Bach Concerts in Sanders

The Cambridge Society for Early Music devoted all three of its concerts this fall to works by Johann Scbastian Bach. In the second concert, Ruth Posselt was the featured soloist in three of the rarely performed Sonatas for violin with harpsichord and continue. I admired especially the rhythmic vitality and sharpness of articulation which she brought to these works. Her dramatic vibrato, however, seemed out of place in the stately declamation of the E major Adagio, while the following Allegro sounded overly stiff, and other occasional nuances of mood were only slightly indicated. Yet within her conception, the performance was minutely planned and impeccably executed.

This three-part series had a purpose beyond displaying the fecundity and variety of Bach's creation: the final concert focused upon the very axis of his work, the climax and culmination, both literally and figuratively, of his polyphonic genius, The Art of the Fugue. The first concert, as if in preparation, had featured The Musical Offering, whose ten canons and gigantic six voice fugue might be considered a complement to Bach's abstract on polyphony.

The heart of The Musical Offering, however, is still the essentially lyrical Trio Sonata. The Art of the Fugue confronts the listener with a from whose essence cannot be analyzed in terms of melody or of harmony. Ernest Levy, in his recent lectures at M.I.T., suggested that the fugue might best be apprehended spatially, with time, as an aesthetic factor, removed. This approach, peculiar to the fugue, stands in contrast with that type of appreciation whereby the listener views a piece as a drama in whose development he may participate.

The true analysis and apprehension of Baroque polyphony would demand a mental construction of the most comprehensive and difficult sort. The initial study would undoubtedly be through musical technique but in the end a religious approach could not be avoided. A comparable task might be the understanding of Chartres cathedral by the man who was not born in its shadow, does not worship there daily, is not aware of the myriad architectural problems solved in its construction, and no longer conceives spatial dimensions to be precisely analogous to religious dogmas.

Erwin Bodky's performance displayed an approach of absolute seriousness and purity toward the music. The attraction of instrumental color was avoided by using a bare string orchestra. The tempi were uniformly slow so as to attain the highest awareness of the formal complexity within each of the fourteen fugues performed. Yet at the same time, the playing, especially through its attention to tonal color and phrasing, attained such a level of devotion and warmth that the audience could not help but be moved to a closer contact with the music by the example of the performers.