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Article: Happy birthday, JSB. (Johann Sebastian Bach)
- Article from:
- National Review
- Article date:
- May 3, 1985
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1985 National Review, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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THREE HUNDRED years ago today (March 21) Johann Sebastian Bach was born. It is as though God had decided to clear His throat to remind the world of His existence. That existence had been greatly dishonored by the terrible Thirty Years' War, which had ended only a generation before Bach's birth, a war whose reverberations we still experience, even as the Ayatollah continues to dishonor the Muslim creed he misunderstands himself to incarnate.
Bach has the impact of a testimonial to God's providence not because he wrote the most searingly beautiful church music ever heard (about The Passion According to St. Matthew one can say only that it does credit to the ...