Bach

Jen wasn't really a classical music devotee, but we had a few shared tastes, and one of them was J.S. Bach. Being a pianist, I'd played Bach on the piano over many years, but wasn't as familiar with his many other works. When we were planning our wedding in 1993, Jen wanted her brother-in-law to play a piece on classical guitar that she'd heard him perform before. It was the beginning of Bach's first cello suite, and that was the music to which Jen and the bridesmaids walked down the aisle. During our honeymoon, we often played a tape of a performance by Pablo Casals of all six cello suites. It's not 'easy listening' music - it draws you and demands that you pay attention, it changes moods, it can suddenly burst out with emotion. Casals had the distinction of being the person who reintroduced the cello suites to the world after that they languished in near obscurity for a long time,

Three years into our marriage, when we were living overseas, a friend who plays the violin introduced us to a recording of Bach's violin sonatas and partitas. That music too became over time part of the soundtrack of our life together, put on to suit or create the mood of an evening.

I kept up my piano playing, and became interested in Bach's Goldberg variations, so I started to learn a few of them. Out of the 32 variations, I've so far only really mastered about 6-8, but I have a vague plan to tackle them all eventually (though I doubt I'd be able to have them all 'up' at the same time). Jen enjoyed listening to me practice, even though I'm not a particularly good pianist. I would also return to the 48 (the preludes and fugues) and I dipped into the two and three part inventions.

On the morning that Jen died, while her body was still in the room in the palliative care centre, our friend the violinist came with me into the room and played part of a Bach violin sonata - something that she'd been planning to perform for Jen, but hadn't had the opportunity. On the saddest day of my life, it was so right and valuable to have the beauty and sadness of Bach's music, not as a recording, but as the expression of a friend. My associations with that place are now not all about dying and death, but also about friendship and beauty.

In the days after Jen's death, as we planned her funeral, I asked Jen's brother-in-law if he would play the same piece of music as at our wedding. After some misgivings about his ability to perform under emotional stress, he agreed. I'm not sure how it seemed to others, but for me the music linked to our wedding seemed the right way to close our married life. Later on in the service, our friend the violinist (accompanied by another friend from church, who is a wonderful pianist) performed one of the Bach violin sonatas.

The last act, perhaps, was the internment of Jen's ashes, which we did down in the Otways in November. Again our friend the violinist came (with her family, who together are some of our closest friends) and there, in the open air, performed one last piece of Bach for Jen, as it were, but also for us. At each moment of Jen's passing - her death, the funeral, the internment - the music of Bach gave us beauty and a kind of weight of significance that we sometimes associate with ritual.

So Bach was woven through our time together. For Christmas, I bought myself a new recording of the cello suites - before we just had the Casals mono recording, but this time it was Rostropovich's version, a modern recording, and it brought out some new facets. Of course I'll always associate Bach's music with Jen, especially the first cello suite, but I will also continue to experience and enjoy it still as time moves on, and I'll start to make other associations. Curiously I both want that and don't want it - I want to enjoy Bach without just evoking grief, but equally I don't want to lose the special link it is to Jen.