A solar panel and a wind turbine are having a chat.
The solar panel says: So what sort of music do you like?
Well actually, I’m a huge metal fan, came the reply.
I can’t believe that I have written around 40 short posts over the past couple of months, and haven’t said much about my favourite composer, Johann Sebastian Bach. There have been bits about coffee, marriage, podcasts, books, the Bible, Christmas cards, classical composers in general, the sacking of Gough Whitlam, Riding For the Disabled, getting kids to practise, a concert, things my mother and father used to say, how my parents met, the most popular songs, our sweetcorn plants, the wonderful Musicians of Bremen folk tale, but little about this amazing composer.
They say that people like the music they grew up with, and particularly in their adolescent years. I do still enjoy The Beatles’ music, and while I sometimes watch a video on YouTube or dial them up on Spotify, I don’t need to do it, really - it’s in my ears and in my eyes; for me it’s here, there and everywhere.
I didn’t grow up with classical music: Mum and Dad had LPs of Broadway musicals like Brigadoon and Oklahoma! - two of my Dad’s favourites, and records of hymns and gospel music - who could forget the Tennessee Ernie Ford one? And they had one classical record - a red covered RCA disk of Strauss waltzes.
It was my high school Music teachers, Miss Helen Batty and Miss Denise Griffiths, who introduced me to the wonderful music of Beethoven, Corelli, Purcell, Holst, Mussorgsky and others, in works such as Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto, Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, The Planets and Pictures at an Exhibition.
But I didn’t go out and buy classical music records, or listen to radio stations which played the classics. I was captivated by the latest things on the popular music radio stations, like 2KO and 2HD (eleven four noughtable on your transistor portable).
In Belmont High School choral group we sang The Passion Chorale which Bach used in both famous Passions (music about the last seven days of Jesus’ life on earth, following the text of St Matthew and St John). I loved the words about committing your way to Jesus, and found Bach’s harmonies profoundly moving.
Then when I went to study high school Music teaching at Newcastle Conservatorium, our student choir Bach’s wonderful motet, Jesu, meine Freude (which is sung in English as Jesu, Priceless Treasure) and the astounding Mass in B Minor. And that’s where my interest in Bach began.