Again re the Art of Fugue by JS Bach

 Recently, the night cap for me has been the Art of Fugue by JS Bach, I have written about it and fond memories with this great work in the past posts.

I just would like to point out it should be performed with key boards like cembalo. It makes the melody line distinct compared with string ensemble like quartet. This performance by Juliard String Quartet is an exception. Its performance is so exhaustive and detailed. As if the texture of the music was shown before us. 

Here

The series of Canon attract my mind. Simple and still profound. The 2nd CD of his set starts with Canon. I am relieved as well as soothed whenever I listen to these works. I could understand why Bach has concentrated on the counterpoint works for his last one. Absolutely abstract and still specifically appealing to our mind.

Brahms Viola Sonata

In the last years of his life, they say, Brahms has felt running out of inspiration and energy for composition. He also had problems with his friends even including Clara Schumann those days. Knowing a virtuoso of clarinet player, Richard Muehlferd, however, he has been inspired and started composing the last works of chamber music featuring clarinet. The clarinet trio, the clarinet quintet and the two clarinet sonatas. Later, the clarinet sonatas were transcribed to viola sonatas. Being highly self critic, Brahms was not very happy with those arrangements.  But this couple of viola sonatas are performed like jewels by violists.

This 1st movement of the 1st sonata is particularly impressive. The beginning motif is from his 1st piano sonata OP-1. He told his work had been continuous like a loop. At the end of life, he must have had the same emotion of passion for music and possibly for life even if resignation for life is the fundamental mood in this music. I could hear solitude as well as a kind of anger on the background. 

I appreciate this viola version. The charactersistic of the instrument matches this music. Not so brilliant as violin but mellow enough to easily reach our heart.

This duo, Carr and Petrova, plays it most emotionally as well as passinately. They have left a recording of the clarinet trio by Brahms, which I posted in this blog before. Competent musicians. I hope these young musicians may publicate recordings of such great chamber music as this one.

 

Brahms won't give us heavenly relief as Bach does. But he still closely whispers his thoughts in our ear. We could find intimate companion for the travel of life.

John 9V1VV gone QRT

A few days ago, I received an e mail from John 9V1VV. The title was "QRT". It has made me utter "What?".

It was literally a news that he had decided to quit radio and sold all equipments for now. He has been annoyed by heavy noise from the surrounding. He often mentioned of that before and told me he could barely enjoy chatting on CW. 

I know what person he is and what he has been pursuing in ham radio. In a moment, I fully understood why he had made such a decision. He told me he enjoyed Thai tea, listening to music, constructing hifi system and doing volunteer work for the area etc. It seemed worthwhile for him to spend time with those things but not listening to noisy bands without anyone to converse. Recently, there were, as he said, only two exceptions like Jim W6YA and Happy W7SW strong enough to talk with. I was smiling at those call signs because they also used to be regulars for me to talk on 40m. Anyway, John has made up his mind and has stepped out into no-radio life now.

It was around 2007 when I ran across with John for the very first time. He was running with a hand key and later a bug key using an electrical keyer. He had worked as R/O for years and got ashore when the traditional work of R/O was extinct, I guess. However, he used to tell me he was unconsciously converting the words on signs or advertisements along the streets into Morse code. Realizing that, he wanted to come back to the world of Morse code communication. I believe it won't take too long before he applied for a ham ticket in Singapore and prepared the radio gear and antenna, possibly, a wire antenna. 

In our first contacts, I knew he had belonged to the old generation of CW operator. I felt close to him with that his intention. In addition, we shared classical music as hobby. whenever we meet on the air, we scarecely miss the chance to talk about music with him. I have also learned a lot on that subject from him. Something like the yiddish melody in Mahler's 9th. 

He has visited me at our home back in 2008, a year later from our 1st contact on the radio. On that weekend, we had one of the important rehearsal of the local orchestra. I was sorry but asked him to go for the rehearsal with me. I have written about his visit on a post in this blog. Here.

It has been a pleasant journey together on our loving mode in ham radio. He will be missed badly by a lot of his friends in ham radio including myself. But he has made up his mind to go off to another voyage of post-radio life. We could get in touch through the internet. It is not the end of our friendship but just another chapter of new voyage. Wishing him very good health and meaningful life.