2023-06-11 06:32:06
A sixteen notespresenter, writer and publicist Risto Mejide, fictionalizes Johann Sebastian Bach’s love for his second wife and the problems the couple had due to their age difference
When does he become interested in Bach’s biography to the point of writing a novel about him?
I was looking to read a novel about Bach and couldn’t find it. There are many biographies about him, but, curiously, there is very little fiction about Bach and, instead, a lot about Beethoven and Mozart. Also, all the biographies that fell into my hands had a major ellipsis at a crucial point.
Quin?
When Bach returns from a trip, he discovers that his wife, Maria Barbara Bach, has died suddenly and has been buried. He couldn’t even say goodbye to her. He is left a widower, with four children and broke. This is July 1720 and in December 1721 he marries Anna Magdalena, with whom he has 13 children. What happened this year? This question is not answered by any biography.
Could it be due to the image of him as a serious, almost unsympathetic man?
The image that has reached us of him is a portrait of Haussmann, who takes him at 60, with a double chin and a very serious rictus. But he was also 35 years old, which is when he fell in love with Anna Magdalena, and he was a passionate man, even a transgressor, very fond of tabola with his friends, who frequented the cafes of the time, authentic slums He even got to fight and duel.
Bach was a passionate man, even transgressive, who frequented the cafés of the time and even got into fights and duels
Do prejudices persist due to the age difference in couples?
In general, all age-gap couples have experienced some form of public discrimination or pointing out.
You have been criticized for the same. Did it influence you to write this story?
It is true that I connect with Bach in this sense, but this is not a book about me. If I had wanted to report what was happening to me, I would have written a book about my relationships.
What’s it like to get inside the mind of a genius?
I wish I could answer that, because I don’t think it’s possible to get into someone else’s mind. In his life you can try and decipher many things. A genius like Bach is an ever-open question, while an ordinary person, like a servant, tries to answer a very small part of this great question.
Talent is a gift, but do you think it’s also something genetic?
At one point in the family, I can’t remember exactly when, there were as many as fifty members who were living musicians. I think he benefited from that musical environment, but he stood out from all of them and left a huge legacy.
If Bach were in Chester, what would he like to hear him say about the novel?
I wouldn’t learn anything about his life, of course. I guess I’d like to know that it entertained him. I’m not trying to make it a scholarly treatise much less demonstrate everything I’ve learned about him. I care that the reader has a good time, and learns things about the life of the genius along the way. And above all, apart from being entertained, is that he listens to Bach.
I care that the reader has a good time, and that along the way he learns things about the life of the genius, and above all, that he listens to Bach
The novel also contains the find in the exhumation of his tomb, in 1894.
This story began to grow on its own because, what were two buried coffins doing with theirs? What happened to the one with the shattered skull?
It also includes the recording, in 1955, of the “Goldberg Variations” by a very young Glenn Gould.
Glenn Gould is the closest reference we have of a genius around Bach, eccentric, hypochondriac. When they give him the opportunity to record his first album, he chooses the “Goldberg Variations” and he had a lot of problems, because very few people believed in this album. He ended up being one of the best in the history of classical music. Gould’s story is a defense to diversity, to different people, to the fact that no one is there to tell him how another person should be.
Like Bach and his wife?
Talent must be preserved from what others want it to be. The message of the lives of Bach, Anne Magdalene and Glenn Gould is a little like this: live your life without harming others.
#live #life #harming