Truth Tellers: Bach’s Music ‘Mandated by God’s Spirit’

A portrait of Johann Sebastian Bach, before 1798, by “Gebel.” bachaus-eisenach/CC BY-SA 3.0

We live in secular times. One of our former presidents, Calvin Coolidge, said that “the business of America is business." Certainly, making and taking money seems to be heavy on the minds of many people. Even in music, a prominent contemporary composer remarked, “I began working in a record store when I was a kid. The first thing I knew about music was that you sold it; in other words, people paid for it.”

Let us compare this way of thinking with that of Johann Sebastian Bach, a citizen of another country, from another time, almost 400 years past. His works often bore the inscription “Only for the glory of God.” In the margins of books from his personal library are entries such as “Where there is devotional music, God with His grace is always present,” and “music has been mandated by God’s spirit.”

The deeply religious Bach was born in 1685 at Eisenach in present-day central Germany, next to last in a line of six generations of highly esteemed church musicians. They made their livelihood as organists, choir masters, or composers, but their employment was secondary to their ardent faith.

The extended Bach family, scattered throughout the various Germanic kingdoms, celebrated an annual reunion, and it’s significant that the first event, after everyone was assembled, was the singing together of a hymn.

Student Years

From the age of 8, Bach sang in the choir, and he quickly learned all keyboard, string, and wind instruments. In his 18th year, he became organist at the New Church in Arnstadt, and 20 years later, after a series of increasingly prestigious positions, he became cantor and music director of the magnificent St. Thomas Church in Leipzig, where he remained until his death in 1750.

St. Thomas Church and School, Leipzig, where Bach served as choirmaster, in 1723. Public Domain

His duties there were formidable. He taught composition, practiced, performed, and conducted at church services, wrote more than three sets of cantatas for every Sunday in the liturgical year, and produced masterpieces including the B Minor Mass, the St. Matthew and the St. John Passions, the Magnificat, the Christmas and Easter Oratorios, and scores of other works for various solo instruments and ensembles.

The output is astonishing, but still more astonishing is that the expressive power of every note of every piece, religious or secular, is filled with the “glory of God,” to whom they are dedicated. Indeed, there is no distinction between sacred and secular in his writing.

He spoke little about himself, other than a passing remark like “I work hard.” While he wasn’t treated very well by his superiors at St. Thomas, Bach lived in God’s eyes rather in the eyes of men. It mattered little to him what others thought.

Bach the Man

"J.S. Bach and His Family at Morning Prayers," 1870 by Toby Edward Rosenthal. Public Domain

Aside from the memories of friends and family, a few letters, and some legal documents, little is known about Bach the man. However, we know he loved his morning coffee, he loved his pipe, and he loved his first wife, Maria Barbara, who bore him seven children. After her death, he loved his second wife, Anna Magdalena, with whom he fathered 13 more.

He was sometimes outspoken. He had a temper, and once, at a rehearsal, threw his wig at a careless musician.

He was also kind. When a favorite student, Johann Philipp Kirnberger, was ill for several weeks, the teacher came to the boy’s room so the lessons might continue. Later, when thanks were offered, Bach asked him not to speak of gratitude, but only promise to pass on what had been given to him.

The Bach Passions

Statistics, anecdotes, and critical analyses can’t tell us what Bach’s music tells of this servant of God, perhaps the greatest of all musicians. The deepest expression of his faith is found in the St. John and the St. Matthew Passions. Their dramatic structure, their vision, and their expressive power place them at the zenith of our Western musical tradition.

During the Christian Holy Week, it was customary in the early Christian church to read the story of Christ’s final days. By Bach’s time, this story, the Passion, had become a musical narrative, a remarkable phenomenon unprecedented in our musical canon: Every soul present in the church becomes a participant.

A handwritten note by Bach in his copy of the Calov Bible. The note next to 2 Chronicles 5:13 reads, "In a music of worship, God is always present with his grace." Public Domain

A solo voice reads the words of the Evangelist, soloists are assigned the roles in the story, the entire congregation joins in the chorales, and other soloists bear witness to the events that unfold, expressing their compassion, their sorrow, their thanks.

It’s a great thing when people gather to celebrate a mystery and to create something of beauty together. Bach’s Passions address the eternal question “Why do we suffer?” The works give us perhaps the only answer we can begin to grasp: God himself assuming a human form, suffering what mortals suffer, in order to offer eternal life. It is the ground that the faithful stand upon, and certainly the source of Bach’s musical offerings to God and man.