to be almost inaudible,
and yet feel a nurturing of your sound.

Part of Bach's earthiness was
in the use of chromaticism,

in the use of the unexpected
turn in the chord progression,

or a leading voice that took
you in another direction.

Bach took the twelve notes
and treated them all very personally,

and with great honesty,
wonder and discovery.

If you think about the
quantity of music that he composed,

we can't really talk about
composition in the normal sense.

I think basically what Bach
wrote down was what he heard.

I don't think he
ever composed anything.

I think pieces arrived
in his mind complete.

There's no other way to explain the
massive amount of music he wrote.

When we talk
about composition,

I wouldn't say that he really
composed in any way that you

and I would think
about composition,

where you had to think about the structure,
and wonder what was going to happen next.

I think, for example, the fugues,
it seems, when I listen to them,

it sounds to me, he was - he just heard
them and he wrote them down.

When you say how can
someone have done this,

we're talking about a genius.

We're talking now,
what do we mean by that?

We mean that in the way we
talk about how did Einstein

think of the
theory of relativity.

Well, he was a genius.

How did he think of it?

He says that he visualized it,
and then he spent years trying

to develop the mathematics
to describe what he saw.

Bach was given a beautiful
system of notation that had

developed over a
number of years.

He could go from the auditory
vision to the notation

without any process.

He could hear it that way.

What's staggering about
this is that works of that

complexity could have been
visualized with such clarity.

Bach articulated the language
of music in the most complete

and richest and complex form
that any single person has

ever been able to do.

When you come across people like
Michelangelo or Einstein or Bach,

men of tremendous
artistic or scientific vision,

what's inspiring about them is that
in fact they're human beings, like us,

and yet they've realized
a potential that we haven't.

To me it's a great inspiration
that human beings are capable

of that, and we are related
to them without any question.

We're a part of them,
they're a part of us,

and they're the best of us,
and we can see it.

They've articulated it.

And they probably don't know
very much more about it than we do.

The Goldberg Variations to
me represents sort of Bach's

summing up of all the musical
interests that he had in his life.

He's putting in all the
different techniques,

all the different
national musics,

the humor, the pathos.

And also his sense of unity.

In other words, this
idea that all these pieces,

in all their various manifestations,

are all derived
from the same harmonic grid.

It's an amazing achievement.

If you look at
Goldberg Variations,

it's sort of Bach trying at
the end of his life to include

his musical universe
in this one piece.

You know that's really sort of
the message that I'm getting

from Bach, that there's the
universal aspect of wanting to

embrace a lot of different
types of music,

but doing it with a lot of
different techniques,

not just with your
head, but with your heart.

It contains the universe.

Glenn Gould's "The Goldberg Variations"
had an enormous effect on me.

I think that I listened to
that music exclusively

for at least two months, because
I was astounded at the colors

and the dynamics and the phrasing that he had,
and created, and brought to that piece.

I had never, never heard
that piece played that way.

And that Aria at
the beginning.

I was so
moved by the melody.

Whatever the proper view of
Bach playing in the Fifties was,

Glenn Gould
turned it all around.

This was a strutting Bach.

This was a sort of sexy,
out there, very physical Bach.

It was something new, and a lot of people,
I think, were quite suspicious of it.

But there were those
who understood

and those who
heard.

It just astonishes me how many
people - still - are finding in

Glenn Gould something that means something
very specific, and very personal to them.

People who weren't ever
born when Glenn died.

When you heard Glenn play, there
was something that really just leaped out.

There was so much rhythmic
propulsion in how he was playing.

The very sort of - for many people, I'm sure -
strange choices.

He played in a
very percussive way.

But the voice-leading - you could
hear how all the voices were moving.

He had incredible control of
the counterpoint as a pianist, and

when I heard that, it really floored me,
and I became obsessed with those records.

And those recordings had a profound effect,
I think, on a lot of musicians.

Glenn Gould. I listen to his
Goldberg Variations very very often.

Just absolutely floored by the
way that he approaches Bach

with exactitude, and yet
the emotion that he gets,

quality of the playing,
quality of the recording,

all of that is perfection.

There was no avoiding the fact,
when listening to Glenn Gould,

that all of those neural
circuits were firing constantly.

This was a brilliant man who
had a profound understanding,

not only of the music of Bach,
but of many other composers.

