Johann Sebastian Bach
Kunst Der Fuge

Characters:

• Bartender
• Errand Boy
• Filipino caregiver with elderly man
• Two teenagers
• A very glamorous lady with chihuahua
• A shabby little man
• Gino Castaldo, the ineffable music critic

The setting is a rundown suburban bar. What makes it so are the "five infallible signs of restaurant degeneration":

1. A Financial Police calendar hanging near the cash register. Often autographed by a Second Lieutenant. Just as often "of vessel."
2. Slot machines, in a number NEVER less than three, producing a din that reminds some elderly people in the area of the Val di Stava mining disaster. These machines are perpetually occupied by shady figures who inspire as much trust as the appearance of Gianni Boncompagni at a dance recital;
3. The presence, on the workers' attire, of bright red stains, apparently difficult to trace back to a simple operation like preparing a ham sandwich or uncorking a Crodino. According to some gastro-anthropological currents, there exists a sort of "bartenders' cult," that meets in secret places practicing chilling initiation rites, such as watching "Blu notte" while eating black pudding;
4. The possibility of assigning legal personality to most of the sandwiches displayed in the case; emblematic is the case of liver pâté canapés, which in some Appennine venues join into a cooperative and take over the establishment;
5. The Gazzetta dello Sport rendered unreadable by stains attributable to all the fats present in the establishment's food (a criminologist from Parma, simply by examining a Gazzettino, was able to find enzymatic traces that would have solved the major crime cases of the last thirty years in the Po Valley).

If it were up to the TV, it would be airing "TG L'una."

From the speakers hanging on the walls, distant echoes of Provenzali's voice from "Tutto il Calcio Minuto per Minuto." Beyond the counter, two figures grope, slow and drowsy. One is the BARTENDER, the other the SHOP ASSISTANT (though he's around forty). These two roles should be played by two good cabaret performers.
On this side of the counter, a varied underbar humanity: a shabby little man, a lady with a chihuahua in her arms sipping a herbal tea, a Filipino caregiver engaged in scratching a "Scratch & Win" ticket as long as Veltroni's fuel card - with the elderly man parked on a chair emitting involuntary bodily noises - two teenagers consulting the cinema newsletter in search of Muccino's latest film.

BARTENDER

(leafing through the Gazzetta) ...The problem, if anything, is that you always put too much cheese...

ERRAND BOY

(indignantly) Me?!? Are you kidding... I put what’s needed. Not a slice more. I strictly follow our union’s guidelines on the matter.

BARTENDER

(placing a cup on the counter) Coffee for the engineer is ready!

ERRAND BOY

(whispering to his companion) Excuse me... how do you know he's an engineer? It's the first time he’s come to our bar...

BARTENDER

Easy! Who else could read the classifieds for masseuses in the paper and, jotting down the name and phone number, fill a notebook with "A.A.A.A.A."?...

Confirming the bartender's intuition, the little man heads to the counter, where, amid general disturbance, he tries to strike up a conversation with patrons on some issues related to "Materials Engineering."
Suddenly, a roar shakes the Sunday sluggishness, while the lights go out and the bar plunges into darkness. It's chaos. The trendy lady loses the chihuahua, which - in one of those cases where it feels like Creation is governed according to balance criteria - ends up in the slush machine; the two teenagers take the chance to make out, though lamenting the lack of popcorn. Gino Castaldo, serene, hums "Smoke in your eyes" in the Dik Dik version.

CAREGIVER

(terribly frightened) ...Aaahh!!!

BARTENDER

My God! What's happening? I can't see anything...

CAREGIVER

There’s a fat man lying on floor with wig...

ERRAND BOY

Saints alive, it's true!

BACH

(trying to get up, unsuccessfully) Zu Hilfe, zu Hilfe… Sonst bin ich verloren!

LADY

He speaks a language we don't know...

BACH

So we speak as commanded. I know Greek and Arabic, I know Turkish and Vandal, and I also know Swabian and Tartar...

FILIPINO

I know this fat man with wig! Yesterday saw him on TV arguing with Sgarbi! It's Platinette!

BACH

Platinette?!? I'm called Bach! Johann Sebastian Bach!

