About

Bach 6 Solos merges films created for and shown with an evening of Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin as performed by Gil Shaham. The work, which had its premiere at Carnegie Hall onOctober 25, 2015 and following that traveled nationally and internationally

Background

Gil Shaham approached me in 2013 to consider crafting films for his evening of Bach Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin (BWV 1001-1006), a set of six works completed by Bach in 1720.  As I began to read up on the works, I discovered some recent research by Helga Thöne into the six sonatas and partitas which suggests that the sequence of works progress thematically in pairs according to the great feasts of the Christian year:

Christmas:                  Sonata no 1 (G Minor)                      Partita no 1 (B Minor)

Passion/Easter:        Sonata no 2 (A Minor)                      Partita no 2 (D Minor)

Pentecost:                  Sonata no 3 (C Major)                     Partita no 3 (E Major)

In addition, this corresponds to a Latin Trinity formula found on tombstones: ex Deo nascimur (from God we are born); in Christo morimur (in Christ we die); per Spiritum Sanctum reviviscimus (through the Holy Spirit we live again). Thöne’s argument that a religious structure underpins these instrumental works is based upon the large number of chorale quotations in the movements, their relationship to the liturgical calendar and the numerological analysis of notes and letters in the works.  In particular, she judges that the Chaconne of the D Minor Partita was Bach’s musical epitaph for his first wife, Maria Barbara, who died suddenly aged thirty-six after thirteen years of marriage. 

While I didn’t want to manifest any of these references directly, it seemed that separating the works into the thematic pairs listed above might provide a way in to crafting images that aligned with some of Bach’s inner motives. 

As a contemporary artist with a particular interest in motion pictures and time, I’ve been compelled to consider how the addition of extreme slow motion might be applied to moving images of the face, the body (and by extension, dance), narrative tableaux, and also still life in ways that can both enhance and alter the meanings latent within them.  As a visual strategy, extreme slowness creates a continuing sense of pause within the action—as if the growth and evolution of the slow-moving image is itself a further manifestation of the deep and consuming absorptive state that often arises while observing it.  As I continued to listen to famous recordings of Bach’s music, I was fascinated by the way that a change in tempo from recording to recording, would significantly change the relationship to whatever moving image that I might have tried to pair it within my period of research. 

It is clear that Bach devoted a significant portion of his life to composing dance music, and these three Partitas are no small example of that.  But if dance was my point of entry for the Partitas (even looking into the dance forms that Bach makes music for such as the bouree, allemande, correnti and gavotte), what eventually began to take shape was the cultivation of dance and movement of a broader type: one that could spark the kinesthetic imagination of each viewer while not fighting with the tempo of the music in live performance.  Along the way, I brought choreographer Wendy Perron on board to craft dance short dance sequences that I could eventually record. 

Press

The Boston Globe
Gil Shahm Plays Bach with Video Accompaniment
1 Nov 2015

The most radical aspect of Shaham’s live performances is his decision to play the Bach with the accompaniment of films by the New York-based artist David Michalek, whom the violinist met at the Zankel Hall premiere of a piece by Du Yun. This forward-thinking idea arose from the two artists ruminating on Bach’s audience for these pieces. That audience, Shaham explained, would have understood intuitively a network of social meanings and religious signifiers encoded in Bach’s dance suites and sonata movements.

The Montreal Gazette
Bach to the Future
4 Oct 2015

To produce them, Michalek shot models and dancers at high speed. Slowed down, this footage turns a single ballet leap, the shimmering drapery of a twisting skirt, or a falling vase of flowers, into a vibrantly detailed and subtly changing painting of a motion that lasts as long as a single movement of the music. Michalek even re-created late renaissance memento mori still lifes.

Links

Celebrity Series of Boston
Bach Six Solos
Cambridge, MA
November 1, 2015

Carnegie Hall
New York, NY
October 25, 2015