Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 80:318 (Apr 1923)
Article: Music In The Evolution Of Civilization
Author: Matthew Nathanael Lundquist

BSac 80:318 (April 1923) p. 246

Music In The Evolution Of Civilization

Matthew Nathanael Lundquist, Ph.D.

II.

There existed for a long time a delusion concerning J. S. Bach, the great master musician. It was believed that Bach’s religious creed embraced Pietism. But J. S. Bach was not a Pietist. Yet that heart-felt and ardent mysticism, which can be seen in his wonderful choral works, particularly those with Biblical texts, is surely something very closely related to that fervent devotion with which the Pietists studied the Bible. That metaphysical characteristic, which causes Bach to linger so easily upon the subjects of the annihilation of temporal life through death and the joy of eternal happiness (the Christian’s life after death), is surely correlative, in some measure at least, to the religious thinking of the followers of Philip Jacob Spener (the father of Pietism). This was not, however, the fruit of a pietistic philosophy of life on the part of Bach. It was the emotions of a general tendency in German life that found an expression in musical art. It was a great influence upon Bach. But we find in the works of Bach elements which certainly possess no correlation with Pietism. There is to be found that strong restrainment of a most ardent subjectivity by the strictest possible form and by the employment of the least subjective of all musical instruments, namely the pipe organ. Bach was a great organist. There is also that sound and definitely affirmative way of thinking, revealed in his acknowledgment of the full and free rights of musical art. Pietism had no use for musical art or any fine art. We must also note that Bach was a great lover of pure and wholesome social life.

But J. S. Bach (1685–1750) is not only a strong representative of a religious creed, he is also a noble example of a class of unadulterated German society. He reminds us very much of those illustrious men of the Middle Ages, in whom excellent corporate (consistent with the rules of a guild) and professional proficiency went hand in hand with remarkable artistic ingenuity. The social cir-

BSac 80:318 (April 1923) p. 247

cle within which Bach moved belongs to the last remnants of that unbroken medieval middle class. Hence, the German, the pure and also the marrowy, the adamantine, in Bach’s great musical works.

If we turn our attention from Germany, with its patriarchal petty tradesmen, to absolute monarchial France, we see in Jean Baptiste de Lully (1632–1687) the musical representative of the brilliant, though somewhat hollow pomp of the age of Louis XIV. Because of his personal character, Lully belongs to those who are very much at home in a despotic community. He was a combination of despot and buffoon. He did not consider it beneath hi...