I often enjoy this time of March. The days have become noticeably longer (I've adjusted to Daylight Savings Time, thank goodness), the temperatures are usually a bit warmer, and outdoor track season is just on the horizon.
Yet there's another reason I like this stretch of days, and it has nothing to do with the climate or sleep. Rather, it's a birthday that catches my notice, 21 March*, and generates a celebration on my part. For it was on this date in 1685 that the composer Johann Sebastian Bach was born in Eisenach, Saxe-Eisenach, in contemporary central Germany. I celebrate each year for many reasons, but one stands above the others perhaps; namely, that my introduction to Bach showed me that even abstraction and strict rules could produce something beautiful.
For many years as a youngster I was quite sickly, suffering frequently from asthma and needing hospitalization from time to time. I spent hours every week on a nebulizer; a thick, plastic mask strapped to my face, pumping medicine into my lungs. At pre-school the kids would cast odd glances as they walked by. At some point (I don't remember it) the nebulizer proved insufficient, and for the first time since birth I paid a visit to the hospital.
The first day proved difficult. I remember a nurse sticking me with several needles, first to install an IV and then to administer a shot of some kind. Two plastic tubes were then inserted into my nose, and a plastic band stickered with my name and birthday was strapped to my tiny left wrist. A yellow blanket with bears and smiling balloons was given to me, as well as a prayer from the church. My parents held my hands. I was frightened all the same.
I spent three days in the hospital, getting a needle for my trouble each day. Thankfully, I also got music. On the evening of the first night the nurse put on the film Fantasia, and from the start I was hooked. Undoubtedly my favorite part of the film was the Toccata and Fugue in D Minor scene. The toccata portion (the first part) felt strange, abstract, and full of mystery. The flashing light and color only confirmed to me that this music was somehow deep like an ocean, sparked like lightning, and somehow primordial, like the need to eat or breathe. I know that sounds abstruse and not particularly clear, but that is my best attempt to describe it; the toccata terrified and awed me all at once. Following that the fugue began, a complex exercise in counterpoint in which one voice introduces a theme, another repeats it, then possibly another, followed by a development section in which all manner of things happen to it. Strict and less strict rules govern the structure of fugues, but it was the outcome rather than the rules themselves which left me stunned that night in the hospital. Over and over again lines ran together, up and down scales, all in harmony and all fitting neatly into place. And then above it all the theme would return, like a beam of sunshine jumping through a hole in the clouds.
Each day in the hospital I watched Fantasia with my dad, who stayed with me, and fell in love both with the film and its music. When I recovered and went home, classical music went with me.
It's strange sometimes how we find our interests, yet that seems to be an important part of how we live and grow. We pick up things by accident, through experience, temptation, disaster, and endeavor. At times we stumble, and at others we run. Sometimes we laugh, and sometimes we cry. I think no matter which it is, a really wise person finds a way to make it all a dance, a painting, or perhaps a beautiful fugue. In some ways, I think finding Bach helped me discover a difficult notion; that even abstract rules and complex principles could be made to express something uniquely lovely. It is chiefly for this reason that I celebrate Herr Bach's birthday every 21 March. Perhaps next year you will too.
*21 March is also the birthday of a dear horn player I know. I celebrate her birthday, too.
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