Meanwhile, some volunteers try to lift him from the ground with tremendous effort

ERRAND BOY

(groaning from the effort and sweating like a sea lion) Whoever You are, I advise You to lose weight, sir...

BACH

Easy for you to say... in my time there were no energy bars, electro stimulators, or dissociative diets!

BARTENDER

Look on the bright side... In your time there probably wasn't even the "D di Repubblica" insert or "Donna Moderna".

MAN

Come on... Can we know who You are?

BACH

I told you... I'm Bach!

LADY

The one with the flowers?...

BACH

What flowers, excuse me?

LADY

I don’t know... At a Herbalife meeting, I heard a woman say her couperose problems went away with the flowers of a certain Bach...

BACH

I don’t know what you're talking about, meine Dame...

BOY

(as if finally enlightened) wait, wait... I know this guy. He does classical music. I know because the teacher made us do a research on Wikipedia! Damn, cool! Now I'll film him with my phone... Then I'll put it on YouTube!

GIRL

No! YouTube's rules are super strict! You’d have to beat him up before uploading, or they won’t accept it. And you already have high feedback after last week’s post... the one where you club our PE teacher while he’s smoking a joint dressed as the little match girl.

BACH

(disregarding the teenager) Finally I understand!… I'm in a review on a website!!!

BARTENDER

(to those present) Poor thing. He's babbling...

BACH

No, sir. It's the curse of us musicians. Once we’ve passed, we are doomed to expiate our sins by wandering through newspapers, posters, inserts, symposiums, roundtables… Basically, anywhere music criticism takes place. It’s the penalty that befalls us.

ERRAND BOY

Well... That's not such a terrible thing.

BACH

(sneering) Oh yes... Try telling that to poor Monteverdi. The other day I met him in a Matia Bazar review...

CASTALDO

(whispering to the bartender) It was definitely written by Il_Paolo...

BARTENDER

So, what do you mean to tell us?… That we don’t really exist? In which case, I would have paid a fortune to take over this bar...

BACH

Precisely.

BARTENDER

So, I wouldn’t exist except in the mind of one of those idiots who spends the day at a computer?

BACH

Something like that, yes!

BARTENDER

Couldn't I at least have ended up on a porn site?...

ERRAND BOY

(convincing himself) Maybe. I have a cousin who is the protagonist of a novel by that writer… what's his name?... Ah, yes! Moccia!

BARTENDER

I wouldn’t be so proud if I were you...

ERRAND BOY

Eh... but he gets a lot of action.

BACH

(pointing at the Ipod peeking from the kid’s jacket) And what’s that?

CASTALDO

It's an Mp3 player. It's used to listen to music, Maestro...

BACH

Don’t call me that, for the love of God! I once ended up in one of your reviews and saw that you call even Franco Battiato that.
(indicating a painting on the wall) And what kind of painting is that?!

BARTENDER

It's not a painting... It's called a "stereogram". Try looking at it... What do you see?

BACH

Nothing. Just meaningless clusters.

BARTENDER

Look at it with more focus... Try not to focus on the image but on an imaginary point behind it...

BACH

(squinting his eyes) But, really... I can only see an ocean of dots...

ERRAND BOY

Try harder...

BACH

(As if acquiring the gift of sight at that precise moment) Mein Gott! A dinosaur! I see it, I see it! Das ist unglaublich! How is this possible?

BARTENDER

You see... The secret is not to look at a precise spot. Don’t fix on a detail, but try to see the whole... Only then can it be seen.

BACH

(suddenly becoming pensive) You know... This is really very strange. You used my very words when I tried to explain the essence of my Goldberg Variations and "The Art of Fugue"...

LADY

(retouching her makeup) "The Art of Fugue"?...

BACH

Yes, ma’am. It’s my final work. Unfortunately, it was published only after my death in 1751. And it’s undoubtedly the most ambitious. I wanted to reproduce in music precisely that stereogram, or whatever it's called. Fourteen fugues and four canons each sound, in different ways, the same very simple melody. Every point of that image contributes to making it visible, just as every note I wrote helps to raise that sound cathedral I dreamed of.

LADY

So, you mean you wrote a piece and then re-did it in eighteen different ways?

BACH

Yes. More or less...

