Bach on Bach : Coda

What I had meant to say in the previous post about the accidental BBC Bach mash-up (which may have been implicit) was this:

There was a moment -- during that initial minute or so when it still seemed the jarring cross-cut effect might have been intentional -- when my ears and brain suspended disbelief and something genuinely creative happened.  It didn't last long, but it was real. If you've ever sat through a free jazz performance or a piece of aleatory, experimental music, you'll know the feeling: ten seconds of real interest bought at the price of an hour of screaming tedium.

At the risk of sounding like a vicar turning his sermon ("And I thought, isn't the love of God just like a free jazz performance?") it occurred to me that the problem with much contemporary art is that it is predicated on the pursuit of nothing more than that fleeting experience of defamiliarization and disorientation.  Where Bach builds a magic space in your head, patiently, cunningly, others -- no need to name names -- hope to get lucky and create one by grabbing both of your ears and pulling hard.  But you can never build a substantial achievement that way.   Hence the endless churning of attention-grabbing but ephemeral novelties.

Of course, the great thing about chance is that it can reveal fresh solutions to old problems.  But, as we know, chance mainly favours the prepared. Whatever it was that happened during those ten seconds was interesting but not much use to me.  But, who knows, maybe one or two composers who happened to be listening had their ears pinned back -- "that's IT!" -- and stumbled to their manuscript books, fired up for an afternoon of pure creative frenzy...