Last night, while in good company in a cheerful and spirited place, some time between 10 and 11:00 pm I simply went into one of my "downers" for no obvious reason at all.
Almost as if it's pure chemistry, some strange gear-change in mood for want of a better analogy. And though I managed a few good quips and jokes, I've been there for most of today as well, after a night of weird dreams.
Except for more than an hour spent with Bach.
Except that when it comes to 'The Art of the Fugue' played with something approaching what must be perfection, you can't talk or write about time any more, it becomes an almost meaningless concept.
Twice I listened, particularly, to Glenn Gould's recording on a piano of the unfinished 'Contrapunctus XIV, Fugue on three subjects,' made for a CBS television broadcast in 1981.
That totally banished any racket in the Métro, even any feeling of motion, and the people at Sony who re-released the CD in September last year had the sense to leave plenty of space between the final suspended note and the last piece on the disc (the 'Prelude and Fugue in B-flat major on the name BACH' by unknown). So you don't have to rush for the stop button to keep an idea of the rest of forever in your head.
In one or two of the fugues on this CD, played either on a piano or an organ, Gould's renowned originality -- eccentricities? -- gets in the way between you, the listener, and Bach. But mostly it's a wonderful disc and I'm surprised to see that it appears only to have had a small handful of write-ups on the Net.
New York composer John Stone writes revealingly and without misplaced reverence of Gould's video.
Given thoughts I was having on a paradox in some of the music which strikes me as pure mathematics and profoundly human at once, I liked Stone's title for another article on the same 'Kunst der Fuge' site: "Two Reasons Man is Superior to Machines: Bach and Gould."
J.S. Bach (Home Page) was the man who laid nearly all of the groundwork for a century and a half of "classical" music in things like major and minor keys and the western tonal system with his well tempered clavier and tuning. As a kid, I obviously long misunderstood that well-tempered business, thinking it had something to do with Bach's mood until somebody bothered to tell me how he bent notes to fit into all the scales I had to practice.
My introduction to Gould came with the composer who blew all that apart with the 'Tristan Chord' (Henning) and other miracles in the possibly ultimate operatic love story, 'Tristan Und Isolde.' I found Gould's recording of Wagner's Siegfried Idyll (with other works) both as conductor and performer of the piano transcriptions.
Then I wasn't scared any more of the monstrous genius -- Glenn Gould, I mean, though Wagner was certainly monstrous too -- people talked about in hushed tones.
His playing of Bach is exactly the kind of thing I need when I feel that kind of blue. It's not a matter of going up again, just simply somewhere ... completely ... else!
8:15:40 PM link 
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