J S BACH		Bach’s score of the Adagio from the G minor Sonata

The Bach Project is a multi-dimensional performance-cum-workshop that uses a combination of solo violin, eurythmy, baroque dance and voice to explore the inner world that lies behind the enduring appeal and challenge of some of Bach’s greatest music.

As an international performing musician for over 35 years, Paul Robertson was increasingly drawn into the science of musical experience - how musical forms and structures create meaning by mirroring our underlying neurological forms and physiological structures.


Paul Robertson and Eurhythmist Maren Stott in rehearsal

Based on Paul’s research as a NESTA Fellow (National Endowment of Science Technology and the Arts), the Bach Project took shape using the composer’s sonatas and partitas for unaccompanied violin as foundation for an exploration of the structures, psychology and spirituality that lie behind this powerful music.

In a fascinating journey, we discover:
• Bach’s affirmation of his Lutheran faith and hope in redemption and resurrection
• Dedication and love for his wife and family
• Symbolism of French Baroque dance forms and Illumination from Eurhythmy
• Revelation through hidden Chorales
• Application of “Gematria” - sacred number alphabets encoded within the music
• Contemporary practice of the “chaconne” (fixed bass) to represent the constancy of the supreme God

Workshop participants share in the unravelling process of interpretation and performance. In so doing, they gain valuable insights into Bach’s music and its timeless relevance. For some, the experience initiates a personal spiritual voyage of discovery.

Financial Times
Where God meets the artistic impulse
By David Honigmann
Published: March 15 2005 02:00

But the point where art, religion and the brain really came together was in a discussion by Paul Robertson, lately leader of the Medici Quartet, of Bach's D Minor Violin Partita. Robertson exposed the intellectual framework behind the piece, both in planetary terms (western scales mirroring the music of the spheres) and, following Helga Thoene, the German musicologist, its numerological secrets. As a tribute to Maria Barbara, his dead wife, Bach encoded their two names into the piece; but also, read in various ways, the Agnus Dei and the Kyrie Eleison. And the implied baselines below the solo violin echo the Lutheran death chorales. The monumental Chaconne that concludes the Partita is literally a monument to Maria Barbara: buried in it, in the numerical system of the Gematria, whereby different letters correspond to different numbers, are the Credo, the Sanctus and "Media Vita in Morte Sumus".

To illustrate the dancing styles implied by the sections of the Partita, Robin and Christine Stokoe demonstrated Baroque dancing to Robertson's accompaniment, looking like candelit oil paintings sprung to extravagant life, the very picture of Enlightenment art. Robertson concluded by playing the whole of the Partita: when he finished, he was trembling, as well he might. In these masterful two hours, art, religion and the brain were triumphantly reconciled.


Robin and Christine Stokoe, Baroque Dance

Louis XIV ‘The Sun King’ dancing the Chaconne

Sponsorship and Foundation Support:
NESTA (National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts)
Fairbairn Trust

Acknowledgements to collaborators in the Bach Project:
Alan & Maren Stott – eurythmy
Professor Helga Thoene – mathematical de-coding analysis
Robin & Chris Stokoe – baroque dance

Learning to Connect

Meaning, Emotion and Connection
in JS Bach’s work for unaccompanied violin

Sacred and Profane: The Bach Project

For the past five years Paul Robertson, leader of the Medici String Quartet and an international expert on music and the mind, has been working with Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin. Approaching the music as a performer, and supported by his knowledge of the relationships between music and emotional life, he has brought together a team of practitioners and researchers to make sense of the complex interconnectedness of Bach’s music and explore its relevance for the way we live, think and feel today.

This rich and revealing project involving music, dance and gesture, includes a connected series of performances, recordings, new research and a range of workshops for different audiences and participants in the UK, Europe, the US and elsewhere.

The Project Team

Project Leadership and Performance: Paul Robertson, violinist and lecturer
Project Management: The Music Mind Spirit Trust
Baroque Dance: Robin Stokoe & Chris Stokoe, teachers, researchers choreographers and performers
Emotional Gesture: Göran Krantz and Maren Stott
Hugh Pidgeon: Management Consultant

The Educational Framework

Most great music from western and other traditions draws on and speaks to the multiplicity of human experience: intellectual and emotional, spiritual and sensual, active and responsive, creative and appreciative. It reflects but also extends its historical context. Much of the power of the music lies in its ability to connect or reconnect disparate aspects of experience, combining science and art, the personal and the universal.

Bach’s Partitas and Sonatas for solo violin – pre-eminent among them the Partita in D minor with its justly celebrated Chaconne – provide a particularly rich terrain for a detailed and in-depth exploration of the interconnectedness of music. Religious faith, mathematics, personal experience, musical tradition, and contemporary dance styles come together in a complex whole. Some of this is immediately accessible through the music itself; some of it is hidden. Our approach is interdisciplinary, and is grounded in performance.

We work with educators, students, practitioners, historians and others to explore the connections in Bach’s music and apply the results to our own experience and understanding. We are working with

• architects
• artists and art historians
• musicians and musicologists
• dance specialists
• managers in the public and private sectors
• mathematicians, physicists and other scientists

Workshops

We offer workshops linked with presentations, lectures and performances. The workshops are interactive: there is no better way to understand the spiritual significance of a chorale than to sing it; and no substitute for experiencing the rhythmic interplay of dance and music than literally to go through the dance steps on which Bach drew for his Partitas. Similarly, the affective gestures contained in music and movement are best experienced and understood through activities designed to draw them out.

Workshops are tailored to suit the needs of particular groups. A typical workshop runs from 10 - 5 and includes presentations with illustrations, practical sessions and discussion. Full day workshops are followed by an evening performance by members of the team. We are also able to offer half day workshops, illustrated presentations, or workshops spread over a number of days.

The content of the workshops can also be focused to address the particular interests of the group. In addition to the obvious engagement with music and movement, we can explore the music and the experience it represents through the perspectives of mathematics, philosophy, cognitive development, the physiology of emotion, team-building and leadership, and the resonance between the structures of music and musical instruments and the visual arts and architecture.

For further details and an extended discussion of the educational potential of Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas and Paul Robertson’s work, please see Information Sheet 1. See Further Information (below) for details of how to get a copy of the sheet.

Costs

A full day’s workshop with evening performance starts at £1,500 depending on the organisation and its resources.

Music Mind Spirit

The Bach Project is one of a number of projects developed by Music Mind Spirit, a Trust set up to generate research, information, educational events and dialogue on the relationship between music and our spiritual, emotional, intellectual and neurophysiological experiences of the world. Other projects currently include Swansongs, an exploration of the role of music in the treatment and understanding of dementias such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s syndromes. The Music Mind Spirit website carries detailed information about these and other projects.

Further information

For further information including an Information Sheet and biographies of all the team members, please visit our website: www.musicmindspirit.com

Acknowledgements

Paul Robertson’s work on the Sonatas and Partitas of JS Bach has been supported by a Fellowship from the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts. The Bach Project has received a generous award from the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation.