‘Bach devises an ingenious symmetrical structure to underpin in music the theological division between Law and Gospel. ’
Even to his most ardent admirers Bach can sometimes seem remote: his genius as a musician is too far out of reach for most of us to comprehend. But that he was a very human genius comes across in all sorts of ways: not so much via the bric-a-brac of personal evidence like family letters and anecdote…
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‘We meet at various points in the great swathes of the past that neither of us were alive to witness.’
Allen Bratton on a daytrip to a castle with his older boyfriend.
‘Listening to three white poets, whom I suspect are academics, talk about the state of poetry.’
Oluwaseun Olayiwola eavesdrops on an older generation.
‘I’d been dubious about his company at first.’
Sarah Moss on watching Shakespeare with her twelve-year-old son.
‘She didn’t trust us because, to her, tenants were like children.’
Kate Zambreno on negotiating with her older landlady.
‘A moment now swallowed in embarrassment, I asked a question only a young person might ask an older one.’
Lynne Tillman on trying to understand what makes a generation.
‘Is there in fact a jostling for dominance between the art forms, some barely suppressed competitiveness?’
Adam Mars-Jones on music and ceremony.
‘gormandizing, gluttonous, lickerish, guttling’
Excerpts from Lydia Davis’s diary.
‘What happens to a dancer when they stop dancing?’
Diana Evans on dancing and writing.
‘The people I’ve photographed made Beirut liveable.’
Sama Beydoun photographs the nightlife of Beirut.
‘Ordinary sounds change their meaning in the context of war when the reverberations of sound can mean death.’
Ada Wordsworth on silence, noise and the war in Ukraine.
‘What would follow for five years was one of my last relationships forged through letters.’
