In All Music There Is Bach

Abstract

No ordinary musician, Bach was a composer whose works were deeply influenced by personal faith and who expressed his theology through music. Transcending denominationalism, his compositions have an ecumenicity belonging to Church Tradition and express the movement of the human spirit reaching for the divine. Its universal, mystical tenor was never fully appreciated by his own cultural age, even though he was considered a great organist. Overlooked and later rediscovered, Bach drew inspiration from past composers for whom music as art was an expression of the longing of the human spirit for the divine, in contrast to an emerging view of art and culture as having the human person as the measure of all. A source of inspiration for later composers, the music is that of a man of the Church responding to the call of biblical narratives reflecting the faith for which Luther stood and about which Arndt wrote a text that was read by some Russian saints. It is the Church calendar, its rhythm of holydays and remembrances, that structured Bach’s life and work. Love for his theological music continues despite social and cultural upheavals.