B.A.C.H.

A sculpture park was established in Halle on the grounds of a former cemetery. As a park, the cemetery is now a place of remembrance, relaxation, and communication. As a cultural space, it displays sculptures from recent years that were designed to reflect on topics from the Halle Bach Tage. This sculpture by Joachim Bandau was commissioned for the 2010 Halle Bach Tage and focuses on the theme of exodus.
The work comprises a row of four steel cubes that are each made up of four stacked steel plates. The top plate of each block is in the shape of a highly abstracted letter, spelling BACH when read together. Although they are only visible from the sides, the bottom three plates in each cube are also letters, so that each of the individual blocks contain the letters B, A, C, and H in different orders. As such, the cubes can each stand alone in terms of sense and meaning, and contain the name of the great German musical dynasty that significantly shaped the music of the 18th century.
This four-part sculpture can also be read as a work of word art. The four letters – whether hidden or readable– also stand for sounds. Letter and sound, word and image, name and music are the contents of this sculpture. Strict rhythm, linearity, compact overlapping of letters, demonstration, reversal, and variations of a theme characterize these four rough steel blocks and are reminiscent of the development of a fugue.
Compositional structures found in sculpture and music are brought together by this work.