testing Christoph Bach

I’m exploring the interconnection of text with YouTube clips, starting with a passage from John Eliot Gardiner’s Bach: Music In The Castle Of Heaven, where he discusses Christoph Bach’s Es erhub sich ein Streit:

Creating a magnificent tableau in sound, Christoph portrays the great eschatological battle in which the archangel Michael and his angelic squadrons fought the dragon and snuffed out a mutiny led by Lucifer and the forces of darkness… the halo of beatific string sounds of the sinfonia soothes the listener up to the moment when two solo basses appear and sing:

are these dispatches from the front line or war reporters furtively recording their commentaries in the build-up to battle? Their antiphonal exchanges become steadily rougher, and they start to roar like a couple of meths-drinking tramps. Then almost imperceptibly the drumming begins.


One by one four field trumpeters bugle out their alarm calls and the voices start to pile up, while the circling angels size up the dragon and plan their attack. Soon a space opens up between the two five-voiced choirs… and a column of sound, six octaves tall, has been built up.

(that’s enough for proof of concept)

I have a lot more to say about Gardiner, but wanted to solve this problem of multimedia linkage. Stay tuned.

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