Rerurn to Romy the Cat's Site
In the Forum: Playback Listening
In the Thread: Accuracy vs. Musicality (and YMMV)
Post Subject: Curiosity killed the cat, electricity brought him back...Posted by rowuk on: 1/20/2026
Why things happen in my view, is a matter of from how many thousands of miles up you are looking at those things.
If we are too close to a subject, often we can not see beyond the tip of our noses. I believe this is where "love" and "hate" thrive and are closely related.
As we move further out, we get to the "Wehret den Anfängen" stage where we want to intervene early against dangerous developments before they become too big and can no longer be stopped, derived from Ovid, but today particularly associated with the warning of right-wing radicalism, populism and extremist tendencies in the face of the history of National Socialism. It means acting decisively at the first signs of loss of freedom, misanthropy or threat to democracy in order to prevent worse by resisting in the beginning. I believe that a lot of audiophilism gets stuck here with bogus arguments about having to rescue "sound" from digititis (as well as many other things). A lot of the "problems" with electricity also show up here. This was also something that Jazz and 12 tone music suffered from in their early days.
Moving alot further out, we start to see context. In the case of Bach, we do see the extraordinary qualities that comes from having the stars line up. It requires a lot from the viewer in the way of understanding the vast context as well as sometimes accepting our own mortality and not having enough time on earth to figure the rest out. In the case of electricity, we do not have this issue. The problems are AFTER (not because of) the electrical event. The "because" is in our listening habits, maybe even in the audio gear or media. There is no "growth" or "life" intrinsic to electricity. We are not enslaved and can very well "learn" to deal with it (change listening habits, move to areas without electrical events, new gear, less stereo/more live concerts, learn to read scores, etc.).
In the case of Bach, he wrote new rules for musical engagement and regardless of how much time and energy we spend, there is always more - for me anyway. I can not "learn" to live with it. Every encounter is something new. Every time that I read a score anew, I pick up something else. BECAUSE he had all the cards in his hand, his oevre is simply more complete and this basically is very much a tool that shows me how small I really am. Although similarly prolific, Händel and Telemann did not write new rules. That is a HUGE difference historically, musically and electrically. Their popularity did not wane like Bachs did.
Funny enough, after Bach's death his works were not played again until Mendelssohn dug some out (he did not have the musicians with the proficiency to perform many of the compositions). Then they disappeared again until the 1920s and have been expanding ever since as musicians developed the skills to reengage.Rerurn to Romy the Cat's Site