TODAY is Johann Sebastian Bach’s birthday. Celebrate by listening to this beautiful version of the Bach Concerto in F minor, with Claudio Dauelsberg on the piano.

Bach means “brook” in German. Beethoven said, “Not Brook, but Ocean should be his name.”  Bach is a vast and glorious sea that stretches to the horizon.

                                            — Comments —

Peter S. writes:

Of Bach’s sacred works, his cycle of cantatas deserves mention at once for their sheer mass and quality as well as for their general unfamiliarity, even among those who know and treasure Bach’s music.  There are a number of recordings of his cantata cycle worthy of consideration but those by Masaaki Suzuki and the Bach Collegium Japan are of particular note both for the sustained excellence of the performances – at present some forty-seven CDs released over the course of twenty years, which have garnered numerous accolades and awards – as well as a particular quality of reverence and depth of feeling grounded at once in Suzuki’s Christian faith and his great love and commitment to Bach’s music.  A fine point of entry into this set of recordings is their recent CD A Choral Year with Bach, [1,2] which offers highlights from their cantata recordings.  As an added attraction, the CD ends with the final movement from the B Minor Mass, dona nobis pacem (“grant us peace”), perhaps the most transcendent moment in all of Bach’s vast repertoire, which may also be heard here (from the 5:18min mark).  Online resources dedicated to Bach’s cantatas include the Bach Cantatas Website as well as Julian Mincham’s Bach Cantatas site.

Peter adds:

I am reminded that the noted Catholic philosopher Peter Kreeft includes, among his Twenty Arguments For The Existence Of God, the following: 

The Argument from Aesthetic Experience:

There is the music of Johann Sebastian Bach.
Therefore there must be a God.
You either see this one or you don’t.

 He adds further: “I know three people who overcame temptations to atheism through the music of Johann Sebastian Bach.”  Something to consider.

Hurricane Betsy writes:

I bawl and sniffle and go all non-functional when I hear the final movement from the B Minor Mass: dona nobis pacem. Whatever could be wrong with me? 

You have to know Bach is the greatest when you learn that he had 20 children. Okay, okay, a bunch died, but of those who survived, a disproportionate number became composers, too!

Kristor writes:

This icon of Bach is hanging in the choir room at my church. These two prayers are also mounted there: 

Bless, O LORD, us thy servants who minister in thy Temple. Grant that what we sing with our lips we may believe in our hearts, and what we believe in our hearts, we may shew forth in our lives; through Jesus Christ, our LORD. Amen 

And this, from John Donne’s “Hymn to God, my God, in My Sickness:” 

Since I am coming to that holy room
Where, with thy choir of saints for evermore
I shall be made thy music, as I come
I tune the instrument here at the door. 

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