I’m in Lüneburg, Germany – a small, former Hanseatic town that was once one of the wealthiest places in Germany, thanks to the salt mines here which created, by the Middle Ages, the largest industry in all of Europe. For Bach aficionados, it’s also the first place where Sebastian Bach came, setting off on his own to support himself at the age of 15 (in the year 1700). The young Bach, then a boy soprano, had found employment as a singer at the Michaeliskirche in Lüneburg. For years historians assumed that after his voice changed, he continued his association with the Michaeliskirche as a harpsichord continuo player and violinist. But we know now that the story is actually far more interesting than that. It appears that Bach became the apprentice to one of the greatest composers and musicians in Northern Germany of the time, Georg Böhm, then organist of the Johanniskirche – also in Lüneburg. In the 18th century, if one wished to become a professional musician, it wasn’t a question of paying for one hour lessons once each week; students lived with their teacher, getting room and board in exchange for assisting the teacher – copying music, generating parts, preparing for rehearsals, etc. One’s craft was assimilated by watching, imitating, and doing. (I can’t speak for other aspects of the music profession, but I can attest to the effectiveness of this approach for church musicians, having served as the Organ Scholar in England in a similar approach to training.)
In 2004, a manuscript of a piece of organ music by Johann Reincken, a chorale fantasia on An Wasserflüssen Babÿlon, was found. It had come from the household possessions of Georg Böhm and was written in tablature (rather than notes). The fact that this massive, 20-minute piece was written in J. S. Bach’s hand tells us that he undoubtedly served as Böhm’s assistant, living with him and his family.
So, as I approached the organ at Johanniskirche to play a recital there last evening, I felt acutely aware that the very organ in that church, with principal and flute pipes dating back to the 16th century, had precisely the same pipes that inspired the young Bach. That acoustic, those sounds, the ambience of that particular space all merged together to mold the God-given talent of a young man destined to bring solace and joy to billions of people in the course of world history. It is humbling, to say the least, when I participate in that flow of musical expression.
We know that objects continue to hold some of the energy of everyone they come in contact with. So, that specific pipe organ, the very walls of that specific church, and even the staircase approaching the organ itself, continue to resonate with something of Bach, the person. I don’t want to turn Bach into part of the Divinity, as if he was a reincarnation of Jesus. Bach would hate that! He was just a normal young man excited to engage the support and help of a master musician. Yet this was a life that was truly destined to enrich the understanding of music and symbolism, music and theology, music and expression of affect – the likes of which the wold has never seen before or since.
Yesterday I walked the ten-minute walk between St. Michael’s Church and St. John’s Church. Lüneburg, untouched by any war, looks pretty much as it would have looked in Bach’s time, so the stroll offers a close glimpse of what things would have looked like, perhaps even felt like, for the young Sebastian in 1700. The front tower of the Johanniskirche is 354 feet high and its majesty dominates most of the walk. Built in the Gothic era, it would have been built to show off the city’s enormous wealth and to underscore the fearsome power of the Church. In Post-Reformation Germany, it would have underscored religion’s doctrinal rigidity. But as I walked through the city streets, I didn’t feel those things; I felt the excitement of knowing I would soon be playing the stunning organ that sits at the base of the tower. And while Bach would later go to great lengths to reveal his profound grasp of both Christian doctrine and mysticism, I don’t believe it was those things that would have turned him on at age 17. I believe his guiding principle, at that age, was joy. The joy of making music on a noble organ representing the pinnacle of human ingenuity and craftsmanship (an honor which organs held for several centuries). The carvings on the case, alone, are enough to inspire awe and excitement.
My program in Lüneburg started with Bach’s Fantasia und Fuge in G-moll, a piece I had not played since I was the age Bach was when he sat at the same instrument. (I learned it in Conservatory and hadn’t played it since.) I then switched gears to Dutch minimalism (Bert Matter), a fairly unknown piece by Mendelssohn (Allegro, Chorale, and Fugue in D minor), and my own arrangement of Aaron Copland’s Hoe-Down. After that I changed organs, playing the symphonic organ (Kuhn, 2010) in the front of the church. That half of the concert included Fredrik Sixten (Toccata Festival), Vierne (Impromptu), Messiaen (Apparition de l’Église Éternelle), and Dan Locklair (two movements from Rubrics). It was while I was playing the Messiaen that it dawned on me the connection between Bach and Messiaen. I’ve long known that those two composers speak to me in ways that no other composers can. Of all organ composers, these two are the most entrenched in my own particular approach to life – mysticism. They were also quite vocal about their role as servants of the Church. Yet they used entirely different vocabularies, appropriate to the age in which they each lived, of course. Interestingly, their effect on my spirit seems the same to me. They each use the intellect to reach the soul. Neither engages in cheap manipulation to make you try to feel something. They use their extremely well-tuned craft to express that which cannot be expressed without their unique help.
And as I sat at the other end of the church, playing Messiaen, I felt that the two composers were speaking to each other in a way. Messiaen in the front, on the symphonic organ, and Bach in the back on the classical instrument. It was a conversation in a room that molded the musical thoughts of young Sebastian and now vibrated with the combined energies of both Bach and Messiaen.
There’s something enormously humbling about participating in the flow of music-making in spaces, and on specific instruments, that had a role in shaping how the entire world now hears music. Billions of lives have found joy and solace because of these two (most especially Bach – which even gets more air time in Asia than in the Western hemisphere). Billions of lives have been afforded a glimpse of Eternity thanks to the Spirit that has been channeled by Bach and Messiaen. I can’t help but feel gratitude for my teachers that taught me how to swim in this mighty river of sound, gratitude for the possibilities that have been actuated in my own life, and gratitude for the Mystery itself.