Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Toccata & Fugue

In the hell that is patching up other people's code mess, I picked up my iPod to stop people interrupting me. You look busier with head phones on. When coding, or especially when writing, I find that classical music works best - no lyrics to distract you. Although saying that, I was frequently giggled at during my PhD write up for singing along to Mozart's Requiem. Nothing like a good death mass in Latin to get you going in the morning. But I digress. My iPod selected the quite astonishing organ piece Toccata & Fugue in D minor from Bach. If you've never heard it, if you're of a certain age it will still sound strangely familiar and eerily modern. I've lost count how many long-haired guitar heroes of the last few decades that unashamedly ripped off this piece - the complex scales seem as if they'd been specifically composed to fit in the hands of a young Ed Van Halen, Joe Satriani or Steve Vai. Of course Bach had altogether a more pious audience in mind, but still, the piece seems irresistible to rock musicians. Jon Lord, on the Hammond organ, used to perform pretty much the whole thing on stage with Deep Purple, and I keep expecting the drums to kick in.

Nothing new under the sun.

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