IN MEMORIAM GUSTAV LEONHARDT (1ma pars)

[MrChristopherSimpson]

Thanks, Gleobacter!!!!!

[MrChristopherSimpson]

Translation, please...

[Gloeobacter]

"I only conduct when I am asked to do it. I have no orchestra of my own, no choir, even no conductor's baton. When I am asked to conduct fine ensembles, then I am happy to do it - when the musical piece is close to my heart, then I can conduct it. It's always been like that. [J.S. Bach] I am glad that he is just a composer to me, because he might have not been so nice. I mean, he was probably nice, but not an easy person. He used to fight back, when things did not go well.

...

[Gloeobacter]

[part 2] He must have had a really strong personality. No, I am not sorry that I did not meet him. [laughs]

These days, it is fashionable to say that Bach didn't use a choir in Leipzig. Now, it is one of the few things that we known well, and even then, there are a few, I'd almost say, idiots, who claim that he only had one singer [per part]. That is utter dribble. We have Bach's own handwritten documents stating that there were at least three singers per part, ideally four.

[Gloeobacter]

[part 3] And often we know these children by name, and in which choir they sang, etc. We know so much about this, namely, that he always had a real choir, and never soloists. Many people hear this, and are influenced by these so-called "new discoveries", that we got it all wrong in the choirs. True, the choirs used to be much too big. But saying that he had no choir is nonsense; it is just as false for Weimar [as for Leipzig].

[baxter5431]

@MrChristopherSimpson

Agree!!! He's too important to those of us who have listened to him for all these decades to have him without translation. I wish that I could have played for him. Musicians of his caliber are very few and now their number has been diminished by one more. He now enjoys eternity with the very masters whose music he played.