pe principiu belelelor care vin ca ciresele, numa 2 cate 2, evidenta ca bafta se stramuta trebuia sa aiba si o continuare…cum adica ce continuare, bafta se stramuta 2.

la nici o saptamana dupa ultimul eveniment mentionat in bafta se stramuta simplu, parchez aproximativ in aceeasi zona, aproximativ exact aceeasi masina, marca persoanala, albastra si draguta, insa usor molestata in urma incidentelor trecute.

clar dupa ce am parcat, aproximativ foarte regulamentar m-am indreptat spre locuri unde se consuma licorile bahice la preturi exorbitante…clar nu eu aveam de gand sa le consum, cele bahice ramaneau stict pentru smecherii de si-au tras soferi.

dupa o perioada nedeterminata de consum de non-alcohoale de toate formele si aromele diferite, ne-am returnat catre motorizarea proprietate personala.

spre deosebire de nefericirile care i se intamplau Marelui Alb (luat pe sus si mutat), Proprietatea Personala era la locul ei, insa, cumva nu mai era la fel…sprijinit de bara frontala statea senzual si extrem de nefiresc de nelalocul lui  numarul meu de inmatriculare. la o analiza mai atenta am constat ca nu doar numarul era nefiresc, ci toata fata, care arata mai sifonata decat smecherii care si-au tras sofer si au consumat alcohoale toata seara.

la fel de senzual imi sedea in stergator un biletel galben care ma anunta numarul de inmatriculare ( care pun pariu ca si acum sede la fel de firesc la locul lui) al bestiei neindemanatice care provocase sifonarea Proprietatii Personale. ..trebuie retinut ca biletul nu era din partea faptasului, ci din partea unui anonim care a hotarat sa nu se semneze si sa o dea anonima, asa ca a lasat-o anonima, intelegeti voi aluzia.

bun. pe cai si la politie cu dovezile. cu dreptatea de partea mea, m-am dus acolo tunand si fulgerand…si a fost fix ca o ejaculare precoce, mi-a murit de la intrare, de cand mi-au spus ca fara nici un martor nu am ce face…sa-mi fut una si inca una, ca am crezut ca mi s-au scurt-circuitat toti neuronii din dotare.

dupa mai multe explicatii, procese-verbale, analiza a frontalei Proprietatii Personale, noaptea fara lanterna, de catre priceputul organ, am reusit, prin metode de persuasiune care vor ramane secrete, sa aflu coordonatele locatiei bestiei neindemanatice, ca sa ii pot rupe capu, fara martori legali, a doua zi.

cu dreptatea flendurandu-mi pe sub mustati ma prezint a doua zi la adresa, avand ca insotitori si preafericitii consumatori de licori bahice din seara precedenta, cum spuneam sa rupem un cap, un gat, ceva.

si a fost fix ca o ejaculare precoce, mi-a murit la intrare toata dreptatea, in momentul in care am aflat ca bestia neindemanatica s-a mutat de acolo si ca doar documentu de legitimare i-a ramas pe acea adresa.

acum, cu dreptatea fluturandu-mi pe sub mustati ma prezint la casco, fut aiurea fransiza de fix 100 euro, platibili in RON, la cursul din ziua efectuarii platii si imi creste si asigurarea pe motiv ca cica o ard aiurea in trafic.

sa ma fut in ea de bafta ca nu se mai termina!!!!

dusmanu lu superglu

Happy Thanksgiving Eve, music nerds!

I was all set to post about what I want for Christmas, but that will have to wait. I mean, what was I thinking? I hate the way Christmas takes over the stores and the radio stations the minute Halloween is over, and here I was about to jump the gun myself — gah!

Don’t get me wrong — there’s plenty of holiday music that I love (and some I hate, but that’s another story for another day, too). But Thanksgiving is actually my favorite holiday; I love to cook, I love to eat, and I love Autumn, so how could it get any better?

I know it can be a stressful time, though, and some of you may feel that this is the soundtrack of your life right now!

But what about bona fide music for Thanksgiving? Click Mr. Readmore for a pumpkin-pie-spiced playlist!

The first things that springs to mind for me are a couple of hymns. I grew up singing the Welsh folk tune, “The Ash Grove,” with the words, “Let All Things Now Living.”

Here’s a nice version of the tune played on the harp:

Another good Thanksgiving tune is “Nun danket alle Gott,” (Now Thank We All Our God. Here’s a nice little organ arrangement of it that I should learn to play (LOL! )

But I know that not everyone is the church music geek that I am, so I decided to cast my google net a bit wider.

