August 6, 2001, published in Radix Magazine 28:4, pp 22-24

Bach gives us hope when we are afraid; he gives us courage when we despair; he comforts us when we are tired; he makes us pray when we are sad; and he makes us sing when we are full of joy. [7]

Three days ago, I cracked open my new box of 153 CDs that compose the complete extant works of Johann Sebastian Bach. After a decade-long pilgrimage into Bach's music, I have not had a greater visceral sense of the man's (dare I say), superhuman, accomplishments than in schlepping home the fifteen-pound box that contained two hundred church cantatas, the Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, the Brandenburg Concertos, the B Minor Mass. Though he has been dead for 251 years now (world-wide Bach megabashes last year commemorated the 250th anniversary of his death), his presence lives on in concert halls, practice rooms, church choirs, and the hearts of Bach lovers like me.  Of course, I am certain that Papa Bach would be bemused by the birthday party I threw for him, my clumsy “dances” to his music, the Bach tunes sung in showers, my Halloween wig and t-shirt ("The Bach World Tour"), and the dozens of emails over the years pleading with friends to attend yet another performance of the St. Matthew Passion.   I am a fool for Bach.

I take some comfort that I am not the lone member of the cult of Bach.   A perennial problem is finding adequate words for explaining the wonders of Bach to the uninitiated.  Over the years, I have shouted amen to Bernard Greenberg's essay on his J. S. Bach FAQ website:

Those of us who admire Bach and his work the most find in his work perfect unity and balance of emotional subtlety and depth with an awesome, unrivalled depth of technical means and architecture by which they are achieved. While Bach's work can and should be admired for its unmatched beauty and emotional power alone, careful study reveals a use of complex, formal, technical means and structures from which Bach brings forth that height of human feelings in a way that reveals the workings of one of the supreme intellects of all time.[5]

And so the hosannas arise -- Bach is one of our Ultimate Iconic Human Beings.  Because of Bach's profound influence on Western music (probably second to none) and his enduring popularity, many commentators are wont to describe his music as universal.   In an advertising brochure,  the Prince of Wale is quoted as describing Bach as "surely the most universal composer of this last millennium." [1]   Prince Charles actually underestimates  Bach's potential appeal.   In a whimsical essay about the search for extra-terrestial intelligence, Lewis Thomas asked the question of what humans would have to say to sentient life in space.  He proposed that we communicate with music, specifically "Bach, all of Bach, streamed out into space, over and over again."  In a comment that warms the hearts of Bach lovers, Lewis continues, "We would be bragging, of course."[11]    In 1977,  Voyager 1 and 2 were launched into space.  Each spacecraft carried a 12-inch gold-plated copper disk that had, among its images, words, and sounds, three selections from J. S. Bach.  

Back on earth, when as an undergraduate, I knew Bach only as the composer of such instrumental works as the Brandenburg Concertos, I would have been untroubled by claims of Bach's universality. But now, as I embark on a three-year immersion into the life and work of Bach (in emulation of Peter Drucker's practice of focusing on a new subject area every several years [4] ), I am singularly fascinated by the question posed recently by John Butt:   "Why does Bach's music still have relevance in a pluralistic, relativistic age? If it does indeed possess an element of universality, how can this be possible, and what are the parameters of discussion?" [3]  

Before hearing the grim choral lament that opens the St. Matthew Passion blasting from a friend’s dorm room, I had little idea that Bach was also a prolific composer for the church.  Among his church music are two hundred extant sacred cantatas, written for voice and instruments to be performed after the gospel lesson as part of the Lutheran liturgy.  A handful of these cantatas, the St. Matthew Passion, and the Mass in B Minor have gradually become the deepest artistic embodiment and touchstone of my own Christian experiences. For several years immediately following my baptism, a poster-size score of the Confiteor from the B Minor Mass ("I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins.")  hung on my bedroom wall.   I often glanced at that score as I sang  the Confiteor karaoke-style, remembering not only my own baptismal confession of faith but all that of the many Christians before me who sang the same mass text.   Its intricate counterpoint, the blending of multiple melodic voices that nevertheless harmonize with one another, consistently inspires me to dream of heaven where I will be able to jam (to Bach?) with saints from every nation:  diversity in unity.

Living in Berkeley, working at a great secular, highly pluralistic, arguably relativistic, university, I am reminded daily how non-universal the Christian faith that grounds me seems to be.  How then can Bach's music--at least a large part of which was born within the context of 18th century Lutheranism, no less--be universal?   In the same brochure that quotes Prince Charles, John Elliot Gardiner writes:  "More than that of any other composer, Bach's music reminds us that we have a common, human heritage.  Although steeped in the Lutheran liturgy, his church music carries a universal message of hope and faith which can touch us all, regardless of our culture, religion, or musical knowledge."[1]  Is there truly a "universal message of hope and faith which can touch us all" in Bach's music?  Does focusing on a "common, human heritage" do justice to the music?   Calvin Stapert, in distinguishing between the "essential Bach" (that of the cantatas and Passions) and the "canonical Bach" (the popular Bach of the concert hall), argues that essential Bach -- the heart and soul of Bach's music -- has been marginalized because of the "post-Enlightenment preference for generic religious feeling over an explicit Christian message." [8, p. 5]  The quote that Stapert draws from Richard Taruskin's provocative essay, "Facing Up, Finally, to Bach's Dark Vision" is worth repeating:

