MUSIC AND WORSHIP
Johann Sebastian Bach, 1685-1750
The second composer we want to study in the Spiritual Lives of Composers is one who fathered twenty children. Throughout history, Johann Sebastian Bach has been acclaimed as the Christian composer, almost a kind of “patron saint” for church musicians. His name in German is “brook” but according to Beethoven “ocean” would be
more appropriate because of his infinite and inexhaustible wealth of combination and harmonies.

Bach spent his entire life in Germany working primarily as a church musician. He composed chorales, cantatas, masses, oratories, passions, concerti and solo works for virtually every instrument of his day. He was born in 1685 in Eisenach, Germany and orphaned at the age of nine. He went to be with his brother and here his musical training began. The name Bach was synonymous with the musical trade. More than fifty musicians bearing that name are remembered by musicologists today.

Although he had a variety of personalities, he claimed that music’s only purpose should be for the glory of God and the recreation of the human spirit. He routinely initialed the end of his manuscripts S.D.G. (Soli Deo Gloria – “To God alone, the Glory”).

He was a sincere Lutheran, a devoted reader of the Bible and other religious volumes. His last work, dictated from his bed, was a chorale entitled “Before Thy Throne I Come.”
Dennis