Musical Mentors: Mine vs Bach's

Memorable conversations with my violin professor, playing Beethoven like a family man, and young Bach's time learning from Dietrich Buxtehude

A study of J.S. Bach’s personal life is worthwhile and needed, in part, because there is such a contrast between the ideals that guided him and those most common today. I do not want to spend too much time in this project unpacking the unhealthy tendencies of the modern classical music profession and its training grounds, but I have found that writing about Bach’s early chapters has allowed me to process my own journey and draw fruitful lessons—maybe even a bit of closure—from those difficult years. With that in mind, today I have a bit of memoir for you, with a little Bach history and some beautiful music, too.

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During my freshman year at Carnegie Mellon School of Music, my approach to the violin underwent a dramatic transformation. Arriving as a showy and confident high school concerto competition winner, I was soon met with a harsh and public reality check from my violin professor. Over the following months, I practiced more hours than I thought possible. The hours became more focused and efficient week after week as I sought to become a serious student of the art and science of the violin.

The simplest way to describe my violin professor would be old-school; Franco-Belgian school, to be exact, though there were many layers to his method and personality. He possessed an unparalleled knowledge of violin technique and repertoire and showed deep devotion and sacrificial care toward his students. He also exhibited uncontrolled mood swings and strategically manipulated our practice lives and even our personal lives.

He was not old-school, like others, in the sense of forcing you to become a mini version of himself through the use of his bowings, fingerings, or musical interpretation. No, each of his 17 students sounded completely different, and it was thrilling to see the strides each of them made in becoming the best version of their violinist selves. Yet, there was something about this man’s approach to life that made him a problematic mentor.

After a grueling but rewarding freshman year, I spent the summer painting houses in Bexley, OH to save up money for my sophomore year. While my classmates attended music festivals around the world, I was up on a ladder thinking about life and listening to music on an iPod Touch. After a day’s work, I would take a shower, scrub the paint off my hands, and practice the violin. I was learning my first Beethoven Sonata, and I had picked the most subtle of the ten: No. 6. One line a day, I worked out my fingerings and interpretation, leaving as many original bowings as possible.

When I returned and played all three movements in my first lesson of the semester, my professor said, “What happened to you?”

“Good or bad?” I said.

“Wonderful,” he said. “You’re a completely different violinist than a year ago. You play in tune now. And there are so many subtleties. Bring it with piano next week.”

I rehearsed the sonata with our studio pianist, and at the next lesson my professor was just as happy. I memorized the piece, which is seldom done with Beethoven sonatas, allowing me to focus on the sensation of playing the violin and listening to the piano without the cold reality of black notes on a page in front of me. I have always been an old soul, and there was something innate about my connection to this piece. My professor made a strange comment I have never forgotten. “You know why I think you connect with this piece? It’s because you’re a family man.”

I had always thought of the term “family man” as referring to a man who has a wife and kids, and it felt strange to hear this term applied to me as a single sophomore in college. But I think he was correct. His few interactions with my parents and his knowledge of my many younger siblings had shown him that family was part of who I was.

I had picked Sonata No. 6 because it seemed understated and underplayed, and because I liked it. Beethoven’s Sonata No. 9, fictionally, provokes the jealousy and fury of the protagonist in Leo Tolstoy’s novella The Kreutzer Sonata, who suspects his pianist wife of having an affair with the violinist she plays it with and blames the music for the murder that results from his temporary insanity. If No. 6, on the other hand, carried inherent meaning, it had to be something much more subtle than lust or rage. It did not have a given name like Sonata No. 5 “Spring,” though I had associated it with Symphony No. 6 “Pastoral.” Sonata No. 6 “Family” would work beautifully.

In one rehearsal, my collaborating pianist and I thought we had found a wrong note. We realized, however, that the momentary dissonance was created by two voices crossing, not unlike how the harmony of individuals in a family sees an occasional bump along the way. It became one of my favorite moments in the sonata.

My professor held weekly studio classes, which often went past midnight. The first time I played the sonata in class, my professor was delighted, but as the semester progressed, the stifling city life and the stress of school began to weigh on me. I played the sonata again in class, and he was furious. It was missing its spark, he said, and he threatened to take the sonata back if I did not “recapture” it within a week. I went home for the weekend to be with my family. Holding my little siblings and being part of the family unit again was refreshing, and I reworked every measure of the piece to ensure the fingerings and interpretation allowed me to express my current place in life.

At my next lesson, my professor said it was better and asked what I had done. “I spent time with my family,” I said. He rolled his eyes and scolded me for this sentiment, saying that I could not just run home to see my family whenever I needed inspiration. I needed to be able to make it happen no matter what. His teacher, David Oistrakh, had to solo with an orchestra the night his father died, he told me. Every night, the audience is full of people who may only hear you once, and they do not care what’s going on in your personal life, he continued. It was for this reason that he believed Oistrakh had once said to him over a glass of wine, “The stage is a lonely place.”

I took this idea to heart, and as I buried myself in my pursuit of the violin, I hoped that my mother could take my successful recitals as some kind of consolation for the increasing distance I allowed to grow between me and my family.

I would stay with this teacher for a total of six years, living at his house during the last—yes, things get a bit cultish in the world of classical music. During one late-night conversation, my professor told me about his daughter. A beautiful photo hung on the wall from when she was small, like my children are today.

