Potsdam

It is pleasant to record that Kaiserling paid Bach liberally for his variations.

st matthew passion and b minor mass on good friday seventeen twenty nine came the turn of st thomas's church to produce the music appropriate to the day the result of this official duty was the passion according to st matthew for which christian friedrich henry who wrote under the name of picander and provided bach with innumerable librettos for all purposes compiled the text the composer himself chose and distributed the chorales which punctuate the score bach was still at work on it when his former patron prince leopold of gotten died rather than prepare a special memorial piece he asked picander to adapt appropriate words to parts of the music in the st matthew and he performed them at curtin at his friend's obsequies it is hard for us to believe that the st matthew passion did not receive on that far-off april fifteenth seventeen twenty nine the tribute of wondering amazement which in the fullness of our hearts we bring it to-day yet we are told that the leipsic worshippers considered its overwhelming dramatic pages theatrical god help us exclaimed a scandalized old dame tis surely an opera comedy we know that judged by our standards the first performance of the work must have been inefficient whether it was much better done at its repetition in seventeen thirty six may be doubted be this as it may the st matthew passion passed into oblivion for nearly a hundred years the glory of its rediscovery and its reawakening an exact century after its birth belongs to felix mendelssohn who with its resuscitation at the singh academy in berlin performed a service that would have shed immortal lustre upon his name had he never done anything else the st matthew passion which is bach at his most tender intimate lacerating and compassionate stands like the b minor mass beethoven's ninth symphony and wagner's tristan as one of the epical feats of music a lonely and incomparable achievement of the human spirit bach is believed to have written a passion according to st mark but not a trace of it survives another according to st luke is extant but most certainly spurious it is hard to believe he could ever have surpassed the lyric glory of the st matthew for generations after its re-emergence musicians painted everything from lip service to ecstatic tribute a complete full-length performance of it was however a rarity and not even mendelssohn had the courage to attempt it in our own time we have finally come to the ways of wisdom recognizing that the st matthew passion can produce its proper effect only when heard in its entirety with never a bar or a phrase omitted those who have heard it thus are unlikely ever again to listen willingly to a cut version if anything can be said to rival the grandeur of the st matthew passion it is the mass in b minor the triumphal hymn of the church militant this utterance of subduing and inscrutable majesty which transcends the world to bestride the universe was completed in seventeen thirty three and offered to augustus the strong as an insignificant example of my skill in musique augustus the strong being occupied at the moment with problems of state did not deign to notice bach's insignificant gesture the composer never heard a performance of this gigantic creation which soars to heights beyond human gaze and in its proportions and technical details is too vast to serve ordinary liturgical purposes yet here as so often elsewhere bach followed the example of his age and employed several numbers from this mass with greater or lesser alteration elsewhere even the triumphant osanna which expert criticism has pronounced a polonaise apparently a subtle compliment paid to augustus as king of poland and the ineffably touching agnus dei may be encountered again in several of bach's cantatas visit to frederick the great and later works early in seventeen forty one bach son philip emmanuel had become clavecinist to the new sovereign of prussia frederick the great moved it appears by a paternal wish to see the young man comfortably settled the father made a trip to berlin in the summer of that year details of the journey are few and it was cut short by news that anna magdalena in leipsic was seriously ill bach's famous visit to berlin and potsdam did not take place however till fully six years later one of its chief objects was to make the acquaintance of his daughter-in-law whom philip emanuel had married in seventeen forty four and of his first grandchild but the visit had more spectacular consequences frederick the great had learned about bach from his court pianist Whether or not the great cantor went to the palace of Saint-Suzy in Potsdam at the king's special command, he arrived there at a psychological moment on May 7, 1747, just as Frederick was about to begin one of his regular evening concerts, at which, surrounded by his picked musicians, he loved to exhibit his own considerable virtuosity on the flute.

gentlemen old bach is here the monarch exclaimed and calling off the concert received his guest with cordiality he immediately had bach examine the new silbermann claviers with hammer action newly installed in the palace and invited him to show his skill after putting each of the instruments to a test bach amazed frederick and his court by improvising a superb six-part fugue on a subject submitted him by the king himself the next evening he transported his hosts once more with a recital on the organ of the church of the holy ghost in potsdam and a little later in berlin examined the new opera house detecting acoustical effects which the architect himself seems not to have suspected back in leipzig bach resolved to break a rule against dedicating scores to noble patrons he had made after the shabby treatment accorded him in the case of the brandenburg concertos and the b minor mass but he would have been less than human if he had not thought that a gracious gesture on his part might perchance further his son's interests at court and besides he was genuinely pleased with the fine theme frederick had given him to develop so alleging that his potsdam improvisation had failed to do the royal theme justice he dispatched to the monarch with a suitable dedication a series of elaborate contrapuntal developments of the theme diplomatically incorporating in the set a sonata for flute violin and clavier this princely gift is the work known as the musical offering whose beauty and ingenuity have come to be properly valued only in recent years theoretical problems of music now interested bach more and more and in seventeen forty seven he was elected to the so-called society for the promotion of musical science founded by lorenz christoph mitzler men as illustrious as telamon handel and graun were already members and after a brief period of hesitation bach joined it too presenting the society in return for his diploma with a formidable sample of his technical skill in the shape of a lordly set of canonic variations for organ on the christmas theme vom himmel hoch da in seventeen forty nine he was occupied with a work in some ways his profoundest and most enigmatic which virtually till our own time has been misconstrued even by serious musicians as a dry and abstract experiment in polyphony of no independent musical value it is that stupendous succession of fugues and canons or counterpoints as the composer himself called them under the collective title the art of fugue on a subject not unlike the theme given him by frederick the great bach has heaped one polyphonic marvel upon another in a manner to exploit to the limits of technique and imagination every possible device of fugal and canonic development he was not spared to complete it but dropped his pen at a passage in the final counterpoint when the notes b a c h in german b flat a c b natural were woven into the contrapuntal texture what adds to the further riddle of the work is the fact that the composer did not indicate for what instrument or group of instruments he intended it In our day it has been scored by turns for a full orchestra, a chamber orchestra, a string quartet, two pianos, and the organ.

It is difficult to believe that Bach did not intend this colossal conception to be performed, and that he projected it merely as a theoretical problem or an exercise in what is called I-music.

A day after the political earthquake of Alternative for Germany's first win in a state election, protesters took to the streets to denounce the far-right party and the danger they say it poses to their country.

Demonstrations took place across Germany from Nuremberg in the south to Potsdam in the east, where those gathered expressed their fears about the victory of a party some of whose members have praised the Nazis.

It was in a way foreseeable, but now seeing it set out on paper, just how many people actually voted for them is truly terrifying when you have to consider who around me voted for them.

Or rather, it's simply unimaginable what has happened.

Siegmund es un sonriente técnico comercial de treinta y cinco años y novecientos mil seguidores en TikTok.

En 2023 participó en una reunión secreta en Potsdam para planear deportaciones.

La revista Der Spiegel lo acaba de describir como el hombre más peligroso de Alemania.

La inquietud por su triunfo es enorme.