Gould was a huge influence on me, but
maybe more in an abstract kind of way.

Not that I'm trying to emulate
how he plays.

What I was influenced by was the
fact that he had such a strong vision,

and wasn't frightened by anyone,
and just followed

what he thought was
important in the music,

and what his personal
vision of this music was.

We took to each
other immediately,

and by the end of our
first phone conversation,

which was a rather
epic phone conversation,

we were already on the way
to building a friendship.

He'd usually call around
eleven o'clock at night.

And you had the sense that
this was a rather lonely man,

and somebody who really really
wanted to connect to the world.

I actually only met him in
person about a month or so

before he died.

Here he was, this man in
this heavy coat in August,

no laces in his shoes, and he
looked as though he wore his

clothes for a month at a time.

I remember walking through the
halls of The Inn on the Park,

and some little boy looked at him,
and started to walk over to him,

and his horrified mother
grabbed him and pulled him back.

I'm sure that
child never knew,

and certainly his
mother never knew,

that they'd just had an
encounter with one of the

greatest musical geniuses
of the Twentieth Century.

Glenn and I started talking about the
new recording of the Goldberg Variations

and I had listened to it,
and I just flipped out.

I thought it was wonderful.

From the very beginning I
thought that it improved upon

the 1955 performance,
that it was much deeper,

much more thoughtful.

It was really a sense of a
summing up, and I felt that

actually listening to it
before I knew that Glenn Gould

was going to die the
week that it was released,

which made it very eerie,

since he had started his career
with the Goldberg Variations,

and then in the same way
that the Goldberg Variations

comes back to the theme to complete,

Glenn went back and re-recorded
the Goldberg Variations.

Glenn was well aware that the singing
on his recordings was a real problem.

But he was honest enough with himself to
realize that something in him needed that.

Glenn was in sort of
an ecstatic transport.

I mean this is somebody who was
just absolutely in a state of his own.

Deeply deeply emotionally involved.

Glenn would have loved nothing
better than to give

live concerts without
having to be there.

And we make that possible.

What we've done is we've
taken soundwaves and we've

converted them back into
a description of how the

musician played that
day it was recorded.

We're in the business of discovering
how every note was played.

We're looking at micro-timings
and micro-pressures,

and every pedal had to be
carefully preserved,

and a fair amount of programming
and all the hardware technology.

The very precise
way that humans play.

I think that Glenn
would have loved this idea.

John Walker is very definitely
on to something with the idea

of taking old recordings
and reproducing them on this

wonderful special version
of the Yamaha Disklavier.

This piano is
controlled by solenoids.

It can actually play a
file, a computer file,

and the quality is so
important in what we do.

The fact that we need to
reproduce performance with

utmost fidelity to the
original performance.

Gould recorded the entire
Goldberg Variations without the Aria.

He got all the way to the end,
and then did 23 takes of that first Aria.

And even after 23 takes, he
couldn't get it from beginning to end,

and had to do a splice.

Overall I am very happy with
the project, and the fact that

in the end, people who really
knew Gould would come up to us

and say thank you so much
for making this possible,

for me to be able to hear
Glenn's performance live again.

Yes, we all know of Bach's
interest in numbers,

and the fact that he didn't just think of
himself as a musician but almost a scientist.

And there are important number
relationships in quite a few of his works.

It's an interesting way in
which it connects again with

what we do here at Zenph, and
that is we ultimately need to

use numbers to recreate
performances by, such as Glenn Gould,

playing the
Goldberg Variations,

and the fact that every note
can be codified as a number.

As a young kid
growing up in the Eighties,

I loved playing computer games
and actually keying characters

into Basic on my
first PC at the age of 6,

and kind of was inspired in
part by the computer music

used in those games.

One of the reactions that I
got when I told people I was

going to write a computer programme
to compose in the style of Bach

was that we might
ruffle a few feathers

with the idea that
computers could create music.

There were certainly a lot of
questions at the beginning of whether

this was
even possible.

And I released it in 1994.

CPU Bach came about at an
interesting time in my life.

I'd just finished the computer
game called Civilization,

which turned out to be quite
successful, and was the first

really huge game
that I created.

And I was looking for, you know,
"What am I going to do next?"

The idea of CPU Bach is
just a river of music,

and was really intended to be something
that you'd put in your living room

and hook up to your television -
a continual flow of music.

