Eminent musician and musical scholar Leo Schrade reflects on Bach and his music.
"UNDERSTANDING AND esteem for Bach's music have developed in a way not altogether regular. The course of men's appreciation of Bach has moved back and forth, like the tides. The causes that have set these tides in motion have changed from time to time. Hence we always think we are "discovering" Bach anew. If signs are not wholly deceptive, a new wave seems to be rising here and now. A new historical interpretation may therefore be worthwhile.
Whenever in the past historical explanation has claimed to reveal the most ultimate and profound secrets of Bach's music, it has been only in the most general terms that the scholar, the historian, the philosophical interpreter have been able to fathom the depths of his work. Its sum and substance have been held to consist in the force of its religious quality, its spiritual power, its profundity of feeling, its abundance of humanity. We accept these terms as entirely appropriate. It seems that all who have a mind for his music draw upon such a terminology to express the ultimate and inexplicable. Such words are nebulous, and always exposed to danger; they are apt to be vague and empty. Their meaning as applied to Bach becomes clear in the light of his own historical context. Was religious quality or intensity of feeling in fact the historical import of Bach and his work? And if so, was it the real force that gave his work its form? If Bach spoke the language of religion, of human depth and feeling, we must learn to understand its significance in terms of his own situation and problems, or else it merely calls forth our subjective and uncontrolled imagination. This is the true task of historical interpretation."-Introduction.
