bach
Mö says to the publisher that Bach wrote his Brandenburg Concertos aus einem Guß: pushed for time (1), dead-line, (2) no second thoughts (3), no scrapping (4), no niggling (5), you can see it from the score.
I think that the publisher was impressed by the ease with which Mö meddles with great culture (bordering on brutality). I’m used to it, I remember the time when I was still not used to it, Mö was twelve, back then he already had outspoken opinions too, over 50 years ago, now he’s on social security, nothing’s changed. On his way home, he threw without a moment’s hesitation a small jigsawed piece of art he’d been forced to work on at school for a long time into the canal with the words ‘I’m going home to listen to Bach.’
The last word about Bach hasn’t been spoken. E.M. Cioran says:
bach was a troublemaker and a nitpicker, he was close-fisted and mad about titles, honours, etc. But what difference does that make? A musicologist who wrote a summary of all the cantatas that have death as their theme remarked that no mortal had ever longed for death. And that’s the only thing of any importance. The rest is biography.
On 12 December 1973, at 10am, I was walking with Mö from the Olympiaplein to the Raphaëlstraat. As usual, we didn’t talk to each other, but in the Leonardostraat he said something: ‘I know that my birth is sheer chance, a ridiculous incident, but if I let myself go, I behave as if it is an event of cardinal importance, indispensable for the progress and balance of the world.’ I asked him it he’d thought of that himself. He said: ‘No, I got it from E.M. Cioran.’
In the Leonardostraat I heard that name for the first time.
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