We actually programmed the
algorithm so that it could

compose just as fast
as it played the music.

When I was a kid, I learned
the violin and I played the

Bach Double Concerto. And the
music was so different and so

rich and deep from anything
else that I had played that I had to

understand who wrote this music, and
how did this person create this great music.

And I think that really started a
lifelong interest in Bach.

We're coming to more and more accept
a confluence of art and technology.

And CPU Bach, I think,

was one of the first steps,
really, in creating that

overlap between
technology and art.

This generation has grown up with
computers and interactivity and gaming.

And to use that technology to introduce
them to something like the music of Bach

could be really exciting.

The Chaconne is definitely a
journey and you feel it from

the outset.

You know you're in for something
very powerful and amazing.

Bach manages to take you through
the entire range of human emotion

through tragedy
and discovery and longing,

and joy and spirituality, ecstasy,

and then resignation and redemption,
and finally a sort of triumph, you might say.

Bach's Chaconne is
Bach's personal story.

It's so easy to get
overwhelmed by the music that

people forget that behind it
was an actual flesh-and-blood guy,

who had, I think
like a lot of geniuses,

Bach had a life that was full
of tragedy and full of joy.

He had an incredibly
vigorous and challenging life.

If you look at some of the
little data points:

when he was just a little kid, when
he was 9 years old, his mom died.

And when you're 9 years old,
you're just about old enough

to know what that means.

But when he was
10, his father died,

and so suddenly Bach was an
orphan, and he grew up in the

care of his older brother,
without a mom or a dad.

That was kind of the
beginning of Bach.

And if you follow the
threads of his career,

when he was 18 or 19, he was a star organist
and starting to get moving as a musician.

And around that time he got to
know Maria Barbara,

and the two of them fell in love,
and they got married when they were 22,

and started having
babies right away.

And ... baby needs shoes, and Bach
needed a job, and so he got a

great job in
Arnstadt as an organist.

When he and Maria were 28,
they had twins in February,

and those two kids died within about
three weeks of each other.

And, yes, it was
three hundred years ago,

and, yes, infant mortality was
more of a prevalence then, but

it doesn't matter who you are.

If you're 28 and you and your
wife have just had twins and

they die, it kills you.

And there must be connections
between these sorts of events

in Bach's life and the
music that was coming out.

If you fast-forward ahead
another ten years,

when Bach was 35, he had to go
on a business trip

to test out an organ, I think.

And while he was gone his beloved
wife and mother of his seven kids died.

By the time he got home
she'd already been buried,

and suddenly Bach was a
widower with kids going down

to about 2 years old, and
no wife to look after them.

The love of his life was gone,
and he had to pick himself up,

and still the music
came gushing out.

The career has changed again, he
found a new woman eventually.

But these were the kinds of big events
that were going on in his life,

and they're
absolutely related to the music.

I think when you listen to
the music of Bach,

you're overwhelmed by the
emotional undercurrents

that are packaged in this sort of
baroque formal structure.

And those emotions come from places
that are very real, and very human.

And it's a shame that we don't know more
about what Bach's life was really like,

but I'm certain that...

that those great human moments were at
the essence of the music that he wrote.

Bach's music is
filled with patterns.

There are many ways to look
at those patterns and see them,

and I think that's a big part of what
gives Bach's music its indestructible nature.

When you look at all the difference pieces
he wrote, he was a very pragmatic guy.

He would take a violin partita
and turn it into a couple of

licks in an organ cantata.

He would take a lute piece
and arrange it for keyboard.

So he was always shifting his
scores from one instrument to another.

You got music
that was like DNA.

It could hop from one animal to
the next without too much trouble.

One of the most amazing things about Bach's
music is how it's reverberated everywhere.

And it's why, a couple of
hundred years later,

Wendy Carlos can pick up a Bach
piece and turn it into a

best-seller by playing it
on a Moog synthesizer,

or why kids can
tap it out on steel pans.

It's because the music had that
sort of lift away from the platform.

And how much Bach would have
really enjoyed hearing his

music adapted that way
on those instruments!

The ukulele is the
underdog of all instruments.

And when you play it,
it just makes you smile.

One of the characteristics
about Bach's music is that

it's so perfect and
every note has its place.

