Bach: Luther’s Musical Prophet?

Abstract

It is impossible to read much theological analysis of Bach without encountering Martin Luther. The reformer's name is ubiquitous: he is given both as source and as ultimate authority for the theological ideas supposedly expressed in Bach's music. To cite just a few examples: according to two theologically minded interpreters of Bach, Lothar Steiger and Renate Steiger, Bach's church music "was theologically grounded solely on Luther's teaching about the Word of God and of the essence of music" (1992:15). Bach scholars even cite Luther's love of music and his assertions of its divine origin as the fundamental impulse behind Bach's work: Robin Leaver writes that the key to "opening the door on the whole world of Bach's innermost conceptions and ideas" will be found in "the writings of the reformer Martin Luther" (1978:30). Rather less approvingly, Richard Taruskin argues that Bach's church music "was a medium of truth, not beauty, and the truth it served-Luther's truth-was often bitter" (2005, 2:363). I imagine that few scholars today would go as far as Hans PreuB, who declared in 1922 that "Bach is Luther" (1922:15). However, most would agree that Luther provides a vital context for interpreting Bach's sacred music. Perhaps it is unsurprising that musicologists have turned to Luther when interpreting Bach. Despite many critiques of the hermeneutic method-such as that of Carolyn Abbate (2004)-musicologists still search out meaning in music by investigating a suitable "horizon of expectations" within which to situate music's meaning and affect historically. My own view is that hermeneutics is inescapable to most of us brought up within the musicological tradition; I tend to agree with Karol Berger's assertion, contra Abbate, that "we cannot help it: we are hermeneutic creatures through and through" (2005:497). Abbate argues for the privileging of the experience of performed music over its hermeneutic interpretation; Berger counters that, while aesthetic experience is indeed an important and under-appreciated part of academic study, the hermeneutic and the experiential cannot be so neatly separated. I side with Berger on this point: whether because of training, conditioning, or instinctive response, many-perhaps most-listeners to Bach's music seem to want to contextualize and understand their