Listening to JS Bach’s enduring and comforting music amid lockdown

Music has the rarest of powers to connect people, Andrew Buncombe says

I first saw Chauncey play in Washington DC (Getty)

A wise rule of journalism says do not write about friends or family.

It’s potentially unethical. And invariably people get upset if they get portrayed in a way they don’t appreciate. Best to steer clear.

But what if a friend is doing something so wonderful, so utterly spellbinding, you feel their deeds should be shared with the entire world?

Such is the dilemma for a friend named Chauncey Canfield, who I first met two decades ago playing pick-up soccer in the National Mall in Washington DC. It was a setting that is tough to beat. At one end you have the houses of Congress, while at the other stands the Lincoln Memorial.

Chauncey is a tech guy, but his real love, in addition to football, is music. After playing, we’d often go and watch him playing keyboards in various bands. He was very good. And he loved playing live.

When the virus struck, Chauncey was not unique among musicians in wanting to find a way to continue sharing his music with others. Think Lady Gaga, John Legend and Yo-Yo Ma all live-streaming from their homes. It was a salve no doubt for their own lockdown blues, and a blessing for those who got to watch and listen.

On 4 April, Chauncey started what he called the “Bach a Day for 40” project. Every day he would perform on the piano a different piece of music by Johann Sebastian Bach, who was born in Germany in 1685, and post the video on Facebook. (Anyone can watch.)

Why Bach? “There is something particularly reassuring and comforting about JS Bach, knowing his music has inspired and endured for centuries through plagues, famines, revolutions, world wars, etc,” he wrote, when he posted the first performance, the “Prelude in C Minor” from The Well-Tempered Clavier.

“We are in this for the long haul, so I’ve started video recording to observe and work on my own technique and finally took the time to learn some basic video.”

Quickly I became hooked. As the world grappled the pandemic, and journalists sought to cover it, watching my friend became a regular balm. In the morning before work, or at lunchtime, or when the day was over, there were few finer distractions from the machinations of the White House, or daily death tolls, than this beautiful music.

The second piece was “Praeludium” from “Partita No 1 in B Flat Major”. “Stay safe, people!” wrote Chauncey. Day 27 was another part of “Partita No 1”.

People who know about music say there is something mathematical and grounding about Bach’s compositions. I did not watch all of the performances, but saw many, rapt, as Chauncey’s hands slid over the keys, the right frequently crossing the left, and vice versa.

Having worked his way through a mixture of Bach’s better and lesser known works, he completed the project with “Variation 14” from “The Goldberg Variations”.

The reaction from those who had been following was overwhelmingly positive. Music, everyone agreed, had a rare power to connect.

“That what was what I was hoping for,” he said, when I called him over the weekend in Portland and asked permission to write about him. “I liked the idea of Bach because he has been around so long.”

Here’s wishing that everyone finds their own calm amid this madness.

Yours,

Andrew Buncombe

Chief US correspondent