Bach has so many of
these really cool,

just beautiful melodic
lines that are happening.

The notes just
make so much sense.

You know, it doesn't -
It doesn't -

Really, it doesn't matter
what instrument you play.

It's the most difficult music
I've ever tackled, and then you think,

"Okay, how am
I going to do this?"

It's this constant problem solving,
when you're playing the ukulele.

It really made me look at my
fingerboard in a different way.

Such a range of emotions
runs through your body,

run through your mind.

You have to feel
it inside of you.

You have to be able to attach
yourself to those notes,

and these different
feelings to it.

And then when you play,
all of that comes out,

and that's what
makes it magical.

That's what moves people.

When I moved to Nashville,

a couple of years later Edgar Meyer
became a friend of mine.

And he would play some Bach,
and I started to think,

"Wow, I'd like to do that.

"I'd like to play
this kind of music.

"There's a place for the
banjo in this kind of music."

So he opened up my understanding
and my awareness of Bach.

Edgar Meyer started
playing all this Bach for us.

That was a great thing for
me when I realized that

Edgar Meyer, who was
already one of my heroes,

was also a great Bach player.

All of the folk guys now,
mandolin players and banjo players,

and guitarists,
they're all playing a little bit of Bach.

That was a lot of fun just trying to
figure out how to make it happen on a bass.

Because it does present a large number
of very interesting technical challenges.

Ah, now my hands are doing
what they're supposed to.

It just feels right.

That's what I want
to do with the bass.

Now that's music.

I am here to tell you,
ain't nobody like Bach.

Being around the music,
listening to it,

or playing it on the bass,
or playing it on the piano,

being involved with
Bach's music in any way,

really, I guess, probably
gives me as much pleasure as

any one thing that
I can think of.

Bach does sit in
a central place.

My father was excited about
this music, and it was played

on Sunday morning
before we went to church.

I can remember him.
He would play a recording,

some piece of music that he
was particularly fond of,

and he would look up
and he would just say,

"Now that's really -
That's what it's all about."

I think it was the center
of his existence and I think I

picked that up
pretty directly,

pretty honestly.

With Bach, every single thing I
listened to, and was attracted to,

it just fit the banjo.

So I had a sense of this
inevitability to the whole thing,

that the music was going
to work on the banjo,

and it would sound right.

It's just amazing stuff.

It wasn't until I actually
started trying to learn a Bach piece

that I started to realize
how awesome this stuff was.

There's a perfection to his lines and
it's the way we all wish we improvised.

So by playing them and getting
that music in our hands and in

our heads, it gives us the
tools to strive for that goal,

of this really intelligent
high level improvising,

which it feels like he must
have been doing because I'm

sure he was just sitting there
writing it down from his head.

He wrote so much stuff so fast that
I think it was just pouring out of him.

It was like turning on a faucet.

And one of the real joys that
I have is sitting with Edgar

and having him pull out music,
and finding one gem after another,

after another,
after another.

It's like, "Holy cow!"

Does it ever stop? I mean I don't even know
if you could ever even hear all of his music.

There's so much of it.

Bluegrass sounds older than Bach,
but when you hear Bach,

it sounds modern and current,
and eye-opening and surprising.

I just know that I like it.

I don't know what Coltrane's doing either,
but I like it.

And I figure I grab little
chunks of it and pieces of it

and internalize them and they
become part of my vision,

but I don't pretend to know
what's really going on.

I'm like a folk musician that
got a little out of control.

When I fell in love with
Bach and heard this Gould recording,

music that
just fires on all cylinders,

that has the immediacy
and emotional intensity,

that clarity of intent.

I've never included the Bach
in a set of mine and it not

been the biggest moment of
the night for everybody.

And honestly, you play this music
for them, and they freak out about it.

People went crazy for it.

And in the autograph line afterwards
that was always what people said.

"Wow, I love the Bach.
I'm going to go listen to some Bach."

It's something that
people come to hear now.

And these are not
classical music fans.

And Bach is one of
those few things,

one of the very few things
in the world that I'd say,

everyone, everyone exposed to it,
in the right situation,

or frame of mind is
going to love it.

I love a routine of Bach's
was put the kids to bed

and he would take a carafe of brandy,
and go upstairs to his little closet,

and write ...
and write music.

Candle, cognac,
in that closet.

And look at all the music
we got from that.

