App Review: The Room

Fireproof Games. 2012. iOS & Android.

Video games aren't known for deep ideas. Yes, there are some with passable and a few even with compelling stories, yet the better the plot the more I wish it liberated from the confines of walking around whacking baddies. The exception is the game which uses its interactive space not just to pad or decorate the plot with novel ways to complete tasks, but which justifies the activity by creating a revealing in the doing which could not be achieved by watching.

This is a lofty goal to be sure and few games even attempt this, let alone achieve it. I'm not sure the makers of  The Room had such a purpose in mind, and while they didn't achieve it, they seem to have wandered onto the path.

The premise is simple: you're trapped in a room and they key to your escape lies inside a box sealed by all manner of locks. The gameplay is equally easy to explain: unlock the box. The devil lies of course in the details and you'll find yourself desperately tapping to find pieces, assemble mechanisms, match symbols, spell codes, and align images in the hopes of teasing the secret to your release from the mysterious casket.

Lovers of point-and-click or click-through games will delight in these puzzles. The tasks vary significantly and the clues are just far enough out of sight. In fact, it's not until the last level that you get a sense of there bing variations on the puzzle themes. Most entertaining of all, though, are not the brain-teasing puzzles but how they are stitched together into the space of this box which quickly becomes not only a world unto its own, but an unfolding one.

Which brings us back to our premise: the ideas of the game. No, The Room is not a philosophical mind-bender, but there is enough said and left out to get the impression of what one might look like. First, the lack of context to one's predicament gives it an existentialist twinge. Why am I trapped in this room? Who put his box here? Why bother giving me a way out? We aren't left to wonder, however, whether there is a way out, mostly because designing an impossible game is not only dastardly but unprofitable. Second, the dramatic tone is that of exploration, set by the puzzles of course but also by following in the footsteps of a scientist whose journal we read as we progress. The entries become increasingly rapt as the mystery unfolds, yet also fraught with concern about the increasingly untamable and overwhelming nature of the unfolding power. Are we on the path to nirvana or falling down the rabbit hole? Lastly, the visual tone is set by the symbological, astronomical, astrological, scientific, religious, and numerological, references. Throw in a little Greek and Latin, shake, and it certainly feels like you're on a momentous quest.

We're not quite, though, or not very much. Such elements don't conspire dramatically or philosophically toward a purpose, be it a question, answer, or process, but are spice for the puzzle experience. That's certainly to the developer's credit, for this is polished and absorbing puzzle game. It's also a tantalizing taste of what a philosophically-oriented interactive experience could be.

On Irritating People and the Concentricity of Relationships

It is often remarked by well-meaning folk of frustrating charity that we ought to get to know people before we judge them, especially if our initial reaction is unfavorable. I agree, but not only out of charity and generosity of spirit, but rather out of gratitude and social responsibility.

You see, we're all rather annoying. Yes, some of us have mastered the arts of charm and pruned our prickly selves down to gentlemen. Most of us, however, are rather rascally. Some more than others to be sure, oh so sure, but we all have our quirks, habits, and idiosyncrasies. Some of us are untidy, others untimely. Some talk to much, some to little. Then you have the special types of irritators like the linguistic malcontents, your grammar nerds, slangtastic hipsters, and verbicidal madmen, the conspiracy theorists, it's the government!, it's the corporations!, it's the Illuminati!, and the conversationally inept close-talkers, mumblers, and loudmouths.

As you can see there's a whole taxonomy of irritating people, but the point is they, we, are legion. Unfortunately, it seems that peeves are easily peeved.

It is therefore vital that we learn each others' hidden virtues so that we irritating people might, either overlooking vices or considering them counterbalanced, befriend or at least accompany one another. And it's important to befriend irritating people because while their relentless stories might bore or vex you, they probably really ticked off someone else. Likewise, there's a very good chance that your fascinating hobby or nail-biting bothers your other friends and they need a little break from you. Relationships are therefore concentric not just with respect to affection as is commonly observed but also temperament. Too we always shift and are shifted around, nearer, and farther from the center, for we can only stand so much of each other.

