Published in Trefoil (no.271) and AD 2000 (Feb 2007) Australia
“The
aim and final reason of all music should be none else but the glory of God and
the recreation of the mind. Where this
is not observed, there will be no music, but only a devilish hubbub”. (J.S. Bach)
J.S.
Bach (1685 – 1750) came from a long line of composers – generations of Bachs –
but none were as illustrious as he, nor as saintly – one, in fact, Wilhelm
Friedemann, though a master of his art, was “a man of idle and dissolute
habits”. J.S. Bach was not only the
greatest genius in the whole family, but was also a genuinely holy man. In every one of his musical manuscripts he
ended with: “Soli Deo Gloria” (to God be the Glory), having begun with the prayer
“Jesus Juva” (Jesus help!). (1)
In
fact, if Bach had been a Catholic, his exemplary conduct and inspiring works
would have led to his canonization long ago!
A
delightful book written just after the 2nd World War by the German author, Johannes
Rüber, called Bach and the Heavenly Choir, tells the fictional story of
a violin-playing Pope Gregory, who was Pope also after the 2nd World
War, and who attempted to get Bach’s name entered in the list of saints. He believed that this would help reunite
Catholics and Lutherans, and bring about Christian unity.
It
is not so far-fetched when one looks at Bach’s life and work. He was a good husband and father, who was
generous in the time he devoted to his wife and many children, as well as being
an extraordinary hospitable person as his home was always full of visitors. In
Rüber’s book: Pope Gregory’s Devil’s Advocate, was at a loss to dig up anything
negative about J.S. Bach in the Canonization process!
Though
he was a good Lutheran, Bach left a huge corpus of sacred music to cover the
entire liturgical year, and this included Latin Masses written for the Catholic
Court of Dresden.
Albert
Schweitzer, in his monumental study on Bach, said that “the distinction between
Protestant and Catholic church music, of which we hear so much, had not made
it’s appearance at that epoch”. (1) Even Bach’s mighty arrangement of Ein Feste
Burg is based on an earlier Gregorian chant.
In
fact, Bach was very catholic (with a small ‘c’) in his tastes. Not only did he have Luther’s books on his
bookshelf, but also the sermons of the German Catholic priest and mystic,
Johannes Tauler O.P. (2) Bach certainly
was no narrow-minded prude, as is borne
out by his strong opposition to Pietism, and he was not averse to an occasional
glass of wine!
Pietism
was opposed to art and instruments of any kind in worship and the musical
performances of the Passion were a particular abomination to it. Yet in keeping with the New Testament
injunction to test everything and hold fast to what is good (1 Thess 5:20) Bach
“invested with his music poetry filled with the breath of Pietism” (3) and the
world is all the richer for it.
Schweitzer
believed that Bach’s real religion was mysticism and “in his innermost essence
he belongs to the history of German mysticism.
This robust man, who seems to be in the thick of life with his family
and his work, and whose mouth seems to express something like comfortable joy
in life was inwardly dead to the world.
His whole thought was inwardly transfigured by a wonderful serene
longing for death”. Hear his Cantatas:
‘Come Sweet Death’, ‘I have enough’ (BWV82) and also BWV106, 131, 99, 56 and
158. Truly his life was ‘hidden with Christ
in God’ (see Col. 3:3)
Like
St Francis of Assisi, Bach could welcome ‘Sister Death, that most loathsome of
things’. Bach’s works appear to have an
unhealthy emphasis on death as he gives a disproportionate amount of his time
to the subject. Yet, according to psychologists like Jung, this is not a bad
thing. The latter maintained that it is
good to discover in death a goal towards which one can strive and that
shrinking away from it is something unhealthy and abnormal. (4) Bach certainly found a goal in death – the
best goal of all – for one notices in Cantatas like “Come Sweet Death” that,
for Bach, death and Jesus were interchangeable terms. Like St Paul, he faithfully believed that ‘to
live is Christ, and to die is gain’ (Phil. 1:21). To the believer nothing can separate us from
the love of Christ, neither here nor in the hereafter.