To me that's the picture...

that's always in my mind,

anytime I'm trying
to be creative,

or playing some Bach and trying
to remember that Bach is

hopefully not up in heaven right now
looking down at me going,

"What is this kid
talking about?

"What the hell is he
doing to my music?"

Hopefully he's actually up
there with his carafe of brandy,

and a candle is lit,
and he's writing more music.

That's how I would
like to think of him.

In a little tiny closet.

One of the strongest examples
of PDQ Bach's innovation,

of his being years
ahead of his time,

years before Bill Monroe,
he actually invented the

bluegrass idiom
in this cantata,

Blaues Gras,
the Bluegrass Cantata,

and it's for bluegrass
band and a baroque orchestra.

He wrote for some
extremely unusual things.

PDQ Bach has a history of
playing off the imbalance

between certain instruments.

For instance, the

Pervertimento for Bicycle,
Bagpipe and Balloons.

I think the easiest way to
describe PDQ Bach is that

he was the twenty-first of
Johann Sebastian Bach's twenty children,

and certainly
the oddest of the lot.

PDQ Bach has been called a
pimple on the face of music.

And although he did follow the
typical Bach pattern of

going into music and
becoming a composer,

he did it in a very strange way,

since he was
a well-known plagiarizer.

There are a lot of things he
didn't write.

Many Eighteenth Century composers
occasionally borrowed a theme

from one of their peers, but I
think that PDQ Bach was the

only composer who worked on
tracing paper, and it shows up

in his works.

Well the three basic periods
of PDQ Bach's creative life

were the initial "Plunge", which
he spent in Vienna,

learning the basic rules of
musical composition.

Then came the "Soused",
or "Brown Bag" period,

by far the longest
period of his life,

which he spent in
Wein-am-Rhein

forgetting the basic rules of
musical composition.

And then the last
period, Contrition,

which he spent in the charming
southern German town of

Baden-Baden-Baden, trying
to work off a monumental hangover,

which the recent discovery of
his skull indicates he may still have.

Using the very sophisticated
alcohol dating technique,

it has been estimated that
PDQ's last hangover

has a half-life
of about 245 years.

Very touching.

For me, the Bach cello suites
and hearing the solo cello,

it's somehow as close as one can get
to how a human brain and heart work.

In fact it was because of Bach
that I started to rethink how

I was presenting this
music that I love so much.

I've taken it to so
many different kind of venues

and different audiences,
stripping away hundreds of

years of concert hall
tradition that really didn't

have anything to do with Bach and
the way his music was performed.

So much of Bach was premiered
in coffeehouses, and he even

charged his employers
for quite a few beers.

I've actually played where
these cello suites were first

performed in Köthen. It's in Prince
Leopold's castle,

in this very small town in the
eastern part of Germany.

I could kind of imagine Prince
Leopold and a select few of

his friends, couples dancing,

and others just having a
conversation in the back.

So really it's not unlike some
of the experiences that I have

on the road now, playing in
clubs like the Iota,

and other
rock-and-roll clubs.

When Bach got the gig
as composer at Köthen,

he turned into a
major hit factory.

The music that came
gushing out is unbelievable.

You have all of the
Partitas for Solo Keyboard,

the English Suites,
the French Suites,

the Brandenburg Concertos, all
those things that kind of come

in sixes, the violin
pieces, the cello pieces.

It's an unbelievable outpouring of
incredibly imaginative music and catchy tunes.

But you look at how much came
out of this guy's pen

in such a burst of a couple of years.

It's unbelievable, and yet it's
only one chunk of his output.

He was so industrious
throughout his whole career.

Bach was one of the most versatile
musicians who ever came along.

He could play all the instruments
that he wrote music for quite capably.

He loved to sit in on
the Brandenburg Concertos.

His favorite thing was to play
the viola line because he was

sort of in the middle and
weaving his contrapuntal

melodies above and
below the others.

But he played all the keyboards.
He played the flute.

He knew intimately the
instruments that he was writing for.

So he was as versatile a musician
as I think you could imagine.

It's almost impossible to
imagine a world in which Bach

had not been born, because so
many other people have been

affected in such
profound ways by his music.

Chopin, whenever his
kids came in for a lesson,

Chopin always had the
Well-Tempered Clavier on the

piano because it was the first
thing he played every day.

