‘The Score’ – J.S.Bach takes centre stage
The life of J.S.Bach was as extraordinary as his music. It is easy to forget that Germany was not a unified country until 1871 under Otto von Bismark. Prior to that date the geographic area that we now know as Germany was under the rule of a number of city states and landowners. During Bach’s lifetime Prussia was one of the dominant states, ruled by King Frederick the Great from 1740. Almost immediately he declared war on Silesia, leading to the eight-year War of Austrian Succession.
In 1723 Bach took up a position at St. Thomas’s Church, Leipzig, a position that led to many disagreements with his employers. In 1747 Bach journeyed to Potsdam with the intention of attending some of the concerts played by the court musicians of Frederick. Carl Philip Emmanuel Bach had been a harpsichord player for the King since 1741. This led to a meeting between Bach and Frederick and the eventual composition by Bach of the Musical Offering BWV 1079.
This meeting is the subject of The Score, a play by Oliver Cotton that until 25 April is being staged at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket, London. Over the weekend I went to see Brian Cox playing the role of J.S.Bach and it was a memorable performance. The story is well documented by James Gaines in his book Evening in the Palace of Reason. The play does not pretend to be a ‘documentary’ of the meeting but instead gives us some sense of the challenges that Bach was facing towards the end of his life. He was writing a cantata a week for the church and yet was getting little support from the church and the city, a city that was also a major military encampment.
The fact that a matinee performance was sold out is testament to the very high reputation of Brian Cox. I’m not going to write a review of the play (there are many reviews you can read) or give away some of plot twists, several of which rather push the accepted view of the meeting. For me it took me into the daily life of Bach and the pressures he was under both in keeping the church elders content and coping with the onset of blindness. At the time he was having eye treatment from John Taylor, the same surgeon who attempted to treat Handel and with the same result – blindness.
The musical elements of the play are very well managed, from the incidental music between scenes to the performance by Bach and other court musicians on harpsichords and clavichords. They play facing the audience, but great care has clearly been taken in the way the actors position their stance at the instruments. It is quite easy to suspend disbelief, especially when Bach is improvising a three-part fugue on a theme that Frederick (himself a capable musician) had prepared to test Bach’s skills.
No matter how much I read about Bach, and play his music, this play brought him to life in a way that only a stage performance is able to. Cox provides a vivid picture of a composer who is well aware of his skills and is proud of what he has accomplished but remains frustrated by the situation he finds himself in personally, domestically and with his employers. In the closing scene you see Bach with bandages around his eyes contemplating an operation that might give him a few more years of active composition.
It is always a challenge for actors to play a real person. Peter O’Toole as Lawrence of Arabia and Ben Kingsley as Ghandi are just two of many that come to mind. These great performances can give strong sense of reality, and that is certainly the case with Brian Cox as Bach. Going forward I will always remember sitting in a theatre in London (ironically across the road from Phantom of the Opera) and gaining some sense of the challenges Bach faced when I am sitting at an organ trying to do justice to him in the way I approach and communicate his music.
The final words of this posting should be those attributed to Bach.
“The aim and final end of all music should be none other than the glory of God and the refreshment of the soul”