LADY

Well... That doesn’t seem like a big innovation. We have a singer named Venditti who’s been doing the same for thirty years.

BACH

I mean no disrespect to this Venditti, but my aspiration was different: to give birth to a creature capable of protecting its own greatness. Skilled in disguising its completeness, to be seized only by those who were genuinely willing to enter it.

ERRAND BOY

And did you succeed?

BACH

No. So much so that after my death, the work went practically unsold, despite the negligible price of 5 Thalers.

CASTALDO

Unsold?

BACH

Indeed! A predecessor of yours, one Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurg – one of the greatest music theorists of the time – even tried to spread the score with a preface written for the occasion. The price was also lowered to 4 Thalers, but after four years, only thirty copies had sold. The proceeds weren’t enough even to pay for the copper plates needed for the engravings.
At a certain point, I had to give in. And indeed my work is interrupted. If you listen to the sample (there must be a damn sample in this review, right?...), you’ll notice the pianist – who, incidentally, is Glenn Gould – stops at the beat of a measure, 239 to be precise. And everything remains truncated. Suspended. Like this.
You know... part of contemporary musicology believes I died right after writing that measure. In fact, on the score, my son Carl Philipp Emanuel wrote: "Über dieser Fuge, wo der Nahme BACH im Contrasubject angebracht worden, ist der Verfasser gestorben" ("While composing this fugue, in the point where the name BACH is introduced in the countersubject, the composer died"). But, you know... they’re kids...

LADY

So, you didn’t die at that moment?...

BACH

It doesn't matter much, my lady. And, if you don’t mind, I’d rather keep the mystery alive. You know, it contributes significantly to fueling the myth, a story like this... And who knows, maybe one day Milos Forman will even make a crappy movie about me.
What is certain is that truly, when I introduced my name into the Fugue, the circle closed. And the only possibility I had was to leave my work unfinished.

BARTENDER

But, excuse me... In what sense did you introduce your name into the Fugue?...

BACH

My work extinguishes with the German musical notation "B.A.C.H.," which corresponds to the notes B flat, A, C, B. It's the third theme of the last fugue. My name makes its appearance at measure 194. By measure 234, the development of the fugue cannot help but give way to silence.

ERRAND BOY

But why?

BACH

Try looking at the stereogram... Can you see the dots and the dinosaur at the same time?

ERRAND BOY

No.

BACH

Good. The same thing happens with my Art of Fugue. One cannot gaze at the sensation of infinity that it desires to unfold before our eyes and, at the same time, feel so limited.
To put it in popular terms, my interruption is akin to Michelangelo’s "Why don’t you speak?" He gave it a hammer blow, I lifted my hands from the harpsichord, and my son his pen from the score.

BARTENDER

Alright... now just tell us the truth. You're just a joker who wanted to fool us all. Forget about Bach... And anyway, I definitely do exist!

BACH

(almost paternal) No, sir, I'm sorry to disappoint you... You exist only on the site where this review will be published, namely that of Debaser.

ERRAND BOY

My God, that's horrible!

BACH

It shows you’ve never seen the Onda Rock site, sir... I also like to point out that the chances of this review being published – and therefore of you really existing – are as high as contracting tennis elbow by exchanging toothbrushes with Adriano Panatta. Most likely, the breed of editors will shove it straight into that limbo called "Literary Cases"...

ERRAND BOY

Oh, not that! I’ll set the editors on fire if that’s the case! I don’t want to be a literary case!

BARTENDER

(skeptical) But why, do you even know what an editor is?...

ERRAND BOY

Of course not! But I've always dreamed of charging with a lance against some mythological being.

BACH

(Looking at the clock) Unfortunately, my time is up... I hope to meet you again. Perhaps again here on Debaser, in a review on Iron Maiden. And especially, I hope to meet you, reader (turning to the audience).
On the other hand, forgive me… (slowly advancing toward the proscenium) If you believe in aromatherapy, the Superenalotto, anti-wrinkle night creams, Britney Spears' virginity, Vasco Rossi's transgression, Michael Bublé as the great novelty, the saints on the dashboard, and the genuineness of certain shades of Montalcini's hair color... why shouldn't you believe this review is mine?

The curtain slowly falls