Mozart took several Bach pieces
from the Well-Tempered Clavier

and arranged
them for string quartet.

Brahms and Busoni
arranged the Chaconne.

I don't think you can find a
composer who isn't deeply moved,

and hasn't been deeply
affected the Bach's music.

It's just...
It can't happen.

And that's astonishing.

It's hard to fathom an artist
in any other field having had

such an impact.

But you see it everywhere.

I mean, Bach's music has
reverberated off of

every other musician that's
worth his or her salt.

I always felt an affinity
with Bach's solo violin music.

A lot of people forget, I think,
that Bach was so active as a violinist,

and he got his first
job as a violinist.

Bach, I find to be a
very progressive composer,

an active
proponent of innovation.

His use of chromaticism, and
his invention of line within harmony

is really very imaginative, and I
wonder how it was perceived in his time.

I think actually he
was quite "out there".

He was experimenting very much
like someone like Schoenberg.

Most people think of
Schoenberg as an academic composer,

as a method composer,

but I don't think either of
them intended to be methodical.

I think they were writing what
they felt, and I think they

were giving themselves structures so
that they would be even freer to write.

And the pure emotional nature of both
of their music is often quite overlooked.

Sometimes the most
mathematical seeming music is

actually the most liberating
to play because

you have certain structures
set out for you,

you have the groundwork
all clearly laid,

and then you really
have to be creative,

you really have to invent
something in your interpretation.

I think technically Bach
is definitely a touchstone

because you can't get
away with faking it.

You really have to
do it all the way.

I have to phrase
each voice separately.

If there's one line that's not effective
or not integral to the interpretation,

it can really skew
everything in the listener's ear,

so it's tricky.

But I have to think about
these lines sort of converging

and weaving in and out.

It gives me a chance to dive
beneath, and really find the

core elements that appeal to
me, so that I can work with

that and make it something
very personal for me and

hopefully something very personal
for the audience as well.

I really feel that my job is to
interpret it and pass it on.

And I feel that
back from them.

When it's being received well,
I do feel that, and it's a

wonderful sort of reciprocal
feeling. And it is magical.

It's very meditative, actually, to play
Bach to a crowd that's really listening.

In 1717, the Duke...
he sent Bach to jail.

Bach, he was arrested in Weimar,
because he wanted to break a contract.

And for one month he was
in jail, incarcerated.

When he was in jail, he decided
to start the Well-Tempered Clavier.

So, the one month Bach spent
in jail perhaps was the most

important month in
musical history.

Yes, in my life I
had so many troubles.

First, I lost my right hand.

When I lost my right hand,
I told myself,

"Well, I can play
with my left hand.

"I can do transcriptions.

"I can play the Chaconne,
the Brahms transcription."

And then I lost
my left hand, too.

And then I didn't
know where could I go.

At that time I realized that I
could conduct,

and this was the
importance of Bach in my life.

He kept me alive.

And today if I can
use only my thumb,

I try to play
some of his music.

For a young student,
it's like magic for them.

But you have to use something
inside of yourself,

that you cannot explain.

You cannot explain with words.

You only can explain with the
inspiration of your mind,

with the
inspiration of your heart.

Bach, with two notes,
one on the right hand,

the other with the left hand,
he can build a cathedral.

Bach's life, and the output of
music that he graced us all with,

is still, I think, unprecedented.

Exploring the violin
for the first time,

that had never been done.

Certainly exploring the
cello for the first time,

it's remarkable that being
essentially a single-lined instrument,

that Bach, being
the first composer truly to

expose the magic of
what a cello can do,

was able to create multi
voices and multiple harmonies

with an instrument that is
essentially able to play one line.

The cello was a church bass
until that moment in time.

That's an innovator!

Bach is alone amongst his contemporaries
in having written suites just for solo cello,

for four strings
or five strings,

and with those limited resources,
somehow creating the sound of an orchestra.

Bach seems to have
been personally driven.

He wanted to explore the musical ideas
that he came up with to the absolute utmost.

Bach seems to have valued hard
work above everything else.

That is, Bach had
his own standards,

which were completely separate,
and shockingly different,

from any of the other composers
who were writing around the same time.

The cello that I perform on is
one of the rarer examples of

cellos predating
the Bach suites.

