New Lights for Dark Paths Bach Then and Now
Richard Bratby
Dumbarton Oaks On August 21, 1944, the representatives of the governments of the United States, the Soviet Union, and the United Kingdom met in a leafy suburb of Washington, D.C., to discuss future international co-operation on peace and security—and to establish principles that would be incorporated, the following year, into the founding Charter of the United Nations. The house in which they met was called Dumbarton Oaks: a spacious, brick-built mansion originally constructed in 1801, though since 1920 it had been the home of Mildred and Robert Woods Bliss. The couple were especially proud of their Music Room; as Robert described it, “a delightful medley of Italian Renaissance, French 18th century, Georgian and American.” What better location for conversations about global harmony? A place where cultures and traditions met in a graceful unity, animated by the spirit of the universal language: music. The idea that the past—especially the musical past—could be a source of spiritual refreshment and rejuvenation would be a recurring theme throughout the 20th century. During the First World War, Maurice Ravel created a tribute to his fallen friends in the graceful forms of the French Baroque: Le Tombeau de Couperin. Igor Stravinsky talked of the delight that he found in the melodies, originally composed (or so he thought) by Pergolesi, that he reworked into his 1920 ballet Pulcinella. To Schoenberg, the idea that this represented an ideal of progress was ridiculous. In the self-penned text of his Three Satires (1926) he didn’t hold back:
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