In the 1990s I went to a middle school musical event because my oldest son was playing a violin part. At one point the teacher called on a student to play a piano piece she had learned. He showed signs of being quite impressed that she had learned a piano transcription of Bach’s Toccata in D Minor (BWV 565). Indeed, she played it note for note entirely accurately, though at a speed so slow that it sounded disconnected from itself. It would not surprise me to learn that anyone hearing this for the first time might, as a result, avoid Bach for a lifetime. I do not blame the child who sat at the piano. I blame the teacher for allowing her to believe that she was ready to perform the work. It was a disservice to her as a student and to the audience. Had she been given, perhaps, a minuet from the Anna Magdelena Notebook she could have had an opportunity to gain some experience performing music. Instead, she learned that hitting correct notes with no more feeling than is possible from an adding machine should impress and awe a crowd. I have heard people do terrible things to great composers, more often to Bach than to any other. Playing the correct notes is no good if one does not play the music too. As Johann Sebastian Bach said to his soon to be famous sons, “It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.” Well maybe it was someone else who said that; but I believe he would have agreed. The notes sans the music is far worse than nothing at all.
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