BKCGS Member Directory
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R.J. Bergmann
When I was four years old, a German great-aunt I barely remember sent me the gift of a tiny, quarter-size classical guitar, complete with nylon strings. Some years later, I started lessons, and though presented with standard rock-pop fare, somehow knew that what I really needed was the thing no one would think to offer a child: the Classical Stuff. In retrospect, it was an expression of the fact that I already knew I was different from my peers; many genderqueer kids figure ourselves out early, as I did, and Aguado and Sor were my refuge from the constant existential chafing of the Top 40s.
These decades later, I am a professor of Comparative Literature dedicated to the study of the relationship between words and music and the ways human beings, longing for means of expression in one medium, and often end up seeking it in the another, or finding ways to turn one into the other. I wrote a dissertation on German Lieder and the philosophy of art song titled "Half a Life: Dialectics of Music and Poetry in German and English Art Song" and continue to write and speak on the subject as often as I can. Among the miracles of the project: the lovely, sudden realization that the Dowland transcriptions I'd grown up playing were in fact early instances of art song--English lute song--so that my care for the lyric soul of the guitar had come full circle, from my German great aunt to Schubert and back.
After a long break spanning much of my education, it's been a gift to return to guitar lessons under the tutelage of my very patient and expert teacher, Gohar Vardanyan, who has helped me achieve just a hint of the discipline and musical proficiency long missing from my practice. My heartfelt thanks to BKCGS for giving me a place to explore some and share these recent learnings with fellow players and friends of the guitar!
Please check out my ongoing project, The School for the Humanities (now online, someday in the flesh), aimed at to giving the high-level Humanities (not least of all musicology) a stable and salubrious life independent the vicissitudes of corporate higher education.
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