Passing Through Infinity

The shade of Bach over Beethoven's gentle fughetta infuses a pathos to the sublime andante dance through time. (Compare to the similar but more abstract Contrapunctus XIII of Bach's Art of Fugue.) Here there is an element of dialogue, of longing, of tenderest and ineffable joy, but fundamentally of the human element to the passage through time and the human connections through past, present, and future.

Alfred Brendel once applied a line from the poet Heinrich von Kleist to the Diabelli Variations:

"When perception has passed through infinity, gracefulness reappears."

Beethoven. Diabelli Variations, Op. 120

See Variation 24 at 1:32

Alfred Brendel, piano.