What historic person was "faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, and able to write a 20-minute cantata for choir, soloists and orchestra every week (sometimes more than one per week) for over five years?”
Okay, okay, I may have gotten my super heroes mixed up, but I’m really speaking of Johann Sebastian Bach, the Lutheran composer that Thomas Schmidt calls “a superhuman musician.” Dr. Schmidt is the Cantor/Director of Music at St. Peter’s Lutheran Church in New York and explains that Bach took operatic-styled texts based on the gospel lesson of the day, and created music “mixing the highest intellectual art with uncommon sensitivity to the human condition.” It was intellectual because Bach was a master of compositional counterpoint.
In musical terms, counterpoint is a style of composing that uses two or more voices that have their own rhythmic and harmonic structure. The result is polyphony, a musical structure different from what we hear in most hymns where all voices (usually four) move in the same rhythm to create harmony. How much of this does one need to understand to enjoy the music of Bach?
According to Valerie Hess, Coordinator of Music Ministries for Trinity Lutheran Church of Boulder, Colorado, there is something for everyone to enjoy in the music of Bach because “the hidden intricacies and ‘symbolisms’ allow for people of all intellectual capabilities to find meaning in it. There is a level at which everyone can enter the music, from the simple beauty of the sound to the depths of the mathematical equations and number symbols hidden deep within, and everything in between.”
Bach, often called The Fifth Evangelist by Lutherans, died in 1750 but his music is still played earnestly and reverently today – not just in Lutheran churches, but throughout Christendom.
Why should we devote so much attention to music from a bygone era? Mark Mummert is the Music Director of Christ the King Lutheran Church in Houston, Texas. He says that worshipers today are tempted to judge music based on personal taste and its ability to manipulate our emotions. Bach takes us deeper than that because “his music functions primarily as proclamation inside a marvelous aesthetic. . .(it) will teach us to not just judge music with the question ‘was it pretty?’ but also with ‘what did it mean?’ or ‘what did it say?’”
A twenty year tradition of Bach Vespers at St. Mark’s brings us to another cantata of Bach in the context of a Lutheran service of evening prayer. Members of our own Festival Choir, singers from the community, and an orchestra of instrumentalists from the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra will present cantata no. 180, Schmücke dich, o liebe Seele, which finds its musical genesis in the hymn Soul, Adorn Yourself With Gladness (hymn no. 488 in Evangelical Lutheran Worship.)
This will be such a unique worship experience that you will want to share it with your family and friends. Join us in the nave on Sunday, November 6th at 6:00 p.m.
Without your support, this endeavor of music and worship would not be able to continue. Please consider a generous gift!