In this video, Ray Davies gives a nice commentary introducing his song, ” Thanksgiving Day.” (Note to self: check out The Kinks Choral Collection. A music nerd’s work is never done! )

Here’s a nice one from Mary Chapin Carpenter — caution: it might even make you verklempt, if you’re so inclined!

Here’s something out of left field (at least relative to where I’m standing!): I either didn’t know, or had forgotten, that the late, great Johnny Cash did a little acting here and there. Here’s a video of him singing a song for Thanksgiving in an episode of “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman:”

And last but not least: I’m always a sucker for the music Vince Guaraldi wrote for the old Charlie Brown TV specials. Here’s a piano solo version of music he wrote for “A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving:”

Have a wonderful day tomorrow, everyone!

“What the FUGUE!?” (if i ever start a blog devoted to organ from the baroque era, this would the name i would give it)

Nu ma pricep la televiziune nici macar la modul amator. Nu ma pricep tehnic vorbind. Nu stapinesc limbajul specific si nu am fantezii regizorale. Dar stiu ce-mi place si sint sigura ca remarcile mele sint sustinute de bun simt, de experienta ochilor zgiiti la tv si de o oarecare posesie de emisfere cerebrale stinga si dreapta, cu a caror uniune fericita ma laud uneori.

 Sint un observator  cindva avid, trecut prin faza indignarii, momentan blazat de atita zappare  sterila. De fapt, nu sterila e cuvintul cel mai potrivit, mai degraba daunator. 

Fiind dintr-o generatie mai veche, avind un copil de iubit, dar mai ales, de crescut cum stiu mai bine, “bine” fiind cuvintul cheie, ma zbat ca pestele pe uscat sa-i cultiv (si) simtul muzical. Din pacate, el are déjà 6 ani si singurele sunete armonice –mai mult sau mai putin- pe care le-a procesat sint cele de la radio. Unele dintre CHR-urile noastre dragi, care se asculta, se cauta, se vind ca piinea calda si se bat intre ele mai ceva ca zmeii din poveste. Am gresit refugiindu-ma in lumea mea, cu castile pe urechi, ascultind in mod egoist ceea ce eu credeam ca mi se cuvine exclusiv. In capul meu era ca nu trebuie sa “deranjez restul lumii” cu toanele mele hedoniste. In plus, am un mod foarte ciudat de a asculta muzica: ori o pun pe repeat, ori sar dintr- una in alta, fara sa le las sa se consume, daca simt ca ma consuma, ambele variante fiind cit se poate de enervante pentru posibila audienta. Eu ascult jazz. Funky.Metale grele. Blues. Oldies. Multa chitara. Bass (uuh, so sexy)!

Bun, dupa “preludiul” asta prea lung si pentru o virgina, incerc sa ajung la mesajul din titlu. Din vinovatie asadar, si din nevoia de a compensa si mai ales, a indrepta propriile greseli, am incercat sa caut un post Tv muzical care sa ma ajute in acest demers. Constat inspaimintata si indignata de lipsa de respect prin omisiunea din target pe care mi-o furnizeaza toate televiziunile de profil ca oferta e compusa din: “videoclipuri” vechi, facute cu picioarele, care au sarmul lor si locul bine stabilit in evergreenuri, dar tot cu picioarele ramin facute si cu un sound de faci riduri, ori duduite uleioase care se mingiie intru slava irigarii organului masculin. Toate pe fond negru, toate supra-tencuite, toate cu chiloti si centura, tocuri, ude, uscate, fierbinti-pina-la-overheated, mustind de fetisuri defetisizate si toate, dar absolut toate, cu cadre realizate cu incetinitorul, in timp ce ele inchid ochii, “patrunse” de moment. Acuma…avind creier de femeie, sigur sint mai rea si mai putin ingaduitoare pentru ca pe mine nu ma excita. In absenta altor pretentii de emotii pe care mi le-ar putea stirni, mai ramin cu asta. Daca tot s-a generalizat ca sexul vinde, mie de ce nu-mi vinde nimeni nimic? Sau de ce nu incearca, macar? Bagati-ma si pe mine in prostitutia voastra, daca aveti cu ce…Promit sa platesc cit face.

Saat ini kita keseringannya sibuk kerja atau mungkin malas dalam merawat diri kita. Banyak diantara kita tiba-tiba sering mengalami penyakit yang mungkin kita tidak meyangka penyakit itu akan datang pada kita. Nah, berdasar banyak kejadian seperti itu saya mau berbagi (share) tentang jadwal kerja organ kita. Diharapkan nantinya setelah mengetahui jadwal kerja organ tubuh kita selain kita mensyukuri karunia Allah swt, hidup kita dapat berjalan lebih baik.

