Essays Before a Bach Concert | Part 1: The Last Time
I haven’t performed Bach in public for over ten years. The music has receded into my private practice, a communion that happens strictly behind closed doors, and I’ve cycled through the Bach keyboard output this way several times. Last winter, I learned and memorized the Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue and then put the score back in my bookcase without playing it for with a soul.
It wasn’t always this way.
In conservatory, I acted as more of a public disciple, but then again, one sort of has to play Bach publicly with some regularity as a music school undergraduate. Before my senior year, I’d already studied and performed a number of preludes and fugues, an obscure keyboard suite, a partita, and a Liszt transcription (probably doesn’t count), all while still cycling through Bach repertoire on my own. I diligently analyzed the harmonies, color-coded voices, practiced the counterpoint in various combinations—soprano/ tenor, alto/bass, and so on—and the music would open itself to me, blossoming in all its tangled, tiered, motive-upon-motive-upon-motive genius. I couldn’t go deep enough. I loved it.
And then something happened, and I wish I knew what exactly. For my senior recital I had to prepare Bach’s 2nd Partita in c minor, rather standard fare, not the end of the world. But it also wasn’t a choice. Maybe that was the problem. I had a teacher at the time who sensed my interest—my defensive, protective interest—in musical miscellanea. In my junior recital, for instance, I’d played a Fantasy and Fugue…by Mozart.
So I have a feeling that my teacher wasn’t about to let me slide through a senior recital with any more baroque eccentricities. He needed me to prove myself in a major work—no ifs ands or buts. No fugues by Mozart.
I set to work, going about what had become a routine of analysis and pick-apart practicing. But after 6 months, maybe longer, the piece hadn’t come together. Of course, Bach always feels like a tightrope walk, but my mind seemed to set traps like never before, traps strewn across every melodic line, every harmonic shift. “What’s next?” “What’s next? WHAT’S NEXT!” It was just a matter of time, usually seconds, before I’d inevitably come up short (”I don’t know!!”), something would snag and the piece would come screeching to a halt.
Nevertheless, I had a senior recital to play! I reserved the hall, arranged the program printing, and taped posters all over the school. (I loved making posters. As a sophomore, I’d created a series of posters for my IU debut, fashioning them around giant images from Madonna’s SEX book. The piano faculty commenced a summit to consider expelling me for obscenity.)
The day came for my hearing. Some background: at IU, a student has a “recital hearing” upon which the faculty actually bases their grade. He or she typically passes and then has permission to play the recital, but the recital is actually more of a formality; I don’t even think one’s teacher has to show up.
I remember starting with Bach, but that’s about all I can harvest from that buried memory. Maybe I stopped? Maybe I improvised? Whatever happened on that stage with my Bach, it set the tone for the rest of the hearing, which also included Beethoven’s “Waldstein” Sonata, another of my teacher’s choices. I left the hall in a cold sweat. That, I remember. And I didn’t pass.
Not passing, by the way, happens, but not a lot. It’s somewhat exceptional, I think (or at least have told myself), to actually fail a hearing. The same faculty that once voted to expel me rallied to support, but quizzically so. By then I’d actually studied privately with many of them, and the overall question amongst them seemed to be: “Huh?” One faculty member said—and I’ll never forget it—“We could have passed you, but we just know you can do better.”
I thanked him, and then went about tearing all of my already taped-up posters down from the halls of the music school. My mother cancelled her flight and friends made other plans, and I receded to my little dorm-type apartment, littered with crumpled posters, and didn’t emerge for days. When I finally practiced again, I did so on an upright in a tiny room in the basement of a neighboring dorm, a room that no one in the music school would ever conceive of using and probably didn’t even know existed. I wanted to drop out.
No, really. I thought about it. I’m not cut out for this, I thought, and even though in a matter of days, after my winter exams, I’d have more than enough credits to graduate early, I wanted out right then and there. Fuck it.
But alas, I scheduled another hearing. A friend gave me some beta blockers—the only time I’ve ever taken them, and I noticed very little difference—and I took the stage again. Terrified and wincing through each agonizing note, narrowly escaping every psychological trap, I somehow passed. The recital happened a couple days later. A recording exists, but I’ve still never listened to the whole thing. I have no idea how I sound in the Bach.
I announced to my teacher that I would graduate early and wouldn’t attend any ceremonies. I was pretty much just leaving. “Do you really think you’ve learned all you can learn?” he asked. “Here? Yes,” I said.
There were 23 people in my studio at the time, and with my teacher, that made 24. He had an idea. Instead of our final masterclass, we would all play Bach’s complete Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1, all 24 preludes and fugues with each of us performing one key. What a beautiful idea, I thought, and a nice way to say goodbye.
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