Now before you cry foul, that this is some terrible cynicism, recall that we can only stand so much of ourselves. Any good and honest man rebukes himself dozens of times a day and that's tiring work.  Hence the great boon to man that is sleep.

So indeed let us indeed in good humor over look each other's vices and gather together in sympathetic disharmony.

The Student Debt Stigma

No form of debt is so fiercely loathed as student loans. I'm not perplexed as to why, there are many and good reasons, but I do wonder why the resentment is so vague and often misdirected. What I observe is not principled opposition but rather a pastiche of regrets and sundry indignations. Let me give a few examples and hypotheticals.

One common source of resentment is that education ought be free, or at least free to those who cannot afford it. Though I disagree, this is to me an intelligible position. What I don't follow is why the rage is not directed at professors. If education ought to be free then wouldn't the people with the knowledge, teachers, be chiefly at fault for charging? Now a philosopher a la Socrates might agree and allege that our modern professorial class is nothing more than sophists. I've not, though, ever heard this argument advanced, though it's not an incredible claim. Benefits might follow from a culture wherein many experts take on a few pupils gratis rather than having a select few essentially retire from the profession and teach for a fee.

More commonly, though, I hear the argument that education ought to be subsidized by those with allegedly excess monies, an argument I find unpersuasive because it doesn't shift the burden from educators. Even if you have a right to an education, it doesn't follow that someone third party with no ability to remedy your dearth of education other than that he has some goods which might be seized, bears the responsibility.

Another familiar recipient of debtor rage is the lender. This again is not wholly unreasonable, for the lender should  if only for himself do some investigation as to whether the recipient of the loan will be likely to pay it back. It is in no one's interest that the borrower default, although the lender won't care or bother to do diligence if he's assured he'll be paid even in cases of default. Again, though, this is the less common argument than, well it's more of an accusation really, that lenders are hucksters. That may be true, especially if the government has insulated him from risk, but such doesn't mean the borrower should hate the lender. After all, the borrower doesn't have the money to get what he wants. The lender does, and he's willing to risk it. That should engender some gratitude, if only at the fortuitous availability of resources for your venture

The last object of the indebted student's scorn is the school itself. Classes are too expensive. I didn't get a job after I graduated. Surely many schools are poorly run, but unless you favor the decentralized,  setup I outlined above, an institution is needed, and institutions have overhead. Likewise, you might not have a job, but you bought a curriculum. Probably should have checked the demand first. The school, however, may be at fault. Not necessarily for charging too much or poorly preparing you, but for letting you in.

You see I think there ought to be a student debt stigma. As it is, student debt is a sign of an individual's investment in the humanistic over the economic. Never mind the utterly nugatory "liberal arts" education $90,000 buys you, spending money on education is the shiniest badge of honor. Never mind the predominantly supine collegiate experience of most "students," once they get the paperwork they're graduates. Instead of these honorifics, exceptional student debt should signal one of two things: either you weren't smart enough to get a scholarship, or you went to a school whose standards you didn't really meet, but who admitted you anyway just to take your money.

Of course, that reality is hard to take: that one's a deeply indebted, mediocre talent, with skills nobody needs. So instead the student debtor dwells on the fact he was swindled by a banker, defrauded by a school, and exploited by the government. Actually, that's pretty understandable.

On Barbers

Gas is too expensive. Food is too expensive. So are cars and taxicab rides and cell phones. Never mind how many things exist for the first time or how many products are the cheapest ever, adjusted for inflation. At some point I think I've heard everything alleged as overpriced. Except for one: haircuts.

Consider it. People pay $90 per month for cell phones and mope about the service. People send food back at restaurants. They resent having to maintain their cars. The mail is too slow. The internet is too slow. Food servers are too slow. Everybody's doctor is rich, and too rich. Yet everyone seems to have found the right barber.

