Art is a way of giving to the world what one holds most precious
John Sebastian Bach had good reason to be grumpy. There was scant appreciation for his enormous efforts. He didn’t get paid for writing music. In those days there was a system of patronage. He’d be engaged by a city council or rich nobleman. At Weimar he was fired from his post and jailed for a month:
On November 6, [1717], the quondam concertmaster and organist Bach was confined to the County Judge’s place of detention for too stubbornly forcing the issue of his dismissal and finally on December 2 was freed from arrest with notice of his unfavourable discharge.
His life involved unremitting hard work often in most difficult circumstances. Something inside drove him to it. There was much cause for grief in his life, many mouths to feed. Only in music could he cultivate perfection, only in music could he find escape. Music and the prospect of death, longing for it even, a common theme in his church cantatas.
John Eliot Gardner has a fine video about Bach on YouTube*. It’s a bit long but helped nudge me in the direction of this post.
So when I write to a friend who’s similarly beset with worldly cares, and I speak of creative work as “giving back to the world”, he responds to say no, he wants to do it for himself alone, as an escape route. In my view there is no contradiction here. When we speak personal truth, this is more precious to the world than gold.
I think of DH Lawrence, Joyce and van Gogh. Whenever they had money they spent quickly, got back into debt, depended on charity from friends & family. They lived as chronic exiles. They wrote and painted for themselves, as an escape from the servitude they’d unconsciously contrived to cage themselves within.
And what about Michelangelo, his three years’ hard labour in the Vatican, painting on his back high up under the Sistine Chapel ceiling? Servitude. He’s another of those whose freedom was to give all they had, turning it into art, for scant reward.†
Perhaps art is instinctual, like sex, but pervertible by civilization. I hazard that art is pure giving, when it’s not corrupted by name, fame & money. Threats multiply everywhere: the art market, best-sellers, prizes, genius-worship, band-wagons, social media, pornography, shallowness.
I’ve said before‡ that art is not restricted to skills of hand, eye, ear and vocabulary. Consciously living one’s daily life within its given constraints—especially when these threaten to overwhelm—this too is an art.
Nothing comes free; but the World-Wide Web provides a great Wall for pinning up self-published work at no cost to the artist, for everyone to see.
There is also the art of the person, manifest in poise, dress, smiles, kind words and deeds. It may be shared face-to-face anywhere: in the street, supermarket, home, pub, community gatherings. Anywhere that’s clear of fighting and rivalry.§
Politics has gone hell-bent. It cannot be saved through itself, while its downward maelstrom gathers momentum. Capitalism is not to be trusted. What can guide us? I think of ubuntu¶, a Zulu word meaning something like “I am because we are”. A humbling of the concept of individual freedom and enterprise. A willingness to embrace through kindness and giving.
The most generous have always been those with nothing to lose. We can let our light shine.
But generosity also is an art. I think of our dear friend’s foster-brother, whose descent into lethal drug-addiction, criminality & occasional insane violence has been till recently bankrolled by his adoptive parent. Guilt-inspired sentiment is not kindness at all.
* : “A Passionate Life“.
† I feel as though I have a personal connection with Michelangelo: see”David’s Fig-leaf”
‡ “My Life as Art”
§ See for example this video (hat-tip to Phil Ebersole): “Some 200-odd dancers suddenly turned up in Antwerp’s Central Station at 9 a.m. on March 23, 2009, and performed a number based on the ‘Do-Re-Mi’ song in The Sound of Music, as a promotion for a Belgian television station. What a delightful surprise that must have been!”
¶ Ubuntu: see Wikipedia.
a wayfarer’s notes 
I was listening to Bach’s Coffee Cantata recently. You’re right about the dark times he suffered but listening to it made me think he had some good times too and an immense capacity for fun!
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Yes, like all of us he had dark and light times but I don’t know if the music he wrote necessarily reflected his mood at the time. It’s as if he had a vast library of tunes, chords & counterpoint in his head; and in that realm away from worldly care was able to draw on his entire gamut of experience to suit the occasion or his current patron.
And in his cantatas especially, churned out one a week ready for the next Sunday, he had to match the availability and competence of his musicians.
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