Bach and the Stile Antico

If you talk to any Bach scholar or crack open a biography of the great master, they’ll tell you it can be hard to get a peek into Bach’s life, especially his earliest and most formative years. Whereas his music is boundless, there aren’t many detailed sources on how exactly Bach was educated and what his concrete philosophy of music might have been. After all, he famously wrote no books nor treatises, letters in his hand are few, and his opinions about music are recorded second or third hand from his family or students. 

Where might that leave us? Well, what we do have is a wonderful trove of music that Bach was exposed to and collected throughout his life, in particular, examples of dense counterpoint. Though Bach never traveled more than 180 miles from the town where he was born, he amassed an incredible knowledge of music from all over Europe, spanning most of the 17th century, right up to keeping track of trends with his contemporaries.

In this evening’s program, A Golden Wire takes a fresh approach with fugues and canons of Bach, interspersed with his organ and solo violin works and those of his forbears. The voices of Palestrina, Frescobaldi, Buxtehude and Böhm will guide audiences through a the soundscape that Bach himself knew.

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Host or Publisher Parker Ramsay