Almost every summer, our youngest Interlochen campers approach me with some variation of the riddle: “What’s J.S. Bach doing these days?”
Their answer is “decomposing.” Cute huh?
I tell them that even when he was alive, Bach was decomposing… quite frequently.
Decomposition is a process in which the complex components of something are separated into simpler elements which can be reused.
If Bach composed by putting melody, harmony and rhythm into an organized form, he could decompose by separating out a melody to insert into another piece. And he did. Often.
I suppose the term “decompose” isn’t quite as appropriate in this context. Musicians might say a composer "reworked" a phrase or a melody from one piece and inserted it into another.
And Bach wasn’t the only one (or 14). Handel, Copland and Barber… to name just a few… incorporated folk songs, borrowed from other composers’ work or recycled their own tunes into their compositions.
This time of year, I cherish every sunny day ,and every chance I get to walk in the forest to breathe in the special scent of late fall.
Now with the distraction of color merely a memory, I focus on the fruity odors wafting from the leaves that carpet the forest floor.
The fragrance, according to researchers, is the smell of decomposition… a combination volatile oils called terpenes and pinenes. These scents are familiar--the aroma of fresh Christmas greens---the smells of a growing pine forest on a summer day.
An unimaginable number of microorganisms: bacteria, fungi, soil flora and fauna consume the carbohydrates from autumn leaves, but then release organic compounds, nutrients and minerals which enrich the soil and are absorbed by trees to be recycled for future growth.
So the smell of autumn is the essence of the summer past, the memories of the growing season, captured in fragrance.
And in a very real way, the autumn fragrance is a promise of summers to come, for out of decomposition comes new life. Or, new music.
