The Gospel According to Bach Issue 95 | 2007 Purchase this issue

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Robert Shaw, a perceptive sleuth of quality and one of the 20th century's finest conductors, said that J. S. Bach might be the "single greatest creative genius" in the "whole history of the Western world." Mozart said of Bach's works, "Now there is music from which a [person] can learn something." Brahms commented, "Study Bach: there you find everything."

It isn't only experts who know that Bach stands high on the list of creative geniuses. Recordings of his music abound, books about him continue to be written, there are Bach festivals in places like Pennsylvania and Oregon, and he is popular not just in Germany but in Japan as well. His music is heard more often in the concert hall than in the church, though ironically most of it consists of cantatas written for worship. In the face of this concert-hall success, why should we 21st-century Christians listen to the music of a German Baroque composer who died in 1750? And given the church's impulse toward relevance and marketing, can we use his music at all in 2007? If so, how?

One of the graduates of the Master of Sacred Music degree program I direct says she is a Christian because of Bach. She is not the only person who has told me this. Bach's reputation as the "fifth evangelist" (after Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) still reverberates today.

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Part of Bach's attraction, like the gospel itself, is the grace and shalom of such a perspective. Much of what passes for church music today assumes with the surrounding culture that music is a tool for selling things. The boundless freedom of Bach's music proclaims the freedom Christ brings and gives the lie to all deathly notions of manipulative control by music or any other means.

With this freedom come the major themes ...