working men

John Eliot Gardiner on Bach:

"We know roughly as much about Bach the man as we know about Shakespeare. ... The finest chapter, “Bach at His Work Bench,” recreates what it must have been like to write, say, a cantata, thinking about which musicians and singers at the composer’s disposal had the chops to handle solos, overseeing slovenly copyists (and often stepping in to copy out the musicians’ scores himself), and then hurriedly rehearsing the piece maybe a day or two before the Sunday performance, all the while thinking ahead to the next week’s number even as he spent his days running a boys’ school."

Department of Cognitive Dissonance:

Sir Derek Jacobi says "My working class roots helped me play kings."  But only Elizabeth's son and lover, the begetter of her son and secret heir, could have written them.  Uh huh.

Nine