I've never heard a cross word said about a barber, nor have I heard someone complain that his is too pricy. This owes not to mere serendipity, however, but two factors. First is the degree of trust required. After all, we let a stranger speed around our head with razor blades and heated irons, not only a danger to our health but our faces, our presentations to the world and self-expressions. The second factor is that people realize this. Sure we might trust the mechanic who replaces our brakes, but most of us have never stepped on a brake and had it fail, so we don't really entertain the thought of mortal peril. Likewise for doctors, for just once are most of us in mortal peril, and so our doctor's visits consist in them telling us to lose weight and that they cannot prescribe antibiotics for our colds.

Yet we don't begrudge our barbers, and in contrast to our outrage at medical and automotive bills, everyone seems pretty happy paying what they do to their barber, whether it be 20 or 100 dollars. People seem to have found not only the right person, but the right price for the service. Maybe barber's just have to be more eager to please, after all the stakes are pretty high. Who would go back to someone who mangled your hair? In other words, this apparent satisfaction with our barbers might owe to some vanity, but we're not the first or most. In an epitaph, the Roman poet Martial reflects on a trusted tonsor:

Within this tomb lies Pantagathus, snatched away in boyhood's years, his master's grief and sorrow, skilled to cut with steel that scarcely touched the straggling hairs, and to trim the bearded cheeks. Gentle and light upon him thou mayst be, O earth, as it behoves thee; lighter than the artist's hand thou canst not be. [1]

Everyone's found just the right person and the right price. And everyone seems to enjoy the experience too, the snipping and sudsing and swirling, be it in the chatty din of a salon or the polished finery of an old time barbershop.

Maybe we're a little vain, maybe we take other specialists for granted, or maybe we're just acutely aware of the alternatives.

–

[1] Martial. VI. 52 Tr. J. Carcopino. in Daily Life in Ancient Rome. 1940. Latin Text at The Latin Library.

On The Critic

I didn't always take such delight in movies. Sure I saw them and enjoyed them, but I didn't realize how much there was to see until about the year 2001. At some point around that time I stumbled across Roger Ebert's reviews at the Chicago Sun Times website. Now I'd been familiar with Ebert and his partner in criticism Gene Siskel, who had died a few years before. Who didn't know them, though? A thumb up from one of them always meant there was something to see in a movie. Not something profound or hilarious, but something worth seeing. Two thumbs up meant one thing: see it.

Anyway, it turns out that Ebert's site wasn't so much a website as a vast cupboard of reviews. One by one I gobbled them up. I wonder what he thought about The Shining. Did he review Ordinary People? And then the reviews for Woody Allen's movies, from Bananas all the way up to the present. And Kubrick. And Bergman. And. . . Inevitably I began to watch the movies again, pulling out old VHS tapes and buying these then-nascent and now-forgotten things called DVDs. After, of course, I went back to the reviews, agreeing here and disagreeing there. The disagreement went through several phrases: denial, outrage, despair, détente. It was like arguing with your professor.

Throughout the following serious movie going years Ebert was a silent companion, first, because he wrote so many reviews and second, because he spoke with personal and yet not folksy literary voice. It's easy for a reader to take voice and tone for granted, but every good style is hard-won and voice long-sought. Too in print he balanced being informative without slipping into academese. This appealed to casual readers wanting a quick review and passers-by a quick read, but of course it left scholars and fans wanting more. Never a bad thing.

Some time around 2007 or so I drifted away. In part this was due to my own departure from reading criticism and desire to develop my own thoughts, and in part I was turned off by his increasingly overblown political columns. I regret turning away. Not just because, as I learned, his reviews continued to be superb, but because I learned to appreciate ardor, candor, and old age, even when the combination rankles me. I can't consider him fanatical, though, well not with respect to anything but love for movies. Once he wrote that on a good day his favorite movie was Citizen Kane, and on a bad day, King Kong. I always smile when I think about that remark. It's. . it's just right, about him and about movies.

