Surprised by this choice of Baroque composer Bach, employing banned during his time, defiant of dogma dissonance? Indeed, in this case he forecasted harmonic language that had been met with skepticism even during 20th century… But now such device of music composition has become conventional, used in many public performances by many musicians, including Dave Brubeck, Keith Jarrett, Scriabin, Prokofiev, Bartok, Shostakovich, Stravinsky… jist to name a few…
Today, we need to step back and imagine the degree of novelty such musical device meant for the ears of the audience during Bach’s time, that likely was met with rarks like “scandalous frivolity” aside from some of rather polite mentions of this in writing…
This sonic experience of great surprise was achieved, thanks to compositional mastery in violation of musical predictions. Readers of the ebook will have the rare opportunity to witness that in fact, It was intended by Bach, aiming to fetch attention of performers and audiences. Today’s music educators and brain scientists, versed with such modern neuroscience term, still have a lot to learn from Bach in achieving this didactic effect (intuitively) and applying it, as “the learning tool* for self motivation for students to practice, their assignment, thanks to the dopaminergic effect of this metaphor of musical humor.
But… ReAdar’s of ebook will witness that many musicians evidently failed to detect such banned during Bach’s time, and yet emboldened by him dissonant sonorities, as this unresolved CLUSTER CHORD, including acclaimed authors of analysis, used as “official didactic aids” and recording artists… Every graduate of music college learns through required strict harmony course, that dissonance was 👉banned by composition rules of Bach’s time. But despite such common understanding of the defiance of these rules by Bach, it had been left with no MERE MENTION, remaining amiss in most textbooks and didactic aids on Bach…
The author of the ebook gracefully shared excellent and helpful insight about one of the key reasons for such significant collective Blindspot about common failure to recognize and to follow Bach’s OWN didactic scaffolding for overcoming zombification - disability to grasp this notation element in this Fugue-Parody, that also provides indisputable factual evidence of Bach’s violations of his time’s dogma for implementing his compositional and didactic innovations, demonstrating significance of his concern of instructor (and father of his first students - his own children). This unmistakable urgent call of composer for the special attention of students of his scores is designed for training in such way, that the student won’t need nagging and instead, would have self-reference to the need to continue to practice on repatterning of the skills for expressive performance:
UNLESS NUANCED DYNAMICS ARE USED BY THE STUDENT/PERFORMER, the sonic impact of the dissonant clash is muted, due to syncopation. (Detailed analysis in ebook illustrates this graciously shared “secret of the trade” for achieving measurable projection of FUN sonic effect - with score measure references. Use below button for instant PDF download.)
And since most musicians followed the false requirement for irrelevant to Bach “historically informed performance“ (HIP), requiring to replicate no/limited dynamics of keyboards with inferior design, incapable of diverse dynamics - unlike emerging hammer clavier, they could not achieve Bach’s didactic task of projecting invested by Bach sobering sonic effect. And as the result, effected by injurious conformity to HIP musicians missed metaphorical symbolism of the satirical humor, clearly spelled out with unresolved dissonance in this fugue, designed by Bach in the style of parody on dogma. (This perception phenomenon paradox of conformity to groupthink, that invoked subliminal morphing of sensory perception to fit conventional, yet false expectations, had been described in case studies for 👉🏿 Asch Effect. But embodied through music data, based on Bach’s didactic maverick, helped to illuminate deeper understanding of inner mechanisms of self defeat under group pressure, and resulting lack of clarity. Similar phenomenon of collectI’ve Blindspot has been described by Andersen in his famous fairytale “Naked Emperor”, or “New clothes for the King”)
This FALSE and irrelevant to Bach, injurious “historically” informed performance (HIP) approach had been entrained since childhood into psychomotor skills and habits, leading to lifelong emotional blocks TO GREATNESS (!) among millions of musicians! Bach’s unique didactic design of this miniature marvel allowed for the evidence of the stupefying impacts of HIP, and thus, helped to alert musicians and their audiences about the incredible power of emotional repression and resulting zombification to paralyzed cognition and even to interfere with the basic music reading skill (visual recognition of notation for banned cluster chords and other dissonance) among many gifted and intelligent musicians, indiscriminately of academic titles, fame, acclaim, honorary awards etc.
At the same time, this produced by Bach didactic tool for achieving emotional/sensory reawakening and restoring lost capacity of musicians to created emotionally-resonant music is also the superb tool for ADVOCACY FOR THE TRANSFORMATIVE POWER OF MUSIC and MUSOC EDUCATION!
And unearthing of these missed in plain sight defiant dissonant sonorities has another very significant implication for restoring the truth about Bach’s passion for innovation:
This sonic effect could not be produced on harpsichord, since this clashing, satirical dissonance depends on the lasting tone of the instrument. (Many performers of this piece had been missing the importance of holding down the keys, in order to follow Bach’s notation of TIED NOTES(!) that allow for the clashing sonic effect to manifest.)
Unfortunately, the biographical facts about Bach’s proactive involvement and excitement about hammer clavier had been underpublicized, due to mindless protectionism among the makers of instruments, who resented Bach’s innovation in expanding music’s emotional resonance. (The pursuits of emergent new technology of hammer clavier, patented by Italian master Cristofori (under patronage of Medici family) were deliberately mischaracterised, as “unpatriotic” by the makers of originated in Germany unfretted clavichord with significant tuning limitations for tonalities with many chromatic keys…) And such long tradition of blunt biographical distortion created the culture of moral atrocity, contributing to the sustainability of the Blindspot of turning Bach’s complex polyphonic design, superb for serving as the tool for EMOTIONAL REAWAKENING and restoring balanced brain function, into the tool for primitive and stupefying zombification. But the values of today’s democratically oriented society demand for such relic of pedagogy to seize now and finally…
The fact, that Bach battled all his life with this misuse of music for subliminal indoctrination into herd mind, cultivated by monarchy regime, despite much risk and sacrifice, makes evident his grasp of the significance for such impacts of entraining emotional repression(!). Many hands on music instructors share such observations of own student’s emotional reawakening with similar efforts of the music teacher-extraordinaire Bach with the mindset of neuroscientist. Unfortunately, the lack of interest to transformative meaning of Bach among most Bach scholars, detached from the realities of hands on teaching experience of hard working and impoverished Genius Bach, living the life of prisoner of conscience, had been a measurable cognitive barrier for grasping motivation for creation of the didactic compositions, like this Fugue-Parody.
Bach’s innovation in didactics deserve not only recognition, but also his lessons in creating effective scaffolding demand for the attention to exemplary impacts of his unique didactic design to be included in textbooks for pedagogy and brain sciences(!)
Required emotional repression in Bach’s music had been proven to be impermissible by Bach’s own design. And the failure to recognize it led to the rare chance for sobering lesson for humanity on the urgency for overcoming stupefying zombification, resulting from following the relic of pedagogy from monarchy time in music (and beyond):
The widespread tolerance to this collective Blindspot over defiantly employed dissonance is evident of ZOMBIFICATION CRISIS IN MUSIC EDUCATION, that demands for urgent change, initiated by Bach, that had been left obscured:
Genius Bach was capable to foresee the modern studies on the hazards of emotional repression three entities before their current data manifestations (!)
ZERO TOLERANCE to the educational standard, that requires/suggests for injurious emotional repression must be proclaimed with long overdue clarity, due to required HEALTH COMPLIANCE with modern STUDIES, that demonstrated the direct link of emotional repression to serious health hazards⚠️❗️
