Word: bache
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...last book on my nightstand, and the one furthest out of my normal range, is called Godel, Escher, Bach, by Douglas R. Hofstader. It won the Pulitzer Prize in the early 1980s and ties together math, art and music through images of endlessly looping equations, drawings and musical canons. I've slugged through about 200 pages of it. Although it's starting to get into deep computer theory, which is difficult to read, it's still interesting...
...book's most fascinating tidbits deals with Bach...
Since the German musical scale contains an "H" (their "H" is our "B" and their "B" is our "B-flat"), Bach's name spells out a chromatic and eerie four-note melody. According to his son, at the point in the "Art of the Fugue" when Bach brought in that melody, he died. The book is full of such strange coincidences and upheavals...
...never enough time to read them all. At least in school, one can pretend that there are a finite number of required books one must read to be educated in a certain subject. In real life, there are infinitely many, as many as the possible variations on a Bach fugue. In a way, it's comforting that the store of knowledge is never exhaustible. On the other hand, it feels like a losing battle. But in mid-July, the summer still at its peak, anything seems possible--the knowledge is there for the taking, at least until September comes...
...days I was reading about the after-math of the symphony's demise, I was also listening to a CD I had just bought: Bach's six solo cello suites. A friend had recommended them, and as I listened I thought that there was little better than this on earth. I have had similar feelings about many of the pieces I was exposed to in Robert Levin's Core course, Literature and Arts B-54: "Chamber Music from Mozart to Ravel." From Schubert's light Trout Quintet to Beethoven's brooding late string quartets, all nine pieces I was required...