Our feelings toward media change over time. My deep, primal adorations of the Scissor Sisters and Spy Kids (if you know, you know) are relics of years gone by that don’t seem to be going anywhere, but these are (frankly deserving) aberrations.
Until recently, Nina Raine’s Bach and Sons, which I caught at the Bridge Theatre in 2021, was another unquestionable exception to this rule. Now, my enjoyment of the show and belief in its value are as indelible as ever, but equally my studies in music have triggered something of a refocusing of these opinions. In short, our changing outlooks may lead us to reconsider media (in this case theatre), but that does not necessarily detract from its value.
Of course, anyone’s experience of a piece of media is inextricably linked with their own circumstances, their mood, their interests. In my case, I was an excitable and uncritical 18-year-old, looking to explore music in all shapes and forms, embarrassingly excited to nerd it up before coming to uni. I was passionate about Bach’s music and interested in his life – perfectly predisposed to enjoy the production.
These days, as a haggard, ground-down, (slightly) more well-informed 20-year-old, I feel a need to revisit my experience, to reevaluate the play.
With this in mind, what actually takes place? What was it about the production that made it stick for me?
Unsurprisingly, Bach was the linchpin of the narrative. You really got the impression that the role was written for Simon Russell Beale, which Raine has indeed confirmed. Bach pulled everything around him into his orbit, but was far from a perfect man, so Beale’s combination of his famously considered yet gritty Shakespearean style (his King Lear at the NT in 2014 was something else, you can see some excerpts here), with a delightfully obstreperous streak (similar to his role as Lavrentiy Beria in Armando Iannucci’s 2017 The Death of Stalin) was perfect for the role. As a bonus, he’s a huge classical music fan, which added genuine honesty and a sense of earnest passion to the lengthy scenes in which Bach instructed his sons in the art of composition and the power of music.
Speaking of which, in the play his sons Carl, more famously C. P. E. Bach, (Samuel Blenkin) and Wilhelm (Douggie McMeekin) were possibly most subjected to this gravitational force; the former as the precocious, buttoned up second son, and the latter the firstborn, the alcoholic tortured artist favoured by his father.
The play spanned decades of Bach’s life, meaning we also saw both his wives – Maria Barbara (Carl and Wilhelm’s mother), who died in 1720 before Bach met and married Anna Magdalena, mother to thirteen of his twenty children. Both marriages were delightfully played, if a little vaguely, serving as something of a safe harbour for Bach, where he could voice thoughts on anything: from the day to day annoyances of his work, to his struggles with his Lutheran faith; a perfectly valid thing to ponder – I’m sure I’d question my faith if half my children died before adulthood.
Of course, the remarriage had deliciously dramatic repercussions within the play. Carl in particular did not shy away from accusing his father of treachery, using the analogy of Bach’s famous ‘Chaconne in D minor’ as a symbol of his love for Maria, and the pain of her loss. This equation has also been drawn outside of this fictionalisation. Some argue that the work was written after Bach learned of her death, and even though this is disputed, the idea of two voices sharing one intimate stave, one violin, is a very romantic notion that served to heighten the rift between Bach and sons.
Ultimately, the play was Bach, and Bach was the play. Often this is exactly what you want from theatre (or, for that matter, film and TV series). A central, integral, ideally bombastic and flawed figure almost guarantees great, or at least compelling, drama.
I wish the review could stop here. Indeed, it would have done until recently, but having gained a more in depth knowledge of music and the schools of thought surrounding it, my appreciation of the play has been, to say the least, repositioned. Of course I am not bemoaning the fact that my understanding has been furthered by my education, but more accurately acknowledging that my experience of Bach and Sons, and by extension the play itself, is also not invalidated by musicological discourse, even though it may be relevant to it.
To explain myself, a brief discussion of music scholarship is, I’m afraid to say, unavoidable, but I’ll keep it brief. Until recently, music history functioned in a manner not dissimilar to the process of writing a play – it is easier, and more romantic, to construct a history around big names and works than, in the case of music, the actual experience of listening or performing. As such, writings focussed on some works and figures while disregarding others, leading to an impression of music history as a periodised process, rather than the granular one it actually is.
Towards the end of the twentieth century, however, philosophers and musicologists criticised this trend. For example, the philosopher Lydia Goehr hypothesised a ‘Museum of Musical Works,’ retroactively created rather than evolved, and Christopher Small highlighted the importance of the act and experience of performance rather than work or composer, coining the term ‘musicking.’
This, then, is the lens through which I look back on my experience. Bach and Sons does not exist to rage against reductive histories, but equally it cannot be accused of actively adding to said histories, it merely exists because of them.
Further, Bach and Sons is Raine’s first historical play, and she may have latched onto Bach (the myth more than the man) to constitute the centre of her script. Her previous endeavours include Consent (2017) – almost a proto Prima Facie without the wigs – and as such Bach and Sons felt like one of her earlier works transplanted into early eighteenth century Germany.
When she describes Bach as ‘a warm family guy, but also incredibly grumpy and short-tempered and quite fiery,’ refers to all families as ‘such great engines for drama,’ or uses an interesting analogy of a fugue to represent the intricate family dynamics on her stage, she is dramatising what some argue should be left well alone, even forgotten.
Obviously it would be unreasonable to expect Raine to have an intimate knowledge of these issues. She is a dramatist, and Bach’s life is an interesting premise to write on. Indeed, her work may have made the topic more accessible for some, and that’s not something even I can complain about.
Despite all this, the play still means a lot to me. It’s not the eureka moment it used to be, but it remains a compellingly written, well staged, incredibly acted, heartfelt venture. Crucially, I don’t see that changing. The experience of Bach and Sons cannot be viewed with criticism of musical historicism in mind, because it wasn’t conceived in this light. As such, it is repositioned, not invalidated.