J.S. Bach – Clara Hsu

Even though time ticks away in a constant tempo, sometimes it seems to accelerate. One moment I was teaching a willful teenager who was angry at everything, the next moment she is a young lady, sweet, graceful, graduating from high school.

We have certificates to show that she has indeed learned something from me, that I have taught her more than just counting one-and-two-and. In our last lesson she told me she has started a new piece, J.S. Bach’s Cappriccio in C minor. All through the years she has hated playing Bach, to the point that she managed to lose the book of Two-Part Inventions. I don’t know what happened, but I know it is not a change but an opening of the mind. It’s what gives me the greatest pleasure as a teacher.

My piano students give me sour faces when I mention J.S. Bach. With good reason. Even his simplest pieces are deceptively difficult. The more advanced students grind their teeth when they have to tackle his fugues. They usually start out strong, but by the middle of the piece they have used up all their energy. I can feel their lead-weighted fingers going into spasms and the music would sag like a corpse being dragged to its final resting place.

There is a sense of playfulness in a fugue, where different voices “chase” each other, constantly morphing and colliding, appearing and disappearing. When Jack Foley talked to me about “multiplicity,” my mind went to the fugue, where a single entity spins and splits and manifests into different elements.

It must have been six months now since I told Jack I wanted to write a fugue—not a music composition, but a poem. Sometimes the brewing period does take that long. Friday (3/16) I sat down and wrote Fughetta (little fugue).

“I can’t help but think this is my break-through poem.” I told Jack.

He agreed.

Tag: J.S. Bach

The Last Lesson

To Write a Fugue