sad descent, because afterward, nothing else occurs but the slow degradation of the form, so it is perhaps more correct to express it by saying that the whole thing isn’t even sad, but pitiful, a mockery, a long, drawn-out vulgar ceremony, but no, those who take part in this perpetually clamoring, false, base propaganda, hammering into us that music is, like art in general, a science, and altogether, that culture and civilization only advance in such a way that the whole thing, starting from some confusingly designated cause, goes onward and moreover surpasses itself again and again, that is it develops, and according to their conceptions, attains ever higher and higher levels; look upon them as people who, in a word, are there to mislead you with their prestige, and who not only keep silent, but try explicitly to ter-min-ate, to an-nih-il-late the fact that the history of music has its pinnacle, after which the entire history of music, summa summarum, begins to decline, in the end it simply rushes into vulgarities masked as a crisis, and drowns in a kind of sordid sticky flood, but enough about that, let us speak instead of how I ended up in all of this; perhaps it might be interesting if we were to pause for a moment at a little anecdote, for surely I, too, am aware — even though I’m not a professional lecturer, apart from these appearances organized by the district library through which, strictly between ourselves, I merely try to supplement my meager income — I am well aware that from time to time a little relief is called for, a small personal touch, as they say: a well-placed comic sentence, a little material drawn from experience, and in this case, I will offer just a brief account of an afternoon in the office where I go now and then as an early-retired pensioner, that is to say about that afternoon when, with maybe thirty similar architects, I was plying the trade completely senselessly, bent over a meaningless architectural blueprint for who knows how many times now, and the colleague sitting next to me, fiddling with the little pocket radio set out on the desk finally settled on one particular station, and left the dial there, and this, this random movement with which the finger of my co-worker stopped the dial right at that point, was fateful, I am not exaggerating, it had a fateful effect upon me, because there began to resound forth, of course in terrible quality and not for the first time in my life, but audible to me for the first time in my life, a faultless, eloquent melody, produced on the strings, together with a second faultless, eloquent melody, and then with another, and this, this melody-architecture having become wondrously complex, created with the leading part high above, such a heart-wrenching harmony, causing within me such joy, in that large, soulless, bleak architect-hangar, under the fluorescent lights, that I was simply breathless; well, I will stop here, although I recall with exactitude every single moment of that afternoon, and of course as well, what music was wavering, crackling, whining right next to me: an Oratorio of Caldara, one of the arias for Santa Francesca Romana, it was the Si Piangete Pupille Dolente, and so I have now incidentally betrayed that I entered the Baroque through a small side-gate, if I may express it in this way; he said and then again adjusted his suspenders with his right hand, and managing it only with difficulty, because his trousers, in spite of the suspenders, continually wanted to slip down beneath his gut, rolled into thick protuberances, in the meantime with his other hand he reached for the glass of water set on the table behind him, where otherwise he had also thrown his coat when he arrived, during which the eight people — six old women and two old men, who comprised, here in the village library, the courageous audience of this completely incomprehensible lecture, entitled “A Century and a Half of Heaven,” were given yet another opportunity to scrutinize the older gentleman who had arrived from the capital city, and to determine that naturally he had many peculiar features: the short, fat, yielding build, the few strands of hair brushed to the right side of his balding pate, the soft flabby double chin tipping over onto his chest, or his voice, which sounded as if someone were trying to scrape out stew-scraps from a saucepan with a wire brush, and the old-fashioned eyeglasses with black plastic frames that might have turned up on him only by mistake, because they were so large as to conceal that entire upper section of his face like scuba goggles, but it was really his gut that captured the attention of the locals, because this gut with its three colossal folds unequivocally sent a message to everyone that this was a person with many problems, it was no wonder that he was continually adjusting the elastic straps on his trousers, like someone who didn’t even trust in them himself, or like someone whose confidence in the straps built up gradually and cautiously, but had been lost time and time again, one nearly felt that one wanted to help him, because everyone sensed how these trousers were continuously, ceaselessly sliding downward across those three thick folds of fat, down toward the thighs, it is doubtful that any kind of trousers can be of any use at all with a gut like that, and that this gut could be of any use whatsoever to any kind of trousers, so that in a word the listening public, comprised of eight persons, was without exception preoccupied with these trousers, these suspenders, and this gut, for they understood not one solitary word of what the gut’s owner was talking about, and, moreover, the person in question spoke without pause, never lowering his voice once and never raising it, never subduing it and never strengthening it, and there was no pause and stop and rest and forbearance, he just spoke and spoke and spoke, he put the glass of water back on the podium borrowed from the school next door, and he said: well now, let’s get to the point, and let us take one of the masterpieces of Johann Sebastian Bach, the Quia Respexit Humilitatem from the Magnificat, in which the greatest musical genius of all times, in an aria for alto, created a kind of compound from pain and humility, from sorrow and supplication, clearly due to heavenly exhortation, which in and of itself could serve as enough of an example here, it would be enough just to speak of these small individual compositions for us to arrive at an instantaneous understanding of the essence of the Baroque, of that entire era, for that is our subject today, the Baroque, and this is what I have spoken of so far as well, and this is what I shall continue to speak of, for I maintain, and I can prove, that it was through the Baroque that music reached that divine sublimity I mentioned earlier, from where there was no going any further; and yet as it was only possible to sustain for a brief time — that is, it was not possible to sustain it — for that star within us that could have sustained it has inevitably died out, that star is extinct, its geniuses vanished into death, those who came after transcended them, transcended the so-called Baroque musical world, because this is the phrase the experts use, they “transcended” them, which is already itself a scandalous expression, and perfectly betrays just who we are dealing with here, what kind of characters employ such turns of phrase, because what does that mean, transcend them — transcend Monteverdi perhaps?! transcend Purcell?! transcend Bach?! — still, to transcend them, we should have transcended them by not listening to them — but that accursed 18th century, those accursed last decades, poisoned everything and destroyed everything, and made everyone unsure if they should listen to the words of the soul — or the mind, as they put it, the mind — the lecturer now shouted, and there was no one in the room who did not sense that a great wrath was trembling in his voice, even if, still, they had not the foggiest notion as to the meaning behind this wrath — and the mind, he shouted again, and to transcend — he raised his voice more and more, so much so that the more timid members of the audience began to steal cautious glances toward the exit, for, all of this — to speak in this vein — is not just baseness but iniquity, for they, the experts, knew full well whom they could honor in this Monteverdi, this Purcell, and this Bach, they knew exactly, and yet they still spoke of how time had passed them by, they announced this in unison, as if time could pass beyond something for which the medium is eternity — Sublime God in Heaven — the lecturer raised both of his hands toward the ceiling, freshly whitewashed not too long ago, he raised his hands and vehemently began to shake them, so then, after Monteverdi, after Purcell, after Bach, there comes someone who would be a greater genius in music? — or what?! — so who came after them?! — I ask you, the lecturer asked, now with lowered hands, and the public really began to feel uncomfortable, because it seemed, since he was looking at them, that they were the ones causing this problem, they were the ones he was angry at, saying: perhaps you’re thinking of Mozart?! about this child prodigy?! who was capable of everything as well as its opposite, are you thinking of this genius of