{"id":13917,"date":"2013-07-17T07:16:36","date_gmt":"2013-07-17T12:16:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/?p=13917"},"modified":"2013-07-17T10:55:41","modified_gmt":"2013-07-17T15:55:41","slug":"comparison-bach-contrapunctus-ix-on-the-banjo-absolutely","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/2013\/07\/17\/comparison-bach-contrapunctus-ix-on-the-banjo-absolutely\/","title":{"rendered":"Comparison: Bach Contrapunctus IX on the banjo? Absolutely"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\"Jayme<\/a>
Jayme Stone (Vanessa Heins photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Just as I’ve been working on a banjo collaboration for “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” for church this coming Sunday, I ran across a video of Toronto-native banjo player Jayme Stone and bandmates playing a section of J.S. Bach’s Art of the Fugue<\/em>. It reminded me for the umpteenth time how adaptable Bach’s musical language is.<\/p>\n

This comes on the heels of reading an recent essay by a prominent, veteran period-performance musician who railed against arrangements of Bach’s music. He cited a string-trio arrangement of the Goldberg Variations<\/em> as a case in point, referring to it as “a modern horror.”<\/p>\n

Is it a horror to bring Bach to life for different audiences in different contexts?<\/p>\n

Since Bach didn’t actually specify instrumentation in the Art of the Fugue<\/em>, I thought I’d share the Stone’s video with the banjo of “Contrapuntus IX,” a four-part double-fugue, and include a few other versions so we can compare attributes:<\/p>\n