LDV38.1

23 CÉDRIC PESCIA His style is founded above all on vocality and the dance . . . Absolutely! In that respect, Bach remains faithful to the two immemorial forms that lie at the origin of all music, namely song and the movement of the body in space. Through the preludes and fugues, the composer develops the art of vocal music in its various forms: monophony becoming polyphony (as is the case with each fugue), chorales, accompanied arias, duets and recitatives. It’s an act of incredible generosity. Indeed, I have the impression that Bach seeks to ‘embrace’ Humanity and make it sing! On the other hand, many preludes (and even some fugues) are closely related to dance forms fashionable (or already declining, or even obsolete) at the time of Bach. All you have to do is read Bach’s manuscripts: he’s incapable of writing a straight line! In his hands, the slightest slur over a group of semiquavers ‘dances’. The projection of the line is irrepressible. His handwriting, very beautiful in calligraphic terms, is true choreography, which in its flexibility of gesture reveals an elegance, a strength, an infinite variety of phrasing. To interpret Bach mechanically would therefore be a total misinterpretation. Over and above these two ‘founding’ elements, the voice and the dance, there are naturally many others: the intellectual or even mathematical games present essentially in the fugues; religious or spiritual preoccupations; the notion of rhetoric or indeed theatricality; the creation of a complete harmonic cosmos, in which all twenty-four keys are represented, each with its own affect, not forgetting chromaticism, and even certain allusions to ancient modes. And to that we can add instrumental virtuosity and the pedagogical aspect.