Ecce! The Bourgeois Boomer

The life of the mind is fraught with labor, not chiefly cogitation but rather searching, seeking after veritable examples of ideas. It's consuming work and the models are rarely perfect, but we proceed, poring over random political correspondence, obscure Renaissance treatises, and ancient marginalia. Then one day a walking archetype stumbles into our lives and. . . voila. Enter the Bourgeois Boomer via The Huffington Post.

Now to be sure I don't know whether the author himself qualifies as a true Bourgeois Boomer or he's just pandering to a stereotype. I suspect the latter, that's he's just playing to a host of sentiments which few people hold but which do form a somewhat consistent constellation of attitudes which is termed Middle Class Baby Boomer. Real or manufactured, though, the persona of the author and the audience at which he aims typifies the stereotype. Read the article when you're at home so you can wash the pandering off your trousers.

The opening is classic: our dear author is baffled by modern technology. Can't you picture the man, a good soul to be sure, pressing the buttons on his phone in escalating frustration. He's lost in an "endless maze" of technology. This never happened when Suzie Q-Tip, who lived just down the road, was the operator and well she just put you right on through. 

But there aren't any operators left. Or receptionists. Or secretaries. Or typists. Or any number of dozens of jobs that used to be available for millions of people to earn a living.

 O Tempora! O Mores! Suzie's been outsourced! And forget those overseas folks working for pennies so our dear author, a hard worker, can afford this service in the first place.

Then the long awaited reference comes, that to ordinary people. Pardon me, "ordinary people." The quotations in this context need some translation because they indicate we're talking about a particular, special, group of people. They should read,

You know these folks right? Of course you do, you're one of us aren't you? Sure you are, come on in. 

This is nothing but an appalling appeal to people like you. Then we get a twofer, a real doozie in learning about these,

average Americans who needed to make a living wage to live the decent middle-class life that defines what makes our country great.

Not smart people, or kind people, or people with any concrete virtue whatsoever, but average people. Average folks like G. Harrold Carswell, who was not in fact the Mayor of Mayberry but a judge, an average man and an average judge for an average American. And Americans should be represented by their peers. Not by their betters, surely, for that would reek of meritocracy or worse, aristocracy. Yuck. Excellence. How un-American, right?

Ooh look now, a "living wage." Well-played, author. One must adopt the new lingo. And apparently the "middle class life" is what makes America great. The Middle Classe Life, i.e. your life. Not life as in freedom from being murdered, but life as in way-of-life. America is great not because its citizens are free or virtuous but because the middle class lives a certain way. And don't let anyone tamper with that!

The author's following reference to the opening of the Declaration of Independence is pretty slick. It's been prepared by the previous reference to life we discussed. You see he's defined the term above, therefore the reference here carries the weight of his definition. Had he simply appealed to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," he would have run the risk of even readers considering the traditional, Jeffersonian, libertarian, meaning of the phrase and not his dutiful Rooseveltian one. He's also chosen not to re-define the term too nearby the quotation of the Declaration, lest it actually look like he is commandeering or re-writing it. Clever author!

But in today's brave new world, too often driven by Wall Street values, there is no more room for most of these people. As Thomas Friedman, the prestigious bestselling New York Times columnist recently wrote: "every boss ... has cheaper, easier, faster access to more above-average software, automation, robotics, cheap labor and cheap genius than ever before. That means the old average is over. Everyone who wants a job now must demonstrate how they can add value better than the new alternatives. ... the skill required for every decent job is rising as is the necessity of lifelong learning."

On no, we're in a "Brave new world!" Of emails and smart phones, presumably. And that world is driven by "Wall Street values," i.e. not "Main Street values." Now our author quotes the Sage of the Times, Thomas Friedman, who ushers in a new age of thought with the observation that people need to add more value to their jobs than people or machines which add less value. My world is rocked.

