Epiphany

 T S Eliot’s poem “The journey of the magi” among other things brings us into the lives of the travelling magi, allowing participation in their hardships, their regrets and their puzzlement. The poem is written afterwards, but why, why did they come? The Bible is short on explanation:

“Where is the child who has been born King of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising and have come to pay him homage. 

In 1705, the twenty year old Bach, newly appointed  organist at Arnstadt asked for a one month sabbatical so he could make a journey to Lubeck more than two hundred and fifty miles north on the German coast. Partly he needed the time because he walked the whole way. This is equivalent to walking from Norwich to Taunton or from Norwich to Newcastle on Tyne and he did this to hear Buxtehude play the organ. Buxtehude was by the way sixty-eight and a renowned organist holding one of the most coveted musical positions in the land, he had attracted visits from Handel and Telemann. We may imagine that Bach had a hard coming of it, but once arrived he stayed to play in concerts that Buxtehude organised. (In fact he was there three months, overstaying his sabbatical considerably.) 

A little before Christmas my regular Saturday morning listening “Record Review” explored  recordings of Mahler’s first symphony. Somewhat to my surprise the “Building a library” recommendation was a recording made by Bruno Walter in 1961 with the Columbia orchestra in Los Angeles. Bearing in mind that this is almost a sixty year old recording the performance had to overcome the technical advantages of more contemporary recordings. I have some bruno Walter recordings of Beethoven symphonies and they are definitely showing their age - but not this Mahler. The nugget though is that aged 17 Walter went to visit Gustav Mahler in Budapest shortly following the first symphony’s first performance. How amazing that 127 years later Walter’s recording is still a landmark.

The magi, Bach and Walter went to visit someone they had only heard about, an act of homage but more it was also an act of learning. When Bach returned from Lubeck his composing style was altered, musical historians can trace the elements of Buxtehude’s influence; when Walter returned from Budapest his appreciation and knowledge would continue to influence his conducting well into his eighties and when the wise men came back they were totally changed, their Zoroastrianism replaced:

“We returned to our places, these kingdoms but no longer at ease, here in the old dispensation with an alien people clutching their Gods.

Amen