So this is the format from now on: posts will appear occasionally, always accompanied by some lame excuse as to why I have fallen off the wagon. Today’s excuse – and this is worthy of the playground – is “Side View (http://viewfromtheside.wordpress.com/) told me to.”
I can almost hear my third year teacher: “And if she told you to jump off a cliff, would you do that too?”
Whenever one hears of a really stunning invention it is always wise to remember who its mother was.
Necessity, she who nags incessantly and places sometimes almost insurmountable demands on our lives: she is the one who so often provides the purpose for our endeavours.
In the case of one seventeenth century inventor, necessity was an ever-present spectre, because he had twenty children.
Johann Sebastian Bach had many small mouths to feed. And so he wrote prolifically, first as concertmaster for a duke in Weimar, then as Kapellmeister for a prince, and ultimately as Director of Music on the Leipzig church scene.
He was the musician equivalent of a jobbing journalist: he turned out perfect, measured, serious music in spades for his employers: and he filled the churches around him with echoes of his profound style, redolent of perfection itself.
It paid the bills: but oh, what inventions.
If, Reader, you have never touched a piano but always hankered after playing, there is no more heavenly place to start than his inventions: his Two-Part Inventions for piano.
The idea is this: he starts with a tune. It is not a flighty, exuberant tune like Mozart’s; not feted and festive; rather, it is grounded and rather lovely, grave and introspective.
After a few moments, another part joins. And the two walk together, doing their own thing but interacting with formal courtesy.
With mathematical faultlessness, with something born not of ego but of unity with a greater purpose, a third part joins, and a fourth. They weave around each other with a light measured step.
And the majority of people will love the effect but never dream of the utter genius it took to construct those sublime parts within a harmonic corset which, though unspeakably graceful, has tight strictures indeed.
Inventions beyond imaginings, these. So many, for year after year, prolific, consistent, across decades.
This ability to develop a single element and combine it with others: it’s a form of invention. Parts that move together perfectly, indeed, like clockwork.
Which predates Bach by centuries, and is first referred to by a man who appears on history’s surface in bass-relief for just an instant. He was called Robert The Englishman, and he was an academic and astronomer of the thirteenth century. He is commonly remembered as the first man ever to refer to the invention of clockwork mechanisms.
He does so in his commentary on an old astronomy textbook, De Sphera Mundi by Johannes de Sacrobosco, in 1271.
The men of the day were obsessed with time, and the necessity to know its passing occupied their waking thoughts. Robert tells us there are men out there grappling with inventing a wheel which would make one complete revolution each day. But, he added, it was taking time to perfect.
What they needed, it seemed, was an escapement: a system of wheels with teeth, which caught on knobs fixed to an oscillating rod. It finely regulated the speed of that revolving wheel. That came just four years later. Voila: a clock which kept the time to within 15 minutes in any day.
Salisbury Cathedral has a clock which has no face. It does not keep the minutes, only strikes the hours. But oh, to our Mediaeval forebears, what a piece of counterpoint: parts moving on contrary motion, regulating each other with such perfection that it has clarioned the passing hours to an English city for six hundred years.
We have touched on an ethereal melodic invention; and a temporal, cogs-and-rods engineering work of art. But what of inventions that start in the ether of fiction, and prove themselves eventual reality?
I speak, of course, of a certain Monsieur Verne.
Fantastical creations were his speciality, this lawyer’s son who skimped his law training to contribute to that haunt of Dumas, Gautier and Balzac, named Musee Des Familes: a magazine for reading to families in the evening.
How shall I count the inventions: the man who has just had his 183rd birthday foretold the electric submarine with Nautilus; in ‘From The Earth to the Moon’ he described ‘projectiles’ which could carry people to the moon. In ‘In The Year 2889’ he foresaw video conferencing: “the transmission of images by means of sensitive mirrors connected by wires”; and even, Dear Reader, news broadcasting.
Verne writes: “Instead of being printed, the Earth Chronicle is every morning spoken to subscribers, who, from interesting conversations with reporters, statesmen and scientists, learn the news of the day.”
All that remains is to ask: which came first, the chicken or the egg?
The necessities of bringing up a vast family were no object for someone as sublimely inventive as JS Bach. The beginnings of the clockwork age sprang from an earnest desire, born of the necessity to track the hours and carillon them to whole communities.
