Word: johanne
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...idea that there might be intelligent life on Mars took root in the 17th century, after Johannes Kepler developed his theory of planetary motion, which helped rebut the old Ptolemaic idea of an earth-centered system of celestial bodies. Kepler's ideas supported the Copernican theory that the sun is the true center of man's universe. Its implications were profound. If the earth is only one of several planets orbiting the sun, could it be the only one to contain life? Newton, Huygens and Voltaire all speculated on the existence of intelligent life elsewhere in the solar...
...know the author but: My hat is off to Johann Bach. For whom my sentiment is ach; Not once, but twice, a model spouse. With twenty children in the house...
Thus might Johann Sebastian Bach and his family have celebrated Christmas nearly 250 years ago. In its joyous expression of a faith that was as natural as breath, that scene seems to be more than a millennium away from 1968, when the season celebrating the Saviour's birth is a time of commercial convulsion. Even many of those yearning for piety find Jesus elusive, a shadowy problematical name in history rather than a symbol of ultimate reassurance. Seen through the scrim of contemporary anxiety and unbelief, everything about the Bach-family Christmas seems to be a quaint anomaly...
Everything, that is, except the music, which looms far larger today than it did in Bach's own time. In 18th century Germany, Bach had a national reputation as a virtuoso organist. Yet as a composer, he attracted mostly condescending notice-even his son Johann Christian, one of the four Bach children who distinguished themselves as composers, referred to him as "the Old Wig." Today, of course, Bach is universally ranked among the transcendent creators of Western civilization. Choral works that he turned out for rowdy schoolboys to sing in drafty provincial churches are cherished by the world...
...trend in music moved away from virile counterpoint toward softer melody and simple accompaniment, from rich harmonic modulations toward more basic cadences, and from daring elaboration toward the cultivation of controlled elegance. Bach's composer sons-notably Carl Philipp Emanuel, Johann Christian and Wilhelm Friedemann -were all attracted to this style. After his death, Bach was mourned as a fine organist and teacher, but for 70 years his reputation as a composer was kept alive only by a few enthusiasts and composers, notably Mozart and Beethoven...