Berikut jadwal kerja organ kita :

LAMBUNG Jam 07.00 – 09.00

Jam piket organ lambung sedang kuat, sebaiknya makan pagi untuk proses pembentukan energi tubuh sepanjang hari. Minum jus atau ramuan sebaiknya sebelum sarapan pagi, perut masih kosong sehingga zat yang berguna segera terserap tubuh.

LIMPA Jam 09.00 – 11.00

Jam piket organ limpa kuat, dalam mentransportasi cairan nutrisi untuk energi pertumbuhan. Bila pada jam-jam ini mengantuk, berarti fungsi limpa lemah. Kurangi konsumsi gula, lemak, minyak dan protein hewani.
JANTUNG Jam 11.00 – 13.00

Jam piket organ jantung kuat, harus istirahat, hindari panas dan olah fisik, ambisi dan emosi terutama pada penderita gangguan pembuluh darah.

HATI Jam 13.00 – 15.00 Jam piket organ hati lemah, bila orang tidur, darah merah berkumpul dalam organ hati dan terjadi proses regenerasi sel-sel hati. Apabila fungsi hati kuat maka tubuh kuat untuk menangkal semua penyakit.

PARU-PARU Jam 15.00 – 17.00 Jam piket organ paru-paru lemah, diperlukan istirahat, tidur untuk proses pembuangan racun dan proses pembentukan energi paru-paru

GINJAL Jam 17.00 – 19.00

Jam piket organ ginjal kuat, sebaiknya digunakan untuk belajar karena terjadi proses pembentukan sumsum tulang dan otak serta kecerdasan.

LAMBUNG Jam 19.00 – 21.00

Jam piket organ lambung lemah sebaiknya tidak mengkonsumsi makan yang sulit dicerna atau lama dicerna atau lebih baik sudah berhenti makan

LIMPA Jam 21.00 – 23.00

Jam piket organ limpa lemah, terjadi proses pembuangan racun dan proses regenerasi sel limpa. Sebaiknya istirahat sambil mendengarkan musik yang menenangkan jiwa, untuk meningkatkan imunitas.

JANTUNG Jam 23.00 – 01.00

Jam piket organ jantung lemah. Sebaiknya sudah beristirahat tidur, apabila masih terus bekerja atau begadang dapat melemahkan fungsi jantung.

HATI Jam 01.00 – 03.00

Jam piket organ hati kuat. Terjadi proses pembuangan racun/limbah hasil metabolisme tubuh. Apabila ada gangguan fungsi hati tercermin pada kotoran dan gangguan mata. Apabila ada luka dalam akan terasa nyeri.

PARU-PARU Jam 03.00 – 05.00

Jam piket organ paru-paru kuat, terjadi proses pembuangan limbah/racun pada organ paru-paru, apabila terjadi batuk, bersin-bersin dan berkeringat
menandakan adanya gangguan fungsi paru-paru. Sebaiknya digunakan untuk olah nafas untuk mendapatkan energi paru yang sehat dan kuat.

USUS BESAR Jam 05.00 – 07.00

Jam piket organ usus besar kuat, sebaiknya biasakan BAB secara teratur.

Sumber: vibizlife.com

I am not the most devout person - but I hear this music and I wanna roll down the car window and jubilantly sing heaven’s praises!!!

Naomi Shelton & The Gospel Queens – By Your Side

Naomi Shelton & The Gospel Queens – Lift My Burdens

 Naomi Shelton & The Gospel Queens – What More Can I Do?

Much as I hate to admit it, I’m suspiciously drawn to some songs on the recent Muse album, The Resistance. I get that it’s totally counter-intuitive to philosophise about pretentious music all day and then go home to a loud, outré, sloganeering chunk of symphonic rock, complete with time-signature changes, wholly self-indulgent guitar solos, and violently operatic vocals. But I really am beginning to love bits of it, at least.

Slap bang in the middle of the album lies the seven-minute long, multi-part leviathan that is “Unnatural Selection”. It opens with Bellamy phoning in a drawl over the kind of church organ that hasn’t been acceptable since Origin of Symmetry. From this innocuous opening emerges a slithering beast of a riff that recalls “New Born”. This somewhat pummelling passage eventually morphs into a rather baroque chorus that invokes memories of Bach, albeit interwoven with some background chanting resembling a football-terrace chant. Eventually, the song collapses into a gloriously decadent waltz, replete with woozy guitar licks and a Hammond organ that has somehow escaped out of a 50s horror film. When that passage is fully spent (and my, Bellamy has a lot of nonspecific wailing to get through), the baroque riff breaks through once more for a final showdown, this time with ten times more multi-tracked vocal harmonies and half a dozen more guitar overdubs.