But I am left with our friend Jules, who dreamt of visions which later became reality. Are they there because he, and others like him, showed them to us?
Necessity has oft been the mother of invention.
But perhaps, just occasionally, invention is the mother of necessity.
Kate Shrewsday 
Oooh I am so glad you succumbed. A truly Kate start to the day. Thank you.
There is nothing so exciting as listening to some music that sounds effortless, until you realise the sheer hard work that went into working within strict limits yet to produce something to move the mind and emotions.
And nobody did it better than Bach 🙂 Thanks Sidey *sheepish grin*
Glad to see you back, even if only occasionally!
I am currently hatching a cunning plan which involves putting a price on technical support….
Exeter Cathedral has a very early clock, possibly the oldest English cathedral clock, but almost certainly the only one with a cat-flap! Though strictly speaking it’s not a flap, just a hole, cut in the casing so that the bishop’s cat could get in to catch the mice that ate the clock-grease.
Oh, and I’m sure that the invention of the Angry Birds update is the mother of the necessity for you to get a new iPhone….
Right, Jan, better redouble efforts to make some money with this racket. What with you and the new iphone life could get pricey 😀
I have been to Exeter Cathedral but never seen the clock. Project!
Have a lovely weekend x
Oh, my scale of fees would be very reasonable – I’m thinking two SmartBoard connections or similar help = 1 blog entry 🙂
We must fall to serious negotiations over a staff room cuppa 😀
I loved this. Bach to basics! Point and counterpoint?
The pleasure of playing that ‘Ave Maria’ Prelude and then the Fugue to follow has never dimmed for me. He is one of the influences in my own music.
I think for writers and composers and artists, invention becomes its own necessity. As borne out by your skilfully-crafted piece here.
Alas, though, my invention is mere whimsy: it lacks that hard edged Bachian ability to raise cash for the family. I am fortunate that invention is is a pleasure all its own 🙂
Fascinating post. Loved the info about JSB.
Thanks Tilly. He is one of my idols: but another is King Julian from Madagascar, so where does that leave us?
Brilliantly posted, Kate! You are a master weaver of stories and never cease to inform while entertaining.
Of course, I love the Bach, but, never quite connected the writings of Jules Verne this way. Fascinating way to start my day here, for which I send a hearty thanks.
And I must thank you for that wonderful post too! We gazed and gazed at the photograph, and only after a while did we see your unexpected subject. You made our morning too 🙂
I am so delighted that someone, somewhere, thought to invent notes for J.S.Bach and words for K.S. ~ so they could share the inner workings of their mind with clockwork precision. 🙂
Especially enjoyed:
The idea is this: he starts with a tune. It is not a flighty, exuberant tune like Mozart’s; not feted and festive; rather, it is grounded and rather lovely, grave and introspective.
After a few moments, another part joins. And the two walk together, doing their own thing but interacting with formal courtesy.
With mathematical faultlessness, with something born not of ego but of unity with a greater purpose, a third part joins, and a fourth. They weave around each other with a light measured step.
And the majority of people will love the effect but never dream of the utter genius it took to construct those sublime parts within a harmonic corset which, though unspeakably graceful, has tight strictures indeed.
Nancy, thank you 🙂 I am very glad you enjoyed it. Your inventing post gave me huge food for thought. I have been mulling it over ever since I read it.
Absolutely brilliant ending to a great post, Kate! Imagination can truly boggle the mind 🙂
Thanks Naomi 🙂 I imagine invention has been your byword over the last months: good luck with the launch of your novel! Brilliant stuff!
Music composition is like the algebra of sound, I suppose. Unfortunately, I don’t know jack about either one.
Well that might be a short comment from you, Carl, but ‘The algebra of sound” is a soundbite to die for.
Wheeeeeeeeeeeeee! I don’t have time to read it now, but I shall return. I’m simply delighted you’ve returned.
😀
So all we need to do, between us all is tempt you, regularly and you won’t be able to resist a post….? Excellent. I shall put on my thinking cap…!
Lovely post, fitting perfectly together, and wound up so well. Like clockwork.
Thanks, Pseu. I’ve been writing them offline and not posting…. the connections are there every day and they just cry out to be threaded together. The other day I thought, oh, blow this for a game of marbles 😀
by the way:
http://charioteers.org/2011/02/03/new-creative-writing-competition/
interested in entering?