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Never in this life did I think I’d play Bach like this. But summer brings birth and new things, and the sound of my new piano (new to me: it’s a 1925 Steinway Model O) is so beautiful that my ears have gone to new places. I’m more certain than ever of the inexhaustible nature of Bach’s propositions. I hope the microphones impart some of the music’s dimension and some of my gratitude.
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This invention (like all the others) is a radical composition; it is unique in the set of 15 for a number of reasons, one of which is how clearly it demonstrates how Bach’s formal thinking appropriates that of the Franco-Flemish School, in whose polyphony the component lines exhibit such persistent independent-mindedness as to repel one another like magnets brought together at their ends of like charge.
I have never loved the term “imitative polyphony.” A polyphonic idea is a contrapuntal combination of discrete sound components whose sense lies in the totality of their combined sound. The art of invertible counterpoint consists of varying the disposition of these components in relation to one another; it is a way of exploring the implicit potential of a basic idea so as to produce a variety of sound expressions that also fulfill different compositional/syntactic functions. Here form literally equals the unravelling of the idea’s inherent potential. When two varying dispositions of the same basic idea are placed in succession, it is possible to hear the recurring component material—which will appear in a different voice or register than before—as a repetition or “imitation” of what has just been stated elsewhere. But this misses the point. The attention, so far as the composer is concerned, is rather on the total sound emanation created by the new disposition, which cannot be traced to any of its components individually. It is somehow greater than the sum of its parts. Polyphony, and counterpoint, paradoxically, are more vertical than horizontal. The individual lines exhibit independence, but the perception of independence comes about only in relation to their context. |
AuthorRamin Amir Arjomand is a pianist, improviser, composer, conductor and teacher based in Brooklyn. Archives
April 2025
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