special thanks to bill in chicago for sharing this with me. j.s. bach is one of a vanishingly small number of composers/musicians who genuinely deserve the description "genius". bach was a revolutionary giant, transforming western music in a paradigm shift that persists to this day. if one likens the structure of music to the vocabulary, grammar, syntax and semantics of language, as leonard bernstein did so eloquently in his six norton lectures (titled "the unanswered question", borrowing from charles ives) at harvard university, then bach was without peer. he was the master-of-masters at inventing and re-inventing the language of music, in subtle and complex layers of expression which remain potent and inspiring even today, even to those who have studied music for years.
as mark frauenfelder declares in the subtext notes, "this video of canon 1 and 2 from bach's Musical Offering (1747) being turned into a moebius strip, then played in two directions at the same time, would have been good to watch and listen to while i was reading the mind-bending Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid." to see what all the fuss is about, click here.
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