Aren't we charmed, though, by the outrage of his response:

Well this mediocre ("old average") citizen is relieved to be retired from a job market that demands that every worker has to continually show they can "add value better" than others. And as for the "necessity of lifelong learning," I'd like to know who just is doing all that lifelong teaching?

Translation: I'm not going to prove that I'm better than someone else at my job and I'm not going to learn unless someone teaches me!

I just can't wait to hire this guy.

Now we get the obligatory reference to a New York Times fact that corporate profits are up. Oh no! He continues:

corporate profits are thriving despite -- or more likely because of -- high unemployment. Even if you consider corporations as people -- as the Supreme Court recently declared -- this isn't good news for most of the rest of us people.

This is bizarre in two ways.

First, even if corporations have legal standing tantamount to that of an individual, which one can sensibly argue they should not, it's not as if the corporation is an actual person taking the money. There's no Matrix-like mainframe somewhere hoarding the money. Real, flesh-and-bones people have the money. This observation then, ignorant as it may be, is just a thinly veiled attack at people with more money than that hard-working good-souled Main Street American citizen.

Second, the notion that high unemployment, which we ought read as high American unemployment, is profiting American companies is misleading. It could profit a company outsourcing labor which is more expensive in the US, but the author has conflated total unemployment with employment due to outsourcing, and implied that it is the unemployment itself which benefits the corporations and not the hiring of cheaper labor which results in unemployment. Yes, the unemployment is transitively beneficial, but the sentence could have easily been reworded had the author not wished to make corporations seem nefarious and opposed to average Americans.

Also, consider a few points. First, anyone who fears being displaced could settle for a lesser salary. . . although that would diminish his sacred, "decent middle-class life that defines what makes our country great." We can't have that. We can't have employers deciding how much money their business should make them. Raise the protectionist tariffs! Second, middle class Americans with their savings invested in the stock market often benefit when corporations profit because they're invested in said corporations.

Finally, never mind pesky statistics about older people not retiring and keeping the youth out of the work force, youth unemployment in general, and monetary policy which punishes savings. Pay no attention to such things. Also, ignore the actual effects of automation. Certainly don't ask why the people who make higher wages are more important than the shareholders who benefit from increased profits of businesses and the consumers who enjoy less expensive goods. These aren't the ideas you're looking for. Bourgeois-Boomer solidarity is the name of this game.

The author now concludes:

Technology -- probably even that produced by the slimmer, more efficient United Technologies -- is wonderful. Since at heart I'm an optimist, I believe that eventually many, many new jobs will be created, as they were after the early days of the Industrial Revolution, to make up for the ones that are being destroyed.

And now the caveats. The author wishes to make it known that he is neither a Luddite nor a cynic, traits he has already demonstrated. Now "Technology is wonderful" and "I'm an optimist." He says he has "faith" that new "jobs will be created,"but he links to an article which suggests the government is what made the 19th century profitable. "Jobs will be created" he says, in the passive voice, but he hides the "by whom" in the link. So the author seems to be confessing to some beautiful faith in wonderful people freely working together, economics, but is really confessing to a faith in government force and planning.

The author ends with a recapitulation of his opening shtick, the average older American is amazed by the whiz-bang technology these kids make today.

Between the author's skill at offering the progressive paradigm in broadly pleasing and pandering pabulum and the chorus of squawking praise in the comments section, Mr. Bloch should write political speeches. Perhaps that'll leave him enough money to afford a new iPhone as well as the time to read its manual.

Gandalf the. . . Libertarian

Sooner or later every beloved literary character falls victim to some ideologue who tries to shoehorn him into a pet philosophy. My goal here is far more modest: to observe the character of Gandalf as consistent with Tolkien's philosophy of nature. I have chosen the appellation libertarian mostly out of desperation, libertarianism being the only recognizable philosophy with any principled and pervasive antipathy toward the use of force. Tolkien's own opposition to force included the political as well as natural.

"The modern world meant for [Tolkien] essentially the machine. . . He used ["machine"] very compendiously to mean. . . almost any alternative solution to the development of the innate and inherent powers and talents of human beings. The machine means, for him. . . the wrong solution: the attempt to actualize our desires, like our desire to fly. It meant coercion, domination, for him the great enemy. Coercion of other minds and other wills. This is tyranny. But he also saw the characteristic activity of the modern world is the coercion, the tyrannous reformation of the earth, our place." – Christopher Tolkien

We see in Middle Earth, then, tyranny in the obvious form of Sauron's political control of the free peoples, but also from Saruman, and it is in fact this tyranny which is more instructive insofar as it is multifaceted.

1. He controlled the land via his industrious machines.
2. He sought political domination, by way of the One Ring, to order all things according to his special wisdom. 
3. He through his extraordinary powers of persuasion sought to coerce people for his own ends. Tolkien calls him subtle in speech but we might appropriately call him in Greek δεινός/deinos, or great and terrible with respect to speech.
4. He assumed political authority in heading the White Council. 

In each instance Gandalf is opposed to Saruman.

1. Where Saruman controlled the land, Gandalf was itinerant.
2. Where Saruman sought the One Ring, Gandalf rejected it. Moreover, while he possessed the ring Narya, its power and purpose were not domination but of preservation and rekindling hearts, Gandalf's mission.
3. Where Saruman seeks to persuade Gandalf finds common cause and mutual self-interest (if that's not too libertarian for you) as in the case of the quest for Erebor.
4. Gandalf refused to head the White Council, rejecting political means and preferring to have "no ties and no allegiance" except to those who sent him.

Most different of all, though, Saruman studied the "devices of Sauron of old" and the Rings of Power, their making and history. Even though he earlier sought to learn with the purpose of destroying evil, Tolkien describes Saruman's "desire of mastery" as having grown great. We cannot say for certain whether only the knowledge itself corrupted him, but surely knowing the arts of evil contributed to his downfall. Elrond's statements that, "The very desire of it corrupts the heart. Consider Saruman." and, "Nothing is evil in the beginning. Even Sauron was not so." suggest the corrupting influence of power. As soon as one ponders the ways of domination, they work their way into once noble plans.

We should pause on that for a moment, the perversion of noble plans. It is facile to say that "power corrupts" and "plans go awry," but think of how truly sad it is to fall from grace, to see the flame of the good die. How pitiful for a skilled and brilliant spirit tasked with the highest good, a sacred good, to have fallen to the uttermost depths of lust and tyranny and to have perverted himself and his trust. Howard Shore brought out the gravity of Saruman's fall in his score to Gandalf's confrontation with the fallen wizard in Peter Jackson's 2001 film adaptation. Jackson, not without reason, played the scene for a laugh with the dueling geezers, but Shore picked up on the profane thread of Saruman's transformation, the unholy perversion of the good.

In contrast, Gandalf tried to fulfill his limited role of "messenger" to the peoples of Middle Earth and to move, "all living things of good will to valiant deeds." Indeed Gandalf seems to be reminding Saruman of his mission when, after Saruman confesses his plans to rule with the ring, Gandalf responds that he has only heard such folly from the emissaries of Mordor, suggesting that Saruman's proposal is the very antithesis of their mission. It was not the wizards' job to to coerce, either Sauron directly or the free peoples to oppose Sauron, but to kindle, that is to cultivate, the good which would by nature oppose evil. In contrast to Saruman's obsession with means, Gandalf brought purity of purpose and, instead of a desire to oppose force with might, a faith in the agency of the good and meek.

