by Howard Nemerov

Forthright instruction, wherewith lovers of the clavier,
especially those desirous of learning, are shown in a clear
way not only 1) to play two voices clearly, but also after
further progress 2) to deal correctly and well with three
obligato parts, moreover at the same time to obtain not only
good ideas, but also to carry them out well, but most of all to
acquire a cantabile style of playing, and thereby to acquire a
strong foretaste of composition. Prepared by Joh. Seb. Bach,
Capellmeister to His Serene Highness the Prince of Anhalt-
Cöthen. Anno Christi 1723.

I

The merest nub of a notion, nothing more
Than a scale, a turn, a broken chord, will do
For openers; originality
Is immaterial, it is not the tune
But the turns it takes you through, the winding ways
Where both sides and the roof and floor are mirrors
With some device that will reflect in time
As mirrors do in space, so that each voice
Says over what the others say, because
Consideration should precede consent;
And only being uninformative
Will be the highest reach of wisdom known
In the perfect courtesy of music, where
The question answers only to itself
And the completed round excludes the world.

II

How arbitrary it must be, the sound
That breaks the silence; yet its valency,
Though hidden still, is great for other sounds
Drawn after it into the little dance
Prefigured in its possibilities;
The tune’s not much until it’s taken up.
O mystery of mind that cannot know
Except by modeling what it would know,
Repeating accident to make it fate:
This is the thread that spins the labyrinth,
The acorn opened that unfolds the oak,
Word that holds space and sequence in the seed,
That splits the silence and divides the void
In phrases that reflect upon themselves,
To be known that way, and not in paraphrase.

III

It is a heartless business, happiness,
It always is. Two hundred and fifty years
Of time’s wild wind that whips the skin of that sea
Whose waves are men, two hundred and fifty years
Of a suffering multiplied as many times
As there were children born to give it form
By feeding it their bodies, minds and souls;
And still the moment of this music is,
Whether in merry or melancholy mode,
A happiness implacable and austere,
The feeling that specifically belongs
To music when it heartlessly makes up
The order of its lovely, lonely world
Agreeing justice with surprise, the world
We play forever at while keeping time.

IV

Landowska said, to end an argument,
“Why don’t you go on playing Bach your way
And let me play Bach his way?” putting down
Whoever-it-was forever; music’s not
All harmony, Landowska too is dead,
Spirit acerb, though her records remain
Hermetically kept where time not much corrupts
Nor quite so quick. In our advancing age
Not only the effigy can be preserved
But the sound as well, only without the self,
As evanescent as it ever was.
At last even the inventions lock us out,
We go while they remain. The argument ends,
It’s like a myth about inventing death:
We don’t become immortal, but it does.

V

Ach, dear Bach, so beautiful a day!
A small breeze shakes the shadows of the leaves
Over the instrument, across your page,
Sprinklings of drops at the outer edge of spray
In patterns overpatterning your own.
And one sits here, “lover of the clavier
And desirous to learn”, your backward amateur
Dilettante, stumbling slowly through your thoughts
Where five and twenty decades of the world’s
Sorrow and wrath are for a while as though
Dissolved in the clear streams of your songs
Whose currents twine, diverge, and twine again,
Seeming to think themselves about themselves
Like fountains flowering in their fall. Dear Bach,
It’s a great privilege. It always is.

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