Bach’s
catholicity (still a small ‘c’) extended to other composers like the Catholics
Couperin, Palestrina, Albinoni, Carissimi, and especially the Italian priest,
Antonio Vivalidi, many of whose works Bach arranged for other instruments. Sir Kenneth Clarke maintains that “to some
extent Bach’s music grew out of the Italian Style”. (5)
Bach’s
son, Johann Christian, inherited his father’s catholicity, as he eventually
went to study in Italy under the Franciscan composer and Priest, Padre Martini,
and became an organist at Milan Cathedral, eventually becoming a Roman Catholic
himself. Bach’s most famous son, C.P.E.
Bach thought nothing of taking commissions from Catholic Austria.
Bach,
as I have said, was catholic in his tastes, and his admirers have also been
universal from the philosophers Hegel & Nietzsche to Jean-Paul Sartre, who
was a passionate lover of Bach’s music, and became a believer in God before he
died – perhaps in some measure due to Bach’s influence. There are reports of hundreds of secular
Japanese inspired by his music, converting to Christianity. Bach’s popularity in Japan is so great that
the classes at the Felix Mendelssohn Academy in Bach’s hometown at Leipzig are
filled with Japanese students desirous of learning more of the spirit that made
Bach compose such inspirational music. (6)
Roger Fry once remarked that ‘Bach almost persuades me to be a
Christian’. (7)
The
secular Jewish philosopher, Edith Stein, has suffered doubts about the
existence of God in the face of evil, and tells in her autobiography of how she
was freed from the pain of this doubt by attending a concert of Bach which
brought her joy and restored her hope. (8)
The
popular modern day Israeli composer, Benjamin Bar-am, wrote of the ‘almost
ungraspable greatness of (Bach’s) music and it’s unparalleled peak of human
inspiration, spirituality and expression of musical greatness’. (9)
No
wonder Johannes Rüber, in his little book, talks of Bach as a “5th
Evangelist” and that “even his secular pieces are hymns to the glory of God and
God’s joy”. (10)
I
have personally enjoyed Bach since the 1960’s when he reached the British Top
Ten pop charts via Procul Harum’s ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale’ single based on a
Bach piece, through ‘Switched on Bach’ played on the moog synthesizer, the
Swingle singers “Jazz Sebastian Bach” and the Jacques Loussier ‘Play Bach Trio’
as well as the massive orchestral arrangements of Leopold Stokowski. So I disagree with Karl Bath who believed
that in Heaven the angels play Bach for formal occasions and on their time off
they play Mozart in their jam sessions!
I suggest that the heavenly choir also play “Play Bach Trio” numbers, as
well as Jazz Sebastian Bach!
With
my tapes and CD’s I find that I can follow almost the entire liturgical year
(‘the Eternal Year’) through the music of Bach, from his fabulous Christmas
Oratorio, through his sorrowful Passions Matthew and John, to his glorious
Easter Oratorio.
In
1977 two Voyager spacecrafts were launched to contact aliens in outer space,
and included on board was a 90 minute disc of music, including three pieces by
Bach , including the Partita no. 3 for solo Violin, so loved by “Pope Gregory”
in Rüber’s book.
The
biologist, Lewis Thomas, was asked what message he thought should be sent to
the outer space aliens. He answered “the
complete works of J.S. Bach”, and then added as an afterthought, “But that
would be boasting”! (11)
FOOTNOTES
1. Lynne Broughton, Bach the Evangelist,
sermon given at Clare College,
Cambridge, 3/2/91.
2. Albert Schweitzer. J.S. Bach, V.I,
p.52.
3. Albert Schweitzer, p.168.
4. Albert Schweitzer, p.169.
5. Carl Jung, Modern man in search of a
soul.
6. Kenneth Clarke, Civilization, BBC,
1969, p.226.
7. Breakpoint, 10 March 2000.
8. Paul Theodoulou, Cyprus Mail,
17/12/1995.
9. A.D. 2000 Magazine, Australia, August
1995.
10. Jerusalem Post, 25 April 1995.
11. J. Rüber, Rupert Hart-Davis, 1956, p.33.
12. Paul Theodoulou, 18/08/96.