And you know what? It’s marvellous.

Sometimes, Muse play up their theatricality until it just sounds ridiculous, but when they get it right, every disparate element of their schtick can fall into place perfectly, with a careless swagger than ploughs through any idea you may have had of decency. The lyrics may be meaningless nonsense, but when Bellamy is busy waking up the residents of Lake Como with his pair of bellows, it’s hard not to admit that he sounds like he’s having a good time. And, more to the p0int, that you’d be a bit of a killjoy not to have a good time yourself.

Wayne Escoffery: Uptown (Posi-Tone Records)
He has become indelibly associated with the New York scene, but in fact tenor player Wayne Escoffery was born here in London, though he was still a child when his mother took him to the States. He is an in-demand side and session man, and is now a regular with the various Mingus bands that work out of the Jazz Standard in midtown New York.

Uptown has him leading a quartet with Avi Rothbard on guitar, Gary Versace on organ and Jason Brown on drums. While we’re used to hearing Escoffery on original material – and there is plenty here, both from his pen and that of Rothbard – but more of a novelty is hearing him get stuck into a standard like Ellington’s I Got It Bad. He has something of Sonny Rollins’ or Dexter Gordon’s directness of attack and confident, melodic improvising, while the band grooves hard behind him.

Escoffery has a particularly personal and indentifiable way of playing patterns on faster originals – reminiscent of a player like Chris Potter, though by no means an imitator. It means some of his soloing can feel a little predictable, expert though it is.

Rothbard has a fairly straight jazz guitar sound but is fleet of finger and fluent in ideas. Versace and Brown swing hard in support.

Ok dirty birds, before you get any ideas, let me tell you what “external organ” I’m talking about:

The environment.

Yes, I said it!  But I don’t mean “the environment,” as in what you try to save by driving a Prius, or by recycling.  Well, I sort of do, but I think the word has been cheapened by those things a bit.

The environment is everything external to you.  Yes, it is the “natural” world – trees, earth, dirt, grass, birds, animals, etc.  It is also your house, the street you live on, your friends neighbors and enemies, your children, your parents, the airplane flying over your house.

Again, “the environment” is everything external to your body.

The “internal organs” of your body are these:

Adrenals — Appendix — Bladder — Brain — Eyes — Gall bladder — Heart — Intestines — Kidney — Liver — Lungs — Esophagus — Ovaries — Pancreas — Parathyroids — Pituitary — Prostate — Spleen — Stomach — Testicles — Thymus — Thyroid — Uterus — Veins

The internal organs of the body are “collection of tissues joined in structural unit to serve a common function.”  More importantly, they are the functional units of your body.  They work in harmony to allow you to live.  Without any one of them, you die.

Your “external organ” is the collective “thing” outside of you, that similarly supports your life.  Without any part of your external organ – without plants and animals for food, or plants and sunlight and water for air, or dirt, or the people around you, or the birds, or anything else – you die.

The "Carbon Cycle" - Your External Organ Breathes

Now consider your actions in relation to this external organ of your body.  For the people who are so detached from their own body that they cannot feel it or relate to it, this won’t mean much – but it might be a path back to the body.  It might be easier for them to first understand their relationship to their external organ.

Another Cycle of Your External Organ

Shalom! Below are some pics from this past Nov 15th, when I was hired to play the pipe organ for the service at the Scottish Church in Jerusalem. What fun!!

-Teddy

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Missing those orginal organ sounds, well here’s the cure

Autodafe have released B8 Organ, a VSTi emulation of an Organ. Here’s what they have to say about it…

B8 is basically a reproduction of the old organs of the 60’s-70’s.It has 9 oscillators, switchable between sine and saw wave, with drawbars, vibrato, chorus and reverb.Sine waves results in tones typical of a church organ, or hammond-type sounds. Saw waves sound more like old combo organs, like Farfisas, Davoli, Crumar, for example.
And best of all it is free – download it here >>

“Music on Tap” at Trinity Lutheran Church, Cleveland, on October 10. ClevelandClassical.com’s editor and publisher, Daniel Hathaway at the historic Beckerath organ. Held the second Saturday of the month, “Music on Tap” includes informal organ concerts, West Side Market bratwursts for sale and free beer samples from Great Lakes Brewing Co. Proceeds benefit the organ restoration fund.