He shared how he used to travel often for music and would bring back gifts for her. She would run to meet him at the door to see what he had brought her. Over time, she was slower coming to the door, and eventually did not even care to open the gifts he brought. Eyes growing distant, he shared how he and his daughter were now estranged and how he and his wife had been separated for many years. “If I could do it all over again,” he said, and paused. “I’d still choose music.”

He seemed to say this with a hint of quixotic pride. “Wow,” I said out loud. He probably thought he had impressed me with his devotion to music, but in my head, even after six years under his influence, I was thinking, that’s messed up, man. I had heard him call the studio his family many times, and while his dedication benefited us in many ways, it had never dawned so fully that we were a replacement for his real family.

Soon after, I left his house and studio, changing my major in order to join the viola studio for the final semester of my Master’s degree. Meeting my now-wife soon after, I told her from the outset of our relationship that I would give up my musical pursuits if they ever became detrimental to a future family life. I also began writing short stories and letters for my younger siblings to rebuild my relationship with them. In one letter, I wrote:

Music is wonderful, but life should not just be about music. Music is about life, so life must be more. I am so glad that each of you play music. Work hard at it and it will enrich your lives forever, but always remember why you play music and Who you are serving. Play as often as you can with people you love. It is really quite a treat to have each other, isn’t it?

At the same age that I was studying Beethoven Sonata No. 6 with my college violin professor, J. Sebastian Bach took leave from his early post as an organist in Arnstadt to gain a mentor of a different sort. He hiked 250 miles on foot in late fall to hear and meet Dietrich Buxtehude, a man who would not only prove to be a lasting musical influence but could also be a positive personal one. While my professor was fond of proclaiming that his god was Oistrakh, Buxtehude’s god was… God. While my professor’s family was his studio, Buxtehude’s family was his family.

Sebastian had grown up knowing the values of the Bach family, yet he was now making his own way at an age when it is vital to observe examples for how to approach both personal and professional life. Buxtehude had a similar-sized family to Sebastian’s father, Ambrosius, with seven daughters, the first of whom died at an early age. During his time in Lübeck, we believe Sebastian got to hear a performance of a now-lost work of Buxtehude’s called Castrum Doloris, translated “Castle of Grief.”

One of Buxtehude’s surviving vocal works is Nun Danket Alle Gott, BuxWV 79, based on the 1636 hymn by Martin Rinckart. Here are the words in English, translated by Z. Philip Ambrose:

      Now thank ye all our God
      With heart and voice and hands,
      Who mighty things doth work
      For us in every quarter,
      Who us from mother’s womb
      And infant’s paces on
      A countless toll of good
      Continues now to do.

Here is a beautiful recording of Buxtehude’s setting:

Sebastian would set the same text in 1730 in his cantata BWV 192 after observing the “infant’s paces” of many of his own children:

Sebastian had initially requested a month’s leave of absence to learn from the master composer and Marienkirche organist, but he would have had to spend more than half of that time on the road there and back. He had left his post in the temporary care of his cousin, Johann Ernst Bach I, and ended up staying in Lübeck an additional three months, allowing him more time to get to know Buxtehude and his family. He arrived back to frustrated employers, but his decision to prolong his stay was a good one, as Buxtehude would die the following year. Christoph Wolff writes:

On being questioned by the superintendent after his return, Bach articulated his initial aim: “to comprehend one thing and another about his art.” As neutral as this wording sounds, with its lack of emphasis on specific musical purposes (in particular keyboard and vocal music), it suggests that the main attraction lay in Buxtehude’s indisputable authority as an extraordinary artist and role model, not just as a distinguished organist or composer of oratorios.¹

Buxtehude’s musical influence on Sebastian is a great topic of exploration, observable in his organ works, keyboard variations, secular chamber works, and sacred choral works. Search Buxtehude on your favorite music platform, and everything you find will be beautiful. I recommend Ton Koopman’s album Dieterich Buxtehude: Complete Chamber Music and René Saorgin’s album Buxtehude: Organ Works.

Just as Sebastian gained musically from many influences through a process of picking and choosing—sometimes emulating and sometimes diverging—he had the opportunity to gain from multiple ways to grow and lead a musical family. He learned from memories of his father and stories of his grandfather and great-grandfather. He grew up seeing the musical success and faithful family lives of his uncles and other extended members of the Bach family. He also gained the influences of musical fathers like Johann Pachelbel and Dietrich Buxtehude.

These examples, and the family legacy Sebastian built over the following decades, are quite different from those set for me and my friends at CMU, where it was said by a prominent musician in our freshman convocation, “If you want to make it in music, you’d better be willing to sacrifice family… at least for a long time.”

The other day, I came across the class syllabus from my violin professor’s studio, which shared the following class philosophy:

We are to be the performers of the music of extraordinary, brilliant, and deeply idealistic composers. If we are to perform their music we cannot not try to be as idealistic as the great composers were with their extraordinary creations. Our profession is indeed a very noble one.

I could not agree more, but I believe our ideals must extend beyond the accuracy of our notes and the development of musical artistry. Our ideals must translate into our daily lives, too, for the benefit of those who matter most. How can we call this a truly noble profession if we must destroy our families in its pursuit?

1. Wolff, Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician