Newcastle upon Tyne - a stroll about the toon

Blaydon Racists?

Ah me lads, ye shud only seen us gannin',

We pass'd the foaks upon the road just as they wor stannin';

Thor wes lots o' lads an' lasses there, all wi' smiling faces,

Gawn alang the Scotswood Road, to see the Blaydon Races......

It's about 6.30 on a still June morning.  Chaffinches burr their skirling songs with a geordie lilt, and Leazes Park is fresh and calm. Around the boating lake fishermen stare at their floats, or doze in their bivouacs, licensed by the Leazes Park Angling Association, whose 31 club rules include: Anglers fishing specifically for carp must use a suitable soft unhooking mat with a minimum size of 30 x 18 inches to prevent damage to fish..... One man I meet has all the gear, and, with his camera set up on a tripod, he instructs his pal on how to press the shutter, a 20 lbs 12 oz common carp gently cradled in his arms. After the photo shoot they cushion the fish wetly back into the water and proudly relax.  This wasn't a record breaker - Steve Henderson got one weighing 27 lbs 13 oz in 2009 - but it was a good night's work.....

The Park was created in 1873, and the lake was originally used for boating and ice-skating.  These days fish and birds take precedence, though there have been periods of neglect.

The bandstand was built by George Smith and Hay in 1875, but 'disappeared' (?) in the 1960s (prime suspects Terry Collier and Bob Ferris).  It was reconstructed from archive pictures as part of the heritage park regeneration. Other recreations include the 1902 bust of Alderman Sir Charles Hamond, who supported the original campaign for the park - the bust was 'lost' in 1992 - and the 1879 wrought iron Jubilee Gates, which 'fell into disrepair' ..... These, and the bust, were restored in 2004.

The ups and downs of the fortune of Leazes Park mirror the recent history of this city, as the ship-yards declined in the late twentieth century, though the University was founded in 1963 and employment in the public sector grew.  The park is now well-kept and well-used, and a discreet stone set in the ground before a memorial tree marks a kind of regeneration of the city.

Overshadowing Leazes Park, and dominating the city, is the Newcastle United FC stadium, St James's Park, which began life in 1880 and was completed in 2000, now having a capacity of 52,338 seats (though 68,826 watched Newcastle play Chelsea in 1930).  It is the second biggest sports ground in the UK with the largest cantilever roof in Europe; it has hosted concerts by Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen; and it will be one of the venues for the Rugby World Cup this autumn.....

Football is part of Newcastle, part of the brown blood that carries the city's DNA. Jackie Milburn is fondly remembered not only in statue but also in the name of the north stand of St James' Park (better memories than the Gallowgate stand which is built on the site of Newcastle's gallows). Jackie Milburn was second cousin to Jack and Bobby Charlton (remember 1966?) and was related to Jack, George, Jimmy and Stan Milburn (I'd never heard of them either, Ed).... His statue, currently in Strawberry Place, just opposite the eponymous pub, cost £35,000, and was paid for by donations from Newcastle United supporters.  He was inducted into the English Football Hall of Fame in 2006.....

Wor Jackie
1924 - 1988
In honour of John Edward Thompson Milburn
Footballer & Gentleman

Another local legend was Sir Bobby Robson, who as a boy was taken to the stadium to see Wor Jackie, and then ended his career as manager of the Magpies. His statue stands at the Gallowgate East Corner.....

And now a word for Bobby Robson, hero of the Toon; 
A football man, a gentleman, who never let wor doon; 
A friendly word, a cheery smile, and brave right to the end; 
We're proud to say your one of wors, 
Sir Bob... Auf Wiedersehen

(Billy Mitchell: to the tune of Blaydon Races)

[A confession:  football was part of my passion when I was a kid, but somehow it bled away, and as seats have come in and prices gone up, I have felt less and less enthused. 

Another Geordie superstar was Paul Gascoigne, and although one of Sheryl's two children was in my daughter Hannah's class in Rome, and Gazza sometimes lunched in our friend Franco's trattoria when he was contracted to Lazio, he never helped me regain my love for the beautiful game. Working with Steve McClaren's sister and brother-in-law in Rome, and meeting the England Manager-to-be, also never quite rekindled the spark I had once felt on the concrete steps of Bramall Lane, clutching styrofoam cups of oxo and a rolled up newspaper..... But my confession is this: there is an aura on this quiet morning as I wander around St James' Park, and something stirs in me. Football means something here, something beating like a heart, and I can feel that pulse....]

The sun is well up now.  I take a moment to rest in St Andrew's, reputedly the oldest church in the city, with more twelfth century remains than any other.  I am struck by a memorial to Charles Avison, 1709 - 1770, The most important English concerto composer of the 18th century.  Mentioned by Laurence Sterne in Tristram Shandy, and in John Wesley's Journal, he was also mentioned by Robert Browning in his poem Parleying with Certain People of Importance in their Day (1887):  

Hear Avison! He tenders evidence

That music in his day as much absorbed

Heart and soul then as Wagner's music now.

A notice in the church recalls that Avison's circle included William Herschel (Court Astronomer to George III) and Thomas Bewick (an engraver, best known for his History of British Birds, though also honoured by having Bewick's Swan named after him.....)  The notice, however, concludes, Sadly, and probably because of his loyalty to Newcastle, his fame waned after his death and his work has been largely neglected and forgotten.

Nearby, remains of the city walls vie with brickwork and tile in what has become Chinatown....  Nothing quite seems but what it is.....

A few steps away, in a slice of old town that has survived the Newcastle Science Central Development, a modest house bears a plaque:

1, Summerhill Terrace,
Mo Mowlam lived here....

A blue star, rescued from Gateshead, adorns a fragment of wall, commemorating what once, apparently, gave reason to discreet hospital wards.....

And, looking up, chimneys in great number once pumped smoke into the air,

While cobble stones and iron railings caught the sparks of life, and let them die...

To revive my flagging spirit, I slip into the cafe society, and take a cappuccino and a bacon roll, all'italiano.....

It's good morning now, and the world is awake.  Between the Central Railway Station and the Newcastle Chinese Christian Church (#4 Bewick Street, named after the engraver above) I meet Cardinal Basil Hume, standing in a garden that represents his particular attachment for the holy landscape of Northumbria and the Northern Saints from which he drew spiritual inspiration....

I meet another worthy Geordie in Grainger Street, which bears the name of Richard Grainger, who designed and built much of the centre of the city between 1824 and 1841, including Grey Street, which Nicholas Pevsner described as one of the finest streets in England.... 

Man With Potential Selves
one of three painted bronze figures
by Sean Henry (2003)

It is 10.05.  Outside the Church of St John the Baptist, a couple take a leisurely breakfast, perhaps thinking that had it been a Tuesday, Thursday or Saturday, they could have been inside for Eucharist.....

While at the Beehive Hotel, only minutes later, I note that several people have already commenced their sacramental rites, whether you see them as first, or last......

Though just down the road, opposite the Job Centre, Java Jim's has served its last coffee, subject to demolition or perhaps what may be worse, subjugation to a chain.....

For a moment I slip into the Cathedral, partly to avoid the black looks of a bronzed Queen Victoria who perches outside as if seated on a hedgehog, and partly to use St Nicholas's conveniences, for which I am most grateful. This, the most northerly of England's cathedrals, is, according to its website, a place of quiet serenity set amid the busyness of a vibrant city.....  The organ, originally supplied by Renatus Harris in 1676, was once the plaything of Charles Avison, his son, and his grandson, and it is still in use today.  Though not actually at this moment.....

  

Another place of quiet serenity, is Stephenson's High Level Bridge, which carries trains between London and Edinburgh 112 feet above the Tyne, and southbound buses and taxis to Gateshead on the lower level. Why anyone should have spent nearly half a million pounds in the middle of the 19th century constructing a weak bridge I am not sure, but perhaps this fine example of privatisation is a clue to the perilous state of the nation's finances today (or not?)

It does however provide an excellent place to stroll, perambulate, cycle, contemplate ending it all, or  simply to practise graffiti, leaning out to inscribe the wrought ironwork with words such as BARBARA, DAREK, 2015, POLSKA, over which another hand has written boldly, WIOLA.  I peer down to scan the muddy tidal shores by the swing bridge for a desolate corpse, or perhaps just a trace of suicidal angst, like a knitted cap, or a fox fur muff - but there is nothing. Just mud and that eternal foggy river stretching away to wherever.....

[I remember now, it was from Newcastle that I sailed to Bergen in 19 hundred and whenever, on the SS Leda, I believe, sister ship to the Vomiting Venus, bobbing swan-like across the North Sea with basinfuls of bile-green schoolboys enjoying the crossing far less than the exuberant Norwegians who treated the trip as a 24  hr bar to escape Nordic frowns on any alcoholic enjoyment.....]

From this vantage point it is clear why Newcastle is upon Tyne, and why the bridges are such a feature of its fame.  But, one wonders, what happened here before the bridges? R W Johnson wrote in The Making of the Tyne, in 1895, Everywhere from the dancing waters of the harbour to the ebb and flow of the throbbing city (are) industry, resource and expansion, coal staiths, shipyards, engine shops, dry docks, chemical works, forges, electrical lighting laboratories, warehouses, merchant's offices, steamships, railway trains, without end, without number - from Shields to Scotswood there is not its like in any thirteen mile of river the world over.

But he doesn't mention the bridges....  I pick up this on a website dedicated to Bridges on the Tyne: The bridges over the Tyne between Newcastle and Gateshead are justifiably famous. They are not merely bridges, but icons for the North East. Over the years the single (Georgian) bridge existing in the early Victorian period has been joined by six others.....

So there was a Georgian Bridge? But what about the Romans? Did they ferry the entire 9th Legion across in coracles? Is that why they never came back? Reluctantly I stray into Wikipedia country, and learn that the Romans bridged the Tyne with the Pons Aelius in the mid second century AD. 

Ah.

While I am there I also learn, from Wikipedia, that, The Castle, Newcastle, is a medieval fortification in Newcastle upon Tyne, England, built on the site of the fortress which gave the City of Newcastle its name.....

Ah!

I was wondering.....

Anyway, tempus fugits, and I must get a whizz on....  Must see the latest of the bridges; that which folds up to let the great flux of shipping pass.  

It is rather beautiful, and it captures the idea of a half sunken bicycle wheel that seems apt somehow....

This last image was captured from the fifth floor of the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art.  The third and fourth floor are closed as they are working on installing the spectacular new commission DEPOT, made especially for [our] Level 4 gallery, [which] re-imagines ‘Jonah the Giant Whale’, a preserved whale exhibited inside a lorry which toured across Europe from the 1950s to the mid-1970s. [Fiona] Tan will rebuild the 71-foot-long vehicle; however, it will now contain a cabinet of curiosities, inviting the viewer to climb aboard. Drawing on Newcastle’s forgotten history as a major whaling port, Depot is an exhibition within an exhibition..... 

You get the picture?  I had, perhaps, indeed, forgot Newcastle's history as a major whaling port....

But not to worry, I can at least see Undetailed Progress, by Northern Ireland's Tony Swain, in which the artist uses sections of newspaper that are pieced together as a support for paintings of fragmented landscapes and abstract patterns.

[Using acrylic paints, he fixes these ‘works on paper’ directly to the gallery walls, emphasising the everyday and temporary feel of newsprint. While occasional details of the newsprint and images survive, most are transformed by their inclusion within Swain’s painted world.]

Ah.

But I wanted to read the paper....

Not really....

Not today, anyway....

My time is nearly up.  From the stillness of that gasping carp to the still carping gasp of the Baltic, I have traversed thoroughfares and alleys, bridges and quays....  a marvellous morning perambulation.  But I have one last port of call before I have to leave.....

The beach.....

Unexpected, maybe, but Newcastle has been busy reinventing itself forever, and there's no call to stop now. Just because the Romans left..... Just because shipbuilding declined, mining stopped (so no more coals to Newcastle) and so on and so forth.....  Here, on the beach on the Quayside, by the law courts, and hard by a neat new pub called the Broad Chare, which serves Haggis on toast with duck egg and HP sauce, absolutely washable down with a pint of The Writer's Block Pale Ale (A very well balanced golden bitter with a massive citrus aroma. Pine fresh with lemon and pink grapefruit on the palate and an American edge from the Centennial finish).....

[Jeyes Fluid anybody?]

Sorry.  

I love it.

Here on the beach on the Quayside, where the whalers used to queue to get into the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art across the Millenium Bridge, I meet Terry Collier, or Eric Burdon (what's in a name?)  Here, on the beach, under an engraved representation of the river Tyne, in the sun, on the sand, I meet Bob Ferris, or Hilton Valentine, and he goes on about how there used to be ships here and ships there, and whalers and colliers (and Ferrises and Hiltons).....

Across the river, roughly where perhaps the infamous Dr Gibbs held his surgery:

[Sum went to the Dispensary an' uthers to Doctor Gibbs,

An' sum sought out the Infirmary to mend their broken ribs.]

Anyway, across there, where now wafts the Sage, Gateshead, gleaming and pupating inside its swelling exoskeleton, there lives another world of Blaydon racists, those fiercely defensive northerners who sing lustily to the loudest of their ability.....

Don't get me wrong.  Don't let me be misunderstood..... The Geordie is a race apart, but for good reason. He may fish in the night, drink in the morning, and laze in a deckchair on the beach in the afternoon, but his heart is made of football, and his love is for his fellow, and he'll dance a jig an' swing his twig the day he goes to Blaydon.....

Love it.....

Oh! me lads, ye shud a' seen w'us gannin,

Passin' the folks alang the road just as they were stannin'.

Aal the' lads and lasses there, aal wi' smiling faces,

Gannin' alang the Scotswood Road to see the Blaydon Races

Oh, what happened to you?

Whatever happened to me?

What became of the people we used to be?

Tomorrow's almost over,

Today went by so fast,

The only thing to look forward to is the past?

http://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/4721070.Geordie_stars_sing_for_Sir_Bobby_fund/

Scotland - Munros - Three Steps to Heaven

À bout de souffle.....

My Big Bro' bags Munros, which are mountains in Scotland over 3,000 feet (914.4 metres) high. They were first listed by Sir Hugh Munro in 1891. He listed 283 separate mountains as Munros, and 255 other 'tops' which are subsidiary summits over 3,000 feet. A review in 2012 has 282 Munros and 227 tops. 

My Bro' has 73 to do......

So, in a fit of lassitude (and brotherly love), I agreed to keep the old goat (sorry, my brother) company, and I find myself being driven mad by the new roads by-passing Edinburgh on a June Friday evening.  It's mid-June; so the days are long, and balmy.....  I packed diligently for the trip, with shorts, tee shirts.  And I forgot gloves and waterproof trousers.  It's June?  

Yeah.

Saturday morning finds us at a car park near the Old Bridge of Tilt, in the grounds of Blair Castle near Blair Atholl. The mention of Blair is ominous, and this leads me to think of ex-racing pundit (and opponent of Blair's invasion of Iraq) Robin Cook and his untimely, mysterious death in the Highlands..... I feel breathless already. Neither the weather nor the forecast are that good, and it is as well that I have been able to borrow some waterproof trousers and a pair of gloves.....  Not that they will make it any easier!

The route from our point of departure to the summit of Beinn Dearg is said to be a very long hill-walk through mostly straightforward terrain.  It is going to be 29 kms (18.25 miles) with an ascent of 1028 metres up a Land Rover track on the approach then hill paths on exposed higher ground.  

The last trek I did was along a stretch of Hadrian's Wall in aid of the Alzheimer's Society - and that was a year ago.  The last Munro I went up was Sgurr Alasdair in the Cuillin - and that was in 1976! In recent years fitness has not been my forte, and in general I prefer white wine to Kendal Mint Cake and pubs to fruit bars.....

It is easy-going to start with.  The scenery is not exciting, with the heather yet to bloom, and dull clouds sitting on the hill tops. Something like a blend of rain and soup seeps from the sky, and I realise we are taking our time when a volley of younger chaps suddenly appear and pass us.  It's true that we overtake them when they stop at the Allt Sheicheachan bothy to take some performance-enhancing drugs (probably Nutella) but predictably they shoot past us again just where the path branches off the made track.

The path becomes rough and steep, and a wind picks up.  I have to put the gloves on, as suddenly my fingers are painfully cold. Something pings hard against my hood making my ear sing.  For a moment I think it is raining the pink granite granules that scatter the ground, but it is only hail....

The wind picks up.  The temperature drops.  Visibility is not relevant as I am only looking at the rising ground in front of me.  I see a cairn, and think we have made it, but, typically, there is another hill to go.  

The wind almost picks me up. Gusts of what I guess to be 50 or 60 miles an hour add to the chill. I concentrate on the achievement.  It cannot be far now and then we can eat our sandwiches.  Then it will be all downhill.....

Yes, well.  There is a certain element of achievement at the very top.  But this is outnumbered by the other elements that conspire to kill us if we sit around too long.  So, no time to rest, Big Bro' declares no lunch here, but a quick exit.....

My fingers are so cold I fear frostbite, but as we descend the views open up and gradually I appreciate just how far we have come.  

And it is grand.  There will be better views, and there could be better days, but we have breasted the inaccessible, and spread out in front of us is a highland landscape that you have to work for.

We take an alternative route back, following the track we left earlier to slip round the southwest slopes of Beinn a'Chait, following the Allt Slanaidh as it tumbles to join the River Tilt in the Glen far below. Everything seems still now we are out of the wind, but then we see deer close by, watching us from both sides of the track.

A weak sun appears, which is just as well as we have to take off our boots to ford the swollen river. From here it is just jarred knees and stiff hips and rambling chatter as we dodge the bullets from the shooting range on our left, back amongst the light greens and churring chaffinches of deciduous woods.  

I must admit that the walk has left me trembling like a hand-held camera, and a little out of breath, but not so damaged as we cannot manage fish and chips and a couple of pints of Light Ale at the Moulin Inn just outside Pitlochry....

Next morning, with the prospect of a brighter day, but a nagging thought that I should have brought a Zimmer frame instead of hiking poles, we mosey up Glen Lyon to park at Inverar.  

Most Munroists here do a circuit route that takes in four Munros, but Big Bro' has done three of them already, so we 'just' have the one to do - the 1029 metres of Carn Gorm. Nothing really.  A walk in the park compared with yesterday. Or perhaps it would be had yesterday not happened.  And we still have to get to the top.....

The start is OK, possibly made easier by some heavy hydro-electric work along the Inverar Burn which has necessitated a smooth road. But once across the burn things start to get steep. The phrase thigh-buster is used in another blog about this route, and, sure enough, it's not long before my thighs are bust....

Fairly soon after this I begin to wonder whether there shouldn't be defibrillators installed at discreet intervals on hills like these, but then I counter that thought with the reminder that most people who come here are probably rather fitter than me.  The point is reinforced when a couple of youngsters sprint past me in trainers.  I ask whether they were out in the weather yesterday, but one of them says he was working late last night.  My case rests.....

I grumble on, imagining I am on Everest as a patch of snow becomes an ice-field to me.  It's mid June, for Chrissake!  But then the sky breaks up and cloud shadows race across the shoulders of the hill below, and, between inhalations I am inspired again.....

And looking back I spy the green sward of Glen Lyon, where we started.  A walk in the park?  The perfect site for a cable car more like.

Those scudding clouds should have made me realise that we were now in the jet stream, and, though it's not quite as bracing as yesterday, it is, in fact, proper bracing up here!  But soon I catch up with Bro' and get the thumbs up.  

With Loch Rannoch in the background, it's time for lunch!

It's Day Three in the Big Brother world, and there's blue sky, I'm thinking. I get up feeling strangely fit, the back pains, stiff knees and arthritic hands all part of a bad dream.....  Or am I dreaming?  

Off to Coishavachan up Glen Lednock where we watch young Martins bathing in a muddy puddle, before starting out for Ben Chonzie, a mere eight miles and 712 metres of ascent.

We start in what could pass for June - green grass, fluffy clouds in an azure sky, lambs ready for mint sauce.....  But every silver lining has its clouds, and soon we can see squalls fleeting across the heavens.  

It's even more realistic (?) in black and white.  You get more of the sense of chills....

We are fortunate.  A spray of sleet ruffles our eyebrows, but it's as fleeting as the mountain hares that bound crazily through the scree. 

Parts of the path are quite steep, but Bro' has taught me to breathe gently and I'm not as breathless as before. Though, ironically, it is the view from the summit that takes my breath away..... 

If there is a heaven, and if it were a bit like this, I reckon I could die happy.  I am slightly surprised perhaps that the thirty-three miles and two and a half thousand metres of ascent in three days hasn't had me shuffling off my mortal coire (sic), though these days I sometimes wonder if there's much difference between being alive and being dead (don't ask - it's all in the mind).  

Big Bro' has seventy-five more of these hillocks to surmount.  If I have breath enough, I will be his Cairn Terrier again, and with pleasure.  As I am sure someone once said, the more it hurts, the better it is......

Shortly after Eddie Cochran was killed on the A4 at Chippenham in 1960 (his taxi blew a tyre and hit a street lamp), his song Three Steps to Heaven reached number one in the UK Hit Parade. Eddie (and his brother Bob)'s three steps were a little different from the ones I have just taken, but it's still a mighty fine tune to get high to.....

And now, as Jean-Paul Belmondo, as Michel Poiccard, pretending to be Laslo Kovacs, said in Jean-Luc Godard's À bout de souffle (Breathless):  I'm tired. I'm going to sleep......

J S Bach - Travels in Former East Germany - 3

Breaking Bach

As often happens, I am confused.  I am muddling up my Heisenbergs with my Eisenachs, which doesn't help my principles of uncertainty. Add to this my Arnstadts, Ohrdrufs, Erfuts, Gothas and Weimars, and I am in a state of Thuringia, to say the least.

It's all the fault of one Veit Bach, a white bread maker (though veit is not white; it probably derives from a German word for wood, and it has been confused with the Latin for life, vita) who lived somewhere in Germany between 1550 and 1619 and begat a Johannes Hans Bach (1580 - 1626) who started begetting so many other Bachs, including some JSBs and JCBs et al that the surname soon became synonymous with all organists and eventually all jobbing musicians within earshot of the Thuringian Forest....

[Incidentally, in German bach means a stream, though in Welsh it is a term of endearment and in English it can refer either to a bachelor, or to a batch....  Veit Bach certainly caused a stream of Bachs (or perhaps a batch?)] 

It was an extensive family. Johann Sebastian Bach, born in the same year as Handel and Scarlatti (as well as John Gay, Daniel Gottlieb Messerschmidt and Dominikus Zimmermann, who later ran the coffee bar in Leipzig where Bach performed regularly, and who may, perhaps, have been an ancestor of Bob Dylan....) was the 8th child of his parents, and he would have 20 children by his two wives. By the time he was fifteen, when his mother and father died, there were 22 "famous" Bachs operating in central Germany. Subsequently six of his sons became well-known in their own rights.....

A cast of J S Bach's skull

Of the eighty-three Bachs who are listed as being related to Johann Sebastian between 1550 and 1870, fifty of them were named Johann.... And these numbers do not include (the ten or so of) his children who never grew tall enough to reach organ pedals.....

So what was so special about this family?

Johann Ambrosius Bach (1645 - 1695 - JS's father), whose father was a musician, was born in Erfut, where he was initially employed as a violinist.  He then moved to Eisenach, where he became court trumpeter and director of the town musicians.  His twin brother Johann Christoph, became a town musician in Arnstadt.....

Johann Ambrosius had eight children, four of whom became musicians.

In memory of the members of the Bach family who died in Eisenach

So what was so special about Johann Sebastian?

In his lifetime, which was comparatively long and productive for those times, he was not recognised as a great composer, although he was continuously employed as an organist, teacher, Cantor, Kapellmeister, and Royal Court Composer to Augustus III. He was famous enough, however, for Beethoven, apparently, to call him The immortal God of harmony in 1801 and for Goethe to say, in 1827, that His works are an invaluable national patrimony with which no other nation has anything to be compared.....

J S Bach at the Georgenkirche, Esienach

  

It was not until Felix Mendelssohn produced the St Matthew Passion in 1829 that publication and performance of Bach's works really took off, though he had been admired and played by the cognoscenti in the years since his death, particularly due to the offices of his sons.

In fact, surprisingly little is known about J S Bach, beyond his music and his progeny.  He was born in a house like the one pictured above, which is now the Bachhaus Eisenach, the first and largest museum dedicated to him (in operation since 1907).  The actual house he was born in has long since disappeared, but in wandering round sleepy Eisenach at night, it is not difficult to imagine the sound of a spinet crashing from an upstairs window.....

Just outside the town is the Wartburg, one of the most famous (so they say) medieval castles in Germany. Bach must have known it, though its musical connections are more with Wagner (who tripped by in 1842) as it was the site of the legendary twelfth century singing contest that inspired Tannhäuser und der Sängerkrieg auf Wartburg (Tannhäuser and the Singers' Contest at Wartburg Castle).

The castle was also famed for sheltering Martin Luther, who took refuge here in 1521 to translate the New Testament.

Martin Luther addresses the masses in Eisenach

Martin Luther and J S Bach actually attended the same school in Eisenach (though not at the same time). This was the Latin School (Lateinschule) that was housed in the old Dominican cloister; Luther later described it as Purgatory.

Initially Bach did not do very well here, for example he was ranked 47 out of 81 in the fifth class in 1693, and his attendance record was very poor, with 96 registered sessions absent, (data that no doubt Aufstadt would have scowled at, leading to Special Measures.....)

The Tower of the Wartburg

In 1695 he was 23rd of 45 in the fourth class, and had been absent for 103 sessions, but both his mother and his father had very recently died, and so after Easter he went, with his brother Johann Jacob, to live with his elder brother Johann Cristoph, in Ohrdruf, where, in July, he joined the Lyceum.....

It could be said that from then on the young Bach never looked back.....

In 1700 he was a choral scholar at St Michael's School, Lüneburg, where he broke his voice, or his voice broke.... So, in 1702 he was (briefly) wandering round Hamburg, and in 1703, after temporary employment in Weimar, he was appointed organist in Arnstadt.

The (reconstructed) 1703 Wender Organ in the Johann Sebastian Bach Church in Arnstadt

It is curious, perhaps, that there is so little known about Bach. He was not a great letter writer, nor diarist, so there is a limited paper trail (in comparison, say, to Mozart, who wrote lots of letters - scattered with a plethora of profanities), allowing us to dwell on personal details of his life. But one incident was recorded, which gives some insight into his personality, and that is of an altercation, in 1705, with bassoonist Johann Heinrich Geyersbach, who he called a Zippel Fagottist! (Nanny-goat bassoonist!) before drawing his sword to defend himself from the other's schtick.... The brawl was broken up, but Bach had not endeared himself.....

Die Liebfrauenkirche (The Church of our Lady), Arnstadt

Though it is difficult to 'know' Johann Sebastian Bach, he must have been a remarkable man. In November 1705 he is said to have taken four weeks leave of absence and to have walked to Lübeck, about 400 kms, (250 miles) (and back, three months later...) to see and hear the highly influential organist Dieterich Buxtehude at the Marienkirche (whose daughter, perhaps, Bach had considered as a possible partner, as had Handel.....)

Remarkable timing, as Buxtehude died only months after Bach got home.  (The daughter remained unmarried.)

Musical demonstrations in the Bacchhaus, Eisenach

In Breaking Bad, which has nothing to do with Bach, a terminally ill chemistry teacher becomes an expert at manufacturing the illegal drug crystal methamphetamine, and adopts the name Heisenberg....  

Werner Heisenberg was a brilliant German physicist (and professor at Leipzig University) who is famous for his uncertainty principle, which tells us that there is a fuzziness in nature, a fundamental limit to what we can know about the behaviour of quantum particles and, therefore, the smallest scales of nature..... [Alok Jha, The Guardian, November 10th, 2013]

Johann Seb Bach was a numbers man.  Taking A = 1, B = 2, etc, then BACH adds up to 14, and J S BACH = 41, the mirror image of 14.  So? The number 14 is one of several significant numbers in Bach's later works, so a chorale of debate has fluttered around this for centuries (perhaps also because Mozart was also very clever with his numbers?) though the word of the day is caution.

The last piece that Bach wrote was his (incomplete) Art of Fugue, and the third subject of the 14th fugue is based on motif B A C H (where B = B flat and H = B natural in German notation).  There is no way I am breaking the Bach code, but it is intriguing to marvel at what could have been going on in the darkening world of JSB in his final years.

