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The "Bach" Code
I recently stumbled over a CD called "Morimur" that my father got as a present from a colleague. I copied it onto my iPod and heard it on one of my many trips between Heidelberg and Tübingen. Wow, this CD was overwhelmingly intense: it sounded much like a very modern and good movie soundtrack, being played by only one violin and a choir of 4. It had a very "ghostly" feeling to it. Of course I was curious who composed this modern work and I was surprised to see that it was Bach! Yes, Bach. But it didn't sound anything like the strict baroque Bach I was used to. So I ended up googling about the CD and I was more than surprised: one track on the CD is the Viola Partia #2. Bach researches and bach lovers know that this partia stands out for two things: it's unbelievably complicated to play and second it sounds very modern and doesn't really fit to the rest of Bachs work. Early Bach researchers even said it must of been a miscomposition by Bach because it sounded so strange. And in deed, Bach wasn't at all proud of this Partia and tried to keep it low. Reason enough for a german music professor Prof. Thoene to look more deeply into the music and found something quite interesting: Bach composed this partia and a couple of chorals right after coming from a long journey and finding his first wife Maria Bach dead. She suddenly died of an illness while Bach was traveling and by the time Bach was home she already was burried. It is said that Bach loved his first wife very deeply and for him it was a tragic loss. Now it is long known that Bach left a signature of his name in many different works by using the notes B - A - C - H ( in Germany B=Bb and H=B ). If I use unique letters over the span of less than 4 octaves i can map every letter of the alphabet to a note. Looking closely at the beginning of the partia, prof. Theone found the signature "Maria Bach". But that was not the only code prof. Theone found: she more and more found references to numbers and other words. Often references to the word "Death" were found. But mostly Prof. Theone found numbers. For a long time she couldn't make anything out of these findings. Until she looked at the chorals. These numbers were actually refernces to certain bars of the chorals. She cut these parts of the chorals together and amazlingy enough she got a complete new chorale with music and text making sense. The text in this chorale is all about death, dying and loss. A subject that could have never been published when Bach lived, because it would have been to "unreligous". Now Prof. Theone mixed this new cut-up choral on top of the partia and exactly there where they were referenced to by the secret codes in the partia. The result of this work is the CD "Morimur"! Amazing how the music and the chorals fit together and form an extremly ghostly atmosphere.
Now, of course there are critics with good founded arguments that I could mix just about anything on top of the Partia and it would sound "ghostly" ( yet at the same time acknowledging that the "Maria Bach" signature cannot be pure coincidence ). And many critics say that Bach would of had better ways of hiding music. One critic put it this way: "In a hundred years people will be finding all sorts of genious nature constants and time-relativity equations in the Simpsons Series if they only look hard enough for the codes!" Well I guess it's just one of the many things in the catogary: "Things that we will never know".
So when is the movie "The Bach code" coming out.... ;-)!
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Wow, that is quite incredible! I will definitely have to listen to that CD sometime!
To the codes: Yes indeed, I can't help but being atleast skeptical. I mean, with all this code-finding everywhere, I wonder if people long ago had nothing else to do than to put secret codes into everything they wrote, painted or composed. But then again, why not? Maybe it was actually some sort of fad, that people of higher class considered artistic. Or maybe the birth of new encryption methods fascinated academics throughout Europe.
Like you said, we'll probably never know. But whoever made the reference to The Simpsons should beware: If you have ever watched a DVD commentary by Matt Groening you'll know that the series does indeed contain many mathematical hints and secrets.
Well if you read a little in the forum link I posted you will see that it was in deed chique to put codes into music. Some composers did this more or less excessively. For Bach we are not sure how excessive he was in code writing. We only know that he occasionaly did put his name into the music.
One word about his name in the music: Maybe we are interpreting to much by saying: He firmed his music to give it his personal touch...
I am just imagining this story: Bach as child fooling around with tunes and the alphabet. Then he asked himself how his own name would sound. Finally he thought it was good and used the tunes for his music. I mean reuse of already composed things is not very uncommon.
So, finally we can state: Even if we find his name into his music, it would perhaps be too much by saying: He wanted to "firm" it.
I'm not quite sure what you mean with "firm it", but I am convinced Bach, as all people, wanted to create something that would outlast him, and carry his signature. Every artist did that, either obviously (i.e. writing their name under a painting), or encoded (some artists liked to integrate their name into the painting, like Escher sometimes did). I doubt it was just child's play.
If you hold down the "On" button on an original Macintosh, and do some other crazy key combination, you will be presented a picture of the developer team. Again, a way for people to put their personal signature into their work.
Of course, this is probably true. I just wanted to point out, that even this is a little bit unsure. I mean music is music and is meaningful by itself. This Macintosh stuff not except for the reasons you mentioned.
So I think there is at least a very, very small chance that Bach put this tunes so often just because he LIKED them and not because he wanted to give his music a personal note.
But you must admit that putting the whole phrase "Maria Bach" right at the beginning of the partia ( from the first note ) can hardly be a coincidence knowing that Bach wrote this partia right after Maria Bach died. You can't explain this fact only by saying it was child's play. I am in deed very skeptical If there is more to that than just the phrase "Maria Bach".
Well, I must say, that I did not understand the music at first hearing. I realized that I was too stuffed with the used to and almost hackneyed Bach harmonies. So I wrapped myself in a warm coat, IPod underneath, and stepped out into the dark. The cold, the snow, the nightly sky gave way for an empty space, open to hear these harmonies from somewhere else. From where? I think: from within. From within a mourning man whose longing went after the beloved one who has gone beyond. There he recieved the ghostly, solemn sound, like a gentle greeting of the realm there to the world here. Strange. Very strange.