Johan Sebastian Bach was and is one of the giants of classical and religious music. His instrumental compositions such as the Brandenburg Concertos and the Goldberg Variations, and vocal music such as the St Matthew Passion and the Mass in B minor are sublime -- some would say other-worldly. Bach was a church musician and in some respects a devout Lutheran who wrote a prodigious volume of music for worship services.
Apparently he was also something of a bad boy, if not a rogue. As a twenty-year-old he got in a knife fight and he spent a month in jail -- where he wrote music. He loved his beer and was once disciplined for canoodling with a female choir member in the church. He married a woman who was half his age and fathered twenty children. There was a quip of the day that "Bach's organ has no stops" and it wasn't referring to an unusual musical instrument.
How can the sacred and profane be so intertwined? There was a fascinating CBC Sunday Edition episode about Bach and Bethoven as subversive forces because they had an almost reckless disregard for convention. In the interview author Ted Gioia offers
It's great to admire these people. We should admire them. But what we need to understand is the reason they were innovators is because they were disruptive. They shook things up. They were transgressive. They were subversive. And when we treat them with too much respect, we lose the very essence that allowed them to be the great innovators that they are.
Well, there are several readers of this blog who are church musicians in different forms and quite accomplished in their own ways. If you want to go to the next level, maybe you need to be a little less respectable and cut loose a whole lot more! Rock out!
https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.5445741
Mozart could make similar claims to infamy...he was crude and rude - but his music was not!
ReplyDeleteCut loose? Rock out? Haha! That'll be the day! What would the M&P Committee say? I did hear this most interesting interview - although not on Sunday morning when I was dutifully at church going over the music for the morning worship service. A member of the congregation teasingly asks me from time to time when I am going to play "Drop Kick me Jesus over the Goalposts of Life". Maybe the time has come to break loose and grant him his wish!!
ReplyDeleteI suggest you go to the pub, down a few pints, and reconsider that request Shirley.
ReplyDelete