In Monday's Investors Business Daily, their weekly motivational article features J. S. Bach. If this link works, you can share this with your students. Enjoy.

Thanks!

Hi John. The link doesn't work for me. I click it and immediately get a box "An error occurred"...and no page comes up.

Thanks, John!

John, a heartfelt thank you. And apparently your post comes on New Year in some parts of the world - what a wonderful timing.

I love the quote...."You have five fingers on each hand that are just as healthy as mine." He had such a work ethic!

Thanks John. I saw everyone else could open it, and I still couldn't. So I googled the article and it came up.

I like this:
Glorify God and delight people through music.
Bach believed in the value of mentors.
"I was obliged to be industrious." J.S. Bach

Lying to economists that they can get the same satisfaction out of their work as Bach did.

What a bizarre comment. How do you know what satisfaction Bach got out of his work? Or Adam Smith, or JS Mill?

The article does not mention satisfaction anywhere. Essentially it says that Bach got a lot accomplished because he worked incessantly at his craft, and did not allow obstacles to interfere. "Motivation" in this case is not inspiring in a romantic kind of way. It is just how to get people to produce more. In a cold calculated way what it says is right: keep focusing on what you want to achieve, keep finding better ways of doing things, keep learning and improving, and you will achieve things in your profession. We, as (aspiring) musicians will want to read other things into it as well. But those things hold true for us as well.

Ha ha. Ann has a new toy!!!!

Yea, I was afraid of this. Blame it on AZNpiano!

It was a sombre comment made during a line of thought that arrived at my distaste for current-day civilization. I put it in the wrong words. What I meant was that by instructing people to work incessantly you simply indoctrinate them and introduce confusion. You don't liberate them to pursue their work out of their inner conviction for it you rather introduce an unnecessary doubt in their minds that there's someone do judge them. As you can see I too am way too indoctrinated in my social 'role' and am not really sure in my comments. I want to apologize if I've hurt anyone, wasn't my intent.

We actually may be coming from similar places. Of course Bach was used in a publication for economists, to get them to work hard until steam comes out of their brains, and the use of a great composer might be seen with cynicism. It's like "inspiration" from composing music translated into working hard for a company in a business that focuses on money. So your take makes sense.

But I was looking from the opposite angle. We idealize music and musicians. Music is inspiring, and the deeper side of music is not an illusion. But at the same time it is a craft, and a profession. Bach had to learn technical things just as much as the carpenter in his day had to be able to create furniture with perfect dimensions, understand wood types, design, mathematics and dimensions. Bach had to sign a contract with his employer, churn out particular types of music whether or not he felt like it. He had a job to do which was defined for him. But he did more with it, and he did it on his own terms according to his own values.

I wonder if that can be turned around again to your original concern. Can people in other occupations manage to put some of that into their own work and the way they live their lives?

I found that the link contained some fascinating tidbits about Bach, how he viewed life, how he worked, etc.

To me one of the marvels about the Net is that we get to read something that interesting in something like "Investors Business Daily", without having to read anything ELSE in "Investors Business Daily".

By the way, I recall reading some time in the past that Bach was almost fired from one of his first jobs because of introducing "radical new music" in the church for which he was working. Something like that.

It made me smile to think that someone who was often viewed as "conservative" later in his life was just as radical in his thinking as many of the famous composers who came later and became famous for "shaking things up".

For the record, my wife is pretty good at picking stocks for our retirement portfolio. However, I can pick losers with extreme precision and frightening regularity.

Here's another link, this time on Franz Liszt and his B minor sonata. Hope it works for you.

One more of interest. This is a book review of Mr. Isacoff's "A Natural History of the Piano" in which he explains how composers and pianists have entrusted to the piano their innermost feelings, perhaps more than to any other instrument.

John, picking stocks is easy. You only have to know one stock! It does nothing but go up. The business does well in good times, also does well in bad economic times. It continues to expand, sells a product that it inexpensive and enjoyed the world over. I won't tell you what it is, but one of its products starts with two all-beef patties. Have a nice McDay!