Over the cliff from the Wartburg Castle where Luther translated the Scriptures into German is the town of Eisenach. There you can find the Bach house and hear glorious music that he created. I was in Germany for a Bach festival and was amazed to see the crowds who came to celebrate his music and his life. Young people from China and Japan were especially involved and it was clear that Bach’s music is timeless and still moves people.
He is considered a Lutheran Theologian. Another theologian, David Scaer is obviously a fan. He wrote, “With the Reformation attention to hymn singing, towns and princes soon supported their own organists, music directors known as Kantors, and choirs for their churches, courts, and special occasions like marriages and funerals. From the mid-1500s up through much of the 1700s rivulets flowed from small towns and courts
into brooks, and brooks merged into streams and rivers, and the rivers flowed into an ocean, which ocean was a Bach, the German word for “brook.” Johann Sebastian Bach, however, was an ocean in whose music we are drowned in God’s own majesty”. David Scaer, “Johann Sebastian Bach as Lutheran Theologian”, CTQ July/October 2004.
Bach died on this day in 1750.
