J.S. Bach
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Bach's Music Reached into the Deepest Recesses of Schweitzer's Soul From playing the organ in the village church when only nine years old Schweitzer became a renown concert artist. At twenty-eight he was appointed organist to the Bach Society of Paris. Why was he drawn to Bach? The simple answer: that Bach is the most deeply religious of the composers. Music and theology are one in Schweitzer's mind. Schweitzer wrote: "Music is an act of worship with Bach. His artistic activity and his personality are both based on his piety... for him, art was religion.... Bach includes religion in the definition of art in general. All great art, even secular, is in itself religious in his eyes; for him the tones do not perish, but ascend to God like praise too deep for utterance." |
Click icon above to hear Schweitzer playing Bach's Fugue in G minor BWV 578 in REAL AUDIO Format. If you need the FREE Download of Real Audio CLICK HERE.
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Schweitzer's first organ teacher was Eugene Munch, whose nephew, Charles Munch, was later director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. In 1893 Schweitzer became a student of Charles-Marie Widor, composer and organist at St. Sulpice, Paris. Schweitzer revealed to his teacher a Bach of whose existence Widor had previously had only the dimmest suspicion. It happened that Widor's lifelong study of the Bach organ chorales was based on an edition that omitted the texts, and, when one afternoon the master confessed to puzzlement at certain abrupt changes of mood and plan, Schweitzer enlightened him by supplying the poems from memory and translating them into French. Widor urged Schweitzer to write the book, J. S. Bach, that has revealed the secrets of Bach to organists throughout the world since it was first published in 1905. That book, along with the eight-volume The Organ Works of Bach, edited in cooperation with Widor and E. Nies- Berger, remains in print today. Frederick Franck - noted artist and author - spent three years working at Schweitzer's African hospital. In Dr. Franck's book, What Does It Mean to Be Human?, Carman Moore, conductor of the Children's Choir at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, in New York City, wrote, "When I feel what it feels like to be really human, I hear music." So it is only fitting that Symposium 2000 celebrate the lives of Schweitzer and Bach whose works and influence upon world history are well-known in every civilized country and whose lives were so closely entwined.
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J.S. Bach Websites
Bach's seal, used from c. 1720. Not designed
by him, but in the style of early 18th century
German seals, "JSB" and its mirror image, left
to right.
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