Musical Fight

Bach, Ricercar a 6 (from The Musical Offering)
I'm reading Gnomon by Nick Harkaway and somewhere past the halfway mark he starts talking about a musical 'fight' between Johann S. Bach & Frederick the Great. A quick search turns up this story on The Guardian that gives us a good synopsis of the situation. The Musical Offering (excerpt above) was Johann's response to Frederick's challenge.

I am not a big fan of classical music, Rock & Roll is more my style. Lately though I have been listening to classical music when I am driving, mostly because the classical station doesn't have as much blather (people talking) as other stations. Also, occasionally, depending on the tune playing, I get the feeling of being in a scene from a movie. Scenes where we have someone driving down the road and the soundtrack is playing some classical music are fairly common.

The video embedded above gives a nice illustration of the notes being played.

Frederick has appeared here once before.