… Bach Was Far More Religious Than You Might Think - The New York Times. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Citing one of Bach’s annotations on music as key progressivist testimony, John Eliot Gardiner, in his 2013 biography “Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven,” wrote: “Bach understood that the more perfectly a composition is realized, both conceptually and through performance, the more God is immanent in the music. ‘NB,’ he wrote in the margin of his copy of Abraham Calov’s Bible commentary, ‘Where there is devotional music, God with his grace is always present.’ This strikes me as a tenet that many of us as musicians automatically hold and aspire to whenever we meet to play music, regardless of whatever ‘God’ we happen to believe in.”
What a lovely, modern idea! Alas, no aspect of it could possibly have been part of Bach’s understanding.
As regards the following:
ReplyDeleteBoth Bach’s music and his Calov notations put powerful stress upon: (1) contempt for human reason, along with the exalting of biblical revelation as the proper arbiter of truth; (2) disparagement of notions of human autonomy and achievement, along with the exalting of dependence on God, including for one’s position in the social hierarchy; (3) contempt — explicit or implicit — for Judaism, Catholicism and Islam, along with the exalting of orthodox Lutheranism; (4) disdain for foreigners, along with the exalting of German faithfulness and goodness; and (5) the emphatic exalting of monarchical power, as authorized not by the people but by God. Nowhere in Bach’s music or Calov notations are these sentiments contradicted.
I was wondering if acceptance of one's position in the social hierarchy, and disdain for other religions and of foreigners are conservative principles.
They don’t strike me as such, though a respect for reason’s limitations. Moreover, The B-minor Mass hardly comes off as anti-Catholic. Perhaps his notions changed over time.
ReplyDeleteYes, I felt the same too. The writer may have stretched his argument a little there.
ReplyDelete