Patterico's Pontifications

6/9/2005

I once was lost, but now am found

Filed under: General,Music — See Dubya @ 4:03 am



A forgotten Bach aria comes to light, after being stuffed in a book and nearly lost in a fire. I’m amazed when things like this happen. This brilliant man’s thoughts have been locked away for nearly three hundred years, and now they can be thawed out and reproduced for all to hear.

We forget how much we have forgotten.

5 Responses to “I once was lost, but now am found”

  1. If only they could find all of the pages of the last movement of Bruckner’s Ninth. The guy was fighting death to complete it, and had a bunch of sketches written out, but a lot of the pages were taken by friends and hangers-on as souvenirs.

    Patterico (756436)

  2. Just think, we have something like 4% of all “high” literature produced in Classical Antiquity.

    Angry Clam (f05866)

  3. “A forgotten Bach aria comes to light …”

    Whenever such examples of genius and excellence come to light, it is always a blessing and a treasure.

    clark smith (37176e)

  4. One of these days he family Haydn was employed with for most of his career might just open up their family vaults, and a lot of music historians think that when they do there’ll be more discoveries than can be properly studied and analyzed in 25 years.

    They only discovered Haydn’s Cello Concerto in C about 40 years ago, and now the work is just below the Bach cello suites and the Shostakovich cello concerto in terms of popularity of repertoire for the instrument.

    Steve Donohue (42059e)

  5. Perhaps it’s worth reiterating how devastating the fire at the Anna-Amalia-Bibliothek was. Where the preservation of Central European history and culture is concerned, this was one of the saddest events since the Second World War. The discovery an early Bach aria provides some small consolation, but this fortunate event only serves to underscore the potential magnitude of our recent loss.

    http://www.anna-amalia-library.com/aktu.html

    Consider donating. Around 50,000 volumes were lost. Some 62,000 heavily-damaged volumes require restoration.

    http://www.anna-amalia-library.com/spende.html

    m.croche (1ba66b)


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