Y WIFE AND I recently celebrated our seventh wedding anniversary. Naturally, on that day, our air conditioning system and electric power malfunctioned … but it was still great.
Looking back over seven wonderful years, my thoughts went to when we first got married, when I was still teaching at a (brand new) Catholic high school. Specifically, I recalled how insane I used to be!
I would force my ninth grade students to listen to Bach’s Art of the Fugue (as well as the students in detention), and they were graded on being able to point out where the various fugue subjects entered: in augmentation, diminution, inverted, and so forth.
Non-musicians might have a hard time understanding what a quodlibet, canon, or fugue is … and who can blame them? Perhaps it would help if they listened to an ingenious combination of two patriotic songs. Credit for the idea of mixing them goes to Glenn Gould. You can download the complete score for piano & mixed chorus:
* * PDF Download: Glenn Gould Patriotic Quodlibet
… or you can listen to the following recorded excerpt (the part wherein two patriotic tunes are combined):
* * Gould/Ostrowski Quodlibet — A small choir of 9th grade singers (October (2006)
Did you hear the two melodies mixed together? If you did, you get a cookie!
WHAT CAN ONE SAY about Bach’s Art of the Fugue? Marvelous. Simply marvelous. Here’s a splendid example played by Gould on the piano:
Here’s the same piece played by Gould on the organ. For the record, critics with no imagination and inferior musical sensibilities tend not to enjoy Gould’s organ playing, but I love it. I think I read somewhere that Gould was originally an organist.
I should be careful when it comes to reminiscences of the past. I have a video of myself conducting 10 years ago and it’s pretty horrible! I may post it one of these days in a moment of weakness … stay tuned!