It's thrilling to think when
I'm playing this cello that

these sounds were around
during Bach's lifetime.

I play these
suites for my children.

They are singing dances.

They are movement pieces.

I am amazed at the pure joy
that one can feel

with these dance rhythms.

It doesn't surprise me at all
that Bach was known to shake

every bone in his body when
conducting his own works.

Bach's music does survive well when
you transcribe it for other instruments.

One of the earliest copies we
have of the cello suites is

actually made by an
organist, not by a cellist.

So, music for violin was
being transcribed for lute,

music for the cello was being
transcribed for the organ.

There was a lot of transcription
happening at the time.

I think this music is
expressing something that we

all feel, that we
all have inside,

even people who are not necessarily
classical music lovers or Bach lovers.

If you manage to get really inside
this music, it's overwhelming.

There's probably no more
intellectual form of music as

a fugue, when you have this
one line that's played and it

comes back again, and it comes back
again, in different levels.

I mean, it's a very simple
way to explain it but that's

basically the
beginning of what a fugue is.

That's very
rational, intellectual,

as intellectual as it can be.

And still what he's
able to do within that,

the freedom that he
finds, the emotions.

In my mind there's no
limit to what it can express.

To me, it begins and ends with being human,
his music.

To me, that's what it's about.

Like so much of Bach's music,
there's this relentlessness,

this kind of
Lutheran persistence that,

you know, he just
keeps pushing the point.

Whether it's a fugue and the subject
keeps building and building and building,

it becomes more beautiful
every time you come back to it.

That sort of thing, I think,
happens all the time in Bach's music.

He knows how to grab an idea,
and really work it.

There's a great deal of
Bach's music that has such

architecture to it,
that you think,

well, the same class of people
that were building these

fantastic baroque cathedrals
and these incredibly

complicated organs, Bach was
in a way a part of that movement,

and a lot of the
music that he wrote was in

service of that kind
of industrial energy.

That doesn't mean that it's
without a tremendous amount of

emotional content
because it certainly is.

But there was a big part of
Bach's musical life that was

kind of like being
a great engineer,

somebody who could do for a dime what
any normal genius would do for a dollar.

At the core of a
lot of Bach's music,

I think you find a very
pious and humble man who felt

that his work was in the service
of a better life and a better purpose.

And there are elements of
Bach's music that are so

uplifting that in a way it's
hard to feel that there isn't

something more divine tugging
us up when we hear Bach.

To me one of the great
miracles of music is

when you write a piece of music and
play a piece of music,

and things really work, you can
share a moment with the people

that you're playing for, and
it's a moment that's so vivid

that you will remember it with
perfect clarity for the rest of your life.

And the thing that's even more
amazing is that that music can

be picked up years later or
centuries later and have the

same effect on
groups of people.

It's a way of connecting
something that is very

important at a kind of mythic and spiritual
level in people across many centuries.

It's perfectly understandable
to feel that you're sticking

your toe in some water that
has run very deep for very

many years across many, many,
many generations of people,

and it's one of those things
that's hard to express,

and maybe it's best expressed just by
reveling in those great musical moments.

The Art of Fugue was one of
the last pieces that Bach wrote.

And it was not
just like sound.

It was more of an emotion.

I think that playing Bach is a
more internalized experience

compared to maybe
some other composers.

Whenever I play
at senior centers,

I tend to think of an
opportunity to share Bach.

I think I bring a sense of
rejuvenation and freshness.

Bach didn't
complete this piece.

He died before he completed
the last countrapunctus,

and I think that this piece
kind of relates to old age.

Old people can still relate to it
in many many different ways,

and how they can create their
own emotions and their own feelings.

The music that Bach wrote
at the very end of his days,

it's impossible not
to be affected by it.

But it is astonishing because
by that point in his life,

Bach had done everything in
music, and he'd seen everything

that a worldly person could
experience in those times.

His last will and his
testament were his last works.

As inevitably he began to
confront his own mortality,

and was suffering with infirmities,
and dealing with blindness,

he began to be forced
to dictate his pieces.

And he put a lifetime of
wisdom into them and as much

attention as he could, and of
course they're colored with

all of the feelings that he had as
he was coming to the end of his time.

Great music has a way of
keeping you on your toes

mentally and emotionally, and
the Art of the Fugue,

and Vor deinen Thron, pieces like that,
are among the most astonishing

things ever produced by one of the
most astonishing musicians who ever lived.

