104th ride of 2020 - Tuesday, 8/25/2020

 2020 mileage: 2948.2

Again today, I wanted to honor Michelle's request that I keep my ride short. I had been riding 30+ miles/day frequently in recent weeks, but in her perception, this tiredness this brought about was a contributory cause in several recent falls I've taken, so she asked me to scale back the rides for a while.

Accordingly, I rode my Packard/Platt Square, plus one loop in Stonebridge, for a total of 16.5 miles in 1:51.

While riding today, I listened to Bach's French Suites. There are 6 of these, and each is a collection of six or seven movements for keyboard, related to various Baroque dance types. I used to keep my score of them (along with several other types of Bach keyboard works) open on the piano in my office when I was teaching at Olivet College (1987-1993), and when I had a few minutes free time (say, between classes, or before a rehearsal), I'd sit down and sight-read through some of them just for fun.

The performance I listened to today was by Murray Perahia, on a modern grand piano. But this was an instrument which Bach never imagined, since it wasn't developed until a century after his 1750 death. In his day, they would have been played on the clavier (either harpsichord or clavichord).

Here is a performance of one of my favorite of these movements:

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