Trinity’s Beckerath organ is a historical landmark. Built by Rudolph von Beckerath in 1956, it is the first large modern pipe organ in North America built on historic Baroque principles.

The next “Music on Tap” is Saturday, November 14 from 1:00 – 4:00 pm. Organists Nathan Carterette (1:00 pm) Brian Wentzel (1:45 pm) and Graham Schultz (2:30 pm) will perform.  2031 West 30th Street (at Lorain).

Photos: Sam Hubish

JS Bach – a composer’s name that most everyone knows.  Didn’t he compose that “scary” Phantom music?  Well, yes – that amazing piece called the Toccata and Fugue in d minor for the King of Instruments – the organ – is that “scary” and magnificent piece of music.

Bach’s music holds our attention and our imagination in the 21st century.  Yet Bach lived over three hundred years ago.  His music endures because it is intricate – it challenges the listener to keep listening;  it is emotional – why else is the Toccata called “scary” music;  it is exciting – hundreds and thousands of notes keep players focused and the listener intrigued;  it is masterful – no other composer has come close to the sheer volume of perfect music composed in a lifetime;  it demands our attention – both as a performer and a listener.

So take time this week – explore the music of this genius, this consummate musician, this master – listen to a CD, attend a performance or better yet – play one of his magnificent compositions on the organ or piano.

The opening paper at the Bach Symposium I attended last week was a stirring tribute to Johann Sebastian Bach and his influence in the world – three centuries ago and still today.  I know it is long, but this paper is worth including in my blog.  The discoveries you will make as you read this paper about Bach’s influence and lasting qualities will astound you.

The Global Importance of Bach Today

(Opening presentation by Uwe  Siemon-Netto at the “Bach in Today’s Parish” conference, Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne, IN, November 2, 2009)

A few caveats are in order before I speak to you about the global significance of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. I am not a musicologist, nor a musician; you will hear from these eminent scholars and artists later. I am just a journalist, and as a journalist, I will start with hometown news first — before going global.

I was born in Leipzig, virtually in the shadow of the Thomaskirche. When I was four, my parents began taking me to the motet or cantata services in the Thomaskirche every Friday or Saturday. This might sound alien to present-day parents, Lutherans included, who do not introduce their kids to music saying that they were “too busy” for that and preferred to spend some “quality time” with their children, like munching hamburgers together.

I spent most of World War II in Leipzig. This is why a blend of two kinds of acoustical impressions has been resonating in my head ever since my childhood – the sound of bombs and sound of Bach.

Often the two dovetailed. Often an air raid followed a cantata service or an organ recital. Or an air raid interrupted a house concert in our home. It was during one of these weekly concerts that I was first introduced to the Art of the Fugue, to which I shall return several times this morning.

The first time I heard the Art of the Fugue, it was played by a string quartet in the music room of our downtown apartment, which was destroyed on Dec. 4, 1943. Two of the musicians were members of the Gewandhaus orchestra, and two were amateurs. In the middle of the performance the sirens howled, and we all rushed to the basement.

There is something else I must tell you about these extraordinary events. They suspended on a very private level the artificial division between Jew and non-New imposed on us by the Nazis. Often Jewish relatives or friends came out of hiding a night to perform Bach or Beethoven, Pachelbel or Pretorius with us before joining us in the air raid shelters or disappearing into the night.

From that the very moment I heard the Art of the Fugue at home, the opening bars of its Contrapunctus One returned to my inner ear virtually every day – while being bombed, while fleeing from Soviet-occupied Leipzig after the War, while sitting exams at school, while feeling lovesick or covering the Vietnam War as a reporter, while suffering from a writer’s blocks.

O, I sang Lutheran hymns in my head too, and I still do, none more often than “Abide with me.” However, most of all I am fixated by these fugues! They order my mind and my soul.

In my prayers, fugues join the hymns my grandmother sang into my ears during the air raids. And this has been so for nearly seventy years now.

But that’s enough about me for the moment. Let’s stay in Leipzig for a while longer, though, in Leipzig, cradle of the peaceful revolution that brought down the Berlin Wall exactly 20 years ago. Did you know that this monumental event in history has a strong Bach connection?

The protest movement that ultimately snowballed into the bloodless revolution of 1989 started with young Christians, and even though it developed into a mass movement involving more non-Christians than Christians, it was the Church that provided the umbrella for its growth.

Here is a significant bit of information you will rarely find in your media:

This protest movement had its roots in the popular anger over a barbaric act committed by the regime of East Germany’s Communist leader Walter Ulbricht. Ulbricht was a former bordello bouncer.