Anyone exposed to Bach's full range...knows that the hearty, genial, lyrical Bach of the concert hall is not the essential Bach.  The essential Bach was an avatar of a pre-Enlightened--..., a violently anti-Enlightened--temper.  His music was medium of truth, not beauty.  And the truth he served was bitter.  His works persuade us -- no, reveal   to us--that the world is filth and horror, that humans are helpless, that life is pain, that reason is a snare....Such music cannot be prettified in performance without essential loss.  For with Bach--the essential Bach--there is no 'music itself.' His concept of music derived from and inevitably contained The Word, and the word was Luther's.[10, p.310]

As a Bach amateur (in the sense of both beginner and lover), I am no position to offer any definitive answers concerning the question of universality.   The significance of Christianity in the work and life of Bach continues to be debated.  The question of whether Bach himself was a devout follower of Jesus will unlikely never be completely settled, not only because we have little documentary evidence for revealing the "true Bach", but because we simply want our heroes to be big versions of ourselves.  I myself believe that the man who could create such stunning interpretations of Christian discipleship and who signed JJ (Jesu Juva) and SDG (Soli Deo Gloria) on manuscripts that were unlikely to be seen by anyone else but God was a disciple of Christ.  Fellow Bach acolytes disagree.   "What is astonishing, and in the end, inexplicable is that music which makes so few concessions to the listener should enjoy an immense popular following....Every generation of music lovers seems to find in the works of this incomparable artist that Gemütsergötzung, that 'refreshment of the spirit', which his title-pages promised, and which his music so richly provides." [2, pp. 244-245]

My friends, and even acquaintances, know that I have been a Fool for Bach, who preaches the good news of Bach.  But do they know the love I have for Jesus?  Am I also fool for Christ or a man who loves the icon more than the Reality?   "But Bach the man lies hidden behind that stupendous body of work, and so it is hard to imagine him as anything but superhuman: many music lovers are apt to get Bach mixed up with God."[9]   And the good news of Bach, I realized yesterday, is hard to hear and speak at times.  In the sad goodbyes to a dear friend, my heart draws comfort from Bach's cantata 106 ("God's time is the very best time"), music that would be alien and inappropriate to that farewell gathering. 

At this point, I need to state the obvious:  the sacred is ultimately larger than the music of Bach.  The passion I feel for Bach is akin to the love others have for Beethoven or the Beatles.   I am thankful for those close to me who have tolerated my tendency to prate about this Cosmic Bach.  Could they be thinking what Alex Ross wrote last year:  "When people talk about Bach, they often sound like Erich von Stroheim in 'Sunset Boulevard,' as he intones, in tribute to Norma Desmond, 'She vas de greatest of dem all.' .... One can end up saying, in a distinctly off-putting way, not only that Bach...is the greatest but also that everything else is worthless."   [6]

But as for me, I will praise Jesus – who created not only Johann Sebastian Bach, but a world capable of knowing such great joy through the music of this amazing artist.

SDG (Soli Deo Gloria) "To God alone [be] [the] Glory."

References

[1]  John Eliot Gardiner's Bach-Cantata Project (advertising brochure), Archiv Produktion, 2000.

[2]  Boyd, M. Bach. Oxford University Press, New York, 2000.

[3]  Butt, J. The Saint Johann Sebastian Passion (Review). New Republic, 33 (July 10, 2000).

[4]  Drucker, P.F. My Life as a Knowledge Worker Inc. Magazine, 1997. http://www.inc.com/articles/details/printable/0,3535,CID1169_REG6,00.html

[5]  Greenberg, B.S. J. S. Who?  What's so great about J. S. Bach?, 1996. http://www.bachfaq.org/whybach.html

[6]  Ross, A. Bach 2K. The New Yorker (March 6, 2000). 88-90.

[7]  Siemon–Netto, U. J.S. Bach in Japan. First Things, 104. 15-17. http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0006/opinion/siemon-netto.html

[8]  Stapert, C.R. My Only Comfort:  Death, Deliverance, and Discipleship in the Music of Bach. Eerdmans Publishing Co, Grand Rapids, MI, 2000.

[9]  Swafford, J. The Vintage Guide to Classical Music. Vintage Books (Random House), New York, 1992.

[10]  Taruskin, R. Facing Up, Finally, to Bach's Dark Vision. in Text and Act:  Essays on Music and Performance, Oxford University Press, New York, 1995, 307-315.

[11]  Thomas, L. Ceti. in Lives of a Cell:  Notes of a Biology Watcher, Viking Press, New York, 1974, 42-46.