Consider Gandalf's proposal to Elrond that Merry and Pippin be permitted to go with the ring-bearer instead of some great elf lord:

this quest may be attempted by the weak with as much hope as the strong. Yet such is oft the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world: small hands do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere. . . it would be well to trust to their friendship rather than to great wisdom.

How striking, to put all hope not in force, not in conscripting men to fight Sauron nor in matching the Dark Lord in might, but in a bond of love and fealty. To venture slightly off-canon, in his film of The Hobbit, writer-director Peter Jackson gives Gandalf a few lines which seem to sum up the wizard, and libertarian, philosophy:

Saruman believes that it is only great power that can hold evil in check, but that is not what I find. I've found it is the small things, everyday deeds of ordinary folk, that keeps the darkness at bay, simple acts of kindness and love. Why Bilbo Baggins? Perhaps it is because I am afraid, and he gives me courage. 

No grand plans, no machines and spies and lies and craft. No system of force, just people doing good. And how beautiful that Gandalf should take courage, what he was meant to kindle, from Bilbo, in whom the wizard awoke something Tookish and adventurous, some spirit willing to take a personal risk for the good.

A Friend of Mine: Beyond Polyphony

As any APLV readers know, the classical music greats feature prominently on the blog. Please don't think, though, that we neglect that modern music which speaks straight to the heart. Right here we have a great 20th century hit which cuts past those nasty fugal complexities behind us for some toe-tapping elation. In a way this is purer song, finer expression through its liberation from complex harmonies and expressive means. Listen.

First, hear how the symmetry of those opening notes, three pairs of two, is broken by the seventh, lone note. One does not simply write such a groovy theme. One is inspired. Likewise, notice the triplet figure in the bass rolling on and on, as if eternally, reminiscent of a great passacaglia from Bach, Purcell, or Buxtehude. See lastly how yet another figure theme lays atop the bass, there.

Naturally we cannot ignore the text, which is deliberately emphasized by the lack of musical development. The text features rhyming couplets, emphasizing contrasting pairs such as different and same by their end-stopped placement and important concepts such as name, and same by the end-rhyme. Lastly, the imagery references everything from the ancient myth of Actaeon. "Once I tried to run," to the modern morality tales of Dudley-Do-Right, "He is like a Mountie, he always gets his man."

Complemented by the timeless look of leather vests and pelvic swaying, this video is simply electrifying. Zap!

Six Bach Dances: Part II: The B Minor Mass

And so flung wide are the doors of heaven.

IV. Gloria: Cum Sancto Spiritu

This festive trumpets-and-drums finale closes the ring of the Gloria which kicked off with another dancing D major fanfare. We begin vivace in 3/4 time with one of Bach's most rhythmically potent figures in the first of three sections of free declamatory material which sandwich the two fugues.

In the free sections dancing figures in the accompaniment leap and bound over sustained notes on patris  or ride virtuosic waves of ecstatic thirty-second notes on gloria, producing contrasts of texture and symbolism.

The two fugues utilize a variant of the opening figure for a theme against which he throws, "an animated countersubject, a weaving, conjunct idea on the word 'Amen,' which acts as a perfect foil for the leap filled main subject." [Stauffer, 93-94] The fervor and flurry of second fugue is charged by doubling instruments and false fugal entries, producing a feeling of spontaneous exuberance and, as Stauffer wisely observes, liberation.

It is one of soul's purest pleasures to be carried off in the glory of the Cum sancto stretti as they overflow into the rivers of amens and one grand affirmation: In gloria Dei Patris.

V. Credo: Et Resurrexit

Where the Cum Sancto Spiritu flowed easily and graciously from the noble bass aria Quoniam tu solus Dominus, the trumpets-and-drums Et Resurrexit is an epoch-making break from "the crown of thorns" that was the dissonant Crucifixus.

If the swelling elan of this movement, with rising figures every which way and a positively irresistible downbeat, don't quicken your pulse, check it. Bach has here combined the dignity of regal galanterie and the verve of spontaneous festal feast into a hymn of purest praise.