On his orders, the Communists blew up Leipzig’s graceful late-Gothic university church. It stood on Karl-Marx-Platz, formerly – and now again — called Augustusplatz. Ulbricht, also a native Leipziger, had big plans for transforming this largest square in Germany into the biggest proletarian parade ground in Europe. In Ulbricht, a church had no business standing at such secular venue.

The university church, symbol of Leipzig’s academic life, as murdered on May 30, 1968. Three weeks later, the Third International Bach competition took place in Leipzig. During its opening session in the Congress Hall of the Zoo, All the Communist bigwigs sat in the front rows, next to prominent personalities of the international Bach community.

Suddenly, invisible hands unrolled a yellow poster from the ceiling of this concert hall causing a gasp. The poster showed the outline of the murdered church, the year of its death –1968 – and the words, “Wir fordern Wiederaufbau” (“We demand Reconstruction”).

This spectacular incident drew the attention of the world’s musical elite to a Communist outrage. The authors of this demonstration were four young physicists, all Christians. One was eventually betrayed by a West German leftist to East Germany’s secret police and sent to prison.

It was this stunning episode that ultimately spawned the resistance movement whose success in November of 1989 Germans are commemorating in these weeks.

I must still beg you to remain with me in Leipzig for a little longer for it is, after all, the capital of the global Bach community, the number one pilgrimage site for Bach lovers from all continents. Of the 850 students at Leipzig’s Hochschule für Musik und Theater Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Germany’s oldest state conservatory, almost one quarter hails from Asia. Asians fill the pews of the Thomaskirche during its motet and cantata services.

Japanese in particular have been flocking to Leipzig even in Communist days. One of them was musicologist Keisuke Maruyama. He became a Christian by studying the impact of the weekday periscopes in the 18th-century Lutheran lectionary cycle on Bach’s cantatas.

After he had finished his research, he told my friend Rev. Johannes Richter, then the superintendent (regional bishop) of the half of Leipzig’s Lutheran parishes: “It is not enough the read Christian texts. I want to be a Christian myself. Please baptize me.”

When Richter told me this during one of my rare reporting stints to Leipzig, atheism was the state religion of East Germany. On the same occasion, I interviewed the members of the Thomanerchor, whose director Bach had been from 1723 until his death in 1750.

Since the Reformation, the Thomanerchor has been a municipal institution, and so it was in Communist days. But under Communism, for the first time in the choir’s history, no chaplain was allowed to provide pastoral care to these boys in their boarding school. For the previous 800 years, their predecessors received their instruction in the Christian faith in their dorms; now even table prayers were forbidden. To be catechized they had to go to a nearby church.

But when I asked several of these children whether they were believers, they replied: “O yes, almost all of us are. You cannot really sing Bach without faith.”

These two examples show that in an era of darkest atheism Bach worked as a missionary – to a scholar from far-away Asia, and to kids raised in a godless environment, and even a ranking Communist functionary.

I remember interviewing the director of the Leipzig Bach Institute of that period. He was a member of the Communist hierarchy. He told me that he could only be an atheist only as long as he did not have to listen to Bach. “It is strange, though, how quickly this changes when I hear Bach’s music.”

This now really does take me to the global significance of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. I have made the fascinating discovery that whenever I write about Bach for the Atlantic Times, my regular client, these articles automatically appear in its sister paper, the Asia-Pacific Times.

Why should this be so? Because the editors of both publications know that Bach is one of the hottest topics in the Far East. You write about Bach in Germany or in France or in the United States, and Asians gobble it up – so much so that features like these sell advertising space more easily than many other topics.

My wife and I spend our summers in the Dordogne in southwestern France, where towns and villages are gradually restoring their Romanesque parish churches; there are about one thousand of them in the Dordogne alone. These sanctuaries are usually empty, largely for lack of priests. But this changes during the summer thanks to a concert series organized by Ton Koopman, the great Dutch organist and Bach performer, who owns a home there.

Then busloads of music lovers pour into the Dordogne from all over the world, Dutch, Belgians, Germans, Scandinavians, Japanese, Koreans, and Chinese. A French count sleeps in a car parked immediately in front of ancient churches where the musicians store their ancient instruments. He protects those instruments literally with his own body against thieves and vandals.

French peasants devoid of musical education suddenly appear in their churches they and their ancestors had ignored for at least two centuries. Their children, until recently ignorant of any form of classical music now join choirs whipped into shape by Koopman, the star, and hitherto unknown instructors.

