Word: bache
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Never in the history of music has the work of one man embodied so completely all religious experience as does that of J. S. Bach. In the scores of his Passions and Masses are infused the mysticism, the love, and the exaltation of Christianity, with the devotion and piety of Bach's own nature. The great B minor Mass especially expresses no narrow sectarianism, is not devoted to the Lutheran or the Roman Catholic Church, but to the universal Church of God. Truly, if, as Henry Adams has said, Chartres Cathedral represents the Church architectural, and the work...
Other religious music pales beside the Mass. Mozart and Beethoven both wrote masses of unquestionable beauty, but since they were more in the secular tradition than Bach they did not succeed so well in pouring into these works their own greatness of spirit. The Easter music from "Parsifal" likewise, for all its magic, seems mere tour de force, coloristic effect, next to the Mass; Wagner was concerned chiefly with recreating the atmosphere of legend and not with creating a setting for Christian devotion. The Bach B minor Mass is, in fact, a unique work. Consequently, its performance next Sunday...
Alfred Wallenstein, sometime concert cellist, has been musical director of Newark, N. J.'s station WOR (Mutual network) for five years. Long ago he disabused the station's management of their theory that Bach was too high-brow for their listeners; long ago he began putting new compositions on the air. Last week Director Wallenstein for the 300th time gave a work its radio debut...
...fitted, the tunes receive full harmonic treatment only in the hands of arrangers. But obviously enough, every theme is simple until it has been subjected to the variation and development of which only highly trained musicians are capable. The principal musical ideas of the world's greatest composers, from Bach to Strawinsky, in their original form might well be and often are the products of a folk group rather than a single genius. And the possibilities of transforming these so-called "simple" Negro melodies into classical music of tremendous power are shown by the popularity and genuine artistic merit such...
...Bach: Little Organ Book (E. Power Biggs; Victor: 6 sides). Organist Biggs makes Harvard's 18th-Century-model organ sparkle in a sheaf of Gothic choral preludes...