From Pere Portabella’s 2007 film Die Stille vor Bach (The Silence before Bach)
N.B. The title does not imply that there was no worthwhile Music before Bach but that Silence itself was never the same after.
It refers to the following poem by Lars Gustafsson
The Stillness of the World Before Bach
There must have been a world before
the Trio Sonata in D, a world before the A minor Partita,
but what kind of a world?
A Europe of vast empty spaces, unresounding,
everywhere unawakened instruments
where the Musical Offering, the Well-tempered Clavier
never passed across the keys.
Isolated churches
where the soprano-line of the Passion
never in helpless love twined round
the gentler movements of the flute,
broad soft landscapes
where nothing breaks the stillness
but old woodcutters’ axes,
the healthy barking of strong dogs in winter
and, like a bell, skates biting into fresh ice;
the swallows whirring through summer air,
the shell resounding at the child’s ear
and nowhere Bach nowhere Bach
the world in a skater’s silence before Bach.
Claudio Zardon 