I lack certainty.  It is one of my principles.  If I knew what Bach was doing there would be little left to know.  I didn't enjoy Breaking Bad and don't understand Heisenberg, but something tenuous, and strangely beautiful, links the miraculous crystals manufactured by Walter White in New Mexico to the ingenious crystalline fugues of J S Bach; something perhaps links the twentieth century professor of Leipzig University to the eighteenth century Cantor of the St Thomas Church and School of Leipzig?  And perhaps the link is the limit of what we, ordinary people, can know, perhaps especially when confronted with the extraordinary achievements of exceptional human beings.....

Telemann - much bigger in his time than J S Bach

J S Bach lived in Protestant Germany all his life, and his career took him from Arnstadt to Weimar to Leipzig, where he died at the age of 65 in 1750 (having suffered bungled cataract operations from the same English doctor that attempted similar torture on Handel).  One obituary notice called him Our Bach, and said that he was the greatest organ and clavier player that ever lived.  His genius as a composer (of almost every musical form in existence except for opera, and for every instrument) was not appreciated until almost a century after his death, but now he is recognised as one of the greatest musicians ever.

The Bachhaus Eisenach

The Bachhaus Eisenach celebrates the life and work of J S Bach. Musical presentations are given, using original keyboard instruments from his time (28 baroque instruments are on display here, though the museum possesses more than 400). Attached to the fifteenth century house is a stunning new centre, with bubble chairs for visitors to listen to recordings, exhibits showing how we see Bach and what we know about Bach, and a walk-in diorama showing videos of performances of key works, including a rehearsal of Tönet, ihr Pauken! Erschallet, Trompeten! BWV 214 by the Thomanerchor, in the Old Town Hall, Leipzig in 2006.

As Nicholas Kenyon says (in the Faber Pocket Guide to Bach) Let's face it, Bach can be daunting. He does not give up his secrets easily. He is one of the most mysterious of Western composers.....  But, at the risk of exercising my naivety, the music that Bach produced, whether played on period instruments, sung in parish churches, or jazzed up by Jacques Loussier, or whatever, can soothe, stir, shake or simply satisfy something in the soul like little else.

At the risk of over-stretching my naivety, Bach rocks, and Bach rolls. From Sunday mornings reading the paper to Angela Hewitt playing Das Wohltemperirte Clavier; to hearing Adrian Davis conduct a choir of friends singing Ach Herr, laß dein lieb from the St John Passion at my father's Memorial Service, soprano eyes glistening with gestus; to driving south in heavy traffic with Murray Perahia unravelling the Goldberg Variations.....  There is a Bach for all times and for all people.....

In 1981 Glenn Gould performed the Contrapunctus XIV from Art of Fugue for Bruno Monsaingeon's Glenn Gould Plays Bach.  Gould was worried: It's the most difficult thing I've ever approached.....  I've got several versions - one which would sound like a pavane and another one like a gigue, all very different in tempi and phrasing and articulation and so on....  The piece breaks off at the end of bar 239 with an eighth-note D above middle C.  At this point Gould snatches up his arm as though suffering from an electric shock.  Columbia's sleeve notes from Bach/Glenn Gould: The Art of Fugue go on, The picture freezes, and the arm remains suspended in the air, now and evermore.....

I am confused.  Breaking Bad means to raise hell, or to go wild, break laws, take control..... The key effects of crystal methamphetamine include feeling very exhilarated, alert and awake.  Somewhere there is a connection with the muttering digital exertions of Glenn Gould. 

I am uncertain, but I suspect that Johann Sebastian Bach was, essentially, a very precise, controlled man, though at the same time his ability to extemporise on a subject, taking musical instruments to their limits, suggests exhilaration and extreme alertness.   And control is not the right word.  There's some kind of divine auto-pilot at work.....

There is something about Bach that doesn't add up.  I catch him staring, a little dangerously, from a shop window in Weimar, his wigged head blank in contrast to the coloured clothes on the headless mannequins beside him.  There's an element of funk about him, that aloof ability to do whatever he liked.  

Funky Genius.