reading scores
Wilhelm Vossenkuhl · 2015
Recent research suggests that Johann Sebastian Bach could read a score according to visual criteria. He saw it as a picture and corrected it like a draughtsman, according to its graphic structure. Music seemed like a picture to him, and he created his music by making graphic notations. Quite obviously, Bach did not read notes as linear or horizontal chains, as one reads language in a linear fashion. Instead of listing spring flowers he captured a spring meadow and instead of listing autumn flowers, digitalizing them, he saw an autumn meadow. Hearing and counting, reading and calculating, smelling and feeling are always connected with ideas, with brightnesses, with spaces, with structures, with analogies and landscapes. In this context listening to music is particularly complex. Often four, five, six lines of notes are overlayered and interpenetrate, in Bach even with the highest degree of autonomy and individuality.