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<\/a>Alex Ross, music critic for The New Yorker\u00a0<\/em>has written a fascinating piece on Bach\u2019s theology. \u00a0He says that while much research of the past tried to look at Bach in purely secular terms, today\u2019s scholarship is attempting to unpack the musical impact\u00a0of his\u00a0Lutheranism.<\/p>\nRoss reviews several recent\u00a0books on the subject, including one that tries to read into Bach\u2019s music elements of anti-semitism, as if that is what Lutheranism is all about. \u00a0(Despite Luther\u2019s senile ravings at the end of his life, Lutheran theology at the very least removed the stigma that Jews are to be blamed as\u00a0Christ-killers\u2013what the book in question is looking for in Bach\u2019s Passions\u2013<\/em>since Lutheran theology sees Christ\u2019s death as the result of all human sin,\u00a0making possible their redemption.) \u00a0In reading the review of the books, which touches on the struggles and spiritual dynamism reflected in Bach\u2019s music, I was struck by how little outsiders know about the distinctive, unique \u00a0elements of Lutheran spirituality, such as the contrast between Cross and Glory, and the spiritual desolation known as\u00a0Anfechtung<\/a>. \u00a0These would be highly relevant to Bach\u2019s music, accounting for some of what these scholars otherwise struggle to explain.<\/p>\n But I love Ross\u2019s close readings of Bach\u2019s music, particularly, St. John\u2019s Passion,\u00a0<\/em>in which he shows the Biblical and theological meaning of the musical structures the composer employs. \u00a0I love this quotation of\u00a0one the authors: \u00a0\u201cMarissen identifies himself as an agnostic, but adds that in the vicinity of Bach\u2019s music he will never be a \u201ccomfortable<\/em> agnostic.\u201d \u00a0I love that so much of this research draws on the copy of Bach\u2019s annotated Bible<\/a> held by Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, which Ross discusses. \u00a0And I love the overall question asked by this article and by the books themselves: \u00a0How is it that music based on\u00a0such archaic theological ideas can connect so profoundly with people in our time? \u00a0(I would answer that Bach is evidence that Lutheranism itself, properly understood, can connect profoundly with people in our time.)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n From Alex Ross,\u00a0Bach\u2019s Holy Dread \u2013 The New Yorker<\/a>:<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cBach & God\u201d<\/a> (Oxford) is the splendid title of a new book by Michael Marissen, a professor emeritus at Swarthmore College. It brings to mind two approximately equal figures engaged in a complicated dialogue, like Jefferson and Adams, or Siskel and Ebert. The book is one of a number of recent attempts to grapple with Bach\u2019s religiosity. Others are Gardiner\u2019s \u201cBach: Music in the Castle of Heaven<\/a>\u201d (Knopf); Eric Chafe\u2019s \u201cJ. S. Bach\u2019s Johannine Theology<\/a>\u201d (Oxford); and John Butt\u2019s \u201cBach\u2019s Dialogue with Modernity: Perspectives on the Passions<\/a>\u201d (Cambridge). All ask, in different ways, how we should approach works whose devotional intensity is alien to most modern listeners. Marissen identifies himself as an agnostic, but adds that in the vicinity of Bach\u2019s music he will never be a \u201ccomfortable<\/em> agnostic.\u201d<\/p>\n Previous Bach scholarship tended to take a more secular tack. Many of us grew up with an Enlightenment Bach, a nondenominational divinity of mathematical radiance. Glenn Gould\u2019s commentary on the \u201cGoldberg Variations\u201d spoke of a \u201cfundamental coordinating intelligence.\u201d One German scholar went so far as to question the sincerity of Bach\u2019s religious convictions. But the historically informed performance movement, in trying to replicate the conditions in which Bach\u2019s works were first played, helped to restore awareness of his firm theological grounding. Recorded surveys of the two hundred or so sacred cantatas, including Gardiner\u2019s epic undertaking in 1999 and 2000, have brought Bach\u2019s spirituality to the forefront. To what extent does he faithfully transmit Lutheran doctrine? What did he privately believe? Marissen also confronts an issue that many prefer to avoid: do Bach\u2019s Passions project anti-Semitism?. . . .<\/p>\n The book that perhaps reveals more of Bach than any other can be found at the Concordia Seminary, in St. Louis. By chance, that organization came into possession of Bach\u2019s copy of Abraham Calov\u2019s three-volume edition of the Bible, which contains Luther\u2019s translation of the Bible alongside commentaries by Luther and Calov. Bach made notes in it and, in 1733, signed his name on the title page of each volume. The marginalia establish the fervor of his belief: no Sunday Christian could have made such acute observations. Bach singles out passages describing music as a vessel of divinity: in one note, he observes that music was \u201cespecially ordered by God\u2019s spirit through David,\u201d and in another he writes, \u201cWith devotional music, God is always present in his grace.\u201d The annotations also seem to reveal some soul-searching. This passage is marked as important, and is partly underlined: \u201cAs far as your person is concerned, you must not get angry with anyone regardless of the injury he may have done to you. But, where your office requires it, there you must get angry.\u201d One can picture Bach struggling to determine whether his \u201calmost continual vexation\u201d stemmed from his person or his office\u2014from vanity or duty.<\/p>\n Yes, Bach believed in God. What is harder to pin down is how he positioned himself among the theological trends of the time. The Pietist movement, which arose in the late seventeenth century, aimed at reinvigorating an orthodox Lutheran establishment that, in its view, had become too rigid. Pietists urged a renewal of personal devotion and a less combative attitude toward rival religious systems, including Judaism. Bach made passing contact with Pietist figures and themes, though he remained aligned with the orthodox wing\u2014not least because Pietists held that music had too prominent a role in church services.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n