WE are apt to think that great composers were always so. Yet, to adapt Shakespeare, few are born great and many have greatness thrust upon them after their deaths.

Take J S Bach. Working for Prince Leopold at Cthen during his thirties, he was generally regarded as a competent journeyman, no more. The young prince was ten years his junior, but enjoyed playing the harpsichord and viola da gamba when politics allowed.

Their relationship is the raison d'tre of David Napthine's Playing For Time. Bach comes across as a crusty old grump, middle-aged before his time, who - like many musicians before and since - regarded his art as taking precedence over just about anybody or anything that appeared to threaten it. He had spent a month in jail for rudeness to a duke before being allowed to join Leopold's court.

Music for Leopold was a pastime, not a profession, that buoyed his always fragile health and offered a solace from his domineering mother. The play puts flesh on the bones of these divergent characters, as differences in social status gradually yielded to grudging admiration.

Bach wrote at least two of his three sonatas for viola da gamba while at Cthen. They represent the fullest flowering of music for the instrument before it capitulated to the cello. To hear all three as part of the play was not merely a bonus. It also set a Baroque ambience that any amount of scenery would have struggled to establish.

Greg Pullen's gamba grew increasingly fluent, unexpectedly revealing gradual advances in Bach's technique. Duncan Brown's harpsichord was a steady, calming influence.

Napthine himself played the composer as something of a firebrand, matched by Chris Price's equally determined Leopold. A fascinating sidelight to musical history.

Updated: 10:38 Tuesday, April 05, 2005