The Naive

— Cornelis de Bondt

The parable of ‘The Wizard of the Keyboard’

Let us consider the following scenario: imagine a performance of a Bach fugue by an exceptionally skilled pianist, a true wizard of sound, but with one drawback: he has no idea what a fugue is. He has never heard of it. What would one hear then in his performance? Miraculous sounds, certainly something unheard of. The question then arises: is there something wrong with that? Must one necessarily be able to hear all the lines, all the thematic entries, all the structures, and so on? Is it not sufficient that a masterful piece is played in a masterfully refined, technically outstanding manner, and that furthermore, one hears something that one has not have heard before? Is that not the essence of art? Well, I believe the answer must be negative. Because what one hears is not ‘masterful’. At best, it is played ‘artistically’, but above all, naively. Only when this pianist has fully grasped the essence of the fugue, and then decides to ignore all thematic entries and lines, and focuses entirely on the sound, only then does one hear something truly worthwhile. The negation of what is undoubtedly an essential part of the fugue then gains meaning. One does not hear the absence of something, but the denial. That is a deed. Not an inability, but a choice. A choice with which one does not have to agree, but that does not matter much, because that is just a matter of personal taste.


The naive has no place in the matter of the beautiful; but perhaps it does in the matter of the sublime.

— Cornelis de Bondt, Loosduinen, March 17, 2024