S is for Space

Extracts from interviews with Armando Ianucci and Siobhan Davies, which will be broadcast on Radio 3 during 'A Bach Christmas'.

'I first heard the Bach solo violin sonatas and partitas when I was 18 and a student. For some reason I thought of space - the planets, the solar system and way way beyond. Then I heard that when the Voyager 1 satellite went up into space, it took a package containing representative illustrations of the finest human achievements, including Glenn Gould playing Bach. So the NASA scientists agreed with me that Bach was the sound that we should send out into the solar system and now he's somewhere out beyond Alpha Centauri!

Although it sounds slightly pretentious and quasi philosophical I think it's something to do with the fact that Bach's music sums up music - it's music about music. He tries to explore what can be done with the medium he works with, taking the violin, cello and keyboard to their outer limits. I think he's probably on the verge of trying to discover what we are capable of spiritually in his cantatas and great choral pieces. '
Armando Ianucci


' Bach is for me an architect in sound. He has invented a different sense of place through music and both my spirit and mind are shifted as I have tried to learn how he works. It must be the choreographer in me that identifies with the idea of music and shape. The opening theme of the Art of Fugue creates a complete minimal and original space each time I listen to it, and it is also the beginning of an immense story about to be told. Those few notes, points on an architectural plan, are later imbedded divided, multiplied, reordered, quickened and drawn out. Each mathematical shape releases beauty - an immense and fabulous idea. I listen and learn and sadly do not reach that same clarity, but I am made happy by imagining my potential improvement. I need to create a space and only fill it with completely necessary moves.

I have been re-listening to the Musical Offering having read the book 'The Evening of the Palace of Reason ' by James Gaines, which has alternate chapters about Bach and Frederick the Great. The last chapter focuses on the king giving the composer a theme and asking for an immediate 3 part fugue. Bach sits down, and in my imagination displays the virtuosity of a fabulous contemporary jazz musician. I begin to listen to the Musical Offering, intending to unravel its structural complexities, but my thinking brain and my imagining brain plait together every time. I am no longer in an isolated thought place or an isolated emotional one, I am combined and while I listen I am in a space of articulate beauty. My ears and a truly developed musical understanding are not polished enough to keep concentration throughout, but my creative energy is fired up. In Webern's orchestral transposition of the 6 part fugue that closes the Musical Offering, each entry is made clear by the instruments of the orchestra. The original space is not only filled with fugal structure but also the colour, textures and character of individual instruments. My sense of architectural space is made large and vividly alive - it is three dimensional music to walk about in. '
Siobhan Davies, Choreographer