VI. Credo: Et Expecto

Like the Cum Sancto the Et Expecto flows without delay from the previous movement and like the Et Resurrexit this follows one of great gravity. Bach links the movements with an adagio bridge where a simple and declaratory anapestic figure on A in the first soprano which no sooner begins to fall through the voices than it falls into tempo Vivace e Allegro against a rising fanfare as the movement proper begins. 

After the orchestral ritornello of the fanfare figure the voices rejoin for a short fugato and every factor conspires to paint a clear sense of gesture, space, and scale. First, the leap of a fifth in the figure itself suggest the raising of one's senses to the celestial and divine. Second the rising entrances from the tenor to the second soprano draws the scale and gives a sense of graded escalation while the leap from the bass to first soprano suggests a spiritual vaulting to the heavens. 

The final fugal section achieves a similar sense of space and scale but here a contrast in both sustained and melismatic lines on saeculi, suggesting both the roll of ages and the constancy of the eternal firmament, all complemented by the heraldry of the paired fanfares in the trumpets above.

–

Bibliography

Stauffer, George B. Bach: The Mass in B Minor: The Great Catholic Mass. Yale University Press. 2003.

Six Bach Dances: Part I: Passion Sarabandes

The rhythms of dance are at once wax earthly and celestial, calling the listener to join his corporeal form to a timeless continuance. No dance wants to end and no composer understood this innate property better than Bach, whose dances not only in suites but also sacred choral works remain sculptures of rhythmic perpetuity as they within hold the most expressive harmonies. 

Here on this Good Friday I would take a look at three movements from Bach's two surviving Passions. All three are built on sarabande rhythms in 3/4 time and make use of the room within the sarabande for both gentility and passion.

I. St. John Passion, BWV.245: Tenor Aria, Ach mein Sinn

Score & Text @ Bach Cantatas Site

The St. John Passion's counterpart to Matthew's more famous Erbarme dich, the tenor aria Ach mein Sinn is Peter's turmoil after his threefold denial of Jesus. Yet where the Erbarme dich is a haunting, twining torment in the memory, Ach mein Sinn is an extroverted display of furious self abasement. Where the twists and turns in the Erbarme dich seem as Peter's sin again and again trickling into his mind, they here seem daggers amidst the din of dissonance, halting dotted rhythms, and rising and falling phrases. 

II. St. John Passion, BWV.245: Chorus: Ruht wohl

Score & Text @ Bach Cantatas Site

The stately sarabandes which close both of Bach's surviving passions have been variously referred to as  lullaby-like. This is somewhat appropriate, given the gentle flute and oboe parts above and the falling figures, suggestive of laying-down, which both pieces also share. Rising-and-falling figures, the lullaby-rocking, if you will, also contribute to the soporific mood, but the grieving leaps in the chorus and descending chromatic bass are bitter contrast to the sweet gentility of the rhythm.

III. St. Matthew Passion, BWV.244: Chorus: Wir setzen uns

Score & Text @ Bach Cantatas Site

Here the more regular sarabande rhythm creates a more persistent, sepulchral tone while the sudden shifts into dissonance draw an expressive interiority within the scene-painting of Christ's burial. The contrasting emotions of grandeur in the sarabande rhythm and tenderness in the falling figures, of personal grieving in leaps and communal grieving in vertical dissonance, and the death of Jesus the Man and Christ the Lord coalesce into one unfolding both immanent and transcendent.

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Bibliography

Little, Meridith & Jenne, Natalie. Dance and the Music of J. S. Bach. Indiana University Press. 1991, 2001.

Stapert, Calvin R. My Only Comfort: Death, Deliverance, and Discipleship in the Music of Bach. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. Co. 2000.

Steinberg, Michael. Choral Masterworks: A Listener's Guide. Oxford University Press. 2005.