Palette of Sound


Did Bach know to what end
his harvest of melodies-in-parallel would become?

Scholars agonize.

Was creation of counterpoint
musical destiny,
a hybrid fruit of beauty
knowing no boundary,
bewildering those of first look,
given musical staffs,
voicings and manuscripts,
always conformed to traditional confinement?

What spurred his palette of sound
to become one with the elusive rainbow
providing independence through marriage of numbers,
allowing prolonged courtship,
sanctioning destinies to verge,
converge,
separate,
return to coalesce?

And so…

From guitar
to clavichord,
string quartets,
to symphonies,
counterpart airs were discovered,
became melodious architecture
challenging new musical frontiers,
voiding tundra's boundary rules,
reducing history's brass survey monuments
to mere reflections of past memory.

Popularization of Bach's invention
soared beyond the artistic elite,
for in '55, "Picnic" graced movie screens,
initiating the unsuspecting,
elevating emotion with layered melodies,
Moonglow playing under the love theme,
Bach's kaleidoscope of synchronous colors
reaching the century's romantics,
keyed into a music major,
minored ala Brubeck,
scat-a-tized via Ella and Mel
making unity of opposites a given.

From Bach's synthesis of two dimensions,
musical ironies evolved,
influencing writers' language
line upon line,
stanza to stanza,
chapter to chapter,
making magical
the double entendre,
metaphor,
subtext,
contrapuntal imaginings,
all translated into infinite language-in-progress.

With applause knowing nowhere to go,
except to acknowledge the roots of prodigy,
a high five to the man who pioneered so much of our soundscape,
taught us all the numbers of romance,
ironically created attraction to opposites,
arpeggios with infinite colors,
intimacy amidst chaos.

Encore Mr. Bach…

Encore!