A beautiful quotation from Schumann

[hautbois]

From the linear notes of the recent release of Andreas Staier's Schumann album - Tribute to Bach:

"1836 - One evening I went to the Leipzig cemetry to seek the resting place of a great man: I searched for hours, all over the place - but found no 'J.S. Bach'. And when I asked the gravedigger about it, he shook his head over the obscurity of the man, as if to say: there were many Bachs. On the way home, I said to myself: 'How poetic are the workings of chance! Lest we think of ephemeral dust, lest any image of the death that is our common fate should occur to us, chance has dispersed his ashes to the four winds, and so I will forever think of him sitting upright at his organ, in his finest array, with his works booming away below him, the congregation looking piously up, and perhaps also the angels looking down.'

[PerfectWagnerite]

From the linear notes of the recent release of Andreas Staier's Schumann album - Tribute to Bach:

"1836 - One evening I went to the Leipzig cemetry to seek the resting place of a great man: I searched for hours, all over the place - but found no 'J.S. Bach'. And when I asked the gravedigger about it, he shook his head over the obscurity of the man, as if to say: there were many Bachs. On the way home, I said to myself: 'How poetic are the workings of chance! Lest we think of ephemeral dust, lest any image of the death that is our common fate should occur to us, chance has dispersed his ashes to the four winds, and so I will forever think of him sitting upright at his organ, in his finest array, with his works booming away below him, the congregation looking piously up, and perhaps also the angels looking down.'

Sounds like the quote of either a windbag or a crazyman to me.

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Windbag, crazyman? Simply Schumann, in a flight of typically Romantic rhetoric.

[PerfectWagnerite]

Windbag, crazyman? Simply Schumann, in a flight of typically Romantic rhetoric.

I think he was looking in the wrong cemetary. You would think there were more than one cementary in Leipzig, even during Alexander Robert's time.

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

"Bach moved to Leipzig in 1723 and remained there the rest of his life, serving as Music Director of the St. Thomas Church and Choir School, which provided music for all the city's principal churches. In his last years Bach began to lose his eyesight. He was persuaded to undergo two operations in early 1750, but the procedures left him blind and ruined his health. He died of a stroke and was buried in the churchyard of St. John's in Leipzig. His grave went unmarked for nearly 150 years. In 1894 his coffin was finally discovered and reburied in a vault within the church. St. John's was destroyed by Allied bombing during World War II, and in 1949 Bach's remains were taken to their present resting place at Leipzig's Church of St. Thomas."

http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=4237

[The Six]

Is your name pronounced "hot boys?"

[karlhenning]

Romantic rhetoric; and why not?

[hautbois]

Is your name pronounced "hot boys?"

Not for the French... 

Howard

[karlhenning]

Obe Wah

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Obe Wah

Kenobi

[karlhenning]

Kenobi

Oh, to have been a fly on the wall when Sir Alec Guinness was pressing Geo Lucas to kill off his character . . . .