Constellation of Genius

Ezra Pound referred to 1922 as Year One of a new era. It was the year that began with the publication of James Joyce's Ulysses and ended with the publication of T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land, two works that were arguably "the sun and moon" of modernist literature, some would say of modernity itself.

Breaking All the Rules; Transgressing All the Boundaries

Here is a constellation of compositions that pierces the sky and seems to tell the two musicians that this moment belongs only to them. We can feel in the high notes of French pianist Robert Kaddouch and the deep bass of American Gary Peacock the High Line on which Robert has built its harmonic structure: an unstable equilibrium where musicians, like tightrope walkers, increasingly move away from their comfort zone towards a point where only the fall becomes possible, or a spark of genius climbing even higher towards a new High Line.

Bach’s Clavier Übung is a good example of an understatement. Übung means exercise, practice; if one were to judge the book by its cover, the obvious deduction would be that Bach’s Clavier Übung is a set of finger exercises, in the fashion of Hanon or Czerny. To be sure, Domenico Scarlatti’s magnificent keyboard Sonatas are likewise called Essercizii, “exercises”; and they are far from a dry form of gymnastics for fingers. Moreover, etymologically “exercitium” relates to training in the martial arts (from exercitus, the army); thus, it was also a training in virtue. The Latin word virtus is at the root of its English translation, “virtue”, but is also related to vir, man (the soldier, the hero), and to “virtuosity”, which today indicates also technical prowess and musical accomplishment.