In Leipzig, Germany, there are ten researchers, employed full-time, trying to understand everything there is to know about Bach, his daily life, the whereabouts of missing manuscripts, authenticating newly found scores, doing paper analysis, doing handwriting analysis, studying letters, and on and on. The annual BachFest, taking place, over the course of two weekends and the intervening week, in every June for the past 50 years, brings together Bach lovers (by the thousands) and Bach performance experts (usually leading ensembles of singers and instrumentalists). This was my first time to witness this extraordinary event, logistically extremely complicated, and brilliantly executed. I reveled in the opportunity to hear Bach cantatas within the very walls where the works had often premiered, and on one occasion, within three feet of the master’s grave (in the chancel of St. Thomas Church). It wasn’t lost on me that the many hundreds of people in those sold-out events each probably felt that they had a unique connection to Johann Sebastian – a humbling realization to those of us who might have once assumed we had earned a special place in the fan club of Bach’s champions!
It also wasn’t lost on me that we were standing on holy ground. As sacred as the places where apparitions of the Virgin Mary have been witnessed, such as Lourdes or Guadalupe, St. Thomas Church in Leipzig marks a spot where there once existed an open portal between heaven and earth, and between the theological and the mysterious. Bach was destined to become one of the most open musical channels to the Divine that human history has ever witnessed. His music has touched and inspired billions for three centuries. His name is the first of the “three B’s” and often the first name people think of when thinking of classical music.
There’s something incredibly human about this figure, so often idolized, however. He had to bury ten of his own children before they reached adulthood; he had serious issues with his employers (including getting fired from one post); it seems that he rarely could enjoy the full musical forces that he requested from his superiors, so, likely rarely heard his music performed as he must have heard it in his head; his prodigious natural gifts as a musician, being almost immediately obvious, were often viewed with envy and contempt. Somehow, though, he continued to produce endless scores of music, as if being handed to him directly from the Divine.
He lived one century before Sigmund Freud; so any pretense that people of his generation would have had even a remote sense of interior world of psychology and developmental phases is entirely anachronistic. Yet that doesn’t preclude us from looking at him, his life, his work, and what we can read from his many letters, with a lens that is colored with an understanding of human development systems. For example, we don’t know of any cantatas Bach wrote after his first three (tumultuous) years in Leipzig. He stopped composing them at age 43 (and lived to 65). Midlife crisis? Quite possibly, especially given the absence of respect from the Church Council. It seems obvious to me that a psychological approach might take us to a deeper level of appreciation of Bach, the man; but as psychology is an “inexact science,” it sadly doesn’t fit into the scheme of musicologists eager to cross every “t” and dot every “i.” Cynicism aside, you sadly won’t find psychological analysis and awareness figured into work of historians and musicologists.
Bach published almost no music in his lifetime. Of the 1128 pieces we have from him, he published only six keyboard collections (Clavierübung books 1 – 4, the Canonic Variations on “Vom Himmel hoch,” and the collection of Schübler chorales). The fact that producing a physical legacy of his vast output was unimportant to him (a mark of the humility that he was well-known for) is less significant than what it tells us about why he did compose. Composition, for Bach, was a statement of spiritual faith.
When you remove applause from performances (Bach’s cantatas were for church services, and applause would most definitely not have been permitted), you actually elevate the role of the music. Applause serves as a way of saying to the performer: You did a nice job. We appreciate you. You bring us to new heights of enjoyment. Note the subject: “you.” When applause is discouraged (or not permitted), the “you” subject disappears. The music is the subject, pointing beyond itself to a transcendent experience with the Spirit, or in more contemporary language, enabling contemplation. This creates the possibility of a very rich experience. The music is performed for a reason which does not include making the performers, or even the composer, feel good about themselves.
But I don’t want to be misunderstood with the way applause functions in today’s world. When people feel genuinely moved by a performance, they want to be able to express their appreciation. This becomes a way of acknowledging and including the experience that the listener/observer has. Likewise, a performer wants to know that they are “on target” in what they are doing. Applause, therefore, can be a manifestation of what has already transpired on a metaphysical plane.
We know, from Quantum Theory, that the observer changes the observed. The listener changes the performer; and the performer changes the listener. Music, nor any of the performing arts, is never created by the performer(s)! It’s created by the interplay between the audience and the performer. That interplay is, more often than not, completely subconscious. But it is precisely this that moves people. The performer is the catalyst. The actual piece of created art is an interplay of Spirit as it touches and moves through the environment. It becomes a unique experience for everyone in this way. What we bring to the experience, by way of our understanding, our emotional state, our ability to focus and center, etc., all contribute to the uniqueness of our own perception, as opposed to that of another person. But what is really amazing, when you stop to think about the quantum ramifications of this, how we experience something will change as the people around us change. A person sitting next to you, with their own field of experience, is changing your field of experience just through their conscious presence.
As I think about this in relation to the person of J. S. Bach, who’s to say whether the considerable obstacles Bach found in his career may have actually served to help create the remarkable beauty which he, alone, knew how to bring to life? I think we can safely assume that he did not compose in spite of the obstacles, but because of the obstacles.
This leads us directly into an acceptance of our soul’s journey. The stumbling blocks, pains, and griefs are every bit as important in helping us create a better world, and find our full awakened self as our accomplishments, joys, and loves.
©2026