Bach Akademie Australia interwove music with speech in its Weapons of Rhetoric program, illustrating the parallels between words and music. Music, after all, is a form of speech with its own script in the form of notation. Ten musicians of the ensemble, led by director and solo violinist Madeleine Easton, were joined by writer-actor Jonathan Biggins and barrister Jonathan Horton QC, commentating and engaging in repartee. Based on the eponymous book by Judy Tarling (2004), Weapons of Rhetoric used the musical language of JS Bach to question and answer, refute and agree, debate and expostulate, puzzle and solve.

The formidable program focused on works by Bach which especially illustrate the devices of imitation, canon and fugues, inversion, mirroring, reversal, palindromes and the many other games that Bach wove into his writing.

Back Akademie Australia performing its Weapons of Rhetoric program at Verbrugghen Hall, Sydney Conservatorium of Music, on 11 June. Photo courtesy Australian Digital Concert Hall.

Introducing this idea of rhetoric in music was the Sonata No...