The motley mediators at a Bach Concert

 If you hear the eerily beautiful noise of the violin cords, this mediation adds to the quality of your pleasure, exactly as much as the plot you have just read on the program, or the envious glance that you got from a friend who learned that you had been able to get a seat for this most vaunted performance. More exactly, you do not have to build a stable hierarchy of those mediators to find it acceptable to consider that Bach's work is indeed "made up" of all these elements associated and combined, no matter how. Extracting from it the "real core" of Bach's work will not necessary strike you as an important task. Bach, you will say, is made of "all that," snobbery and execution included, scores and lighting, ticketing and pietism, CDs and numerology.