Review of Reinventing Bach by Paul Elie. Farrer, Straus and Giroux; 512 pages.
Paul Elie uses the story of [Glenn] Gould, along with those of other outstanding musicians, to argue that the age of recordings has allowed Bach’s music to be reinvented by its interpreters, as well as making it available to everybody and for all time as “an ever-expanding collection of peak experiences”. Bach’s music, he says, derives its power in part from its quality of superabundance; and its superabundance has now been compounded by recordings.
Interest in Bach has waxed and waned since his death in 1750, and 60 years ago it was in a waning phase; the conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein said you “had to go to certain churches or special little concerts” if you wanted to hear his music. Mr Elie shows how the development of ever better recording techniques since then has allowed Bach to pop up everywhere, despite a supposed decline in the popularity of classical music: as a soundtrack to Walt Disney’s animated film, “Fantasia”; as part of the backing in some of the Beatles’ songs; even as a jingle in would-be classy television advertisements.
Mr Elie deploys considerable scholarship (the more notable since his previous book, about four modern American Catholics who made literature out of their search for God, had nothing to do with music), and he writes beautifully. He makes a strong case that within less than a century a succession of new recording media—from the wax cylinder to the 78, the LP, various kinds of tape, the CD and now the computer—have brought Bach’s music, in multiple versions, to vast numbers of new listeners at the press of a button. It is a luxury previously unavailable even to princes, who in order to enjoy live performances had to employ entire orchestras. Recording technology has made a monarch of everyone. A chapter or two into the book, you will find yourself reaching out for your “Goldberg Variations”.