Wealthy Frenchmen like my friend Francis Vigne, a retired engineer, buy orphaned organs from the Netherlands and Germany and install them in these rural sanctuaries that had never held any instrument since they were built a millennium ago. Now slowly the locals, intrigued by their alien sounds, pop into these churches they had never seen from the inside. And more and more often do I hear them sigh:  “All we need now is a pastor.”

It is my impression, which I cannot substantiate with statistics, and for which I must beg you to trust my experienced journalist’s nose, that all this is a manifestation of what many French call la grande soif pour Dieux or, more sophisticatedly, la soif pour la transcendence.

I claim that the music of Bach and his contemporaries lures the thirsty to a place where they will be refreshed — to ancient edifices where they sit tightly packed on narrow benches, often without backrests, and listen to Koopman’s Baroque ensemble, more and more and more every year – so much so that many copycats are now imitating Koopman’s initiative.

When I see and hear all this I cannot help thinking with enormous sadness and anger of one big Lutheran church near St. Louis, which proudly proclaims: “Here you will never hear the music of Johann Sebastian Bach.”

Well, let me tell you this: In southwestern France, people might not fill the pews every Sunday but they have also not replaced the altars with sets of drums; they swing along not with praise bands but with Bach, Telemann and Pachelbel, Schütz, Schein and Scheidt. And I have noticed that when the concert season is well over, some of the churches, once so empty, remain packed.

Yes, I do believe that Bach is busily at work as an evangelist, to paraphrase Nathan Söderblom, the former archbishop of Uppsala in Sweden. I also share a similar view expressed by the late Arthur Peacocke, one of the most significant figures in the burgeoning dialogue between Faith and Science.

Peacocke, an Anglican canon and a noted biochemist, sounded much like Martin Luther who once described music as a tool of the Holy Spirit. He specifically made a point to which I am inclined to subscribe to heartily:
The Holy Spirit Himself dictated The Art of the Fugue into Bach’s plume.

When I wrote this on my blog site I got into deep waters with Lutheran coreligionists who believe themselves to be more orthodox than I.

What infuriated them was not only my reference to the Holy Spirit’s authorship of the Art of the Fugue, but even more so a story of mine describing how Glenn Gould’s rendering of the Goldberg Variations, another very abstract work by Bach, had triggered the interest of Masashi Masuda from Hokkaido in northern Japan in Christianity.

Masuda told me on the telephone one day that he wanted to discover the source of this wonderful composition – and was guided to the Christian faith, thus supporting Arthur Peacocke’s theory.

Masashi Masuda became a member of the Society of Jesus, and ultimately a professor of systematic theology at Sophía University, a Jesuit-owned school in Tokyo.

You cannot believe the furious electronic missives aimed at me across the internet in response to this report. “Sir, did you not know that the Holy Spirit only works through the Word?” one angry reader chided. I replied, “I thought we had learned in Systematics III that the Holy Spirit blew as he wished.

I apologized saying that I was unaware that the Third Person in the Trinity was under any obligation to study the Book of Concord before blowing? So now we know: The Holy Spirit has no right to use an abstract composition by Johann Sebastian Bach as a shoe ladle for the Word of God.

Another email correspondent seemed ready to burn me at the stake, if only this could be done in cyberspace, for implying in my Masashi Masuda story that the Holy Spirit might have guided this former non-believer to a denominationally incorrect target. “See? Now Siemon-Netto even asserts that Bach has driven this man to the Antichrist.”

Rare in a journalist’s life are such wonderful occasions when divine irony refutes absurdity with swift fury. On the very day I received this email a friend from Portland, Oregon, sent me this beautiful bit of news: She had a grandson, who used to be a godless lout. Then one day his father gave him a Glenn Could recording of Bach’s Italian Concerto, another work without words.

A few months later, this young man surprised his father by playing the Italian Concerto on the father’s piano, from memory. Until that point Dad had had no idea that this teenager even knew how to handle a piano.

Next, the boy informed his grandmother that he would now like to learn how to play the organ.

So from that day on he accompanied her every Sunday to her Lutheran church, and now he can play the organ and has become a Christian. I just copied this bit of her email to my angry interlocutor, self-righteously adding three of the first Latin words I had ever learned: “Quod erat demonstrandum.”

As Prof. Robin Leaver told me this morning, Johann Olearius, the 17th-century German mathematician and librarian called the Holy Spirit “der grosse Kapellmeister” (literally, the great orchestra conductor). Again: Quod erat demonstrandum.

This leads me to a fascinating question others are probably more competent to answer than I:

How come that the most destructive and tasteless forms of music and the very best have an almost equal ability to transcend ethnic, cultural and geographic barriers while others don’t.

