Thank You, Bach
Bach and I probably would not have been friends... Alright, let's get things out of the way. He lived in the eighteenth century. I live in the twenty-first. He was deeply religious. I'm not. Our ideas about life, society, family, work, sex, and probably just about everything else would have been very different. Our lifestyles? Not much in common there either. Our personalities? Who knows. But I'm not feeling optimistic about that one. So let's see what we have left. Music.
Well, except that... the man was Bach. And I'm a musician yes, but let's not get carried away. Still, nearly three hundred years after Bach was alive, I can sit down at a piano and play or listen to something he wrote.
Keyboard Concerto No. 5 in F Minor, BWV 1056 is one of those pieces I listen and allowed me to meet a part of him without actually meeting him because, I can't imagine the two of use sitting down over coffee and finding much to talk about. An afternoon together would have been an experience from hell. Just saying.
Anyway, I don't need to have anything in common with Bach to thank him for the music. Two people who could hardly be more different, separated by centuries, geography, culture, religion, sexuality, lifestyle, and probably a rather impressive list of other things... And, we still had this one conversation. He wrote it. I listened.
Thank you, Bach.