Something very special is going
on in this particular piece of music.

You feel as if
you're being lifted up,

carried along on this
wave of inspiration.

I can't help but think that
he's striving for a higher plane,

and it's not just a
higher plane of intellect,

but of spiritual involvement.

When you come to the last few
measures of that final fugue,

in which Bach has revealed
something very intimate

about himself by using
his own signature,

the B-A-C-H theme, there's an
overwhelming emotional effect.

Perhaps he was saying
something about himself that

there's something almost
autobiographical about this

final summation of
his life's work.

The Art of the Fugue unfolds
through an exploration of

a wide variety of
contrapuntal techniques.

The simplicity of this
opening fugue subject,

on which the
whole work is built,

and where he was striving for
something ever more complex,

ever greater.

I can't help but think that he has lifted
all of us up onto a higher spiritual plane,

along with his own
striving toward that plane.

It is the pure contemplation
of infinite possibilities.

I think that's what the
Art of the Fugue is about.

But time eluded him and he did
not actually finish this last fugue.

And it breaks
off in mid-phrase.

There is a shattering
emotional effect

and I think it's partly because we know
he died before he could finish it.

Bach's son,
Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach,

said that at this moment the
creator of these fugues died.

The last thing that he ever
did write was a chorale that

was included in the first
edition of the Art of the Fugue.

And this chorale creates a
very spiritual feeling,

and represents a sense
of cosmic harmony,

a sense of oneness
with the universe.

When you have those ecstatic
moments in Bach's music,

that uplift, that feeling
of transcendence,

it was something that started
to happen more and more when I

would just sort of submit to all
these voices swirling around.

It was almost like I was
forgetting that I was playing music,

and I realized,
"Whoa! You're in another place now."

There is something about the music
of Bach that does transcend,

something that
rings so true when you hear

music that's based on something
small like that. And to develop this -

It stimulates the mind and
perhaps it imitates life itself.

Scientists are constantly trying
to find the basic laws of physics.

There are only a hundred or
so elements and they make up

every single
compound in the universe.

Or the DNA, only made up of
four nucleotides,

but those four little things in different
combinations make up our entire DNA.

So I think there's something
very appealing as human beings

when we see this
kind of thing happen.

And that's what happens
in Bach's music.

The poetry of mathematics and
the poetry of science is to me

in the neighborhood of
the poetry of music.

Look at the Art of the Fugue.

It's a catalogue of
musical manipulation.

To be able to do that, it's
like a gymnast who can walk on

a high wire, and somehow
the wire isn't there. It's gone.

It's just in space.

He was way out.
Bach was way out there!

Music and math are
intimately related.

What they do share is an
abiding respect for the power

and the importance of
pattern recognition,

whether it's in a sequence of
numbers or in a sequence of notes.

Bach did appear to think like
a mathematician because the

techniques he used all have analogues
in the world of classical geometry.

But it can also possess
characteristics of fractal geometry.

The term fractal was coined by the
mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot.

It deals with the
concept of self-similarity.

What this means is that if
you zoom into such an object,

you see more and more structure
that resembles the object as a whole.

From bacterial colonies to the
distribution of galaxies in the universe,

an incredible variety of natural
phenomena exhibit fractal structure.

And in that respect perhaps Bach
best reflected the world around him,

the fractal nature
of the world around him.

Bach believed that the microcosmic
order must be mirrored in the macrocosmic.

It's not surprising then, that
the Art of Fugue

is in some sense composed of
smaller copies of itself.

All of us want to find a connection
to something greater than ourselves.

Scientists find that
through the glory of nature.

Musicians, we
find it through music.

And for me,
music is my religion.

And when you listen to
Bach, it brings you,

it shows you what
many people would call God.

I would call Truth.
And it sort of tells you about life

and about the world in a
way that nothing else can.

There's a wonderful story about
Carl Sagan and the Voyager I spacecraft

our first attempt at communicating
with beings beyond our solar system.

He was talking to Dr. Lewis Thomas
about what kinds of things he should include.

Lewis suggested, "I think we
should send all of Bach,

"but of course we would be bragging.”

People often refer to
the timelessness of Bach.

At this very moment the
Voyager is speeding through

the galaxy with
Bach as our emissary.