How come you see people twitch to the same inane beat whether you are in Iceland or Okinawa, in Berlin or Bali? If Arthur Peacocke is right that the Holy Spirit disseminates Bach, what do you call the spirit that promulgates rap and Hip Hop but not, for example Schubert’s lieder, on a global scale?

We might have to consult psychologists here, perhaps even physicians. After attending a genuine – not touristy – Voodoo   séance in Haiti back in 1964 my wife told me that this experience had literally put a spell on her, mesmerized her, changed her physically at least as it was happening.

One physician said that this intense drumbeat actually changes your breathing or your heartbeat. I don’t know about that. I was there too, and it did nothing for me. But like my wife, and evidently like huge audiences in Tokyo, I feel profoundly changed when listening to the Art of the Fugue or the final chorus of Bach’s St. John’s Passion.

There might well be some kind of spirit involved in Rap and Voodoo, in addition perhaps even to temporary biological and physiological transformations. Others might be more competent to opine on this.

But what about the Spirit who made sure that the Japanese with their entirely different musical background grasp the significance of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, whereas most of us Westerners might find the traditional tunes of Japan charming, exotic, an alien delight, but not really overwhelming.

About ten years ago, I put this question in Tokyo to a couple of musicologists, whose names, I am ashamed to say, I have misplaced in my messy archives. They came up with the following theory that might in part explain the current Bach Boom in Japan and other parts of Asia for several decades now.

When Francis Xavier and other Jesuit and Franciscan missionaries landed in southern Japan in the mid-16th century, they brought with them Western-style church music, especially Gregorian chant, and the organ. In fact they built pipe organs from bamboo, and before the sixteenth century was out, some Japanese princes were so accomplished on the Queen of the Instruments that in the 1560s three of them toured European courts playing before kings and princes and before the Pope.

Christianity was eradicated in Japan in the early 17th century. Christians were crucified, burned at the stake, and scorched to death while hanging upside-down over cesspools.

But my Japanese interlocutors told me that while the Christian faith was wiped out, elements of Western music infiltrated Japanese folk song.  This influence evidently remained strong enough to help Bach’s music sweep Japan four centuries later.

I like this theory. I am sure Arthur Peacocke would have loved it. It comforted me in my perplexity throughout the last four years in St. Louis when I listened to Robert Bergt’s spectacular Bach at the Sem performances, and found the huge Chapel of St. Timothy and St. Titus filled with white heads.

Most of these heads belonged to members of outside communities. I was grateful to see them there. But where were the seminarians in whose theological tradition the music of Johann Sebastian Bach played such a towering role? Where, for that matter, were most of the faculty members?

These concerts were recorded and then repeated over KFUO-FM, this marvelous gift by faithful German-American Lutherans to the larger St. Louis community, a jewel of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod whose reputation is otherwise not really one of winsomeness.

Now this KFUO is being sold for an apple and an egg. The church body whose founder had linked music and the Holy Spirit so closely glibly jettisons one the Comforter’s most splendid tools. Ladies and gentlemen, by all means grill me electronically for this outburst: This unfathomable act reminds me hauntingly of Walter Ulbricht’s massacre of our University Church in our mutual hometown of Leipzig in 1968.

I have been invited to talk to you about the Global Significance of the Music of Johann Sebastian Bach. You cannot do this without contemplating the Third Person of the Trinity, and I cannot help noticing that He is being mocked in our own family of faith.

Of course you can try to keep the Holy Spirit and his toys out of reality and replace them with kitsch. But be warned. The Holy Spirit will still blow as he wills, perhaps not on Founder’s Way in St. Louis, but — Japan and Korea, in once abandoned Romanesque churches in southwestern France, in the head of a formerly godless lout in Oregon — and in my head, which keeps finding order and comfort thanks to Bach’s incomplete masterpiece, the Art of the Fugue.

Office:
Uwe Siemon-Netto Ph.D., D.Litt.
Director
Center for Lutheran Theology & Public Life
Concordia University,
Old Administration Building, 312 A
1530 Concordia West
Irvine, CA 92612-3203
Phone 949-854-8002

Jeannine attended a Bach Symposium at the Concorida Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne, Indiana the first week of November.  Excellent papers were presented on Johann Sebastian Bach and his relevance in today’s world.  Several superb concerts were heard during the symposium including a performance of Cantata #106 – Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit, an organ recital by Dr. David Mulbury which included major works for the King of Instruments, and a thrilling Hymn Festival.  It was an intellectually stimulating three days!