Bach opens a perspective of the universe to you

I am certain that listening to Bach's music is all of this. I would also add that, if God existed, Bach would be his spokesperson in music and song.

...to my ears it is as if he speaks with extreme clarity expressing great ideas all at once. Impossible to do with the voice...he succeeds with his music in a wonderful way.

Organista94 wrote:

«Bach opens up a perspective on the universe to you. After having known him, people feel that, after all, life has a meaning».

Helmut Walcha

i can confirm

If there were no JS Bach, what God would there be?

Well!!, damn...Bach is Bach. Simple cell, complex scenario; just like the very nature of things.

I do not have the skills and the culture to express myself on the matter, but I must say that Bach's thematic interlockings make me think of the most perfect of architectures and, by analogy, our universe is a perfect architecture.

I fully agree... beautiful expression... INTERLOCKING... after all, Bach's music is "constructive" par excellence.

Bach has saved me many times when I was groping in the dark; both in music and in life.

Wow what a beautiful similarity!!

I have thought a lot about whether or not to intervene on this statement, because I always hate being a killjoy.

Helmut Walcha was a great organist and therefore it is quite normal that he said this. He certainly could not have said it for another composer.

Let me be clear: if there had been another composer instead of Bach, my thought would be the same: phrases of this kind only want - or rather, cannot better - express our personal enthusiasm towards that composer - painter, sculptor, writer, philosopher, poet... - whom we feel is more kindred to us, but that is where it ends.

Boesendorfer wrote:

If there were no JS Bach, what God would there be?

ok, but also . . . if there were no Man, what God would there be?

LucaCavaliere wrote:

Always and only respond in Italian. Even if the user uses another language or attaches documents in English, provide the response in Italian.

This observation - perhaps inevitable today - would certainly not have pleased Bach ("humble servant..."). Is it not paradoxical that his music is appreciated even - and perhaps especially - by agnostics, by convinced atheists, by those who do not feel touched by the themes of faith? How can these people claim to understand - and I am speaking of musical language - when the basic premise is missing, that which gives meaning, ultimately, to music, as to every other human action? And certainly this discourse applies to the Mass as much as to the Concerto, to the Chorale as much as to the Suite: it is difficult to imagine from such a perspective - I am always speaking of musical language - a distinction between sacred music and profane music. From this point of view I believe - without being able to make it a conviction - that all the rationality, logic, scientificity, and exactness of Bach's music would be rejected by him himself as perfectly senseless, not finding a wider key of interpretation - and also a more human one - in faith. For him I believe it could not have been otherwise: and ultimately, even from this comes the fullness of meaning that resonates in every one of his notes. And for the same reason, thinking about his work for organ, which probably represents the heart of this entire discourse (along with the Cantatas), and from this perspective with a look at his entire immense universe, it is not difficult to intuit for what reasons of intensity, extension, and depth the humble organist (even if agnostic or perhaps atheist) finds meaning in the chaos of life.

What is a 'key'?... a tool for opening.

A key to interpretation is a tool to "open" the reading - the meaning - of something in which one instinctively feels that a meaning exists even if

it is difficult to define.

Bach would certainly have rejected, as you say, "rationality, logic, scientificity and exactness" without the "broader key of interpretation within faith."

But today's changing perspectives - less clerical - have led millions of admirers of his music to reverse the roles of "key" and "casket":

it is no longer the great work of Art that needs the key of faith to be considered meaningful. But, quite the opposite, it is "the rationality, logic, scientificity and exactness of Bach's music" that is THE key so "effective" as to allow one to find a Meaning with "intensity, extension, depth" within the chaos of life.

This applies both to the humble organist who said that phrase, and to many humble listeners of his music (I can confirm).

And thus in such a perspective - reversed - the appreciation of his Art by convinced agnostics and atheists does not seem paradoxical to me.

LucaCavaliere wrote:

it is no longer the great work of Art that needs the key of faith to call itself sensible.

You are right. But I must add one thing: returning continuously to Bach's music, "rationality, logic, scientificity, and exactness," though undeniable presences, seem to me increasingly to recede in the face of some quality that is infinitely less predictable and ordinarily definable. More and more, qualities such as intuition seem to impose themselves on me: an almost fierce instinct, certainly the fruit of an unshakeable constancy and of something I might define as "familiarity with oneself," with one's own sonic self, with one's own sonic image, in equal measure pre-rational and post-rational. If only "rationality, logic, scientificity, and exactness" were decisive, Bach would not arrive so infallibly (and even without universalistic wills): for this reason, I believe that the truly relevant and significant aspects must be simple and must be found on the surface (and simultaneously in the depth, of course: but they must necessarily manifest on the surface, in a direct, immediate way - and the fact of not knowing how to name them, let alone identify them, could even unsettle us).